Home › Library Life › Archive for Projects

Projects

A Surprise Six Months as the SSL Grad Trainee 2.0 (Showcase Presentation)

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

 

Hello! Unfortunately, due to testing positive for Covid a few days before the Showcase, I was not able to attend and present my project. I will therefore attempt to re-create it as this blog post. By way of introduction, my name is Katie and I have been the graduate trainee 2.0 for the Social Science Library for 5 months and counting. My experience with the Bodleian began on a boring and drizzly Monday working from home, when I very unexpectedly received a call asking if I was still interested in working as the SSL graduate trainee for 6 months. I said very much so yes please, and a few weeks later packed my bags and moved from Derbyshire to Oxford. A quick disclaimer…I have not managed to undertake a formal project in my 5 months, so will talk about some core (hopefully interesting) mini projects which I have thoroughly enjoyed working on in this time.

 

First up: promotional campaigns. Every week in term time, we have a ‘promotional campaign’ – this involves creating a blog post, entry gate poster, LCD screen display, entrance display stand, Facebook post and Tweet, all around one central theme. For the third week of Trinity Term, I made a campaign on ‘Wellbeing’. To start, I created an entrance display stand which pointed out spaces to relax in around the SSL. These included the upstairs café, multiple seating areas in the building, the vending machine area, and green areas such as University Parks and the Botanical Gardens – with the help of Google Maps, I included how many minutes it takes to walk there so students could plan their study breaks accordingly. Whilst on my issue desk shifts I saw a total of 3 people stop to read it, which I consider a small but satisfying success! My entrance stand poster pointed out the vending machines upstairs (as they are a bit hidden), whilst also cheekily reinforcing that food or non-KeepCup drinks should not be brought into the library… A problem I encountered with my LCD display, which aimed to show the different counselling services provided by the University, was how to visually represent counselling support – when choosing my background images, for example, I didn’t want to evoke any sort of stereotype or negativity. I could have made it a plain display but this would not be very eye-catching. In the end, I went with a photograph of a tree at the beginning of dawn, as I thought this suitably aesthetic whilst also conveying a sense of hope and positivity.

I had a similar issue with representing the idea of ‘health’ in my second promotional campaign, which was titled ‘Sources of Help for Exam Pressure’. For my LCD display, I created a range of tips for how to keep healthy during exam season, such as not drinking too much coffee (super hypocritical!) and some good brain foods to snack on (outside the library of course…). My problem was that health looks different for everyone, so I didn’t want a picture of someone working out or eating a salad as my title slide. After a lot of digging on Pixabay, I found a picture of a woman happily leaping in the air on a hiking trail, and decided this was an acceptable way to represent ‘healthy’ – having the energy and peace of mind to do things you enjoy.

Whilst researching for this campaign, I discovered that the University Counselling Service has a range of free podcasts tackling issues around exam stress, such as anxiety and pre-exam insomnia. They also run free online and in-person workshops, titled things like ‘ACT-Based Anxiety Group’ and ‘Can’t Work’. For my entrance display stand, I aimed to make passers-by aware that this support exists. I created QR codes to take them directly to the website, in case they wanted more information or to sign up. I also featured these workshops and podcasts in more detail for my blog post on ‘Sources of Help for Exam Stress’. I have included my original presentation slides illustrating the full campaigns below:

 

 

I will now move on from this topic to discuss a task I was not expecting – hosting a work experience student for several mornings/afternoons across a week. This was something I was quite nervous about, as to have someone watching and learning from me felt a bit of a responsibility. I also found it quite a challenge to talk engagingly for long periods of time, especially in the morning! However, I think I managed to give them a good overview of my day-to-day tasks, and there was some opportunity for them to get hands-on experience with supervision. To prevent it getting too repetitive for them, I thought it might be nice if they could take the lead on a project – creating a Pride Month Display. They were able to select the titles themselves on SOLO, locate them on the shelves, arrange them in display form, and together we created the display graphics. They could then take photos of what we had made and take this back to school. All in all, it was a great experience (hopefully they thought so too!) and helped me to practice some rather lacking leadership skills…The strangest part was when I was asked to help fill in their work experience journal, which involved answering questions such as ‘how did you get where you are today?’ and ‘what skills do you need for your job?’. I had to scramble for a more helpful answer than ‘I’m not sure really…’, but it also gave me a moment to feel happy and grateful for what I have achieved.

