A Week in the Life of a Trainee at the Oxford Union 

A view of the Oxford Union from outside.

My working week starts at 09:30 on a Monday morning. This is glorious as my fellow trainees have to start at 09:00 or earlier, mwah ha ha ha.  

Coming in early often means I open the library: unlocking, turning on the lights and emptying the dehumidifiers (and, after 6 months, I still haven’t mastered the art of pouring the water from our leaky dehumidifier without spills).   

Having opened up, I am often on shift at the reception desk (I have one shift a day). This means that I get to meet lots of lovely people – some members, some not.   

There are six staff members in the library: the Librarian-in-Charge, the Deputy Librarian, the Assistant Librarian, me (the Trainee), the Archivist, and Helga (the library printer, who works very hard). The Union has more than just library staff, but the team is still very small and you get to know everyone; the Bar staff even know my lunch order before I say it (despite me definitely not having a coronation chicken sandwich almost every day for the past six months).  

Mondays are fantastic; I take minutes at our Library Committee meetings. These are chaired by the Librarian, who is a student. They decide which books will be withdrawn and which will be purchased. Our Library’s collection is thus entirely dictated by the needs and wants of members and booklists are often a little peculiar as a result.  

On Tuesdays my cup runneth over; I come in late (for the evening shift, not because I have given up on punctuality by Tuesday), and do research for our displays, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. This also tends to be the day on which I do the most research for my project (which will eventually be posted on the library website).  

Wednesdays are usually training days for all Trainee Librarians – here you’ll learn to use ALMA, learn the nitty gritty elements of librarianship and visit other libraries (inside and outside Oxford).  

Thursdays at the Union are great; this is ‘Brew and Biscuits’ day, on which all staff, and sometimes student officers (President, Librarian and Treasurer), meet for an hour, first for business, and then a social chat (usually about rugby, at which point anyone who doesn’t watch it is bored rigid). The possession of a brew (tea, coffee, or hot chocolate) and the consumption of at least one biscuit is rigorously enforced (on pain of death). This is also the day when I leave early to go bouldering.  

Fridays are more relaxed, there are no minutes to write, no training to do (usually), and no threat of death for not partaking of the cookies. This is a day when reshelving and book processing are the priority and social media posts get scheduled.   

The blog post continues into Saturday! Fear not! At most you’ll only do two Saturdays a term, and you have a late start. Shock horror though… there are no free bar lunches. And on that cliff-hanger, I will leave you.  

Constructing ‘A Noble Library’: Enriqueta Rylands, a Woman Ahead of her Time

In honour of International Women’s Day on the 8th March (today incidentally!), I wanted to focus in on one very important woman within libraries – though it should go without saying that there are a whole host of impressive women throughout the field. This person is Enriqueta Rylands, the brains behind Manchester’s John Rylands Library (JRL), contrary to what the name implies! I have always had a soft spot for Rylands, as my family has something of a (some may say tenuous) connection to the library – my great x3 grandfather carved some of the decorative oak panelling within the building – so it has been a pleasure to research more about the endeavour for this blog post.

Though the JRL is now affiliated with the University of Manchester, housing its special collections, it began its life as a public library. It still continues to proudly admit all readers with no need to pay, and encourages them to not only access but to enjoy their special collections – this is specifically to align with Enriqueta’s vision of the library, which we’ll delve into in this blogpost! [1]

A picture of the statue of Enriqueta Rylands, which stands in the main Reading Room.
Enriqueta invigilating readers and visitors alike. The University of Manchester Library, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 DEED

Just who was Enriqueta Rylands?

Enriqueta Augustina Tennant was born in Cuba in 1843 to a wealthy family thanks to her family’s dealings in sugar and land. However, Enriqueta’s fortunes quickly changed when she was a teenager upon the death of her parents. Unable to claim inheritance in Cuba, she was sent to live in England with members of her deceased father’s family in 1859. [2] Though she was a ‘white creole’ rather than someone with Spanish or Indigenous roots from Cuba, she still faced an uncertain future in England, facing prejudice for her heritage which was made all the worse for her lack of personal wealth. [2]. It was during this period that she became the companion of Martha Rylands, John Rylands’ second wife, and after her death in 1875, Enriqueta became his third wife.

John Rylands was Manchester’s first multi-millionaire and cotton magnate. Upon his death in 1888, he left an estate worth £2,574,922 to Enriqueta (£305 million adjusted for inflation in 2024), which formed the basis of funding for what would become the John Rylands Library – named in tribute to her husband’s memory. [3]. He was a lover of literature, though unable to devote as much time to reading as he would have liked. Instead, he often gifted books to poorer or rural Free Church ministers to help in their studies; Enriqueta could not have thought of a better way to memorialise her husband. [4] Less than a year after his death, plans had been submitted for the construction of the building. Even before this though, Enriqueta and her husband were interested in libraries and collecting – where many point to later acquisitions as the beginning of Enriqueta as a collector, Dr Elizabeth C. Gow makes the point that in 1881 an anonymous cataloguer put together a catalogue for the Rylands’ personal library at their residence in Longford Hall. The creation of the catalogue then ‘reflects the shared endeavour of John and Enriqueta to organise and define the library as a space and collection’ [5]

A Note on the Library’s Links to Slavery

Before we go any further, I feel that it is important to mention that while the John Rylands Library has done immeasurable good for the city of Manchester, the fortune used to create it was built off the backs of enslaved people in the Americas. To read more on this I would recommend taking a look at Dr Natalie Zacek’s article on the matter as part of the Rylands Reflects series, which explores the history of the library and its collections in context with colonisation, racism, and imperialism.

Building the Library

The library itself took over 10 years of careful planning and construction to bring to fruition – much to Enriqueta’s disappointment as initially it was planned to open in 1893 [6]. Deansgate was chosen as the location for the project – now a popular shopping street but then a cramped slum district, surrounded by warehouses, taverns, and slum dwellings, the majority of which were back-to-back with only narrow passages in-between. If there were any spaces between houses they were ruled ‘small and insufficient’! [7] It is not known why specifically she chose this area, though there are several theories for it. It’s suggested that perhaps she chose the site in order to gentrify the area both morally and in appearance – John Rylands himself wanted to ‘make the highest literature accessible to the people’ [8].

A map of Deansgate pre-Rylands from an 1880s sanitation report, there is a blue star that marks where Rylands will be!
A map of Deansgate pre-Rylands from the cited 1880s sanitation report – the star I’ve added marks where Rylands will be! The University of Manchester Library, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 DEED

 

The architect Enriqueta chose for the job was Basil Champneys –  you might be familiar with his work as he designed several Oxbridge buildings including the libraries for both Mansfield College and Somerville College. Enriqueta’s choice of Champneys to helm the design work was in fact inspired by his work at Mansfield, where she was patron to the college.

Enriqueta took an active approach in all facets of the library’s construction, from books to building work, for the duration of the project much to the chagrin of Champneys; she was not afraid to voice her opinion on the architecture and fittings within! For just a taste of this, here’s a small list of some of the feedback she gave:

  • The statue of Gutenberg for the Reading Room was malproportioned (‘The portraits she has seen show him with a longer beard. Has the photograph exaggerated the length of the right shoe?’) and she demanded it to be adjusted. Rest assured it was! You can even see a close up of them here if you want to double check his work. [6]
  • Enriqueta wasn’t a fan of the light fittings and radiator grilles that Champneys had designed with ‘none of them being exactly to her mind’. This resulted in her going over Champneys and straight to the manufacturers, telling them to direct all correspondence to her as ‘the architect has nothing to do with this’. [6]
  • The traceried screens designed by Champneys to go in the Reading Room were nixed even after they were partially constructed, as they were too evocative of the Catholic church when she wanted to ‘avoid anything that gives an ecclesiastical appearance to the building’. Not only did Enriqueta foot the cost of modifying the screens, the craftsmen billed her for the time and materials used for the initial design too. [6]

(You can find a whole timeline of the construction, including the changes that Enriqueta requested, in the cited article’s appendix.)

If you’re wondering how Champneys took this, well, he had to yield in the end. However, that didn’t stop him from voicing his frustrations in a letter to William Linnell, advisor to Enriqueta, saying ‘I have taken a pride in the building and spared neither thought nor labour, nor, what has cost me far more, patience and humiliation, to make it worthy of Mrs Rylands’ intention.’ [9]. Enriqueta had a specific vision in mind, and she wasn’t going to give it up for anyone – and certainly not for the architect of all people(!) Despite all this strife during construction, the building itself was incredibly modern and forward-thinking. The library was one of the first buildings in Manchester to use electricity to power the lighting and it was generated from inside the building itself (motivated by fire safety after one of Rylands’ warehouses burnt down due to gas lighting) [3]. There were also complex filtration systems installed at Enriqueta’s behest to keep the air, and thus the books, clean from the industrial atmosphere outside.

