21 Jan 2016

A recent visit to the Wellcome Institute has got us thinking about what attracts people to our Caird Library.

Staff from the Library visited the new Reading Room at the Wellcome Institute earlier this year. The room is an experimental area which operates as a sort of hybrid of a library and a gallery. .. it’s well worth a visit. I was struck by a line in the guide to the space which stated - `If the Welcome Collection is home for the incurably curious, this space is designed to nurture those gravely afflicted by the desire to know just a little bit more’!

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I’d like to think that this, in a nutshell, is also what attracts people to the Caird. We have an enormous range of material for visitors to look at especially if they’ve seen something in a gallery and want to find out more. The variety of different enquiries that staff deal with on a regular basis is also proof that the Library is a resource for everyone and almost anything. In the last week enquiries have included steamships operating in the Far East in the 19th century, art relating to solar eclipses, the definition of a `muffiere’, statistics relating to scurvy and information on the Windrush voyages!

Stuart Bligh, Head of Archive and Library

If you have your own questions then get in touch, or visit the Caird Library and Archive