Standin' in the Reading Room

On March 18, I attended a Virginia Festival of the Book event held at Jefferson Library. The library's reading room was standing-room only to hear Boston Globe reporter Michael Kranish discuss his new book Flight from Monticello : Thomas Jefferson at war. The event was interesting to me for several reasons. First, Kranish was a delightful speaker. His talk touched on a few major points of the book illustrating Jefferson's westward retreat from Richmond and eventually Monticello during the Revolution. He also talked a bit about diaries and British Naval logs and other resources. As a library school student and from an intern's perspective, I was interested in the event for other reasons. It was fascinating to watch the library space quickly transform to accommodate the event and book signing afterward. I understand that Monticello's Thomas Jefferson Foundation is planning to build a conference center near the library which will better accommodate such large events. This probably has benefits and drawbacks for the library. This particular event was very crowded and it was hard to hear where I was standing in the back, and library work was obviously interrupted for the duration of the event. On the other hand, the event took place in the library's reading room, among the stacks, clearly illustrating the library's function in the scholarship being discussed. Furthering this point, Kranish had been a visiting research fellow at the International Center for Jefferson Studies, where Jefferson Library is housed, and had done much of his research for Flight from Monticello in the very reading room in which he spoke. He made these points to the crowd. The reading room remained set up for another event the next day when I wanted to check something in the stacks but couldn't because the large tables were still being stashed away; I didn't think it appropriate to crawl all over them... Moving such events to a more generic conference space might allow for more focused library events and disrupt staff work less, and create more events in general, but I hope that it does not separate in people's minds the library's resources and services from the wonderful work that goes on there.