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2015 retrospective

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Happy New Year! Please indulge us while we present a reminder of the exciting year that was 2015…

2015 was a busy year at the Oriental Institute Library, with many changes taking place. Most of these have been behind the scenes so we hope that as far as our readers are concerned things have remained calm and peaceful, but for the staff it has been quite a year!

The move that wasn’t

It was early March when the staff of the Library were told of the proposal to close the Oriental Institute Library and move the collections into the Sackler Library. We were told before any other discussions had taken place, in order that we could field questions if anyone heard rumours. Consultations with staff and students were carried out over the next couple of months, with a great number of people expressing to library staff their disquiet at the idea of removing the Library from the Faculty building.

Various points were made about the practicalities of moving our collection into an already full library and the problems which might arise for both sets of staff – Oxford is an institution with a long memory, and it is not uncommon for people to come back years after they left and be confused by changes which took place in the interim, so it would not be a case of taking a few months to get used to different materials.

We were finally told in June that the proposal had been withdrawn, which was an immense relief to both the staff of the library and our loyal readers – not to mention the Sackler readers and staff who had been as dubious as we were about the idea. We hope to continue for a long while as we are, providing a service which is obviously valuable to the University as a whole.

People

In June we welcomed Vasiliki Giannopoulou to the Library, initially on Thursdays and Fridays, although her role has now expanded slightly to take on extra hours. Vasiliki had previously worked at the History Faculty Library, so her familiarity with the Library of Congress materials was a definite bonus in terms of shelving. She has now been with us for over six months and has settled into the team well.

The summer saw a couple of announcements; Dawn Vaux, who had been the Deputy Librarian at OIL since 2004 (check this) told us that her husband had been offered a job in Sydney, Australia, and that she would be leaving the Library at the start of September, while Dinah Manisty would be retiring at the end of September.

Dawn’s departure was, naturally, more of a surprise, but we all wished her well and she was given a good send-off at the beginning of September.

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Meanwhile Dinah’s interim replacement as Subject Librarian for Middle Eastern and Islamic Collections is Lydia Wright, who worked for a month shadowing Dinah to get up to speed with the work before Dinah’s departure.

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As both our senior staff had gone we underwent a bit of restructuring to compensate; Lidio has now taken on more responsibility and Jane Bruder from the Sackler has extended her role to include certain managerial duties at OIL. Both Natalija and Vasiliki have also taken on more hours to increase staffing levels. We hope that readers have not noticed any major change in service provision as a result of these adjustments.

Books

At the end of the summer the staff of the Muller Library at the Hebrew and Jewish Studies centre moved some of the books in our collection over to Walton Street as they were deemed more appropriate to the collection there. Readers who find that books they were expecting to be here have moved are advised to check SOLO for new location information.

Kate has reclassified a total of 2342 books in the last calendar year. Over the 2014-15 academic year she reclassified 1688 shelfmarks, representing a 2223 items in total. During September she moved the books from the end of the LC sequence into the area vacated by the DS section and is currently working her way along the shelves near the computers. As ever, please check SOLO regularly if you are a frequent user of materials in the area which is currently being reclassified as things will move.

Looking Forward to 2016

Now that Term has begun again we look forward to welcoming our returning readers, hoping that everyone has had a relaxing break. At present the only major change of which we are aware is the move of some of our Japanese books to the Bodleian Japanese Library, but at present we have no timetable for that work and will keep the Facebook page and this blog updated when more information comes to light.

 

November Headlines and Reminders

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November Headlines

The library has been gratifyingly busy during the past month, with various readers from departments other than the Oriental Institute borrowing books as their courses demand. We naturally expect things to quieten down slightly as the end of Term approaches.

Readers of our Facebook page will have seen that Kate found someone’s lunchbox (still with the remnants of their lunch in) on a desk at the back of the library recently. We would like to remind everyone that food of any kind is *not* allowed in the library, and nor is any kind of drink other than water permitted. This is not because we are trying to be awkward or make the library less welcoming; it is simply because crumbs and bits of discarded food attract pests such as insects and rodents, which can damage library collections. Sugary drinks spilled on books can cause them to become unusable, while water damage is fairly easy (if sometimes a bit expensive) to fix.

Please respect this rule of the library and confine your food consumption to the Common Room downstairs.

We received a number of queries after a blanket email about outstanding fines was sent out last week. This is a new initiative by the Circulation Task Force of the Bodleian Libraries which is intended to ensure that fines are paid promptly; however the emails seem to have gone to people who are no longer regular users as well as the current borrowers they were intended for and have caused some worry for some of our former readers (one of those who enquired had graduated in 2006!). We will be offering feedback to the CTF about this matter.

Announcements for December

Vacation Loans started on Monday, 30th November, so any books checked out from now on will be due back on the 19th January, which is Tuesday of 1st week. Please remember to renew any books taken out before the vacation loans period began to take advantage of this if you wish to take your books away over the holidays.