The library’s Reading Room! kaysgeog, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 DEED

 

Aside from the building itself, Enriqueta was also heavily involved with the acquisition of its contents. Initially, she began collecting modern reference works for the library in 1890, markedly more utilitarian and middle class compared to other bibliophiles’ collections. Upon the advice of Dr Samuel Gosnell Green, though, she moved into acquiring Special Collections and first editions in 1891, in particular Early English Bibles [5]. Acting on this advice and expanding her search to include rare books and manuscripts set the stage for the later acquisitions and changed the trajectory of the library entirely.

It was in 1892 when a watershed moment happened, the acquisition of the Althorp Library. The Althorp library had previously belonged to the Spencer family (yes, of Princess Di fame), with George John, 2nd Earl Spencer, cultivating the collection over 40 years. He ‘was not satisfied to merely have the best books, he was intent upon having the finest copies procurable of the best books’ [10]. This was supplemented by the fact that the core of this library came from the Reviczky Collection. The Reviczky Collection previously belonged to Hungarian nobleman Count Reviczky and was filled to the brim with Greek and Latin classic literature in tiptop condition – he famously disliked any manuscript notes and marginalia, resulting in an overall pretty pristine collection [10]. Upon the Spencer family going through a difficult period, the 5th Earl Spencer, John, looked to sell off some of the library – and here is where Enriqueta comes in. Poor luck for the Spencers was great luck for the burgeoning library, the sale being described by Dr Green as ‘a most stupendous piece of news’ [11].

Despite Enriqueta ordering the stop of all acquisitions in order to secure the Althorp Library, there was a very real prospect that the Althorp library could have been separated piecemeal and shipped off to (gasp!) America, much to the horror of bibliophiles all over England. Lucky for them then that Enriqueta bought nearly the entire library (40,000 volumes) for £210,000, barely a month after the intention to sell was announced [5]. There was a real sense of relief around this – the fact that she bought the library and ‘saved [it] for the nation’ from the “dreadful” fate of crossing the pond was repeated like a mantra when it came to talking about Rylands – from being mentioned in Enriqueta’s Freedom of the City scroll (we’ll get to that) to contemporary accounts, such as from her trusted librarian Henry Guppy who described keeping the Althorp Library in England as ‘an exceptional service’. [10] The acquisition of the Althorp Library catapulted Rylands beyond its original scope as a predominantly theological library into a multitude of different disciplines [10]. However, I feel it’s important to mention that, despite all this praise in the wake of the completion of the library, in order to bid on the Althorp Collection, she had to don the disguise of an anonymous ‘English gentleman’ [12]. Once it was discovered that she was the anonymous buyer, the opinion pieces came out of the woodwork. For some, the very idea that Mancunians might potentially have access to the collections was met with derision and insult, particularly from weekly gossip newspaper Modern Society in this rant sprinkled with antisemitism: [13]

Newspaper clipping reading: "We see the purchase of the Althorp library by Mrs. Rylands is confirmed, but not the gift of it to Manchester. We trust this magnificent collection will not go to that dirty, uncomfortable city. What do unsavoury Greek shent-per-shenters and uncultivated boors want with a library, and such a one? Besides, they have not enough light to read by, and the books they already have are wretchedly kept."
The University of Manchester Library, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 DEED

 

we see the purchase of the Althorp library by Mrs. Rylands is confirmed, but not the gift of it to Manchester. We trust this magnificent collection will not go to that dirty, uncomfortable city. What do unsavoury Greek shent-per-shenters and uncultivated boors want with a library, and such a one? Besides, they have not enough light to read by, and the books they already have are wretchedly kept.” [14]

Unfortunately for them, that is exactly was Enriqueta intended to do, wanting to lift her adopted city out of its reputation as only good for industry. Luckily, other publications such as The Spectator were more supportive of her endeavour, saying:

We are glad that Manchester rather than London is to get Lord Spencer’s books, for we dislike the centralisation of all the great treasures in the Capital. The more great pictures and great libraries there are in the provincial towns the better.” [15]

Enriqueta stayed heavily involved even once she had relinquished a bit of control to Dr Green’s son, J. Arnold Green: she was still double checking her purchases against invoices and handlists to make sure that nothing was amiss and her money was being spent in the way she intended. [5]

The library was opened to the public on January 1st, 1900 – a very auspicious start.

Scroll with the 'Freedom of the City of Manchester' that was given to Enriqueta Rylands, featuring calligraphy, gilding, paintings of the JRL and Enriqueta's family crest.
The beautiful ‘Freedom of the City of Manchester’ scroll given to Enriqueta. The University of Manchester Library, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 DEED

The Aftermath and Future

Enriqueta’s hard work in the planning and creation of Rylands didn’t go unnoticed once building work was finished and library was opened. For one, the Lord Mayor of Manchester presented her with the Freedom of the City of Manchester for ‘the generous manner in which she had founded and dedicated to the public, and enshrined in a beautiful and costly edifice, a noble library for the promotion of study and the pursuit of learning’ [16]. Later, in 1902, she was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Letters from Owens College (which would eventually become the University of Manchester) as she ‘with splendid munificence has gathered in Manchester a magnificent library, as the most fitting memorial of one who cared much that the best books should be accessible to all’. [4]. The awarding chancellor was actually Earl Spencer – the very same she bought the Althorp library from!

Much like Oxford’s own Bodley, Enriqueta knew that she couldn’t simply put money in at the start and leave it to grow on its own – a consistent flow of cash was needed to ensure the longevity of the institution [17]. She endowed library with an annual income for maintenance, and if any collections became available that might suit the library but were outside of its budget, Enriqueta circumvented this by buying and donated them [4]. The sale of the 26th Earl of Crawford’s manuscript collections in 1901 is a great example of this, amounting to 6,000 volumes for a price of £155,000. Not only that, she paid for the cataloguing so that the collection could actually enter circulation and be used once it made its way to Rylands after her death. [4]. Her final gift was the entirety of her and her husband’s personal library from their residence at Longford Hall, bequeathed in 1903, and transferred upon her death in 1908.

This work carried on after her death, the board of trustees clearly taking on-board the intentions that Enriqueta had for the library and her legacy – which as we touched upon continue to this day. The governors strove to ‘make it an efficient working library for students […] so as to excite and diffuse a love of learning’ whilst also ‘[giving] the general public […] opportunities for forming some idea of the scope and character of the collections, and of the possibility of usefulness which the library offers’ [4] In this vein, they provided exhibitions on the collections, had a series of public lectures from 1901, and offered bibliographic demonstrations to those from local students, colleges, and craftsmen [4].

Wrapping Up

A truly philanthropic gesture, rather than hiding the library behind a ‘pay wall’ or the mists of academia, Rylands opened it to the public for their use at a time when Manchester was viewed as “home of the philistine” – this was only 40 years after the publication of Friedrich Engel’s The Condition of the Working Class in England and two years after its publication in English [3]. She could have so easily, with the immense fortune she had garnered, passed off her ideas to a board of trustees and washed her hands of it. Instead, she personally nurtured it for the entirety of the project, and still had an active role once she had stepped back and let the board of trustees take over upon its opening. I’ll finish on this quote from Enriqueta, chastising bibliographer E. Gordon Duff for the catalogue he created for Rylands being inaccessible for general readers – I think it sums up her mission statement for the library, and the sentiment of inclusivity is something that we as trainees should take to heart going into the field:

‘it is my wish that this library shall be of use in the widest sense of the word: for young students as well as for advanced scholars. It is not to be a mere centre for antiquaries and bibliographers, as its rich collection of early printed Books & M.SS. has led many, I find, to believe’. [18]

Citations 

[1] “Special Collections.” [n.d.]. John Rylands Research Institute and Library <https://www.library.manchester.ac.uk/rylands/special-collections/>

[2] Gow, Elizabeth. 2020. “Rylands Reflects: Whiter than White? Enriqueta Rylands’s Cuban Roots,” Rylands Blog <https://rylandscollections.com/2020/09/14/whiter-than-white-enriqueta-rylands-cuban-roots>

[3] Farnie, D. A. 1993. John Rylands of Manchester (Manchester, England: John Rylands University Library of Manchester)

[4] Guppy, Henry. 1921. The John Rylands Library, Manchester; A Brief Record of Twenty-One Years’ Work (MCM January MCMXII) (Manchester: The University Press)

[5] Gow, Elizabeth. 2023. Enriqueta Rylands: The Public and Private Collecting of a Nonconformist Bibliophile (Manchester: University of Manchester) <https://pure.manchester.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/274925726/FULL_TEXT.PDF%20p.53>

[6] Hodgson, John. 2012. “Carven Stone and Blazoned Pane’: The Design and Construction of the John Rylands Library,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 89.1 <https://doi.org/10.7227/BJRL.89.1.3>

[7] Bastow, Richard Austin. 1880. Report on the Health of the City of Manchester, 1880 (Manchester: Chas Sever)

[8] Letter from Green to Railton, 6 August 1892.

