Divided by a common language, united by common problems : buying foreign books for U.K. Academic libraries

This summer we spent our holidays in San Diego. We swopped houses with a professor’s family from San Diego State University. Unable to avoid being a librarian, even when on holiday, I spent one morning visiting friends at the U.C. San Diego Library and a fruitful afternoon at the San Diego Historical Society Archive. The Archive is a wonderful coiiection of photographs of San Diego, and I wanted to get photographs of San Diego from 100 years ago. To use the Archive you have to present some identification, and I showed my passport. Then the following conversation took place: