Check Out This Telescope!
October 23rd, 2014I totally dropped the ball and am late in posting this. However, my library was featured in the October issue of Sky & Telescope magazine!
The article focused on a practical program for circulating telescopes from a public library. Thanks to the generous donation from local astronomy buffs, we've been circulating two telescopes for about the last six month.
The photo above appeared in the article, showing library staff checking out a telescope to patrons. The article goes into detail about the best telescopes for library use (that is, easy-to-use and hard-to-damage), how to prepare them, and what to circulate with them to make it a good experience.
If you're interested in expanding your non-traditional collection to include telescopes, definitely read this article. Unfortunately the article isn't available free online, so if you don't subscribe it should be in both EBSCO's MasterFILE and Gale's OneFile databases. Or talk to me about an ILL request.
And one last note: there has been a double-digit waiting list on our telescopes ever since we started offering them. I neglected to sign up right away, and now have been waiting four months for it to be my turn.
October 23rd, 2014 at 1:30 pm
What a great idea! I’ll be sharing this article with some folks in my library system for a “wishlist” idea. I can imagine long waiting lists for it here, too–even with the constant Seattle rain.
October 31st, 2014 at 11:07 am
This is great! We just received a Dart Science Grant have purchased a similar brand telescope with all the fixings. I will propose this article to the upper admins to consider this.
Thank you!
Alessandro