[9] Letter from Basil Champneys to Linnell, 3 August 1897.

[10] Guppy, Henry. 1935. The John Rylands Library, a Brief Record of Its History,1899-1935 (Manchester, England: Manchester University Press)

[11] Letter from Dr Green to Enriqueta Rylands, 17 June 1892.

[12] (anonymously), Ward, Thomas Humphry. 1892. “Sale of the Althorp Library,” The Times, p. 7

[13] [N.d.]. Victorianperiodicals.com <https://english.victorianperiodicals.com/>

[14] Modern Society, 1892. “Cutting from Modern Society” <https://luna.manchester.ac.uk/luna/servlet/detail/lib1~1~1~281756~290625:Cutting-from-Modern-Society?sort=reference_number%2Cpage%2Ccurrent_repository>

[15] 1892. “News of the Week,” The Spectator, p. 3

[16] Manchester City Council. 1899. “Freedom of the City of Manchester” (Manchester City Council) <https://luna.manchester.ac.uk/luna/servlet/detail/lib1~1~1~89196~105074:Freedom-of-the-City-of-Manchester?sort=reference_number%2Cpage%2Ccurrent_repository&qvq=w4s:/what%2FLegal%2Bdocuments;sort:reference_number%2Cpage%2Ccurrent_repository;lc:lib1~1~1&mi=14&trs=15>

[17] “History of the Bodleian.” [n.d.]. Bodleian Libraries <https://visit.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/plan-your-visit/history-bodleian> [accessed 7 March 2024]

[18] Letter from Enriqueta Rylands to Linnell ‘Re Mr Duff’, 13 April 1896.

LGBTQ+ History Month at the Bodleian Law Library

British LGBTQ+ history has an involved and often traumatic relationship to the Law. At the Bodleian Law Library (BLL), we’ve taken the opportunity to highlight some of those relationships through a display of our primary and secondary collections. In this post, we want to briefly touch on just a few pieces of legislation, currently on display or accessible on open shelf in the BLL, that were vital to the progression of LGBTQ+ rights in the UK, showing how the Law Library can be a key resource for studying its history.

Three books on display against the background of a rainbow flag
Physical copies of the Wolfenden Report, a Homosexual Law Reform Society annual report, and Peter Wildeblood’s memoir.

In 1954, Peter Wildeblood, Lord Montagu of Beaulieu and Michael Pitt-Rivers were convicted for “consensual homosexual offences” and sentenced to 12 to 18 months in prison. The trial invigorated a reform movement that triggered a Commons “committee on homosexual offences” that, in 1957, would publish the seminal Wolfenden Report, which advised that “‘Homosexual behaviour between consenting adults in private be no longer a criminal offence”. The report was debated in parliament, but the government did not act on its recommendations, galvanising new organisations agitating for gay rights, such as the Homosexual Law Reform Society (a 1960s report of the Society is on display in the Law Library). Also in the Law Library, you can read the Wolfenden Report itself, as well as Wildeblood’s brave memoir Against the Law, which appeared in the same year.

Picture of a book display showing various primary and secondary resources related to LGBTQ+ history
Part of the LGBTQ+ History Month display at the Bodleian Law Library.

The library-held collections of historical and in-force statutes (such as Halsbury’s or online legal databases like Westlaw or Lexis+ subscribed to by the Bodleian – see the list of legal databases at Legal databases | Bodleian Libraries (ox.ac.uk); not quite as up to date but freely accessible to everyone is the government’s own Legislation.gov.uk) are a key source of LGBTQ+ history. In 1967, ten year after the recommendations in the Wolfenden report, the Sexual Offences Act finally decriminalised in-private sex between men over 21 (i.e. only a partial decriminalisation: the age of consent, moreover, was not equalised until 2000). Another key statute is the Gender Recognition Act 2004, which finally gave Trans people the legal right to full recognition of their gender (we also hold the 2018 parliamentary consultation material regarding its reform). And there is the Marriage (Same-Sex Couples) Act of 2013, which legalised gay marriage, or the 2010 Equality Act, Britain’s key anti-discrimination legislation. All these laws have a direct impact on people’s daily lives and experiences, as well as our sense of what kind of society we are and/or want to be.

The BLL does not only hold the final product when it comes to legislation. In the Official Papers collection, the often fascinating (and not rarely disturbing) parliamentary history of LGBTQ+ – related legislation can be followed, for instance through the debate reports printed in Hansard (also online at https://hansard.parliament.uk/). From the first discussion of Lesbianism in parliament in 1921 (a Criminal Law Amendment bill, which would have criminalised all sex between women, was defeated in the House of Lords that year) to the long history of the repeal of the repressive section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988 (which prohibited the so-called “promotion” of homosexuality by local authorities, inspiring the activism of Stonewall and OutRage!), readers can discover how House discussions and committee reports reflected (or not) debates, prejudices, advocacy and reform in wider society. Behind the glass of the main reading room, for instance, three volumes on display chart the repeal of section 28: from the 1988 introduction of the paragraph which offensively termed gay partnerships “pretended family relationships” into the 1986 Local Government Act, over the introduction of repeal in the Standing Committee stage of the 2003 Local Government Bill, to the eventual enactment of repeal in the Local Government Act 2003 (a government apology, however, did not follow until 2009).

Two statute books and a parliamentary committee report on display, resting on bookstands.
Tracing the repeal of Section 28 at the BLL

If you want to know more, a good first place to start is the Oxford LibGuide prepared by the Law Library: Home – LGBTI law – Oxford LibGuides at Oxford University. The secondary literature on display until the end of this month in the main reading room, moreover, highlights not only titles about the UK, but also the US, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East. On the first floor of the library, in addition, there are extensive collections of statutes from Australia, Canada, India, and many other jurisdictions: on the first of February, for instance, we displayed the Canadian Civil Marriage Act, which legalised same-sex marriage in the country on that day in 2005 (on the same day in 2009, incidentally, Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir became the prime minister of Iceland, and with it the world’s first openly gay head of government).

There are many more legal resources accessible through the library, either in physical form (such as reports on the trial of Oscar Wilde, notoriously convicted under the infamous Labouchère Amendment of the 1885 Criminal Law Amendment Act, at KB65.ENG.WIL on the second floor), or in electronic form. As such, the library constitutes an excellent resource in remembering and making visible LGBTQ+ history, the constraints and repressions that the Law has inflicted, and the trajectory of its reform and the construction of anti-discrimination legislation.

 

Celebrating LGBT+ History Month at the Bodleian Libraries

February is LGBT+ History Month. Across the Bodleian and college libraries, the Graduate Trainees have been hard at work creating displays that showcase a wide array of books which explore and celebrate LGBT+ history.

The Oxford Union Society Library

The Oxford Union Society’s LGBT+ History Month display explores LGBT+ history from across the world.