Something I have found quite challenging whilst working as a graduate library trainee is helping test the new library management system ALMA. I first started with the ‘advanced search’ function, trying to use it to generate reports on things like how many books are out on loan, how many patrons owe money to the library etc. In the majority of cases, I was unsuccessful. I found it quite difficult to say whether it was me or the system who was wrong. It was also a challenge figuring out how to write understandable test ‘scripts’ which recorded exactly what steps I took, followed by the outcomes and whether these met my intended goal. I’m not sure my contribution was very helpful, but thankfully I did a bit better with testing user loan periods. I found this much easier, as I simply had to record whether the different user types had been given the correct number of days to return different loan types. The only slight hiccup was that the developers were still working on it at the same time I was testing, so the results sometimes changed day by day. It was certainly eye-opening to see the vast number of different users we have at the Bodleian!

And to conclude, something I have really enjoyed during my traineeship is helping out with the move of the Tylor Library to the SSL. For a number of weeks, we have had long rows of stacked green crates filling the library isles, and lots of empty spaces on our shelves to hold the new books. Initially, my role was to help with the physical re-processing of any Tylor items that were requested whilst still in the crates. This involved digging the book out, covering the old Tylor book plate with an SSL one and adding a spine trigger. If the reader had requested the book via email I could place a hold on it for them, but if they asked for it over the issue desk I would frantically try to remember what they look like and track them down somewhere in the library. The start-to-end process felt very rewarding. Later, I was asked to help the PADS team with processing the thesis collection. I was therefore loading trolleys full of big, musty theses, re-processing and then reshelving them, which really left my arms aching by the end of the day!

 

 

 

2021-22 Graduate Trainee Showcase!

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

Well, we’re into the final month of our trainee year, and our trainee showcase has been and gone. Here are some of the things the organising team did to get everything in place for the big day.

  • Arranged a guest speaker. Making libraries more inclusive and accessible has been a recurring theme of our year, so we were really excited when Helen Worrell (Archaeology & Anthropology Librarian and Equality, Diversity, and Inclusivity Coordinator) agreed to speak to us about her work leading the EDI project ‘Changing the Narrative: Championing Inclusive Collection Development.’ We were also lucky to have Antony Brewerton (Associate Director for Academic Library Services and Keeper of Collections) speak to us about the traineeship and beyond at the end of the day.
  • Invited everyone we knew – or at least, everyone the trainees had worked closely with over the course of the year, as well as any former trainees remaining in Oxford. We also had space to offer each trainee an invite for a non-Oxford guest – one brought a friend who was interested in librarianship, and another invited the former colleague who had helped them apply for the scheme. The showcase took place on what was otherwise a normal working day, so we knew we couldn’t expect everyone to join us for the whole day – to help accommodate this, we collected all the trainees’ presentation titles well in advance so we could send out a draft programme along with the initial invitations.
  • Used RSVPs to plan refreshments. We included a question about dietary requirements in our RSVP, and kept track of this information alongside who was coming and for how much of the day. This meant that we had a clear understanding of what would be needed on the day, and liaised with Craig at the SSL to place an order with the Manor Road Building’s catering team. Unfortunately there were some issues with how this turned out on the day – we’re looking into it, and will come back to this post if we find a way to avoid this in future.
  • Scoped out the location. We visited the Manor Road Lecture Theatre ahead of the big day in order to have a look at the size and layout of the room, where the refreshments would be located, and to explore the logistics of holding the showcase both in-person and over Teams. This was a really useful thing to do – although we’d advise remembering to communicate what you find out to the rest of the trainees before the entire organising team goes on annual leave for part of July. Sorry, guys.
  • Designed a programme – with trainee contributions! Since not everyone in the audience had worked with us all, each trainee wrote a short paragraph reflecting on their year to give some introduction to the new faces. We decided to use a panel-type structure for the showcase, with three or four presentations followed by a round of questions and discussion. This allowed us to find some common ground between what was an incredible variety of projects – key themes of the day included institutional memory and the passing-on of information and skills, and various experiences of working with and presenting special collections materials. Encouraging the trainees to have questions planned for each other seemed to help with getting the ball rolling on the discussion segments.
  • Hosted a hybrid event. This was easier than we expected and proved to be a useful option for colleagues who couldn’t attend in person – we’d recommend taking some time ahead of the day to get to grips with how everything works. We collected everyone’s presentation slides on a USB in advance of the showcase, and one of us was on tech duty during each session, transitioning between presentations and ensuring the Teams call was running smoothly. Another of us introduced each speaker and handled the question sessions, and we tried to also have someone situated at the back of the room, ready to run to the IT office to find out what was going on when things didn’t go to plan (like when the entire building’s internet gave up mid-presentation). Our trainee twitter team also live-tweeted throughout the day, and we even had a guest tweeter from the Bodleian social media team in the morning!

