The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Thomas J. Watson Library

I set off for my meeting with Ken Soehner, longtime Chief Librarian of the Thomas J Watson Library at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, sometime President of ARLIS/NA on a stunningly beautiful New York afternoon. Ken had been very encouraging of my art-library-tourist endeavours at the ARLIS/NA VRA conference earlier in 2011 in snowy Minneapolis, and I was very pleased to have some time with him in his august domain here at the Met.

The Very Impressive entrance to the Met (above) is matched by the Very Impressive chamber (below) one crosses to enter the Watson Library within.

Once within the library proper, however, I feel a little closer to familiar scale. The ubiquitous, imperceptible buzz of fluorescent tubes is a great democratiser.