Whats Happening at Texas

Well guys, its been a while since I posted something, so here goes. My trip from San Francisco was not without the usual problems - my morning flight was cancelled, so was out on another flight and had my entire flight plan changed. Ended up in Los Angeles, had to deplane as I was told they would have to find me another seat since the plane was full. Managed to board after an hour and go to a Dallas to get my connecting flight to College Station. I was really exhausted as I arrived at 9pm. Anyway, this week I visited the Cushing Special collections library which has some strict security -

very specialised and involved in preservation. I did see some books valued at over $5000, so pretty serious stuff happening here. On Tuesday I visited the Medical Sciences Libray and noticed a similar work patttern amongst the librarians -except I found it very interesting to hear that the librarians do "Rounds" in the wards with the professor and students - a great way to network and learn about research. Today I went to the University of Texas in Austin and was amazed by the size of this library. Very different from Texas A & M in that the librarians are not on a tenure track here, so not so much under pressure to publish. Will be spending the next 2 days learning about digitisation..
The last picture is their Research Commons which is wireless and students bring their own laptops in.