A huge thanks goes out to everyone who helped out in advance or on the day, and to everyone who came to support us. Click the read-more for a roundup of this year’s trainee projects, with links to blog posts by those who were unable to present on the day.

Read more 2021-22 Graduate Trainee Showcase! ›

The Bishop John Hall collection: Creating an inventory

Posted on by — No Comments ↓
John Hall (1633–1710), DD, Master (1664–1710), Bishop of Bristol. Unknown artist. Pembroke College, University of Oxford. Image: Art UK

My trainee project saw me inventory the book collection of Bishop John Hall (1633–1710).

The project’s long-term aim is to see a complete, up-to-date inventory of Hall’s book collection enabling it to become a searchable collection for researchers, staff and students. Hall’s collection consists of works by Classical writers, and more modern books such as Wood’s History and Antiquities of the University of Oxford.

Hall was Master of Pembroke from 1664 to 1710 and Bishop of Bristol, as well as one of Charles II’s domestic chaplains. He was ordained as a Presbyterian before becoming an Anglican minister and maintained strong Protestant sentiments throughout his life. On his death, Hall left all his books to Pembroke. Until this point, the College did not have a proper library, and books were kept in an upper room of St Aldates Church. Knowing that more room would be needed, Hall had library space constructed above Broadgates Hall (Pembroke’s medieval precursor, former library and now the SCR), while the dining space for the Fellows was below. This situation remained until the building of the dining hall in the 1840s, after which point, the books took over the whole of Broadgates, spreading through the rooms of Old Quad and taking space elsewhere in College. Eventually in the 1960s, the situation became untenable, and the McGowin Library was built.

For my project, I worked with Laura Cracknell, the college librarian. The first step was to cross reference the 1970s’ card catalogue of Hall’s books to a recent handlist of the Hall collection, noting books’ shelfmarks. This information was converted into a large Excel database listing all of Hall’s books, or so Laura and I thought. When I assessed the stack which stored Hall’s books, I discovered that there were a number of books that corresponded to the themes of Hall’s collection which were not documented in our recent records. Laura and I teamed up and noticed that some of these books had Hall’s bookplate inside. This was puzzling. Taking a step back to assess this problem, we chose to then delve further into history and compare the library’s recent documentation with that of Hall’s personal catalogue of his collection which he wrote in 1709. This allowed us to address problems in the recent documentation of the Hall collection. I made a list of all of Hall’s books which were not recently documented, but nevertheless sat on the shelves in the stack and were recorded in Hall’s 1709 catalogue. In doing so, Laura and I realised that our 1970s’ card catalogue had not recorded nearly half of what Hall had recorded in 1709, and therefore Hall’s collection was much larger than what we first thought. This project took a surprising turn and it will require further work to better understand the scale of Hall’s book collection in order to create an inventory.

This project has taught me how to manage a historic collection and the trials and tribulations that comes with working with historic catalogues and documentation that you inherit from predecessors. As well, it has been fascinating to learn more about college history and to experience working with special collections.

 

Ben Elliott (Pembroke College)

 

Showcase Presentations 2017

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

As promised, here are the presentations given by the 2016-17 trainees at our Showcase in July.

All the PowerPoint slides, and Stephanie Bushell’s video presentation, can be found here: http://bit.ly/2fvhCFg

Chantal van den Berg’s video presentation can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bisZh0AicQQ

Sophie Welsh’s Prezi can be found here: http://prezi.com/kihswng7cpmz/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy

Thanks again to all the trainees for working so hard on these presentations.  We all learnt a lot from hearing about each other’s projects.

