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The Alpine Club Library

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Outside my day job as a graduate trainee librarian, I am a keen climber with an interest in climbing and mountaineering history and literature. In the past, I served as the Librarian of the Oxford University Mountaineering Club and the editor of its journal, and I spent long days paging through the OUMC’s rich guidebook collection, dreaming of working in a specialised library. When I first started my library traineeship and was encouraged to see various libraries, arranging a visit in the library of the Alpine Club was one of the first things on my to-do-list.

I do not suppose many of our readers will be familiar with arcane mountaineering terminology, so a bit of a background: the Alpine Club is the oldest mountaineering club in the world, founded in 1857 to facilitate access and exploration of the mountains of the world. Since its inception, its members have been the leading mountaineers and explorers of their generations, including household names such as George Mallory, one of the first mountaineers to attempt to climb Qomolangma (Mount Everest) in 1921, 1922, and 1924. Today, the Alpine Club is based in Shoreditch, London, and houses one of the most extensive collections of mountaineering literature in the world: over 30 thousand books, magazines, photos, and other archival material. Truly an exciting place for a budding climber-turned-librarian.

 

12 book spines in vibrant reds, greens, blues and browns. Many of them have gilt detailing or other decorations.
Pretty bindings in the Alpine Club Collection

 

To organise the visit, I reached out to Nigel Buckley, Assistant Librarian at Balliol College (my DPhil home) and the former Librarian of the Alpine Club. Nigel very kindly agreed to travel with me to London to show me around on a particularly sunny November Tuesday.

Upon our arrival to the hip borough of Shoreditch, the first of our two stops was the Library itself. Full of excitement, I foolishly did not take many photos, so my description will have to do. The Library, located in the first floor of the club house, is a small room with a handful of reading spaces, full up to a brim with all kinds of mountaineering literature: guidebooks, maps, biographies, historical accounts of climbing, or magazines. I even spotted the issues of Oxford Mountaineering Journal that I edited! After some time ogling at the shelves, Nigel showed me the digital catalogue that he created during his appointment using the free library management software called Koha.

The second stop – the basement – proved to be even more exciting than the Library. It houses all kinds of material, from journals, outdated climbing guidebooks, and historic collections, to paintings, photographs, and all sort of mountaineering paraphernalia. Ice axes, ropes, compasses, tents, you name it. At one point, Nigel opened a random drawer, and there was a pair of solid leather mountain boots!

What were some of my favourite objects? I fell in love with ice axe that used to belong to Dorothy Pilley (1894-1986), a pioneer British female climber who established many routes in Wales as well as further afield in the Alps. Although hundred years old, this tool seemed much lighter and sleeker than my own modern ice axe, and it has probably seen more action in the mountains as well.

 

 

An ice axe with smooth wooden handle and metal pick. It is held in someone's hands over its storage box which lies open underneath and contains book bound in black textured leather surrounded by tissue paper.
The ice axe of Dorothy Pilley

 

I also want to mention a couple of illustrations. The 19th-century edition of Edward Whymper’s Scrambles Amongst the Alps made me excited for its excellent illustrations and lovely Victorian binding. Whymper (1840-1911), the first ascensionist of Matterhorn in 1865, was an engraver before he was a mountaineer, and his illustrations are an absolute joy. Furthermore, I loved the book plate of The Ladies Alpine Club (founded in 1907 and merged with the Alpine Club in 1975) which seems to capture the spirit of mountaineering very well.

There are many more books, paintings, and objects that Nigel showed me that day, but these should be enough to showcase the atmosphere of the library and the collection. We eventually made our way back upstairs to see the archives, and then moved towards the bar to finish our tour off with a pint. There was a lecture planned that evening – the cutting-edge British mountaineer Tom Livingstone spoke about his latest ascents in the Himalayas – so we stayed in London until about 10pm before catching the train back to Oxford.

I have enjoyed the visit tremendously, and I encourage you to make use of the Alpine Club collections if you are in the slightest interested in mountaineering and climbing. Many thanks, of course, go to Nigel Buckley for taking the time to show me around and chat about librarianship and mountaineering.

 

A black and white line drawing depicting four men on a mountain. The first man is falling off an icy overhand, his guide rope still attached but flying loose in the air. Below him three men stand on a ridge watching. Two simply lean against their sticks and observe, the third has sunk his ice axe into the ground beside him and has his arms wide in shock.
Illustration from Edward Whymper’s “Scrambles”
A decorative bookplate with a picture of a mountain scene. Below it texts reads: "The Library of the Ladies' Alpine Club" Above their moto reads: "per aspera as astra" with a small semi-circle containing seven stars right at the top. Around everything is a thin checkered border.
Bookplate of the Library of the Ladies Alpine Club

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Day in the Life at All Soul’s Library

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9:00

My work starts by cycling to work. I live in Cowley, a comfortable 10-minutes-long cycle away from All Souls (7 minutes if I am late and pedal hard enough). My first steps in the college lead to the Buttery to fill my water bottle before I enter the library via the magnificent Great Quad.

