One month tomorrow I will be flying out to the US for my Travelling Librarian trip. This seems like a good point to kick off this blog and write a little about the aims of my trip and how my plans have been coming together.

I applied for the Travelling Librarian Award, offered by CILIP and the ESU, back in March, and following an interview was fortunate to be selected as this year's recipient. The award exists to promote and develop US-UK library links, so as a US Studies Librarian I jumped at the chance to travel to the United States to visit libraries and archives, both to learn about their collections and also to share information about the study of US History in the UK with librarians in the United States.

My library, the Vere Harmsworth Library in the Rothermere American Institute in Oxford, has one of the most extensive US History collections outside the United States, and I support a strong and growing contingent of students and researchers in US History, who in addition to using our resources, often travel to the United States to conduct primary source and archival research. I often find myself being asked for advice, particularly from students, about how to make the best use of their limited time in the US, and having never done so myself, have only a limited amount of wisdom to pass on.  Following my trip in September, I hope to be in a much better position to advise others, and one of my main aims once I return is to find ways to disseminate the knowledge I will have gained by means of guides, presentations, and blog posts.

As well as providing guidance to our readers in Oxford on using our collections, I spend a lot of time investigating resources from US libraries and archives which may also be available to UK researchers, often having been made available online following digitisation projects. I am also therefore hoping to have the opportunity to find out more about such projects from the libraries and archives that I visit, and improve my knowledge of what is available to UK researchers without travelling to the US.

The Travelling Librarian Award is not designed to be entirely one way, however, and so I am also looking forward to telling the librarians and archivists that I meet about our collections in Oxford, the needs of researchers here, and the work of the Rothermere American Institute's community. I hope that they will find it interesting to learn a little about the study of US History from outside the United States, and the strengths and weaknesses of our collection.

In order to fulfill these aims and to make the most of my time, I have approached a range of libraries in the East Coast area with significant historical collections. I wanted to visit a variety of types of library, and so I will be going to a couple of Presidential Libraries, a couple of Historical Societies, and an academic library, as well as a few specialist libraries, and the National Archives and (hopefully!) the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. My itinerary and schedule of visits can be seen on a separate page on this blog, and is almost fully confirmed.  I had been warned, both by the administrators of the award at CILIP and the ESU, and by last year's recipients, that getting your visits arranged could be quite a lengthy and at times difficult process, and had been advised to be persistent and patient!  From my experience arranging things so far, I can only agree. It was quite a juggling act to even work out which libraries I might feasibly be able to get to in my two weeks, taking into account travel time, even before trying to make contact.  I soon realised that geography was going to be the deciding factor in many cases, and that sticking to the east coast would mean I could fit more in. Once I began approaching libraries, it became even more confusing trying to fit things in. Naturally, some libraries responded very quickly (and enthusiastically, which is lovely), but others were harder to get a reply from, and in some cases required several avenues of approach.  I'm still struggling to get into the Library of Congress, despite trying a few suggested contacts, but I am still hopeful that I'll get a visit arranged and have kept a day in Washington clear.  (Update: Third time lucky, and I've been put in touch with a very helpful person there who is now sorting my visit out magnificently).  The National Archives was also hard to find a way into, but now I have they have swung magnificently into action and are busy organising everything there for me. There's a couple of other libraries that I've approached but only had tentative replies from, and as my itinerary firms up I'm holding them in reserve in case I can squeeze them in.  Nevertheless, I now feel fairly confident that it's basically there, and I'm pleased with the range of libraries I will be visiting. It should be an extremely useful and productive trip, and now that it's suddenly getting very close the excitement is winning out over the stresses of getting it organised.