Trainee Showcase – Andrew Bax’s Guest Lecture

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

Thank you very much to everyone who came to our Trainee Showcase on 12th July.  We really appreciated your support.

One of the highlights of the day was the guest lecture by publisher Andrew Bax.  For anyone who missed it, or would like to revisit it, the full script is below.  Many thanks again to Andrew for preparing this interesting and informative talk.

The trainees’ presentation slides will follow soon!

 

Oxford, as we all know, is an extraordinary place. The Bookseller, the UK’s trade magazine for publishers and booksellers revealed, some years ago, that the city of Oxford had the greatest density of published authors in the world. It also discovered that over 200 publishing companies were registered in Oxford, including my own.

I got into publishing by accident. In 1965 I was young, irresponsible and in Oxford without a job. A friend told me that there were always vacancies for science graduates at a firm called Pergamon Press. I had only five ‘O’ levels but applied anyway – and was accepted. I joined a team of about ten handling the production of academic journals from offices in Headington Hill Hall, now part of Brooke’s University. Initially, my working space was a windowsill and the top of a filing cabinet in the attic above the boss’s bedroom. The boss was called Robert Maxwell.

Robert Maxwell acquired his name by deed pole in 1948. His real name was Jan Hoch and he originated from that turbulent part of eastern Europe that changed from Czechoslovakia to Hungary and is now part of Ukraine. His family were Jewish cattle dealers and, after the Nazis invaded, most of them were taken to Auschwitz, where they died. Young Jan had escaped however, and joined the Czechoslovak Army in exile and, later, the Royal Staffordshire Regiment. He saw active service across Europe, was awarded the MC and, at the end of the war, was promoted to the rank of Captain. He was then sent to Berlin as part of the mission to revive the German economy, and was appointed to the publishing house, Springer Verlag. Springer was sitting on valuable scientific research and, recognising the opportunity, Maxwell had it translated into English and published it through a company he formed for the purpose. That was the beginning of Pergamon Press. In preparation for this talk I discovered that Pergamon began as a collaboration with a certain Paul Rosebaud who had been a senior scientist in the Nazi hierarchy. Throughout the war, however, he had been secretly spying for Britain.

When the world finally emerged from the devastation of World War II, governments and universities began to invest heavily in scientific research. Then, as now, it was vital for those involved in such work to be aware of what was happening in other centres. Then, as now, there was competition and collaboration, often fuelled by personal ambition. The established publishers were slow on the uptake and communication was often achieved through correspondence and international conferences.

Enter Robert Maxwell. One of his techniques was to use an international conference to launch a new journal. After a visit by Maxwell, often at the conference itself, the host academic was persuaded to continue his good work by editing a new journal in the subject, and the conference papers would provide the first issue. Everyone working in the field wanted to have their work published in the journal and library funds were used to pay for it. Thus it was that a pile of manuscripts was delivered to my desk for a new journal to be called Journal of Quantitative Spectroscopy and Radiative Transfer. Maxwell had brought them with him from a conference in Rio de Janeiro. That journal, I see, is now in its 200th volume and has an in-print price of £6742. This was happening all the time and journals were being launched in subjects we’d hardly heard of. Editors, usually unpaid, competed for the best papers, frequency of publication was increased and, of course, the price. Then Maxwell introduced page charges so that contributors had to pay for the privilege of publication, and their library for the privilege of subscribing. For a while he took advantage of currency fluctuations so that customers might he invoiced in US dollars one day and Japanese yen the next. In books he invented a series called the Commonwealth Library for which he received a guaranteed order from the Commonwealth Office for 500 copies of each title published. As you can imagine, that series grew very rapidly, often from material culled from the journals. While all this was going on he was also Labour MP for Buckingham. And all that happened during the 18 months I was with Pergamon.

Eighteen months was about average. If you stayed any longer you were liable to be sacked or relocated anywhere in the world. I was getting married and this kind of uncertainty was just too exciting. Maxwell was a tyrant, a man of immense dynamism and creative energy and, eventually, a fraudster on a massive scale. There is no time here to cover the Maxwell story but, towards the beginning of the 1990s his empire began to unravel and, in desperation, he plundered his employee’s pension scheme to the tune of some £440million. He died by falling from his yacht off the Canary Islands and debate still rages about whether he jumped or whether he was pushed. Afterwards, he was found to have some 300 companies, most of which only he knew about. He had also been involved in arms deals between eastern Europe and Israel, and it is probable that he had been an agent for Mossad. He is buried in Jerusalem.

