Praised bookservice

The article I wrote for the local historical society publication gave no response whatsoever but I guess not everyone is as interested in old archive material as I am. I wrote about a newly scanned archive series available online at the Riksarkivet website. I found my great grandfather's farm listed there, it stated how many cows he owned in 1917 and what kind of crops he grew in the fields, among other things.

At work I spend a lot of time weeding the reference collection. The current subject is Geography.

We have received much praise for our bookservice. One patron was just ecstatic about the fact that we were able to locate a unique book for her at the storage. She travelled from Blekinge province for this book and she sent a long thank you-note afterwards. She even sent this note to the newspaper, asking to have it published somehow. It feels rather odd to get such a response for doing one's ordinary job.

Last week I took one afternoon off and became a patron instead. I asked to have a volume from a manuscript archive retrieved. It contained over 300 letters written in the early 19th century by the owner of the Strö manor house to his nephew. There was a valuable book collection placed at Strö manor house 1785-1845 and I want to research this. It turns out that both these people had a handwriting that is extremely challenging to read. The manuscript librarian told me the nephew (who was of noble family) was famous for his illegible handwriting. I have 30 years experience and have to say not much was understandable. The last 20 letters or so were not possible to understand at all, the author was 87 years old by then and the letters were written with bad ink. Still, it was interesting to see the material and I could conclude that they did not discuss book-related issues in these letters.