Homosexuality in ancient Greece is discussed through famous historical figures like Sappho, the romantic poet who is widely believed to have been lesbian (indeed, she lived on the Isle of Lesbos which is where the word “Lesbian” comes from),[1] and Ovid who wrote in his Art of Love that ‘a boy’s love appealed to me less’ – although this was later deliberately mistranslated as ‘a boy’s love appealed to me not at all’.[2] This censorship is not unusual, though amusingly some writers who translated Greek texts would translate the more risqué passages into Latin, thus counterintuitively highlighting the very sections they wanted obscured.[3]

Additionally, ancient Greek literature is used to explore LGBT history: Plato’s Symposium includes a brilliantly varied discussion of the origin of man in which Aristophanes, a comic, suggests that humans used to be two beings fused together, some male and female, others male and male and yet others female and female. These original humans were split in half by the angry gods and that is why we search for our “other half”.[4]

Transsexualism and homosexuality in various parts of Asia are also discussed:

  • In Mesopotamia, the deity of love and war, Ishtar, could be depicted as either male or female depending on what aspect of divinity the artist wished to portray. Ishtar’s male followers were even considered feminine and their sexual identity ‘in some way irregular’.[5]
  • The Hindu deity Lakshminarayan is a combination of two deities: male Vishnu and female Lakshmi. Similarly, the deity Ardhanarishvara represents the goddess Parvati and the god Shiva (who is romantic with Vishnu and even gives birth!).[6]
  • Japanese and Persian cultures are discussed through comparing Japanese samurai, who often had relationships with their pages and juniors and valued male love, with a similar practice in Persian royal courts.[7]

Modern British history, on the other hand, is filled with the poor treatment of LGBT+ people. In the 18th century homosexuality was a capital offence and the word “Molly” was used as a term of abuse towards flamboyant men.[8] In 1895, Oscar Wilde was tried for being gay and imprisoned in Reading gaol,[9] and in 1952 Alan Turing was discovered to be homosexual and charged with ‘gross indecency’ and chemically castrated.[10] Later in the 20th century, homosexuals were interrogated and discharged from the armed forces.[11] In fact, homosexuals were banned from British Armed Forces up until 2000.[12]

LGBT+ history is varied and fascinating. If you’d like to learn more about how it has been celebrated at the Oxford Union, check out the posts about the display for Transgender Awareness Week 2023 on Twitter and Facebook.

[1] R.B. Parkinson. 2013. A little gay history : desire and diversity across the world. 306.766 PAR

[2] Simon LeVay. 2012. Gay, straight, and the reason why : the science of sexual orientation. 155.3 LEV

[3] John Boswell. 1982. Christianity, social tolerance, and homosexuality : gay people in Western Europe from the beginning of the Christian era to the fourteenth century. 306.766 2 BOS

[4] Simon LeVay. 2012.

[5] R.B. Parkinson. 2013.

[6] Ibid

[7] Ibid

[8] Simon LeVay. 2012.

[9] Hugh David. 1997. On queer street : a social history of British homosexuality, 1895-1995. 306.766 DAV.

[10] Andrew Hodges. 1992. Alan Turing : the enigma. 510 HOD.

[11] Edmund Hall. 1995. We can’t even march straight : Homosexuality in the British Armed Forces. 306.766 094 1 HAL.

[12] Ministry of Defence, Cabinet Office, Office for Veterans’ Affairs, The Rt Hon Dr Andrew Murrison MP, The Rt Hon Johnny Mercer MP, The Rt Hon Rishi Sunak MP, and The Rt Hon Ben Wallace MP. 2023. ‘Government apologises to veterans for egregious historic LGBT policy in the Armed Forces: The PM and Defence Secretary apologise to LGBT personnel and veterans impacted by the historic ban.’ Gov.uk. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-apologises-to-veterans-for-egregious-historic-lgbt-policy-in-the-armed-forces

 Connie Hubbard

 

The Taylor Institution Library

A picture showing the Taylor Institution Library’s LGBT+ History Month display.

The study of LGBT+ history is a rapidly growing field in academia. This is reflected in Oxford University’s Centre for Gender, Identity and Subjectivity, as well as the LGBTQ+ History Faculty Network which runs fortnightly seminars and research sessions (@oulgbtqhistory). As for the Taylorian, we have a growing focus on gender and sexuality, not only on our ‘G.GEN’ marked shelves in the Main Reading Room and Research Collection but interspersed throughout our modern language and film collections.

While the official theme for this year’s LGBT+ History Month is ‘Medicine: Under the Scope’, we at the Taylor Library decided to stick to our subject specialisms of modern language and European history while putting together our display. As a result, we have two separate displays, a DVD display in the Teaching Collection and a display of our most recent acquisitions of LGBT+ history books in the Research Collection, to keep up to date with current scholarship.

The displays aim to present examples of the vast array of items the library has, from the history of coming out in Wales (A Little Gay History of Wales) and lesbian desire in nineteenth century Italy (Eccentricity and sameness: discourses on lesbianism and desire between women in Italy, 1860s-1930s), to histories of queerness in medieval French courts (Courtly and queer: deconstruction, desire, and medieval French literature) and anthologies of transgender historical scholarship. They are centred around uncovering lost historical narratives, whether that be because of scholarly neglect until relatively recently, or explicit attempts to erase the voices of those who did not “fit” within the heteronormative historical narrative. To recognise these voices, the display also contains the works of 19th and 20th century LGBT+ writers and artists. These include the likes of Renée Vivien, a lesbian Parisian poet whose childhood friend-turned-lover, Violet Shillito, is often evoked in her works such as this display’s A Crown of Violets. Another example you will find is that of Mário Cesariny, a surrealist artist and poet who left Portugal for the UK to escape persecution for his homosexuality. The Taylor recently held an exhibition of his work, which you can read about here. 

As for our DVD display, this aims to celebrate the impact and contribution of LGBT+ artists in cinema worldwide. The collection on display consists of films that were produced by LGBT+ directors and are a mix of early and more recent productions. From French historical drama such as Portrait of a Lady on Fire to South Korean thriller The Handmaiden, Swedish bildungsroman Show Me Love to Thai romance Tropical Malady, these award-winning productions all explore and celebrate the multifaceted experiences of those in the LGBT+ community. Overall, the displays reflect the purpose of LGBT+ History Month as a whole, to create safe and inclusive spaces for all readers and staff members at the Taylorian.

Reading List: Histoire de la Sexualité by Michel Foucault; The Transgender Studies Reader, ed. by Susan Stryker and Stephen Whittle; Queer Genealogies in Transnational Barcelona, by Natasha Tanna; Derivas Del (Mal)decir, by José Javier Maristany; Queer Square Mile: Queer Short Stories from Wales, ed. by Kirsti Bohata et al.; Un Été Avec Colette, by Antoine Compagnon; Pena Capital by Mário Cesariny; A Crown of Violets, by Renée Vivien (trans. by Samantha Pious); Lesbian Decadence, by Nicole G. Albert; Peripheral Desires: The German Discovery of Sex by Robert Deam Tobin; A Little Gay History of Wales by Daryle Leeworthy; Eccentricity and Sameness, by Charlotte Ross; Public City/Public Sex, by Andrew Israel Ross.

DVD List: Tropical Malady, directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul; Show Me Love, by Lukas Moodysson; Happy Together, by Wong Kar-Wai; Tomboy, by Céline Sciamma; A Fantastic Woman, by Sebastián Lelio; Portrait of a Lady on Fire, by Céline Sciamma; The Handmaiden, by Park Chan-Wook.

Clara Oxley

 

English Faculty Library

This year for LGBT+ month, the EFL has decided to do something a little bit different for its Book Display. Under the capable hands of Sophie, our Reader Services Senior Library Assistant, and in collaboration with the LGBTQ+ Campaign, the EFL put out a call to its readers to help co-curate this month’s display. Our readers were asked to submit their favourite queer book with a short blurb on why they chose it. Needless to say, we were blown away by the response!

10 people took the time out of their day to send in a suggestion, and it was wonderful to see how varied the responses were. Here’s a sample of some of the choices and a taste of why they were chosen:

  • Loveless by Alice Oseman, a contemporary coming-out novel with an aro-ace protagonist. In the anonymous nominee’s words, it’s about ‘the multitude of ways that love can be defined’
  • Ready to Catch him Should he Fall by Neil Bartlett which nominee Jasper described as ‘[capturing] the horror and grief of the 80s AIDS crisis’
  • And (of course) classics such as The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, in which nominee Isaac highlighted how ‘with the lens afforded to a modern queer man, the homosexual repression jumps off the page’.

A full reading list can be found below if you’re interested!

It has been fascinating to see how different the responses are, and to see what exactly our readers are reading in their own words – particularly as queer voices have been (and are still being) silenced. In the spirit of allowing people their own voice, I’ve asked Sophie to write a few words of her own about the display:

“The idea for the collaborative display between the English Faculty Library and the SU LGBTQ+ Campaign was first raised by student reps  earlier this academic year, who expressed an interest in the library having a display for Trans Awareness Week back in November (which we did!). The LGBT+ History Month display was a natural follow-up from this, and couldn’t have been made without the help of the SU LGBTQ+ Campaign, who reached out to their connections and collected suggestions from the student body. This has helped us to create a display where Oxford’s LGBTQ+ community can talk about their history, experiences, and literature in their own words.”