After Pergamon I joined part of the Blackwell empire. There were about a dozen of us in offices next to The Bear in Alfred Street. I was with the firm for 20 years during which time it expanded rapidly, moving to its own purpose-built premises in Osney Mead which are now part of the Bodleian and, eventually, employing over 200 people in offices in five countries. It was run by another big character, Per Saugman, who I got to know quite well. As a young man he was employed in the bookshop as part of an exchange scheme with the firm of Munksgaard in Copenhagen. It seems he quickly outgrew the challenges of bookselling so, in 1957, he was invited to revive an old publishing imprint, Blackwell Scientific Publications, which had been dormant for years. It was suggested that, with the growth of the NHS, he should consider medicine.

Per knew nothing about medicine but he thought he would start with blood. So, like Maxwell, he went to a conference in London where he announced his intention to launch the British Journal of Haematology. The leading lights in the field were anxious to become involved and it is now on Volume 177 with an in-print subscription price of £1777. It was the beginning of a substantial journal portfolio. With books his technique was to ‘seek advice’ from the highest authority on what topics are inadequately covered and who might be best to write them. Ego and ambition drove these men and, in those days it was usually men and, in the end, these chaps recommended themselves, which is what Per wanted all along. However, for authors, the financial rewards were modest. The international expert on Megaloblastic Anaemias told me that his fat, expensive monograph had ruined his health and his marriage and that on calculating his royalties he had earned just 4p an hour.

Whereas Maxwell got his way be terrifying people, Per did it with charm. He was articulate and terrific company; if he was speaking here instead of me he would do so without stumbling and without notes. He had his frailties though; there was a bit of Swiss bankery and he was a terrible womaniser.

Blackwell provided me with a series of lucky breaks. After a short time in journals I took on publicity, sales and marketing. Except we weren’t allowed to call it that because the patriarch of the firm, Sir Basil Blackwell, believed that ‘good books sell themselves’ so anything advertised was automatically deemed to be suspect. After a few years the director to whom I was reporting became ill and was off work for a while. I stepped into his shoes and, apart from one big mistake, I did quite well. The big mistake caused an almighty row with our partners in North America, the C.V. Mosby Company and I was dispatched to St Louis, Missouri to be eaten alive by their management team. In the end it was quite a tame affair. I was ushered into the president’s suite, where everyone was hushed and deferential, and then into the office of the great man himself, in which the carpet was so think you almost waded through it. We talked about this and that and, after a decent interval, he considered that honour was satisfied and the meeting was over. Years later I bumped into him at the Frankfurt Book Fair; he was working as a sales rep. So whatever mistake he made, it was bigger than mine.

C.V. Mosby was one of a number of US publishers for which we were stock-holding agents for Europe, often with reciprocal arrangements in America. One of these was CRC Press. CRC stands for the Chemical Rubber Company and their business began in manufacturing rubber valves and tubes for use in laboratories. One of their best-selling items was a rubber apron with a pocket into which they inserted a free booklet called the Handbook of Chemistry & Physics. That booklet proved to be so popular that people were buying the apron just to obtain the Handbook. Eventually they gave up the rubbery stuff and became publishers. By the time we were involved that Handbook was published annually with over 2500 pages, and had spawned many others.

All this meant that we had a lot of books to sell. No-one in the firm had taken on the role before but, through trial and error, I managed to hold down the job and eventually headed up a marketing department of 12 which, at one point included Robert Maxwell’s son, Kevin.

One thing I managed to do quite well was to sell books in bulk to the pharmaceutical industry. Books seemed less like a bribe than the lavish hospitality that such companies gave to those doctors who prescribed their drugs. I was negotiating one particular deal as the board of Blackwell Scientific Publications was in the throes of succession planning. It was a very big deal, and complicated, requiring the directors to sign up to something new. But they were too distracted by other concerns and rejected it. So I reported back to the pharmaceutical company that Blackwell wouldn’t do it, but that I would. Somehow I got away with it. I had six days to register a company, find an office, print some visiting cards and sign the contract. That was on 6 June 1987 and was the beginning of my own company, Radcliffe Publishing. I didn’t have a shadow of Maxwell’s dynamism or a fraction of Per Saugman’s personality, but those guys taught me a lot.

