Spotlight on the colleges

If you’ve ever looked at a map of Oxford city centre, you’ll notice that it is packed with colleges (thirty-nine to be precise). But what are they, and what is it like to work in one?

We sat down with this year’s cohort of college-based Graduate Trainees, to discuss their roles, their colleges and their libraries. This year there are five of us:

Special thanks to Josie from the Law Library for the transcription.

Pembroke’s Old Quad.

What is a college?

Heather (St Edmund Hall): A college is a community of students and staff who are all part of Oxford University, but within the university community they’re also part of their own separate college community. Most colleges have undergraduates and postgraduates, but some colleges are postgraduate only. Some colleges are very big with lots of students and staff, and some are much smaller.

Georgie (St. John’s): Students can get accommodation, catering, and teaching through their college, and as part of that, the college will have its own library.

Jemima (New): There may appear to be some discrepancy between older and newer colleges but they essentially all do the same job for their students. Even though some of them look bigger or older or have a particular reputation, they all serve the same purpose.

The Library building viewed from an archway in the Quad
All Souls College Library. Photo credit: Lizzie Dawson.

 

How does the library fit into the college?

Jemima: I think generally a college library will cater for most undergraduate academic needs, but from my experience (as a graduate student here) there was more of an expectation that a college library wouldn’t cater for more in-depth academic research. Whether that’s true or not, a college library is definitely more of a centre for undergraduates, perhaps because it’s seen as less overwhelming than a bigger Bodleian library.

Ben (Pembroke): Yes, the library is at it’s heart a hub for students. We have a few postdocs and fellows who use our library, but mostly it’s used by undergraduates and taught postgraduates who all study a wide array of disciplines, reflecting our growing library collection. We’re open 24/7 and the library is also open for all Pembroke staff.  Also our library is a space for holding Pembroke’s archives and special collections which attracts visiting researchers and research students.

Heather: It’s definitely more of a direct service for the students, and I think it’s interesting that when people apply to Oxford or Cambridge, they don’t really think about the fact that they’ll have a college library, but it’s actually a really important aspect. It’s really there to cater to a student’s own needs, so at Teddy Hall, for instance, we buy a lot of student requested books, which something you can do through your college library, but is not something Bodleian libraries tend to do.

Lizzie (All Souls): All Souls Library is mainly there for the Fellows* (as there aren’t any undergraduate students at All Souls). The Fellows can request that we buy books, and also if a particular Fellow with a particular research interest is there for a number of years, we can develop a significant collection relating to that interest. But the library does serve a dual purpose because it is also open to external readers. Because the college doesn’t have its own students, if there is a book that is highly requested across the university, or quite expensive, the library will buy that book so that it’s potentially available to all students.

*Fellows are senior members of a college, whose responsibilities typically include teaching, research, administration, and participation in the college’s governance.

Georgie: Another thing to mention is study spaces. College libraries mean that the students who want to use the library can do that somewhere which, in a lot of cases, is near to their accommodation.

Heather: We have height-adjustable desks, and printing and photocopying facilities and they all get used a lot. We’re open 24 hours and you can see from the records that there are people in here throughout day and night.

Jemima: That’s actually a good point: I think a key difference between Bodleian libraries and college libraries is that Bodleian libraries aren’t open as late as college ones. At New, we’re not open 24 hours, but we are open until 2:00 in the morning. I would say that a college library is accessible at most times of day whereas the Bodleian is less so.

Lizzie: At All Souls, all the books are confined so readers can’t borrow them. That means the library is used more as a study space, since it’s very quiet and there are fewer people taking books off shelves, as all the books are locked up (though you can request me to get them for you). The library also serves as a venue for the college for events such as Encaenia, or drink receptions. Sometimes you can be participating in college stuff more than library stuff.

A tortoise on a lawn, with college buildings in the background
New College featuring Tessa the college tortoise. Photo credit: Anna-Nadine Pike.

 

Can you describe your Library in three words?

Heather: Church, friendly, busy.

Ben: Unintimidating, 1970s, welcoming.

Lizzie: Unique, architectural, research.

