Four Epic Sagas Told too Beautifully to Possibly Repeat - Royal Geographical Society
Today's visit to the Royal Geographical Society was a bit different than any of others thus far. Instead of a traditional tour around the library, Eugene, the librarian, took us on a different sort of tour through history. He introduced us to the concept of Hot and Cold display, essentially a display of items from both cold and hot regions of the world. Then he proceeded to tell us four incredibly engaging stories, with the wonderful visual aids he had laid out for us.
The stories themselves were incredibly interesting and well-told, I kind of want to just repeat them, but I don't think I could do the stories justice. What I will mention is how much I appreciated hearing about the work the library is doing to become more open access. And I mean in present day, but they've also been making their collection available to the public for years. Just after they opened, in the 1830's, they would train people in the use of their geographical instruments and even loan them out! I think it's spectacular that such a prominent and established collection is making an effort to serve the community as best as possible.
After our tour of the collection, many of us went to lunch where we got to talk and ask questions about genealogy (while enjoying some authentic London fish n' chips). As far as my genealogy, I know a bit about my father's side, I'm about 1/4 Polish and 1/4 Russian; however, on my mother's side essentially what I know of my heritage is that it's probably a mix of European. Learning about a few of the ways to go about starting the process of finding out more about this was incredibly helpful, and hopefully in a little while I'll know a little more than just European.