The occasional and short-term visitor to the great libraries of the world no doubt has a totally different and overly impressionistic experience in comparison with the daily routine of the local scholars who use them. Practice varies markedly among the libraries as far as admission to the reading rooms, access to and delivery of the manuscripts, regulations for the use of the manuscripts and the available catalogues are concerned.
Scholars only wish to see the manuscripts.
It is perhaps in the interests of security that various hazards have been set in the path of the reader. Anyone negotiating these should remember from the outset, however, that the staff they see and who usually do their utmost to smooth the path of the visiting reader, are not those who invented the systems they are required to implement. The first hazard, then, is Getting In. Idiosyncratic obstacle courses towards the goal of acquiring a reader's ticket have been devised in many institutions, often involving many separate sets of explanations as to who one is and why one has come. In many smaller libraries there may be no wait at all.