 

The former church, now the Library building, during golden hour.
St Edmund Hall Library. Photo Credit: Heather Barr.

 

How many staff members are there in your Library?

Jemima: We have four of us in the main office, basically full-time, then there’s the Archivist, the Curatorial Assistant (who was a trainee last year, and is now part-time), and a Shelving Assistant in the mornings in term time. I think it’s a relatively big team for a college library.

Ben: In the library team, it’s just me and the Librarian, so I often wear multiple hats and juggle jobs such as invigilating researchers, cataloguing, shelving, dissertation-binding, reading list creation, purchasing acquisitions, rare books enquiries, and lots more. Working in a small team is great! There is always something to do, and you gain a well-rounded, and sometimes unexpected experience.

Lizzie: We have a Librarian-in-Charge & Conservator, Senior Assistant Librarian, Assistant Librarian for Digital Resources, and a Graduate Trainee (me!), as well as this, we have the following staff who are part-time: Assistant Librarian for Rare Books, a Clerk to the Archives, and the Serials Librarian (who does cataloguing).

Heather: So, at Teddy Hall, it’s me as the Graduate Trainee, James the Librarian, and Emma who is the Assistant Librarian, and our Archivist, Rob, who is in two days a week. He’s also the Archivist at Oriel and I know that it’s quite common for archivists to be shared across colleges. We also have a Library Fellow on the Library Committee.

Jemima: Yes, I think our Fellow Librarian is involved in important decision-making but I barely see him from day to day. I don’t have very much contact with him at all. It sounds like a similar setup.

Lizzie: I see my Fellow Librarian every day. They do the top-level college stuff and there’s a lot of committees so they sit on those as well.

Cherry blossom in the foreground. The new library extension and the original garden wall meet in the background.
St John’s Library. Photo credit: Georgie Moore.

 

What’s distinctive about the collection in your Library?

Ben (Pembroke): As much as it is a collection reflecting Pembroke’s history as an institution (Pembroke was founded in 1624), we do have some more rogue objects, often things connected with alumni or past staff, such as Tolkien’s letters (we have an amazing letter where Tolkien writes to a friend that he is starting a book called The Hobbit which he hopes will be a success), Samuel Johnson’s desk, Samuel Johnson’s teapot, a fountain pen used by Lyndon B. Johnson, oh and a WWII Japanese sword!

Jemima (New): We have a very good manuscripts and early printed books special collection – I think that comes with the age and wealth of the college. In fact, about 30-40% of my time is spent invigilating readers who come to use our Special Collections for research.

Lizzie (All Souls) : Christopher Wren was a fellow, so we have one of the largest collections of Wren drawings, and T.E. Lawrence was a fellow, so we have some of his things, but they’re on loan to the Ashmolean Museum.

Heather (St Edmund Hall): Something distinctive about our lending collection is that we have lots of student requests and new acquisitions – we’re working hard to try to diversify what we have. At the moment, I am starting to decolonise our history collection.

Interior of the eighteenth century college Chapel.
Pembroke College Chapel. Photo credit: Ben Elliott.

What kind of interactions do you have with Library readers?

Heather: Readers ask pretty much anything and everything – I spend about half my time on the issue desk. Our library is in a 12th-century church, so we also have people coming to see the building.

Ben: Fairly, a lot! Questions can be anything from “how do I find this book?” all the way to, “Would it be possible to see ‘x’ manuscript?”. During COVID peaks, when students are self-isolating, I deliver books around college to them. My workspace isn’t usually at an issue desk, but at the start of the year I gave lots of induction talks, so now the readers know who I am. This means they are confident to pop into my office, or stop me around college to ask me questions.

Jemima: We don’t have a specific issue desk (everyone is based in the office), so I don’t interact with readers as much as you two do. But that doesn’t mean they don’t come to the office with questions, mostly if they’re having problems with the self-issue machines or they want to borrow a book but don’t have their Bod (library) card.

Wisteria and greenery grows over the walls to the left, on the right is a large lawn surrounded by College buildings.
Teddy Hall’s Front Quad. Photo credit: John Morrison (May 2020).

