Monday , Oct 13th

Now it is down to hard work. I left Christel's house at 7.45 a.m. and she dropped me at the STATE MUSIC LIBRARY (STATENS MUSIKBIBLIOTEK ), just before 8.30 a.m.
I was met by the Librarian who gave me a general 'run down' on the history of this library. Although it is run by the national Swedish government , it is free and available to the public. It is a very old library service having been established in 1771. It is now the biggest music library in Sweden and has 25 staff. They lend out any material they can buy and do about 7000 Inter Library Loans to people through their public libraries. they moved to the building they are in now, in 1996 and have a lovely open access library for people to come and use. They also have vast amounts of old material in their stacks . They do not collect CD's just books, scores and sheet music etc. They also subscribe to data bases which the public can access.
I was shown the Archives and document collection and also the Orchestra collection, by the appropriate librarian in charge.
I was treated to lunch in the building's restaurant and then my friend, Astrid, who works here, took me to the actual open acces library and I was able to see how it all worked,what types of material were there and how it was stored and accessed. Vert attractively presented and certainly a pleasant place to visit.