The library will close for the Christmas break on Tuesday 22nd December at 5pm and re-open on Monday 4th January at 9am. Please note that other Bodleian Libraries will be open on the 23rd; we are closing a day early because the rest of the faculty building is closing on the 22nd.

Watch this space: the 2015 retrospective post is being compiled and will be added to the blog shortly after we return from the Christmas break.

In the meantime we would like to wish all our readers a peaceful holiday and we’ll see you in the New Year!

 

September News

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(a little belated, with our apologies)

Arrivals and departures

In September the Oriental Institute Library welcomed Lydia Wright to the staff. Lydia is the Arabic Subject Specialist, and will be taking over that aspect of Dinah Manisty’s role, initially for a year. Regular readers will see her around the library, although she will also be working at Osney Mead for part of each week.

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Wednesday 30th was Dinah’s last day; with typical modesty she told us she didn’t want a party, so we threw one anyway – albeit a modest affair. Nobody gets out of OIL without a party! Dinah has worked here since 2010 and has been the Librarian in Charge for the last two years. We wish her a long and happy retirement and hope she visits us often.

 

Leaping into the fray with regards to management will be Jane Bruder, who some readers may know from the Sackler Library. Jane will be taking a more central role at OIL as part of a small restructuring in the wake of Dawn and Dinah’s departures but the core staff of the library and our remit will remain the same.

Book moves

Readers who regularly visit the basement will have noticed activity over the last couple of weeks as our colleagues from the Muller Library have been moving some of our Hebrew collections to their library as part of a re-organisation of collections.

If you are used to finding a particular item at OIL and it appears to have gone, do check with staff who will be able to check as to whether it has been moved.

Meanwhile Kate has been reorganising the Library of Congress books and moving them round into the area which was vacated by the old-sequence DS materials. This has involved a significant relocation of some popular sections; PK and PL are now in the far corner nearest to the Sackler Library and PJ is ranged along under the windows. Do ask if you cannot find anything; it is all still in sequence, just in different places!

 

Inductions – this Friday!

Finally, don’t forget that the Library Open Day is this Friday, 9th October. Everyone is always welcome, but we especially hope to see lots of new faces keen to find out all there is to know about the Library and its workings.

A fond farewell

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September 3rd saw a sad and yet happy event at the Oriental Institute: a farewell party for our lovely Deputy Librarian, Dawn Vaux, who has left us for pastures antipodean. The party was well-attended, a fitting tribute to a popular and sympathetic member of staff who has weathered many library storms over her almost-eleven-year tenure at OIL.

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Dawn first came to work at OIL when Martyn Minty was the Librarian, in 2004, and has seen many library colleagues come and go. When the closure of the New Bodleian Library in 2010 necessitated the restructuring of the Oriental provision within the libraries, Dawn was gracious in welcoming the staff (your humble blogger included) who had previously worked in the Oriental Reading Room and the New Bodleian Reading Room, and making us feel a part of the team.

In her own words, Dawn has described the Oriental Institute Library as “the most interesting and diverse library to work in at Oxford” and said that she feels “very lucky to have had such a great experience”, although at times the larger team – which developed due to various job-shares and the addition of Bodleian staff – was sometimes a bit difficult to keep track of!

Dawn has left the Library to move to Sydney, Australia, with her husband, who has accepted a job there. We are variously jealous, sad, and pleased for them to have this wonderful opportunity.

 

July Headlines and Announcements for August

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Not Much Library News…

 

As ever, your humble blogger is struggling to find anything to say about July. Various members of staff have taken holidays and the library has been its usual slumbering summer quiet with dedicated readers quietly getting on with their work and only the occasional enquiry to wake us up.

We have had our SunRay computers – the two nearest the windows – replaced by the new Kiosk PCs; readers have alerted us to the fact that there are blocks to some popular websites on these machines, so do let staff know if you come across anything you feel should be accessible. This is a new system so will take time to settle in, but we should be able to request that IT provide access to resources which our researchers require.

But…!

We have an exciting announcement for those of you who use the Book Storage Facility books: from August 1st, the clever people who run Circulation will be switching on a new tool which means that readers will receive an email to inform them that their request is going to lapse, meaning that readers will no longer need to remember when they ordered something and when they need to extend the consultation period.

The emails will be similar to the ones which readers who have borrowed books receive, but the wording will be slightly different. If you receive an email about a book which you do not wish to continue consulting you need do nothing, but if you wish to retain a book on the reserve you will need to renew it using your patron functions on SOLO. Do ask library staff if you have problems with this and we can renew items for another week.

We hope that this will mean that fewer books are sent back in error, which readers will know can cause problems at busy times for the BSF as it can take a while for items to be returned to library locations.

