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Sunday, May 3, 2015

Educational week

As a part of the reference collection project four of us walked a few hundred meters to the humanities library to talk to the librarians. They had recently moved their books and had been forced to downsize a lot, turning five different reference collections into one. They had also changed the call number system to Dewey, which we still haven't made any decisions about. It was interesting to see how they had done it, even though their reference books make up less than a tenth of our collection.

Wednesday the social club at work arranged an event many of us attended. One of the last Holocaust survivors came to talk about her experiences. Her origin was in Poland and she had survived walking from there to northwestern Germany and then spent several months in a death camp. Aged 90, she still remembered dates and places, names and faces. She had just made a return visit to Bergen-Belsen, which was liberated by the British forces 70 years ago this April. She said that her body was present but her mind was still back there. It was the first time I had heard anyone talk about these things in person, and it was just as horrible to hear as you can imagine. She talked non-stop for two hours and 20 minutes with the audience in full attention. Very, very educational.

Thursday was the big spring party day for the students and just as I thought there were no visitors in the manuscript reading room. I sat there guarding an empty room. Friday was May 1st, traditionally the day when politicians give speeches and there are labor union demonstrations. I did not attend any of it. Saturday I was at work for a few hours and then I made use of one event-ticket I was given for my birthday. It was a guided city walk, the theme was Women in Lund. It was the first time they arranged it. We got to hear about the wives of professors, housekeepers of prominent persons, women photographers, doctors and authors and a few more. The time span was 1300-1950, so a pretty wide scope. It was quite interesting. The guide even said she had been to my library to do research for it!

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