This display will be on at the EFL for the entirety of LGBTQ+ History Month until March 4th 2024, so we highly encourage you to see it in person! If you’re unable to make it to the EFL though, a virtual display will be being posted onto the EFL Blog later this month so do keep an eye out.

Reading List: Gender Trouble by Judith Butler; The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde; Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan le Fanu; After Sappho by Selby Wynn Schwartz; Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier; Hauntings and Other Fantastic Tales by Vernon Lee; Loveless by Alice Oseman; Gallathea by John Lyly; Tales of the City by Armistead Mapuin; Ready to Catch him Should he Fall by Neil Bartlett

Leah Brown

New College Library

A picture showing New College Library’s LGBT+ History Month display.New College Library’s book display for LGBT+ History Month draws from our extensive Gender and Sexuality collection, a section of the library dedicated to books which explore and amplify LGBT+ peoples’ lives, voices, identities, and experiences, both historically and in the present day. I also identified some exciting new titles which we acquired for the library.

In honour of this year’s theme, ‘Medicine – #UnderTheScope’, the display includes books which explore LGBT+ people’s experiences of and contributions to healthcare and medicine. David France’s How to Survive a Plague, which was based on the 2012 documentary he directed of the same name, provides a raw and powerful social and scientific history of AIDS. France spotlights the vital work of activists of all genders who were the driving force behind the development of life-saving drugs for the management of HIV. Also on display is The Hidden Case of Ewan Forbes by Zoë Playdon. This book chronicles the life of Scottish nobleman Ewan Forbes, a transgender man, and the 1968 court case regarding the inheritance of his baronetcy. Drawing on the fields of medicine, psychology, biology, and law, Playdon provides the first analysis of this little-known event in LGBT+ history, drawing on records that had been suppressed until very recently.

Other books on display in New College Library this year explore a variety of different aspects of LGBT+ history, reflecting something of the range of different experiences, voices, and identities. Dr Kit Heyam’s monograph Before We Were Trans, for example, moves widely through time and space proposing a broader concept of trans history which encompasses everyone ‘doing fascinating, creative, messy things with gender’. Other books on display include a history of the Stonewall uprising in America and the imposition, repeal, and legacy of Section 28 in Britain, alongside explorations of the culture, history, and science of bisexuality and asexuality.

The display has proved really popular, and readers have borrowed several of the books which we have replaced on the display with others from our collection. There are so many amazing new releases in the field of LGBT+ studies, and I am keen to support in the acquisition of more of these books for the library.

Reading List: David France, How to Survive a Plague: The Story of How Activists and Scientists Tamed AIDS (London: Picador, 2017); Zoë Playdon, The Hidden Case of Ewan Forbes: The Transgender Trial that Threatened to Upend the British Establishment (London: Bloomsbury, 2022); Kit Heyam, Before We Were Trans: A New History of Gender (London: Basic Books, 2022); Martin B, Duberman, Stonewall: The Definitive Story of the LGBTQ Rights Uprising that Changed America (New York: Plume, 2019); Paul Baker, Outrageous! The Story of Section 28 and Britain’s Battle for LGBT Education (London: Reaktion Books, 2022); Julia Shaw, Bi: The Hidden Culture, History, and Science of Bisexuality (Edinburgh: Canongate, 2023); Angela Chen, Ace: What Asexuality Reveals about Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex (Boston: Beacon Press, 2020).

Jessica Hodgkinson

History Faculty Library

A picture showing the History Faculty Library’s LGBT+ History Month display

At the HFL, a former trainee has put together a display of books covering a wide range of LGBT+ history.

For those keen to delve into this year’s theme of “Under the Scope” and explore how LGBT+ people have experienced and contributed to medicine and healthcare, there are titles such as How to survive a plague: the inside story of how citizens and science tamed AIDS, which tells the story of activists and medics fighting to find a solution to the AIDS crisis.

Looking more broadly at LGBT+ history, there are a number of titles which make a deep dive into British queer history, such as Same-sex sexuality in later medieval English culture, A lesbian history of Britain: love and sex between women since 1500 and Queer voices in post-war Scotland: male homosexuality, religion and society. Or why not venture further from home with Red closet: the hidden history of gay oppression in the USSR or Stonewall: the definitive story of the LGBTQ rights uprising that changed America?

And if you’re not able to come into the Radcliffe Camera in person there is a selection of suggested digital titles, ranging from the broad – such as The Routledge history of queer America – to the highly specific Plane queer: labor, sexuality, and AIDS in the history of male flight attendants.

Reading List:

Tomboys and bachelor girls: a lesbian history of post-war Britain 1945-71

Britannia’s glory: a history of twentieth-century lesbians

Let the record show: a political history of ACT UP New York, 1987-1993

Before AIDS: gay health politics in the 1970s

Before we were trans: a new history of gender

Queer public history: essays on scholarly activism

The shape of sex: nonbinary gender from Genesis to the Renaissance

Same-sex sexuality in later medieval English culture

A little gay history: desire and diversity across the world

Outrageous!: the story of Section 28 and Britain’s battle for LGBT education

Sapphistries: a global history of love between women

Bi: the hidden culture, history and science of bisexuality

Journal of the history of sexuality (Online)

Seeing sodomy in the Middle Ages

GLQ (online)

Xanthe Malcolm

Book Snakes and Library Ladders: a trainee plays the Bodleian board game

 

The board includes 6 libraries and paths between them divided into squares, against a background of a map of Oxford. On it are placed chance cards, catalogue cards and five coloured game pieces.
The game board during play.

Back in 1988, the Bodleian created a truly ingenious piece of merchandise: The Bodleian Game, an incredibly niche board game for those who feel they just don’t quite spend enough time in the Bodleian Libraries in real life. Sadly, it is no longer available to buy new, but when one of my housemates managed to procure a second-hand copy, we were all very excited. (Getting excited over a library-based board game is very normal, actually.)

You begin the game by picking a research subject – we went for Women in Society – and are given the first book you need to read on that subject. The premise is then that for each book, you need to first visit the Old Bodleian; consult one of three catalogues there in order to determine which library your book is housed in; journey across Oxford to the relevant library; locate the book in that library’s catalogue; “read” the book and use the references to determine what you need to read next; and roll the dice to determine how useful the book was to your research. Highest score at the end of the game wins, so there is an incentive to reread if you don’t score highly.

Three cards. They read "Book misfiled - find it next turn"; "Book in place" and "Caught eating and have your reader's ticket confiscated - go to Admissions to reclaim it".
Different cards you might face before you can read your book…

 

Sound like a convoluted process? It was! We’ve never been so grateful for SOLO and the fact that it is accessible everywhere. Impressively, the books in the game were all real items held by the Bodleian, which we were of course able to check from the comfort of our kitchen table.

The fun of the game came from seeing how the mechanics had been created to replicate the true Bodleian Libraries experience. For example, chance cards could banish you to the starting spot for getting caught eating in the library, or delay your reading due to your book being already on loan. By the third time one of us drew the card that says you have left your Bodleian card at home and need to go to Admissions, and had to trek back across the board, I was feeling a distinct twinge of guilt for all the readers I have said the same thing to. And if you landed on the same square as another player, you both had to head straight off to the King’s Arms together – I’ll leave our readers to confirm or deny the accuracy of that one.

 

Two score cards with columns of Reference, Shelfmark, Title and Score. One is significantly more filled out than the other.
Two of our score cards by the end of play – I didn’t get as much reading done as my housemate!

Gameplay was not particularly rapid, and was based more on luck than strategy; think Monopoly or Ludo. We ended up setting a time limit to mark the end of the game rather than work our way through all fourteen suggested books, and elided a couple of rules to speed things up a little. But at times, knowledge was rewarded: at one point my housemate deduced (correctly!) that as she was looking for a letter, she could head straight to the John Johnson collection rather than return to the Old Bodleian to consult the catalogue there.

 

Would I play The Bodleian Game again? If I had time to spare on a relaxed game, then absolutely. Am I glad that in real life the Bodleian Libraries function differently in 2024 than they did in 1988? Very much so.

 

 

Burns Night and the Legacy of Tam

A pencil drawing of Robert Burns
The lovely Rabbie Burns himself. Image courtesy of Dumfries and Galloway Museums

We have just passed Burns Night held on January 25th, a night to celebrate Scotland’s national poet, Robbie Burns, with feasts, speeches, and general good cheer! If you don’t know who Robbie Burns is, he was a poet at the forefront of the Romantic movement in the 18th century who primarily wrote in Scots. You might know such classics as Auld Lang Syne (it’s only sung every year in the UK!).

