Museum visit

Tuesday afternoon the social club at work arranged a guided tour of the zoological museum in Lund. It is less than 200 meters from the library and I had never been there before. It is only open by appointment. It was three floors of stuffed animals and bone frames of all kinds of animals from all over the world. The emphasis was on European animals, but there were several showcases with exotic animals, like Tazmanian tiger (extinct) and large snakes. Also an extensive collection of shells from Java. It was interesting to see the bone structures of tigers and polar bears. They don't look at all that impressive without the fur, except for their teeth, of course. The aurochs (extinct large cow-like animal) bone structure on display had been preserved in the Skåne peat land for thousands of years. It had a hole in the spine, and according to the guide, it was from an arrowhead. Very interesting museum.

The treatment the chiropractor gave me yesterday was not pleasant. My right hip is not in good condition, unfortunately. It's not really the hip, it's a large back muscle that gets stuck in pieces of the spine and causes all sorts of problems, all the way down my right leg. Very annoying.

Right now I have desk duty in the manuscript reading room. The first hour there was no one, but now there are three people. One is a colleague doing local history research. Another is an elderly gentleman (a scholar) who used to have access to the stacks (more than 20 years ago). He had asked for some volumes we couldn't find in the catalogue. He actually remembered what they looked like and also where they had been placed in the stacks 20-30 years ago. The books were oversize, and that could be in three different places. I brought him to the stacks and we found the volumes after a while. It's kind of embarassing that the patrons know the stacks better than the staff. But he was very happy to get the books and he thanked me about three times for being given the favor of once again visiting the stacks. Not everybody thinks the stacks are that exciting, I must admit.