London, Day 10, June 26, 2007

Tuesday: this was our second all-day trip day. We went to Cambridge! As I did with Oxford, I will dwell only briefly on the lectures and presentations. This will be a day of photographs and very brief notes on the "school" portion of the day.


For the first time De and I were late for the meeting at the bus, and we were almost left behind. We got lost not in the streets of London, but in the UCL building. In our defense, I will say that that building is a veritable labyrinth if ever there was one. Anyway, we made it in the end, and they did wait for us, and we made good time on the trip, and arrived in Cambridge on time.
Cambridge is so beautiful it's breathtaking! But see for yourselves....



Once we arrived in Cambridge, our first visit was to ProQuest, where we had several brief presentations on the themes of e-collections, e-aggregations and e-book publishing. ProQuest has a lot in common with Thomson, in the sense of aggregating and organizing information as a service to researchers. One-stop-shopping that gives access to organized content, speeding up and simplifying the searching portion of research. Their targe audience is made up of scholars and students. The focus of the presentations was aggregation.



A very interesting presentation was given by a guest speaker from Cambridge University Press, Richard Fisher on e-monographs. Richard is executive director in the humanities and social sciences at CUP.



After the morning talks we were driven to a pub where we had the best pub lunch of the entire trip, I would say. At least I did. I had steak and ale pie (beef stew cooked in beer in a short crust) which was delicious, with mashed potatoes and gravy and another vegetable which I can't remember now. It was very, very good.



After lunch we drove to Cambridge University, and visited the Cambridge University Library.

Here we are, standing outside the Cambridge University Library, ready to begin our tour.

Anthony gave us some history of the university. This is his alma mater, so he was very proud to tell us all about it. Once inside the library, we had our afternoon presentation. Regretfully, this was perhaps the least satisfying of all the presentations we've had during this trip, because the speaker had a bad habit of standing too far from the microphone, not looking at us while she spoke and speaking in a very low whisper, which made it almost impossible to follow her. The topic of her talk was Cambridge's involvement with creating a DSpace repository. The topic was interesting, but the presentation was poorly delivered.

Phil and De standing outside one of the buildings in the university, listening to Anthony. This was a really fun day.

Sam, in front of the library.

Becky.
This was a charming building on the river where the punting boats are. I could have stood on this bridge for hours. As you will see in the next few pictures, the view was almost unbearably beautiful.

Not too much wind in these willos this afternoon, but boy, what willows. One of my very favorite trees, these were absolutely spectacular. They made me want to weep from the sheer pleasure of looking at them.

Please click on these pictures and let them fill your screen to get the maximum impact. Standing on the bridge and having this view fill my field of vision was such a sensual pleasure. It made me nostalgic for my boarding school days, and also nostalgic for something I've never experienced in life but feel that I wish I had.

After lingering on the bridge for a while, we started walking toward Pembroke College, which was Anthony's college when he was a student at Cambridge. Each college is independent in many ways. Most notably from our perspective, each college has its very own library, so that is where we are headed.

During our walk toward Pembroke, I took pictures of the town of Cambridge. What can I say, the charm just oozed out of every brick and stone.

Here we are walking along this marvelous stretch of castle-like buildings.

The other side of the street.

Here we are arriving at Pembroke.

Just look at these trees!

And here it is, the library of Pembroke College.

I took this picture for my mother. Look at the flowers, Mamma!

This 14th century building (or thereabouts) has had a recent addition put on, and I documented some of the places where the old and new structure meet. I think it's quite harmonious.

A stained glass window along one wall of one of the reading rooms.

A view out of the window opposite to the stained glass one. I just couldn't resist this view, the idea that one could say, oh, yes, this is my campus, I look out the window and this is what I see. It's very Harry Potter, too!

This is the main reading room on the upstairs floor. It's been beautifully restored and is quite breathtaking. Who wouldn't want to study in here?

A spiral staircase that took us back down to the ground floor. I have neglected to mention that we received this lovely tour courtesy of the gracious librarian of Pembroke College, Patricia Aske.

This is the last picture of this day. I just love it. D and Andy are sharing a brownie, sitting on a wall with those wonderful castle-like buildings in the background. It just illustrates what a companionable spirit our group enjoyed during this wonderful trip.

We got back on the bus and rested and napped and looked at our pictures and chatted amiably until we got back to UCL. Then home, dinner, sleep...

Good night to all my friends and loved ones!