Monday, November 02, 2009

The Cultured Traveler


The New York Times travels to rare book libraries that anyone can visit and see some amazing treasures.

From the story...

But these books are not just for scholars. They are also on view for the average visitor, albeit one with a decided interest in the sciences who makes a pilgrimage to western Missouri, where the sprawling red-brick library sits majestically on a 14-acre urban arboretum just a five-minute walk from Kansas City’s Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.

The Linda Hall (pictured above) is among dozens of libraries across the United States that house dazzling collections and often mount eccentric exhibitions but largely remain unfamiliar to the public.

“What is fun is to become aware of these marvelous libraries that, though open to the public, are not well known and are filled with wonderful treasures,” said Robert S. Pirie, a prominent book collector who lives in Manhattan and has his own library of several thousand volumes.

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