How does working in a college compare with your expectations?

Jemima: I hadn’t anticipated how much social media, exhibitions and ‘internal outreach’ work I’d get to do.  It’s really nice that so much of my role is about sharing the collection with people in college.

Ben: At Pembroke, the Library and Archives work together a lot of the time, which makes the job all the more fun. I can be climbing ladders in order to hang pictures in the hall one minute, then in the next I can be in the depths of the stacks, then helping out with object talks for students or working with furniture and pictures conservators the next, all the way to reader services enquires. However, I think that’s the product of my library team being so small.

Jemima: Yeah, I think it’s worth saying that I think college library jobs are really varied in terms of what you do and the influence you’re able to have.

New College.

Do you get involved with other parts of the College?

Heather: Actually, that’s another thing I was surprised by: you’re part of the College team as well as the Library team. I’ve worked with the Communications team to set up a Library Instagram, and worked with the Housekeeping department on the sustainability project.

Jemima: Although as Graduate Trainee I don’t interact with other departments that often, as a Library and Archives department we collaborate with JCR and MCR committees (similar to a college-based Student Unions) to organise tours, and with the college Warden (i.e. Principal or President) on things like exhibitions.

That concludes our discussion about college library life! We managed to get through the whole thing without mentioning the free college lunches. Oh, no, wait…

The Library's large glass-panelled seminar room and entryway, with the stone steps and daffodils in the foreground.
Portico Entrance, St John’s College Library. Photo credit: Georgie Moore.

A Day in the Life (St John’s Library)

Here’s a typical term-time day as the Trainee at St John’s, involving posters, returns, acquisitions, processing, and maintaining the Library’s daily Twitter updates. A day in the life here varies based on whether it’s term-time or the vacation. Over the holidays, we have very few readers, so I work on jobs which involve spending longer away from the desk, such as updating the Special Collections inventories, or minor book moves on the reading room shelves.

Working as part of a small team, the Trainee is based on the library enquiry desk. Rather than moving between shifts on different stations, I work on various tasks from my desk, and answer the occasional reader query as and when they arise!

Without further ado, join me for a day in the life of the St John’s Trainee…

9am: Get settled

It’s a three-part process:

  1. It’s always quiet when I first arrive. I’ll check my email, the Library inbox, and the shared calendar. The contractors are still finishing up the new building, so often we’ll have an electrician or decorator scheduled to sort one specific issue.
  2. Next, I empty the returns box and check items back in using Aleph, the library management system. Books can be borrowed for a whole term/break, so big rushes are fairly infrequent.
  3. Most importantly: make a coffee!

9:30am: Twitter

After emails, my next desk-based check is our Special Collections Twitter. Sometimes there will be a popular hashtag or event, so I like to check our feed for inspiration.

This term, my tweet days are Tuesdays and Thursdays. If I’m working on a Tweet from scratch, I’ll find the shelf mark of the item I need, locate it in the basement store, and then take some photos. Then I’ll come back to my desk to draft the optimum 280 characters.

10:30am: check on the Law Library

It is somewhat a mystery to me why this should be the case, but if a College Library has a separate area for one subject, it’s usually law. The St John’s Law Library is on the nearby Kendrew Quad site, whilst the main Library is on the original site. It’s too small to have it’s own staff, so one of us heads over to take any acquistions or work through any shelving left by the students.

Room for one more? The noticeboard awaiting a new poster

11am: sandwich collection!

One of the perks of working in a College is absolutely the lunch: I can either pick-up a pack-up at 11am, or go for a hot meal when the canteen opens at noon. Walking through the historic quads on the way to the kitchen servery naturally involves nattering with the other hungry Library staff members too.

11:15am: updating the posters

Given the changing Covid-19 regulations in College, I’ll regularly update our signage about mask guidance. There are also endless other posters to make, be it a withdrawn book giveaway, or a reminder about KeepCups next to the new hot drink machine.

12pm: lunchtime

When it isn’t raining, I enjoy eating lunch in the College gardens. Like many of the trainees, I’m conveniently located to pick up groceries or go for a walk at lunchtime.

