The Tourist Librarian

I caught the train to Helsingborg this morning, which should be about a half hour journey unless you get on the slow train (guess what I did). Lund University established a campus in this town ten years ago. It serves several subjects, including tourism and computer science (both of which I support at Westminster). This is why I was particularly keen to visit this library.

Campus Helsingborg

Whereas the Faculty of Social Sciences (where I was yesterday) is located in Lund's former hospital, Campus Helsingborg's building used to be a rubber factory.

Like yesterday, I met Academic Liaison Librarians (Kontaktbibliotekarie) for the various departments based at CH. One of them had visited Cardiff University through Erasmus to find out more about the Cephalonian method. This is interesting because we have discussed using this at Westminster.

Colleagues working at Westminster's Harrow site would probably understand how the ALLs at Helsingborg feel in being away from the main university site. One of the ways the library staff at Lund communicate with one another is via a blog. This blog was first set up when Lund did 23 Things a few years ago. However, they decided 23 was too many so cut it down. I think this a wise decision in light of the fact that we started 23 Things 9 months ago and are only on Thing 13!

One of the librarians,Anna Alwerud, took me for lunch at IKEA's world office, just across from CH. This used to be a sugar factory.

They had IKEA's commandments on the wall and Anna commented these are very appropriate for libraries - do you agree and, if so, which ones?

After lunch, Anna and I were on the information desk. I went to browse the tourism books and felt at home when I saw familiar titles written by academics at Westminster.

I'm at Helsingborg again tomorrow and am taking an exciting trip across the water to a place made famous by Shakespeare - can you guess the play?