Essential Information
| Location |
National Maritime Museum
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|---|---|
27 Jan 2012
Local blog authors visit the new Caird Library & Archive
The Caird Library held its first bloggers preview event last Saturday. We've been scouring the blogosphere in the last few weeks for bloggers who we thought would like to see what we have in our Library and our archives. We hoped that this would help us spread the word about our Library and our collections, which are free for anyone to come and enjoy. Our guests were enthusiasts and experts on a huge range of subjects, from local history to genealogy; from naval history to contemporary culture, and more besides.
We'd asked our guests in advance to vote for the objects they'd like to see from a shortlist of some of the treasures in our collections. We had the most popular on display to see, including the Aurora Australis, the 'first book ever written, printed, illustrated and bound in the Antarctic' by Ernest Shackleton and his team, 1908; Captain Bligh's copy of Buchan's Domestic Medicine of 1779, kept at Pitcairn Island; a manuscript diary kept by Alfred Withers of a voyage from Liverpool to Melbourne in 1857, and plans of Deptford Dockyard from the 1770's. Images of these manuscripts and books can be seen in our previous items of the month.
We were also able to give some exclusive tours of our new stores allowing our guests to see how our collections are arranged and cared for, and to see how much work we have put into managing our archive and library material in preparation for the new service that we've just launched. Our guests were also lucky enough to get a sneak preview of a short film of the archive and library move, which is due to go on our website in the coming weeks.
For any of our guests that have blogged about the event that we may have missed please do let us know by posting a comment below, or you can tweet us @NMMGreenwich and mention #CairdLibrary. Please don't be offended if you weren't invited, why not drop us a line and tell us about your blog if you think you should be on the guest list for future events?
Thanks to all who attended for a great afternoon!
Mike
Assistant Archivist
Guest blogs:
Sign of Penguins, http://0tralala.blogspot.com
National Maritime Museum and Library, http://catsmeatshop.blogspot.com
The Caird Library at the National Maritime Museum, http://deptforddame.blogspot.com
The Old Order Changeth, http://gentlemenandtarpaulins.com