At that time Margaret Thatcher was overhauling things as prime minister and Kenneth Clarke, as her Minister for Health, was embarking on a radical reform of the NHS. Part of this involved upgrading the quality of primary care. GPs had little on-going training, were rarely supervised and were badly paid but suddenly they found themselves under great pressure to improve their service, with the prospect of greatly increasing their earnings. My Blackwell days had opened doors to a lot of useful contacts, including the British Medical Association, the doctors’ union. Soon after Radcliffe started I had a call from the BMA asking me to attend an urgent meeting in London that same morning. Within an hour I had agreed to publish a series of books on the Business Side of General Practice; the BMA’s senior negotiator wrote the first one in nine weeks and we published it in another nine weeks. That was very fast, it sold in huge numbers and put us on the map. Another in the series sold 47,000 copies even though there were only 25,000 GPs at the time; that was because I had sold it to four pharmaceutical companies, working in competition. As the marketing manager of Glaxo told me ‘all’s fair in love, war and pharmaceutical advertising.’

Radcliffe started life in a single room in the Jam Factory in Park End Street; we expanded into a second room then moved to a light industrial unit in Osney Mead, then into a second one. In 1995 we moved again, into a beautiful Victorian house in Abingdon. By then we were employing about 15 people, many of them former colleague from Blackwell. They were strongly motivated by the success we were enjoying. We had found our niche in primary care; it was a very big niche and we were providing serious competition to the established publishers. Their reaction was to try to buy us; I had enquires from OUP, Churchill-Livingstone, Taylor & Francis and my old employers, Blackwell. They were talking millions and I rejected all offers; we were having just too much fun. It was too good to last though.

The first problem was the internet which undermined all the traditional publishing models and caused confusion throughout the industry, not just for us at Radcliffe. We did, however, invent something called Radcliffe Interactive. This hosted several consumer-related portals, including Divorce Online which is still going. It was financed by someone I first knew as a stationery salesman when I first joined Blackwell. He had gone on to become a publisher himself, and like Radcliffe, made himself troublesome to his rivals. However, when Routledge offered to buy him out, unlike me, he said yes. With the proceeds he became a business angel, financing start ups from an office he rented from us in our Abingdon home. Sadly we have lost touch now but when we last met he had a manor house in Berkshire, a house in California and a vineyard in South Africa.

Our second problem was that, having rejected all takeovers, our rivals decided to close in on us and, eventually, we ceased to be unique. So from around 2000 onwards we plateaued. I was also becoming aware of my own limitations; I had an inadequate grasp of financial management and I didn’t understand the internet so I decided my time was up. I felt we needed new blood at the top but that view was not shared by my colleagues; we had worked together for a long time and we all felt a strong loyalty to the company and to each other. In the end I promoted our marketing manager to managing director and elevated myself to chairman.

In 2010 Radcliffe was acquired by a firm called Electric Word whose owners seemed only interested in manipulating the price on the Stock Exchange and publishing suffered as a consequence. After a few years they sold Radcliffe to Taylor & Francis which, by then, had itself become part of a huge international communications conglomerate called Informa which included Routledge and CRC Press, names I have mentioned earlier. However, I am pleased to be able to tell you that the Radcliffe imprint continues but for reasons I cannot begin to understand, it publishes from the CRC offices in Boca Raton, Florida.

And that is where I was going to end this little talk but, in her biographical notes Jessica mentioned Bombus Books. This is the imprint of Oxford Inc, a group of writers to which I belong and which has self-published a few books of fiction and non-fiction. Last year we launched a writing competition for stories based on the No 13 bus which plies between the station and John Radcliffe Hospital. The best entries appeared in Double-Decker, available from Blackwells and other good bookshops, and three of the stories are by Jessica. That is how we came to meet and, I guess, why I am standing here today.

