By Elaine Grublin

Last week the American Historical Society (AHA)  held their annual meeting in Boston.  The meeting spanned January 6 through January 9 and brought an influx of historians, graduate students, and other history professionals to the Back Bay area. 

Many of those in town for AHA, made it a point to stop at the MHS as part of their trip to Boston.  Some even arranged to come to town a few days early so they could fit in a few full-day sessions in the reading room before attending AHA events at the end of the week.  We were happy to see many familiar faces returning to the library, as well as a large number of first time researchers.

Over the course of the week, the library was visited by 72 individual researchers for a total of 119 research visits.  In servicing those researchers the members of the library staff offered 35 new reader orientations for first time researchers, paged over 260 requests for materials from the closed stacks, produced over 300 pages of photocopies, and engaged in countless one-on-one interactions with our researchers.  These numbers exceed what we typically see in a single week during our busy summer months. Kudos for a job well done to our Reader Services staff.  They managed the atypical mid-winter rush with smiles and quick delivery of all library services.  We hope everyone enjoyed the AHA meeting and hope to see all who visited us last week back in the library in the near future.