To Browse...

Browsing through the stacks of our books is sometimes an excellent way to doscover just the right book for your research. Librarians working the reference desk often suggest that to people. Recently one of us had someone asking about books on medieval art, and looking one such title up, suggested the person look around in the area that book is located, and see what else looked helpful. It makes one think of the quote from Lamb in the OED definition of the verb, to browse: She was tumbled..into a spacious closet of good old English reading,..and browsed at will upon that fair and wholesome pasturage...

Pictured here are customers browsing for books in the outdoor shelves of one of many bookstores in the small Welsh village of Hay On Wye, which has 1,300 residents and some 30 bookstores!