Day 8

Today we toured both the National Library of Scotland and the National Archives of Scotland, both in the city of Edinburgh. Our trip to Edinburgh was my favorite out-of-London excursion overall. Both places we visited welcomed us warmly, offered tons of information enthusiastically, gave us tea, and offered to be of service in the future. They could not have been more hospitable.
At the National Library, the exhibit we toured was one of the most impressive I've ever viewed. The level of interactivity integrated into the displays set a new standard for exhibitions in general. The way in which displayed documents could be viewed in typewritten text on a screen made viewing the content of old letters and papers much easier and quicker, resulting in many more viewers actually reading them. The "hands-on" philosophy of the designers of the exhibit made the entire experience much more tangible to the viewer, and subsequently more memorable and significant. The "windows" placed throughout the room, with Monty Python-esque charactors gamboling across the panes enacting various moments in history, was not only quite amusing, but extremely clever.