Interesting lectures

It has been a pretty normal week at work, apart from Thursday afternoon. Over 90 librarians attended an event with several lectures that afternoon. It was very interesting to hear my colleagues talk about their areas of knowledge. One gave a speech on the collection of 2000 year old papyrus pieces written in Greek. She brought in two real papyrus plants to show us also. Another gave a lecture on Queen Kristina's librarians. The queen reigned 1632-1654 and took a huge interest in reading and literary matters. Her librarians travelled around Europe to purchase books for her. She abdicated and moved to Rome in 1655. A part of her manuscript collection is still there (in the Vatican Library). One colleague talked about the book production during the 20th century. That century saw an enormous increase in the number of books published, notably large sets of encyclopedias and reference works. That was the time when the book became a common item in every man's household. Prior to that people had basically owned a hymnal book and an almanac. Some younger colleagues had taken a look at the future prospects for the book. They showed us hand-held electronic readers, where the text rolled on the screen, sometimes even with sound effects. Some books are now produced entirely for this market and are never printed properly. I was very impressed with all the speakers, they did a great job of presenting their pieces. Afterwards we talked and mingled for a while.

This has been a rather slow weekend. At least I haven't been anywhere else than here. It may sound a little strange, but I have actually wrapped quite a few Christmas presents. Next weekend I will meet the other family members at the summer house, and I thought that I would bring the presents with me, for them to take home. I have also looked through my clothes collection again, and thrown out some items.