 

Graduate Trainee Showcase Programme

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

Sami Anderson-Talbi | New College Library
Though my time in Oxford has been shorter than most, I have found it to be a very rewarding experience. At New College, we have a fantastic team who have kindly put up with me for the past year, and I will be quite sad to leave. The support I have received from colleagues has been great, and I have had the opportunity to take an active role in most aspects of the running an academic library. No day is quite the same in a College library, whether you are dealing with interesting queries (bringing rowing oars into the library is not acceptable) or working with antiquarian texts, there is always something going on. The highlight of the year has been the many visits to other libraries, my favourite being the trip to the Codrington (where my camera frustratingly refused to work). Having said that, I greatly enjoyed discovering a handwritten note hidden within a book, from the author to a prominent politician.

Chantal van den Berg | Bodleian Social Science Library
I had a fantastic time at the SSL and I will be sad to leave! I’ve learned so much and I feel grateful I was given the opportunity to work in such an amazing library. My highlight of the year has been spending time with all my lovely fellow trainees! Next year, I’ll be studying for a distance learning MA in Library and Information Service Management at the University of Sheffield and hopefully I’ll be staying in Oxford!

Connie Bettison | St. John’s College
I’ve enjoyed my year at St John’s Library very much and will be sorry to say goodbye. I feel very lucky to have got the chance to gain valuable experience both in working with readers in the day-to-day running of the library and in working with special collections. Next, I am going to Edinburgh to study for an MSc in Book History and Material Culture and gain more experience working in libraries.

Stephanie Bushell | All Souls College Library
The past year has given me a sense of the diversity of the LIS sector as a whole and the training has allowed me to explore areas of librarianship which I was not familiar with at the start of my traineeship. I particularly enjoyed the talk on the book trade, although if I had to pick a highlight of the training I must admit it’s probably our weekly meet-ups in the Punter post-session! I’ve had an incredible time working at All Souls College and I have met many lovely people over the course of my employment here. The Codrington Library is a really special place and I know I’ll always be in touch with the wonderful people who keep it ticking over. Now that the year is coming to a close I’ve received offers to study Library and Information Studies and Book History at UCL and Edinburgh respectively, and I am looking forward to seeing where the knowledge I’ve picked up here in Oxford will take me in the future.

Tom Cook | Lady Margaret Hall Library
I am currently the graduate trainee at Lady Margaret Hall, having previously worked at the English Faculty Library and St. Catherine’s College. I am also a poet and literary critic: my writing has appeared in the New Statesman, Spectator, Times Literary Supplement, P. N. Review, Ambit, Partisan and elsewhere. I am the chair of the English Faculty’s Twentieth-Century Poetry Reading Group. I am currently compiling and designing The Ash Anthology – a book of poems drawn from Ash, the magazine I have edited for the last two years – which will be available from all good bookshops later this summer.

Tim Dungate | English Faculty Library
I’ve completely loved working in the EFL this year. I arrived from down the road at the SSL, where I was a Library Assistant while I finished my Master’s degree, and it’s been delightful to join the EFL as a Trainee and learn much more about working in academic libraries. Everyone was very welcoming when I began the year, and I’ve been able to take on a pleasingly varied array of duties, with some longer-term projects alongside.
Recently I’ve been shadowing Pip Willcox at the Centre for Digital Scholarship, and I am assisting her in organising a conference jointly hosted between the Bodleian and the Folger Shakespeare Library (which unfortunately means I cannot attend this showcase!).
While I will be extremely sad to leave the EFL, I’m happy to say that I will be remaining in Oxford as a Digitisation Assistant with BDLSS, starting this summer.

Anabel Farrell | Oxford University Archives
One of the many highlights of my year at the University Archives has been researching and responding to the broad range of enquiries that we receive every day. It has enabled me to explore the University’s fascinating records and acquire a good knowledge of the University’s history. It is always particularly rewarding to be able to help an enquirer trace an ancestor who once studied here. I’ll certainly miss the views over Oxford from my office at the top of the Tower of the Five Orders, but I’m not sure I’ll miss the 142 steps it takes to get up there!’

Ashleigh Fowler | Digital Archives
It’s been a non-stop year, but it’s been very enjoyable. I have been working as a digital archives trainee in the Weston Library and studying for a post-graduate diploma in Archives Administration through distance learning, so I’ve been quite busy! There have been many highlights over the year, from my first completed cataloguing projects and working on the conversion project for Benjamin Disraeli’s online catalogue to being able to attend training and talks in different parts of the country and meet archivists from many different institutions, as well as understanding the sacred role of Tea And Cake in an archivist’s workday.

