Visited the 'rare books room' yesterday.

Not something TheOldPlace has. Maybe a handful of slightly elderly or more likely 'dodgy' books on a shelf in the boss's office.

Here there's a smallish room with all sorts of old material along with some art material as well. Yes, the dodgy stuff appears to end up here too. Certain infamous photographers come to mind. But some of the material is much more like I remember from the job before the last one where there were books from the 1600s and even some from the 1500s. OK, so you weren't handling them daily, but it was interesting to be able to go see them.

Even here, with books 200 years old or more there's a certain awe about them. Favorite find was the final story of a great polar explorer signed by his wife as a gift for the President of a sponsoring institution. Probably worth the best part of a $1000. There was also a giant (books four feet high!) three volume set of the naval architect's plans for the old wooden and ironclad warship in the harbor. Funnily enough I'd have been responsible for that subject area at TheOldPlace, here they don't even teach it.

The only snag in exploring this lot was to remember to move. The lights turned off automatically after just a few minutes with no motion. In an internal room that can be quite dark. Still, I won't have much to do with it in general - not that many rare computing books in general - but it's nice to know it was there and curious to note I was only shown it 'by accident'. It wasn't part of the formal tour.