That’s everything, really

Except to remind everybody in advance that the Library will be closed over the August Bank Holiday weekend as usual – that’s the 29th-31st August this year.

 

June Headlines

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First things first…

Most of our readers will hopefully have heard the good news by now, that the proposal to move the Oriental Institute Library’s collections into the Sackler Library has been withdrawn.

Library staff are delighted with the news and would like to extend an enormous

Thank you!!

to everyone who signed petitions, spoke up in various meetings and generally made lots of noise on our behalf. We realise that there were many reasons besides the ones we had for not taking the option to move us out of the Oriental Institute (not least the disruption it would have caused to the readers and staff of the Sackler), but the end result is just as important and just as welcome. We all look forward to remaining where we belong and to continuing to provide a friendly and efficient library service to all our users, be they from the faculty or from everywhere else in the world.

It really is an enormous relief, and it has been lovely to talk to many indignant regular readers who were unanimous in telling us how much they wanted us to stay put.

June Headlines

Well, there’s not much we can say to top that, is there? We have had a busy month in terms of the reader numbers, and hope that everyone’s exams went – or are still going – smoothly.

Automated Finalist notices went out last week, which resulted in a flurry of readers bringing in books and paying off fines. If you still have items to return, please do so before your card expires as you may find it harder to get into the building afterwards!

For other borrowers we are now in the Vacation Loans period; all books borrowed from the Library will be due for return on the 13th October (Tuesday of 1st week) unless your card expires before that, in which case they will be due the day before the date on your card.

Readers who are in on Thursdays and Friday evenings will have met our new colleague, Vasiliki Giannopoulou, who started working with us at the beginning of June. Vasiliki comes to us with experience of the Library of Congress Classification as she also works at the History Faculty Library. We would like to welcome her to OIL, and we look forward to her pointing out all the weirdly shelved books in the LC section!

On the subject of LC classification, Kate will be doing some moving over the next few days to accommodate the ridiculously crowded DR (Turkish History) section. These books (formerly in DS 162 and DS 165 in the old sequence) have taken over what was previously a relatively small area and the reorganising of shelves from PJ back to DS in order to make room is necessary as Kate was finding it was taking longer to make space for the reclassified books than it was to reclassify them in the first place.

A larger move, which will see all the LC books shifted round to the empty spaces left by the reclassification of the DS section, will take place towards the end of the summer.

Finally, advance warning that the SunRays (the computers by the windows which don’t require a log-in) are being retired on July 10th. The good news, however, is that they will be replaced by a similar system the following week. We’ll put something on here or on the Facebook page when that has happened.

 

 

March Headlines

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Oops!

Yes, we know… this is a bit of a belated post, but in our defence it seemed a little redundant to post on the blog on the Thursday before Easter given that the Library was closed.

March was a productive month for the Library staff, even as most of the students drifted away for the Easter vacation.

The PCAS photocopiers underwent a software upgrade at the start of the vacation which has altered the interface slightly, but they still work as they did before. As far as we know the odd issues which were encountered when the upgrade occurred (none of which affected us) have been resolved, but do let us know if there are any problems.

Natalija has been barcoding some of the uncatalogued Japanese books in the basement, which will be a help when people borrow them as previously we have had to create records from scratch, which can result in a bit of a wait at the desk.

Meanwhile Kate has been doing some shuffling round in the Library of Congress section again, too. The “D” and “DS” sections in particular were becoming heavily congested as that is the area where she is adding to the shelves with the reclassified materials, and it had reached “critical mess” by the end of term. She has moved things around in the “B” and “BP” section, reducing some of the over-estimated growth space there to make space in the “D” and “DS” areas. Please be aware that many books in this section will have therefore shifted position (sometimes up to 20 shelves away from where they were!). The labels on the ends of the bays have been adjusted accordingly, but do ask staff if you have any problems finding anything. The Library of Congress shelves now look a lot less crowded, and Kate is optimistic that she won’t need to move things again until at least the end of the summer vacation!

Stapler Competition Winner

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The end of term crept up on us too soon, so we were unable to do this before the new year, but we are delighted to announce that, after a late rush of entries, we have a winner for OIL’s “Name the Stapler” competition.

Stapler Competition winner

Rowena Abdul Razak wins a generous prize of a £10 book voucher and a bottle of wine for her suggestion “Sir Manytooth Steelmate, Director of Stapler Studies at the Oriental Institute”. We may shorten this for the label, though!

We also have a runner up, Clementine Brown, who suggested “Al-Stabul Ur-Text”, and who wins the second prize of a box of chocolates. We particularly liked the fact that she explained that she had used a letter b as there is no letter p in Arabic.

All prizes were generously donated by Dinah Manisty. Thanks Dinah!

A special mention goes to Ryan Lynch, whose suggestion included a long introduction to the reasoning behind it; we appreciated the effort and thought, but as you were a runner-up last year we thought that it would be better to allow others to win the prizes.