An outside view of The Codringotn Library at All Souls
Going to work does not get more magnificent than this.

9:30-10:00

Today is the first day we are open to readers after Christmas. My line-manager, the Librarian-in-Charge is in for the first time after their leave, so we catch up before I start my morning duties. These include turning on the screens and the lightshow that contextualise the presence of the statue of Christopher Codrington in the library. Codrington was a former fellow of the college who donated a large amount of money for the building of the library; perhaps unsurprisingly for Oxford, this wealth derived from Codrington’s ownership of plantations in the West Indies. The college is hoping to address this complex legacy, and these installations are the first steps on the way (you can read more about this program here). Once I get these out of the way, I do the usual bits: I clean up any books left on desks, shelve books, update the ‘borrowing book’ which documents books taken out by Fellows, and check whether readers have put in any requests.

Three of the screens with information contextualising the legacy of Christopher Codrington.
Turning on screens with information about the library.

10:00

Time to open the main door for readers! We do not have an Enquiry Desk but since my desk is in the Great Library, I am often the one who takes the reader-focused role. Today, however, our first reader does not arrive until 11am which means that I have time to get on with some spreadsheets.

The main desk in the Codrington library.
My desk in the Great Library.

10:00-12:00

More catching up with my manager about what I did last week when I was in the library on my own, and what is on my to-do-list this week. They assign me a few tasks and then the conversation deviates into other work-related topics. Suddenly it is 11:30 and I realise that I have barely done any actual work, so I print out the reader book requests slips and go fetch them before it is time to pootle over for lunch.

12:00

Lunch! One of the most exciting things in the life of a college trainee. Today, the vegetarian option was a celeriac roulade with potato wedges, green veg, and salad on the side. I take the lemon posset for my tea break later in the day.

12:30-14:30

As there’s a lot to get done this afternoon and I want to head home on time, I finish my break early safe in the knowledge that I’ll get that extra half hour in lieu at a later date. My usual afternoon program includes sorting out the post, as well as processing new acquisitions, shelving, and book moving, most of which I do whilst sitting on the desk in the Great Library. I had done most of these tasks last week when I was in the library on my own, so this afternoon I will be moving outdated law volumes from our law reading room into the cellar.

A shelf full of boxes of books in the cellar.
A lot of heavy lifting today.

14:30-15:30

Twenty 12kg-heavy crates later, I am in a dire need of a sit-down for a moment. I reply to e-mails before making a cup of tea and sorting out the incoming post, consisting mainly of new issues of printed law and history journals. I check these in, stamp, shelfmark and shelve them. I like this job a lot for its zen-like, meditative quality (and because I can drink tea whilst doing it).

15:30-16:00

I am currently doing an internship for the FAMOUS project, helping Dr Camillo Formigatti retro-cataloguing Sanskrit manuscripts in TEI. This is an exciting opportunity which allows me to join my academic specialism and develop my librarian skills, including learning cataloguing in XML. I spent half an hour today setting up a meeting with my supervisor and going through the manuscript catalogue to identify the volumes I will be working with from next week onwards.

16:00-16:30

As it is still vacation, the library closes at half past four. I am dreading the return of the term-time hours, 9:30-18:30. For now, however, I happily start my closing routine: I check whether all readers our out, turn off the interactive touchscreens and lightshow, and lock up various doors. By half past, I collect my backpack and coat, wave at my manager, close the main door, and head out to do whatever Oxford throws at me that day.

Barbora Sojkova, All Souls Library

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My name is Barbora and I am the trainee at the All Souls College Library. Although All Souls holds a certain aura of mystique, its Library is perhaps the most accessible college library in Oxford, providing its rich collections not only to the members of the college but also to Oxford students and external researchers. The library is strong in history and law in particular; furthermore, there is a wealth of manuscripts and early-printed materials.

 

 

I have been in Oxford for five years now, reading for MPhil in Classical Indian Religions at Wolfson before transferring to DPhil in Oriental Studies with specialisation in Vedic Sanskrit at Balliol College. Before coming to Oxford, I did an undergrad and MA in Religious Studies at the Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic, where I worked part-time as a Student Librarian in the library of the Department of Philosophy for four years. I loved every aspect of that job, so when I arrived in Oxford, I quickly found a part-time job as an invigilator in the Radcliffe Camera. It was there where I first heard about the Graduate Traineeship, and I was absolutely certain I would apply once I finish my DPhil.

Although I cannot say I am fully done with my DPhil yet – handing in my thesis only over a week ago and anxiously awaiting my viva – I am very lucky to be working in the grand eighteenth-century All Souls Library for about a month and half now. The main bulk of my job has been behind the library scenes so far, including tasks such as shelving, book processing, handling book requests, updating spreadsheets of all kinds, and creating more space in the bookstack. As we have just opened to readers after the long vacation, I will be incrementally taking on more tasks related to the reader services. So far, my favourite job has been processing the so-called “presentations”, i.e., books donated to the library by college members. This involves multiple steps from creating a custom bookplate commemorating the donation to assigning it a shelfmark.

Overall, I am very excited to see what the year at All Souls has in store for me!