My visits are all completed, and I fly back home tonight. I thought it would be worth making a final post to wrap up this blog and start the job of reflecting on what I've seen and learnt over the past two weeks. I feel like I've said this a lot already, but it really has been an incredible experience and so, so worth all the effort of organising it and the exhaustion I am currently feeling. Looking back on what I was hoping to get out of this experience, I feel I've achieved all the aims I set out with, and learnt a whole lot more on top of that. I wanted to learn more about the collections that I visited, as well as how these institutions worked in terms of access for researchers. I was interested in their outreach efforts, how they work to make their amazing holdings more widely available outside their own walls, with digitisation programmes, events, and use of the web and social media, and hoped to come home with a whole lot more knowledge of what they have and what my readers are able to get both from Oxford and from visiting themselves. All of this I learnt in spades, but I also gained a much greater understanding of the opportunities and constraints surrounding all this work, as well as the similarities and differences between institutions that on the surface appeared more or less alike. And on top of all that, it's been absolutely fabulous for my knowledge and understanding of US history, which has been given a real boost by listening to such erudite and passionate people and having the opportunity to view some real treasures of their collections and learn the stories that go along with them. I said to a few people along the way, as they walked me round stacks and brought out unique and priceless documents, that working at such a distance as I do in Oxford and accessing primary sources almost exclusively as reproduced content, both digital and microfilm, I tend to forget about the importance of the physical item and physical collections, and what they can tell you over and above the content itself. Getting to see 'the real thing' always reminds you more that history is far more concrete than it can sometimes seem, and again this is a boost to my own interest in and passion for the subject and for what I do. Librarians exist to bring people and information together, and I've gained a refreshed appreciation for what this means in terms of the collections outside of Oxford. On a more mundane level, just the experience of walking into a place, getting a feel for the lay of the land, helps me envisage so much more clearly this aspect of the work that the researchers and students I support do. I'm also going back with a massive pile of business cards, the evidence of so many new connections which will be incredibly useful in the future, as well as lists of websites and online resources which I can now point my readers to. And I hope I have achieved my intention to pass on information and raise awareness of the vibrancy of US studies at Oxford and raise the profile of our library collections and the Rothermere American Institute in all the institutions I've visited. We already have one talk there arranged from one person I met, who is coincidentally coming to the UK soon, and I really hope that if and when others of my new contacts make their way across the Atlantic that they will visit also come and visit Oxford in turn.

I don't want to pick out highlights from the past two weeks, because really every day has been fantastic and everyone has been so welcoming, and I wouldn't want to suggest otherwise by naming some places or people ahead of others. What I do want to do though is thank everyone I have met, and everyone who so generously gave me their time and contributed to what has been a wonderful and immensely useful trip. And of course, CILIP and the ESU for giving me the award and funding me - to any UK librarians reading this, I really recommend giving this award a go in the future! I expected it to be valuable, otherwise I would not have applied, but its value has really exceeded my expectations. Thank you, everyone!