1pm: re-classification work

Peel, stick, stamp, peel, stick, stamp, moisten, stick…

Like many other Oxford libraries, St John’s has it’s own classification system. This has both positives and negatives! Recently, I noticed that part of the Theology section was in an unclear order, so I proposed to the Librarian that we rearrange this into a chronological order. Although we only reordered or renamed about ten headings within Theology, this meant that around 150 books had to be reassessed, and potentially reclassified. I am working through these about 25 titles at a time, updating the classifications on Aleph, relabelling, and then re-shelving the books.

3pm: collect the post and process acquisitions

St John’s seems to be quite late on the postie’s route, so I usually wait until the afternoon to swing by the Porters’ Lodge and collect the day’s deliveries. At the moment, we tend to receive between 4 and 8 new books a day, which I will process and classify. We are never short of books to process as we are working on a donation given to the Library by a former fellow!

5pm: Homeward bound

If I’ve finished my book, I like to end the day by checking out the recent literary fiction shelf, and choose a new title to borrow for my own reading. I tidy up my desk in order to pass the space over to the Student Library Assistant on duty that evening.

Introducing Eleanor, the St Antony’s Library Apprentice

Today we feature a guest post from Eleanor Winterbottom, also embarking on her Library career here in Oxford:

Hi! My name is Eleanor and I am the Apprentice Library Assistant at St Antony’s College.

My position is a little different to that of a graduate trainee, as instead of going on to do a masters I will be achieving, through my role, a Level 3 apprenticeship qualification in Libraries, Information and Archives Services (LIAS) from Westminster Adult Education Services. This role is fairly new to the college, I am actually St Antony’s first apprentice! I am loving every moment so far, I find it is the perfect balance of academic and vocational training.

 

The Library’s main reading room in a former chapel. Photo by Eleanor Winterbottom.

 

I spend most of my working day in the beautiful main reading room of the college library, which used to be a chapel from when the college was a monastery for the Society of the Holy and Undivided Trinity. St Antony’s College is quite young, and we have gained over the years a plethora of modern and quirky buildings that reflect the college’s multicultural subject areas, but the Old Main Building and library has to be favourite place in the college (though of course I am biased!)

 

Some of the library’s restored Victorian church murals alongside contemporary shelves. Photo by Eleanor Winterbottom.

 

I’m also lucky that on St Antony’s campus we don’t just have the college library, but access to the Middle East Centre library, the Russian and Eurasian Studies Centre library, and the Bodleian Japanese library. Although I don’t work in these libraries myself, having such close access to them means I am able to immerse myself even more in the weird and wonderful world that is the Bodleian libraries.

***

Thank you Eleanor for sharing your experiences so far! For more information about Library Apprenticeships see: Apprenticeships – CILIP: the library and information association

 

Hands on with the Special Collections: a Trainee’s experience

The aspect of the St John’s Library traineeship I perhaps most looked forward to was getting involved with the manuscripts and early printed books. Here are four of the Special Collections tasks I’ve been working on over my first couple of months, and a look at what’s coming next!

1. “Book first aid”

Before: the loose coverboard of an early printed book; after: the same book’s fore edge, now secured with two cotton tapes

Although many colleges with historic collections work with the Oxford Conservation Consortium to preserve and repair their items, in-house we perform “book first aid” to minimize further damage. I found that the front board of this bound volume of tracts had detached. The aim of the “first aid” tying is to prevent damage to the page block, and keep the parts of the volume together. When tying, it’s important to put the knots on the fore edge side (pages) to avoid them pressing into the spine. Another consideration is choosing a cotton tape of a similar shade to achieve a discreet look. Previously, we only stocked cream tape, so one of my tasks over the students’ Christmas vacation will be to replace individual cream tapes with pairs of tonal tapes on our many taped volumes.

2. Invigilating of readers

The Caxton volume on the foam rest arrangement the Librarian and I settled upon

Invigilating readers feels like a bit of a role reversal for me, as a former history student. When a researcher scheduled a visit to study our 15th century Caxton volumes, I was asked to invigilate for the first time. The Librarian and I allotted an hour to find the material and pre-prepare the best book rest set up to avoid damaging the volumes. Once the reader arrives, there are a couple of forms to fill in. Having now invigilated several times, my initial nerves have vanished, but I am still careful not to let the manuscript or book out of my sight.

