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Indeed amazing pictures of amazing repositories of knowledge and human experience. Reminds me of a few of the places I have worked in over the years. Of course, the pictures show them literally in their best light. I have a few stories about working in pretty arduous conditions (such as no heating in winter) which takes away a bit of the glamour of some of these libraries. I now build virtual libraries which is not the the same thing (no smell of the leather, or of dust) but which has the advantage of full text searching . I wonder if we could ever have the best of both these book worlds?