Aside from Auld Lang Syne, arguably the poem most associated with Burns is Tam O’ Shanter, which he considered his finest work [1]. The Bodleian owns several early editions of the poem which are held at the Weston Library (see here and here). However, if you want easy access to it then you can read a lithograph facsimile of Burns’ own hand here – don’t worry, it does come with a glossary if you haven’t encountered Scots before. Written in 1790, only six years before Burns’ death, Tam is an epic poem of over 200 lines in which after an evening of drinking at the pub (much to his wife, Kate’s, chagrin) our protagonist stumbles across a witches sabbath with the Devil in attendance on his drunken journey home. Tam accidentally calls their attention to him and flees on horseback, barely reaching safety by crossing the Brig o’ Doon as the witches and the Devil can’t cross moving water. Tam comes away alive, only missing a chunk of his horse’s tail.

Of course, many people love a good ghost story, which might be part of the reason why Tam is still so enduringly popular and the pièce de résistance of Burns Night – can you really go wrong with cavorting witches and ghouls? However, as modern readers, it goes without saying that we experience these creatures differently to Burns’ initial audience. Although Burns was writing in Age of Enlightenment, a period during which writing that may maintain irrational (even fantastical) ideas were disapproved of, most ordinary people didn’t really change their patterns of belief to reflect the more ‘rational’ ideas that were in vogue. [2] Instead they stuck to their local folklore and superstitions. [1] For these communities, witchcraft still felt like a very real threat, and it was within a community like this that Burns grew up in Rural Ayrshire.

Burns drew his imagery from elsewhere as well – the Calvinist church; the folklore of his rural farming community in adulthood; Milton’s Paradise Lost and its depiction of Satan; and the fact that in the church condemning witchcraft, it also acknowledged it and made the ‘unreal’ real. [1] In 1773, only 17 years prior to the writing of the poem, the divines of the Associated Presbytery passed a bill that declared their belief in witchcraft, and in addition to that, the Scottish Witchcraft Act of 1563 was only repealed in 1736. [3] All this to say that the environment in which Burns was writing had a profound effect on the content of his work despite his rationalism – in a 1787 letter to Dr John Moore he wrote:

“in my nocturnal rambles, I sometimes keep a sharp look-out in suspicious places; and though nobody can be more sceptical in these matters than I, yet it often takes an effort of Philosophy to shake off these idle terrors.” [6]

There are many ways that Tam can be read, which is part of its charm. Of course, you have the vivid imagery and the terror that Tam’s encounter with the supernatural invokes. Then you can see moralistic undertones to the poem if you squint; Tam encounters the diabolic gang of witches and warlocks while drunk, and reveals his presence due to his inebriation – unable to contain himself as he yells to the witch, Nannie, ‘”Weel done, Cutty-sark!”’. [4] This however, might be little bit ironic considering one of our special collections items regarding Burns is a letter from him beginning “Sunday morning. Dr Sir, I was, I know, drunk last night” (relatable?). [5] It’s more likely that this is Burns’ rye sense of humour – to encounter such spirits and devilries you must have to have been drunk, and perhaps the encounter offers a convenient explanation as to why you got home so late and in such a state (and why your horse has had its tail pulled out!). In any case, it’s easy to see why Burns’ poems have endured, and to that we say sláinte!

A sepia picture of the remains of the Alloway Auld Kirk, graves in the foreground and church in the back
Alloway Auld Kirk, where the witches held their sabbath – you can see why it caught Burns’ imagination! Photo © Billy McCrorie (cc-by-sa/2.0)

 

References

[1] Douglas, Tom, Death, the Devil and Tam O’Shanter: the Supernatural World of Robert Burns (Lewes: The Book Guild, 2002)

[2] Clery, E.J., The Rise of Supernatural Fiction, 1762–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995)

[3] Robbins, Rossell Hope, The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology (New York: Crown Publishers, 1959)

[4] Burns, Robert, Tam o’ Shanter & Other Poems(Edinburgh: W. P. Nimmo, Hay, & Mitchell, 1912)

[5] MS. Add. A. 110

[6] Waugh, Butler,  ‘Robert Burns’ Satires and the Folk Tradition: “Halloween”’, South Atlantic Bulletin, 32.4 (1967), pp.10-13

“Cyclone” Nicholson: defying tradition at the Bodleian

Have you ever found yourself trapped between shelves in the Lower Gladstone Link, scouring shelf marks, shaking your fists and cursing the name Nicholson? You wouldn’t be the first, and you won’t be the last.

Graduate Trainee Yells at Books

Okay, maybe I’m being dramatic, but it’s true that whenever a reader asks me to help them locate something in the library, a lot of the time, they’re looking for a Nicholson book. Found in the Lower Gladstone Link stacks, the Nicholson system contains high usage material. The classification number at the beginning of the shelfmark eg. ‘1234 e.1017’ has an imaginary decimal point, which means that ‘12345’ would be found between ‘1234’ and ‘1235’, not after them.

In the spirit of goodwill and charity post-Christmas, however, it seems a shame that this is the most widely known legacy of Nicholson, for the average Bodleian reader. This blog post will explore the real Nicholson: the Bodley’s Librarian beyond the tricky-to-understand classifications, and what we as trainees can learn from him.

Edward Williams Byron Nicholson (b. 1849, d.1912), before he became Bodley’s Librarian, studied Classics at Trinity College, Oxford, and worked as a librarian at other libraries including those at the Oxford Union and the now obsolete London Institution. Nicholson blazed into his posts with a mind to reform their services “without much regard for his famous predecessors.”

Edward Williams Byron Nicholson, by an unknown engraver

It was shocking when Nicholson was appointed Bodley’s Librarian, because studying Classics at Oxford was, at the time, not considered an academic enough background. With suspicion aroused against him because of his lack of education in palaeography, linguistics, and bibliography; a headstrong personality defined by “force and originality”; and a fierce devotion to the Bodleian, Nicholson began his 30-year long tenure as Bodley’s Librarian, from 1882 until his death in 1912.  As Nicholson’s friend Henry Tedder describes, “perhaps a cyclone was wanted to bring freshness into the air of Bodley, but probably no one looked forward to a cyclone which lasted thirty years.”

To paint a picture of the cyclone-like behaviour of Nicholson, I’ll include a story told by the man himself, about when University officials attempted to turn the Proscholium (Entrance to the Old Library) into a bike shed. Even bikes weren’t exempt from cyclone Nicholson!

“The Curators of the Chest tried to use the Proscholium – Bodley’s ‘vaulted walke’, the lower story of his ‘Bibliotheca’ – as a bicycle-shed. They opened hostilities in 1902, when I was still imperfectly convalescing from a great heart-breakdown, … the then Vice-Chancellor refused to allow them either to order the removal of the [bike] stands or to move the Council. Luckily I had my own rights, and had been no party to that resolution. On the evening after the Vice-Chancellor went out of office, I cleared the bicycle-stands away. The new Vice-Chancellor had them put back again. I cleared them away again. At last, in November 1905, the Chest went to Convocation for leave to use the Proscholium as a bicycle-stable, and Convocation gave them the coup de grâce: but fancy such an attempt being possible!”

Now, I am in no way promoting Nicholson’s actions, but it is admittedly pretty funny to picture him calculating his movements immediately after the Vice-Chancellor left, in an obstinate back and forth regarding bicycles, of all matters. Nicholson may not have been popular, but the man got things done.

Indeed, his notable achievements as Bodley’s Librarian include:

“an increase in staff, the introduction of boy-labour, a new code of cataloguing rules, the development of the subject-catalogue, as well as the shelf classification of printed books, MSS., and music, the incorporation of minor collections…”

The mention of “boy-labour” is interesting, because as it has been suggested previously, this could be thought of as a very early form of a library traineeship at the Bodleian, like we are undertaking this year! [1] The scheme was set up by Nicholson to employ young boys to do everyday tasks around the library, with an incentive to then be able to attain a degree from Oxford. After a few decades, women were added to the scheme, with the groups being known as Bodley’s Boys, or Bodley’s Girls. 

Frances Underhill

One of the final clashes that Nicholson faced with other library officials was his appointment of a woman to a permanent position within the library. This woman was Frances Underhill, who definitely deserves her own blog post. In her letter of acceptance, Underhill gave thanks to Nicholson because appointing her was “a progressive step in the recognition of women’s work”. Nicholson’s sub-librarians, however, found it “objectionable”, because of ridiculous reasons such as an inability to climb ladders. Nicholson’s response was that “any woman worth her salt… would gaily ascend on a ladder to any Bodleian ceiling”. [2]

A special Veganuary mention must go to Nicholson’s love of animals. His 1879 text ‘The Rights of Animals’ argues in favour of a largely plant-based diet, “for there can be no question that vegetable food alone will keep a man in the best health and strength.” He argues that animals have reason, feelings, and a soul, and should be awarded the same level of respect as humans. [3] I wonder whether Nicholson would have preferred oat or almond milk in his tea?