Other entries were as follows:

“Alligator” – from Saba Halepota

“Zubayr” – from Ryan Lynch

“Colossus” from Amelia Green

“The Quire Master” from Henry Mason

“Attila” from Stephanie Pambakian

And finally two more suggestions from Clementine Brown: “The Quire master” (again!) and “Pulp Fixion-er”.

HUGE thanks to all our entrants! Things took a while to get going, but it was pleasing to have a last rush of entries. It is only a bit of fun, but we think this kind of thing adds to the friendly atmosphere which makes OIL a fun place to work, and hopefully to study!

 

November Headlines and Reminders for December

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November Headlines

November saw things settling down a little from the beginning of Term, but we have still seen many new faces and enjoyed meeting all the various people who are now using the Library. As always, do ask us if you can’t find something; we know that the set-up here can be a little confusing!

Term is still upon us for the next week, so we would encourage anyone who hasn’t to enter our “Name the Stapler” competition, a winner of which will be announced on Friday.

Vacation Loans are now in operation, having started on Saturday 28th November; books borrowed from then on will be due back on the 20th January (Tuesday of 1st week).

 

December Reminders

We are running a Research Skills Toolkit session on Thursday 4th December – there are flyers at the front desk for anyone who is interested in attending and learning more about this valuable resource.

We will be doing some reorganising in the Library of Congress section over the vacation, moving books up into the spaces vacated as Kate has been reclassifying the collections, so may be making a bit of noise and/or leaving the desk for periods of time, but there will be someone around in the office and we will leave a note telling readers where we are. This is essential work – there is no more room in certain sections due to the volume of material being added – so we beg your patience for a few weeks until we can get things back to something resembling order.

And finally, the Library closes for Christmas on the 23rd December at 5pm, re-opening on Monday January 5th at 9am.

 

October Headlines and new e-Resources

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As ever, we’ve had a very busy month, so apologies if this is a bit of a long post…

Firstly, and most importantly for those of you who hadn’t realised, the Library now opens at 0900 rather than 0915, allowing an extra quarter of an hour a day for all that essential reading!

The OIL open day for new students (and anyone else tempted by the sweets) was held on the afternoon of Friday 10th October and was well-attended, with many of the students staying behind after the introductions for training on SOLO, PCAS and other library-related matters, and also to sample the abovementioned sweets, generously provided this year by Dinah Manisty and Alasdair Watson. Alasdair also made himself available to talk to people about Arabic Manuscripts, and had an interesting slideshow on his laptop showing some fine examples.

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Kate hinted during the introductions that there would be a new competition for Michaelmas Term, the final announcement of which was delayed by a week due to operational matters (she and her colleague at the Humanities Theses desk, Rob Wilkes, moved into the Weston Library from Osney Mead on the 16th October and things were a bit hectic for a few days). We have now, however, launched the “Name the Stapler” Competition – see posters at the Library desk or the previous blog post for details. We hope to have a good number of entries before the competition closes in 8th week, so get naming!

We welcomed Dawn back from her trip to Australia on the 20th – it sounds like she had a lovely time!

New e-Resources for Arabic materials

Dinah has asked that we pass on information about the following exciting new electronic resources which are available to Library users.

Firstly, there is the Qatar Digital Library Online portal at the British Library, a great new archival resource on the region.

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The QDL has been developed as part of a 10-year Memorandum of Understanding on Partnerships between the Qatar Foundation, the Qatar National Library and The British Library.
A wide range of content from the British Library’s collections (more specifically their colonial archives related to the Gulf Region) have been digitized since 2012, reaching a total of 500,000 images that will be available to browse and search by the end of 2014.

The Qatar Digital Library (QDL) is making a vast archive featuring the cultural and  historical heritage of the Gulf and wider region freely available online for the first time. It includes archives, maps, manuscripts, sound recordings, photographs and much more, complete with contextualised explanatory notes and links, in both English and Arabic.

This archive is bound to transform the study of Gulf history, improving understanding of the Islamic world, Arabic cultural heritage and the modern history of the Gulf.

You can find more info on the Qatar Digital Library at  http://www.qdl.qa/en/about.

Try it for yourself (Qatar Digital Library portal) and please let the students know about this great (and free!) new resource.

Also, do let us know what you think of the following, available until November 22nd:

1) Classic Arabic Texts Online (trial until 22 November 2014)

And finally, we have added the following to our Brill package:

2) Early Western Korans Online: Koran Printing in the West, 1537-1857

Dinah is responsible for this side of the Library’s work, so do let her know if you have used these and whether you have any feedback to give; we try to keep up as best we can with the latest resources which are available, but if any of you know of any we should have and don’t, please do get in touch!

As we said, a bumper post for October! We hope for more of the same in November!