3. Finding aids

One of the twelve bays of early printed books I compiled a finding aid for

Since the renovations started on our early modern libraries, the historic collections have been moved into storage in the new building. One of my first ongoing projects was creating a shelf guide for one of the basement stores to act as a finding aid. Excitingly, I was also given license to examine any books which particularly intrigued me. This was to help with task 4, although if I’d stopped to read all of the interesting ones, I’d still be in the basement right now!

4. Creating Twitter content

Left: Dom’s top tweet; right: my top tweet

St John’s Library has a Twitter account dedicated to our Special Collections (go on, give us a follow at @StJohnsOxLib). Whenever I’m down in the store room, I keep my eyes peeled for Tweetable content. Usually, I hunt for intriguing bookplates, marginalia, or images which will make eye-catching photos, and then write up a brief explanation. Creating the most engaged-with content has become a bit of a friendly competition between myself and the Senior Library Assistant (Former trainee, Dom Hewett, English Faculty Library | Oxford Libraries Graduate Trainees). Creating twitter content is fun because it’s hard to predict what will take off. That being said, we are both hoping that by tracking the Twitter analytics more closely, we’ll get better at that part.

5. What’s next?

St John’s Library operates a Special Collections blog, as well as a Twitter. Currently, I am researching for a new blog post, featuring one of the manuscripts and one of the pamphlets from our early modern collection. These items captured my attention because they are two very different forms of autobiographical writing by executed female criminals, so I feel lucky to be able to pursue my interest in them further, whilst hopefully creating content others can enjoy too. If you are interested in finding out more about the Special Collections at St John’s, or are eager to apply for a traineeship here, check out the blog at St John’s College Library, Oxford (stjohnscollegelibraryoxford.org)

Sometimes following up intriguing catalogue entries leads to questions like: “This doesn’t look like real blood to you does it?”

So far, I’ve found working with the Special Collections to be incredibly rewarding. When working with early printed books and manuscripts, taking care is dramatically prioritized over acting quickly. However, working with Special Collections is not just about hiding books in the basement – and it’s fascinating to meet the visiting researchers to hear about how the items they consult will shape their scholarship. In the future, I hope to continue developing my Special Collections skills, particularly in terms of making material available to wider audiences in person, for example through exhibitions and visitor sessions (when the pandemic permits!).

Georgie Moore, St John’s College

Hi! I’m Georgie, and I am the Graduate Trainee at St John’s College Library and Study Centre (LSC). Founded in 1555, St John’s is now one of the biggest colleges, with stunning old quads, a beautiful garden where I eat my lunch, and a brand-new Library which opened in 2019.

When I was applying for the trainee role, I was working on my MPhil in Modern British History, and before that I did my undergraduate degree in History too. Given my love of history, it’s probably unsurprising that my favourite afternoon so far was an exploration of our Special Collections with the College Librarian. At St John’s, we hold everything from an illustrated second edition of Caxton’s Canterbury Tales to the first Bible (1661) published in what would become the USA, written in the North American indigenous language, Algonquian. I’m really excited to work more with these Collections throughout the year.

During Sixth Form and in the pre-pandemic University holidays, I was a Casual Library Assistant in my local public library, but it wasn’t until the final years of my University experience that I started thinking seriously about a career in Librarianship. When I began to research the Trainee Scheme, it seemed like the perfect way to learn more about the academic Library sector and confirm whether this is the right path for me.

Prior library is by no means essential if you want to apply for a Graduate Traineeship, and I’ve found myself drawing on skills from other jobs as much as those gained as a Library Assistant. Creating social media content, for example, is something I had previously done as an adventure holiday Tour Representative, and not in the library setting. Customer service skills are always handy; my experience from working in call centres has already proved helpful. Whatever your voluntary or work background, you will most likely have relevant experience to call upon!

My desk in the swish LSC reception