Dateline Lancaster OH: Anchalee “Lee” Tumthong works in an eight-story, 500,000-book library in the largest city in Thailand, but all she can talk about is a library she traveled about 20 hours by plane to see.
Sitting inside a conference room in Ohio University Lancaster’s student library, “space” is the first word to come to mind when Tumthong describes her current surroundings. “There is so much space here,” Tumthong, 40, said of OU-L’s library. “In this library there are a lot of books and materials for the students.”
Her praise is echoed by Phapada “June” Noikhamyang, 37, who also is from Thailand. The two are part of a exchange program at OU-L for librarians from another country to come to Lancaster and learn about how libraries in the U.S. operate.
OU-L’s library is one of several that Tumthong and Noikhamyang will visit during their 18-day stay. They have visited the library at Ohio University’s Athens campus and plan to visit the Columbus Metropolitan Library and the libraries at Ohio State University, OSU-Newark and Mount Carmel Hospital.
In addition, the two have done their share of sight-seeing; Lancaster, they’ve observed, is full of both “friendly people” and “a lot of trees.”
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