It could be considered pretty ironic that we maintain Nicholson’s classification scheme, even though the man himself was dedicated to upheaving tradition. Yet, what makes the Bodleian such a fulfilling place to work is that there is such a respect for history here, as well as a commitment to making necessary and positive change, and adapting to the times. What we as trainees in Oxford libraries can learn from Nicholson is that being a champion of the Bodleian, or indeed of any library we may work in, doesn’t mean that we should never break the mould. There is room for us to celebrate diversity, and try new things, without completely ignoring our history. See, for example, the We Are Our History project, which is doing important work to re-engage with our collections, through the lens of race and the legacies of the British Empire. [4] We can look forward to being innovators of change within libraries – change that even Nicholson could not have foreseen!

 

N.b: The majority of the quotes have come from Henry Tedder’s E.W.B. Nicholson (Bodley’s librarian, 1882-1912): in memoriam (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1914) https://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/permalink/44OXF_INST/ogbd98/alma990161434930107026

Further reading

[1] Trainee project showcase – The Oxford Traineeship: Past, Present and Future | Oxford Libraries Graduate Trainees

[2] Women of the Bodleian: personal stories behind progressive steps | University of Oxford Podcasts

[3] #10 – The rights of an animal: a new essay in ethics. By Edward Byron … – Full View | HathiTrust Digital Library

[4] We Are Our History | Bodleian Libraries (ox.ac.uk)

Happy Christmas from the Oxford Library Trainees!

Well! It’s the last day before Christmas closure at the Bodleian Library, and as I am writing this, I imagine that some of the trainees in other libraries are making their way back to family and friends for Christmas. It’s been magical to see how Oxford libraries transform at Christmas time. There have been carols in the Divinity School sung by Bodleian staff, busts decorated with Santa hats, and Christmas trees springing up all over our different sites.  

Like the trainees last year, this year we decided to explore our libraries in the festive season through the medium of our very own 12 Days of Christmas- or should I say, Libmas! Originally posted over on our X (Twitter) X/Twitter account below is a list of all the presents that our libraries have ‘sent’ to us, and now to you!  (Singing along is optional.) 

On the First Day of Libmas, my library sent to me- 

A bust of Chichele! 

Henry Chichele was the founder of All Souls College and also Archbishop of Canterbury from 1414-43. One of our trainees has the privilege of working in the library there! 

 

On the Second Day of Libmas my library sent to me-  

Two book displays 

Part of the trainee role is getting to be creative with book displays. Pictured below are some Christmas book sculptures from the Social Science Library. How cute! 

 

On the Third day of Libmas my library sent to me-  

Three window frogs! 

According to cataloguer Peter Spokes, much of the painted glass in the Old Bodleian Upper Reading Room is of 17th century Flemish origin! 

Top right frog has definitely had too much Christmas pudding. 

 

On the Fourth day of Libmas my library sent to me- 

Four festive busts! 

Pictured below are busts of Professor Hermann Georg Fiedler, Prince Edward and Voltaire. 

  

 

On the Fifth Day of Libmas my library sent to me- 

Five old things! 

1)A papyrus dating from 3 AD from St John’s College, in which the recipient is asked why they didn’t attend the sender’s son’s birthday party ! 

 

 

 

2) MS 61 – a rather lovely 13th century bestiary made in York! 

3) A copy of the 27 Sermons preached by Hugh Latimer and held at the English Faculty Library! This edition was printed in 1562 by John Day, seven years after Latimer was burnt at the stake for heresy on Broad Street near Balliol college in Oxford. 

4) One of a series of letters written by Jane Austen to her niece Anna in 1814. St John’s College also owns a 1797 letter from Austen’s father, George, to a publishing house, offering them his daughter’s novel ‘Pride and Prejudice’ – they said no! 

5) Last but certainly not least in our list of old things, a book on Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules! Although still used in some select libraries, AACR and AACR2 were a cataloguing standard that have largely been superseded by machine-readable cataloguing, known as MARC 

 

On the Sixth Day of Libmas my library sent to me-  

Six Christmas data charts!  

With roast spuds as the top dish, average Christmas budget, most desired gifts, total UK Xmas spending, average Christmas dinner cost, and toys as largest gift spend! Sprouts beat mince pies…hmm? 

 

On the Seventh Day of Libmas my library sent to me- 

Seven damaged books! 

It’s inevitable that some of the Bodleian’s collections will become a little careworn, however, it’s important that they are able to keep circulating. This is when the lovely Bodleian conservation team step in! 

 

On the Eighth day of Libmas my library sent to me-  

Eight totes for packing!  

Artfully (?) arranged by a trainee into a very vague christmas tree shape, these totes contain books to be refiled in our Collections Storage Facility. 

 

On the Ninth day of Libmas my library sent to me- 9 ladies’ dancing (manuals)  

Exhibited in Blackwell Hall, Weston Library, ‘The Dancing Master’ was a widely popular manual of country dances, first published in 1651. 

The Weston Library is holding a Dancing Master’s Ball in January- join the waiting list here: The Dancing Master’s Ball | Visit the Bodleian Libraries (ox.ac.uk)  

Or learn more about the display: The Dancing Master | Visit the Bodleian Libraries (ox.ac.uk) 

 

On the Tenth day of Libmas my library sent to me-  

10 pre-Raphaelite murals! 

In 1857, 8 artists including Rossetti, Morris and Burne-Jones, painted the #OxfordUnion’s Old Library (then Debate Chamber). Their inexperience meant the art faded and some said it should be covered. 

Read more about the murals and the pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in Oxford here: OXFORD AND THE PRE-RAPHAELITES | Ashmolean Museum 

On the Eleventh Day of Libmas my library sent to me- 

Eleven (House of) Lords (Hansard parliamentary sittings reports) a-leaping (on to their trolley)! Did you know the Bodleian Law Library also houses the Official Papers collection? 

On the Twelth day of Libmas my library sent to me- 

Twelve libraries with trainees wish you a very merry Christmas!

Thank you all for reading our blog and engaging with our X posts over Michaelmas term. There is lots more to come in 2024, so watch this space!  

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from us! 

Michaelmas term round-up

As the libraries empty out over the Christmas vacation, the trainees reflect on their first term.

 

A display including fact sheets and images of suggested titles such as Ableism in Academia and The Oxford Handbook of Disability History
The Disability History Month Display in the Old Bod Lower Reading Room

Christmas at the Old Bod has arrived, and although in the last week there have been fewer visitors, the reading rooms are still peopled with studious readers. I’ve put up some fabulous Christmas decorations (circa 1970), and the tree in the quad has drawn even more tourists in.

The past few months working at the Bodleian have been a lot of fun. One of my favourite activities has been making displays and advertising resources that the Bodleian has to offer, like my recent book display for UK Disability History Month . It means I get to interact with a wider variety of books from our vast collection. What it has fundamentally shown me is that my favourite part of working in a library is the opportunities you are given every day to help people!

Nia Everitt, Bodleian Old Library 

 

 

 

My first term at the Sainsbury Library has been busy with tasks varying from processing new books, weeding old journals, and creating and updating signs for the library (which sometimes involves warming up the laminator!). I have three main highlights so far:

  1. Creating a ‘How to Guide’ for readers with Sainsbury’s Circulation and Customer Services Librarian. The guide covers topics like setting up the university VPN, how to use PCAS services, and how to search, find, borrow and request books in our library. It is over 60 pages long and counting…
  2. Creating an AI book display which then led to creating an AI window display at the library entrance and now updating our Business of AI LibGuide to include books from the display and A visitor even came in asking about the display because they saw the post I wrote on our Sainsbury Library News blog.

Both projects have helped me to learn about the variety of support and services that the Bodleian provides. I have explored business databases, SOLO, ORLO, and other University of Oxford resources doing these two projects. I have realised that readers at Oxford have access to a wealth of resources but, through working on the enquiry desk, you come to realise how many readers do not know about it! So, the final highlight is:

  1. Helping a reader discover something they didn’t know before and helping them with problems they have accessing services.

The reader’s gratefulness after helping or even just visiting the library is like extra icing on a cake. The gratefulness is a reminder that helping someone in a way that, as staff we may feel is small or routine, such as scanning a chapter, telling someone about a useful LibGuide or just showing them where the printers are, can be quite significant for our readers.

Anna Roberts, Sainsbury Library

 

What a learning experience a term can be. ALMA, ORLO lists, law reports, legal databases, citation styles, serials processing, loose leaf binders: they were all quite new to me. Happily, thanks to the great training and brilliant support from library colleagues, they aren’t anymore. But never fear: the readers and the library keep coming up with new and intriguing conundrums (missing books, obscure queries, rare Bodcard colours…). I’ve loved assisting the students, faculty and visitors (there was one reader who was so enthusiastic when I showed them our bookable study spaces that I got the firmest handshake I have ever experienced!), but equally have come to really appreciate the mindful calm that can come from a book moving or filing spell (when not interrupted by an urgent scan request for use in court, or a group of new readers to guide round, or a puzzling mountain of books left somewhere seemingly at random – there’s always something going on!). And of course, our visits to the CSF, conservation studio and special collections were a real highlight. The term has certainly confirmed that I’d love a career in libraries, and I’m looking forward to the next term, when there will be a recurring display to organise, some more to learn about cataloguing, and a Libguide to write! Keeping busy…

Wanne Mendonck, Bodleian Law Library

 

A Christmas tree stands on a marble table in the Union Society Old Library. There are bookcases and decorative walls visible in the background.
Christmas tree standing on the mysteriously chimneyless fireplace in the Union Society Old Library.

Working for the Oxford Union Society Library is amazing! This term the Union was visited by Sir Roger Penrose, Nazanin Zaghari Radcliffe, Tom Hanks, etc and I have tried things I have never attempted before, such as creating displays – possibly my favourite task as I get to research everything from Victorian ichthyology to recreational drugs, Oxfordshire geology to gothic poetry, and medieval table manners to historical transgender figures. I had never used Twitter, never posted on Facebook, and had never run a professional Instagram account and this term I began running the Library’s (Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook). Training can be pretty interesting too; so far my favourite day has been the conservation day at the Weston Library where we learnt how books are fixed, what pests to look out for (we were handed round laminated insects e.g. silverfish), and about active and inactive moulds.

Connie Hubbard, Oxford Union Society Library

 

This term has been a wild ride. Alongside learning an incredible amount from my training process at All Souls, there have been some amazing events in the library such as a play, a visit from a youth orchestra and a formal dinner. We had over 700 new reader applications, over 1000 visitors to our open day and over 200 book requests. All in all, these first few months of my traineeship have been immensely positive. The day to day work has often been chaotic, but this meant I was rarely bored and always learning. I am very excited for the challenges Hilary term may bring, and feel ready to face them.

Elena Trowsdale, All Souls College Library

 

It’s hard to believe that it’s been three and a half months since my first day at the Rad Cam – the time has flown by! But when I stop and reflect, a lot has happened over this period, and I have learned a lot.

Besides some of the big stand-out moments from the training sessions, such as the tour of the CSF or our afternoon with Special Collections, I think the main highlights for me have been the pleasure of helping out readers and the variety of the work; my days regularly involve fielding enquiries at the circulation desk or reception, fetching and scanning books for Scan and Deliver, donning glamorous high vis and directing delivery vans through the quad, creating blog or social media content, processing new books, and more. I enjoyed getting to take on the responsibility recently of sorting out the HFL books for rebinding, and I’m really looking forward to getting started with my project next term.

Xanthe Malcolm, History Faculty Library

 

It’s safe to say that as my first full term as a trainee draws to a close, the experience has been jam-packed! From the day-to-day running of the EFL, to our weekly training sessions (not to mention the cheeky post-training pub trips) there’s always something going on, and always something new to learn. Looking back at my introduction post, I can easily say that I’ve enjoyed everything even more than I thought I would. Highlights being (of course) the tour of conservation studios; the opportunity to see incredible literary figures such as Philip Pullman; and learning more about the EFL’s collections through my project! Being a part of the traineeship has really cemented that I want to continue working in libraries and, having seen next terms’ training schedule, I’m even more excited for the new year.

Leah Brown, English Faculty Library

Bodley Medal: Sir Philip Pullman

The prestigious Bodley Medal has been awarded since 2002, in its current iteration, to recognise outstanding contributions to the worlds of books and literature, libraries, science, philanthropy and other fieldsPrevious recipients including include novelists Colm Tóibín, Zadie Smith, and Sir Kazuo Ishiguro, among others. Earlier this month, on a chilly November evening, the Bodley Medal was awarded to author Sir Philip Pullman under the baroque ceiling of the Sheldonian Theatre.  

The evening opened with a panel discussion about Pullman’s work, chaired by author and critic, Erica Wagner, along with children’s author and former Waterstones Children’s Laureate, Cressida Cowell MBE, Dr Philip Goff, author, philosopher and professor at Durham University and Dr Margaret Kean, the Dame Helen Gardner Fellow in English and Tutor in English at St Hilda’s College, Oxford.

A screen at the front of a lecture theatre with a picture of en engraved circular medal on the left hand side. Philip Pullman and Richard Ovenden stand on a stage in front of the screen looked on by a crowded audience.
Philip Pullman presented with the Bodley Medal by Richard Ovenden in the Sheldonian Theatre.

Each of the panellists keenly recalled their own experiences of encountering Pullman’s works for the first time, whether as teenage readers desperately grappling with Pullman’s exploration of dark matter, multiple universes, and philosophy, or as adults: parents, critics, or fellow authors. Amongst the varying accounts of each of the panellists’ initial encounters with Pullman’s work, there were commonalities too: an insistence on the deep visual impressions left, the richness and abundance his prose summons, and the expansivity of the works. Erica Wagner, the panel’s chair, noted “the way in which [Pullman] has created a whole cosmology, a whole universe […] for us to enter.” [1] 

The panel discussion was followed by Sir Philip Pullman in conversation with Richard Ovenden, Head of Gardens, Libraries and Museums at the University of Oxford and Bodley’s Librarian. During their conversation, Richard Ovenden described Pullman as “a great friend of libraries”, which was more than evident from the clear reverence with which Pullman described his experiences of both public and academic libraries. The first library ticket one owns, he suggested, is an “enormous gift, a key to open a wonderland.” The loss of approximately 1000 branches of public libraries in the last 12 years, and the cuts to funding which have both prompted and accompanied this, Pullman described as a “a slow, quiet, subtle, well-concealed disaster.” In the earlier panel discussion, Cressida Cowell exalted Pullman’s aptitude for storytelling itself, explicitly identifying one of the great qualities of Pullman’s work to be its power in creating generations of readers. Pullman charted his own experience of the Bodleian Libraries from his days as an undergraduate English student (a discipline which didn’t allow him to read the texts he was drawn to). Instead, Pullman found himself magnetically pulled to the public library in Oxford. This roving between the public library and the academic spaces of Oxford’s Bodleian libraries is still evident in Pullman’s account of the power of libraries. Pullman added to this with a resounding defence of the role of the school library, and, particularly, he stated, the need for a school library to be cared for by a qualified librarian. This is an especially desperate requirement at a time when the National Literacy Trust has recently published new research suggesting that children’s enjoyment of reading is at its lowest level in two decades. [2] 

 

A reading room of the Old Bodleian with book shelves on hte left and right side of the image under an ornately decorated wooden panelled ceiling. In the centre of the image in the distnace there is an ornate arched stained glass window, with someone sat a desk studying in front of it.
Duke Humfrey’s Library in the Old Bodleian, known in Pullman’s works as Bodley’s Library. photo (c) John Cairns

Whilst rooted in the city of Oxford itself, Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy expands our perspective outwards to a consideration of a multiplicity of universes. Oxford echoes through the series like a palimpsest, resounding throughout Pullman’s created worlds. The Bodleian Library itself appears in a mirrored form throughout Pullman’s work as Bodley’s Library. It is, perhaps, excellent symmetry then, for Pullman to receive the Bodleian’s most prestigious award, the Bodley Medal itself. The honour, and the event accompanying its bestowal, are both a celebration of libraries and the work done by those who love and promote them. 

For more history on the Bodley Medal, see here.  

[1] Wagner, Erica, “Bodley Medal: Sir Philip Pullman”, Event. Bodleian Libraries, Oxford. November 9th 2023. All following quotes unless otherwise stated are transcribed from this event.  

[2] https://literacytrust.org.uk/news/childrens-reading-enjoyment-at-lowest-level-in-almost-two-decades/ Accessed: November 28th 2023.