Olivia Freuler | Sackler Library
As my year at the Sackler Library is slowly drawing to a conclusion, I’m looking forward to my next adventure and I hope that I can put some of what I’ve learnt to good use. I am especially grateful to the team here for being so welcoming and taking the time to show me the ropes and teach me what they know. I think the main highlight of this year was delving through a collection of artists’ books for my project. It was great to work with such interesting material and discover new artists that I hadn’t heard of before and learn more about the context in which these books were created. I also really enjoyed visiting other libraries in Oxford and the Book Conservation department in the Weston Library. As for the future, I’m quite interested in continuing to work in Art Libraries, Special Collections or for an Antiquarian Bookseller.

Laura Kondrataite | St. Hilda’s College Library
It’s been an amazing year working at St Hilda’s Library. I have learned a lot about the everyday running of a college library, and have had a chance to assist with and organise exhibitions from the library’s special collections. The knowledge I have gained about the management of special collections and the cataloguing of rare books will come in handy at my new post as a rare books administrator at an auction house.

Amy McMullen | History Faculty Library [Radcliffe Camera]
My year in the Radcliffe Camera team as a trainee has been such an interesting and valuable experience – it is a year I will never forget! As well as working in one of the most beautiful and unique buildings in Oxford, one of my highlights this year has been spending time with the other trainees, getting to know them and sharing our experiences to learn from one another. In September I will be moving to the capital and starting a full-time postgraduate masters degree in Library and Information Studies at University College London, and I am looking forward to making use of all the skills my year at the Bodleian has given me.

Hannah Medworth | Sainsbury Library
In my former role as a teaching assistant, I had the privilege of introducing children to the world of reading in their very first year of school. At the Sainsbury Library, I can’t believe how much I’ve learnt myself in just one year! I’m so grateful for the opportunities I’ve had to work alongside dedicated colleagues on a diverse range of projects and tasks, and to take on new responsibilities and expand my skills. Looking ahead, I’m very happy to be continuing as a member of the Sainsbury Library team, in the post of Collections and Instructional Materials Assistant for Executive Education.

Fiona Mossman | Bodleian Law Library
A graduate of English Literature, I’ve been thrown into the Law Library where suddenly I’ve had to become very familiar with folk such as Chitty on Contract or Wilson on Wills (my alliterative favourites), with the structure of the courts and why it matters for referencing, and with a lady called Elizabeth Moys. The Moys reclassification project is ongoing at the library, and it’s been a big part of my year. The Law Library is a great place to work and I’ve enjoyed the variety that being a graduate trainee there brings. Come September I’m planning on continuing my literary education with a Master’s degree at Durham for a year.

David Phillips | Bodleian Social Science Library
My traineeship has been a page turner, and an enlightening introduction to the profession. The Wednesday tours/talks have been a treat and have touched on everything from virtual reality to multi-part items. I have had the privilege of working at the SSL, a wonderful library that never stops trying to innovate (and stir my creative side). I have enjoyed the friendly and supportive working environment and the breadth of work available to me and my fellow SSL trainee. At the end of my traineeship, I hope to remain within the university’s network of academic libraries and sometime thereafter take on a librarianship MA by distance learning.

William Shire | Taylor Institution Library | Philosophy and Theology Faculties Library
This year has been an amazing experience and I’ve loved getting to know the Bodleian Libraries! The highlight of my year at the Taylor and the PTFL has definitely been working in two fantastic teams. I’d never worked at a Faculty Library before and have therefore had to learn a lot throughout the year – a process made a lot easier by both my patient colleagues and the fantastic Wednesday afternoon sessions. Next year I will be staying in Oxford and studying for the distance learning Library MA offered by the University of Sheffield, which I’m very much looking forward to.

Sophie Welsh | Bodleian Library | Reader Services
The highlight of my year has been answering the wide variety of enquiries at the Main Enquiry Desk – we keep a record of the wackiest ones for future amusement. I have especially enjoyed the mini research projects that have come out of some of the enquiries; I’ve researched inter-war shoe catalogues and 19th Century French pharmaceutical periodicals, to name just two. I’ve also been very lucky to have lots of shadowing opportunities, such as a week based in the Collections & Resource Description department (learning about cataloguing processes, acquisitions of monographs and serials, the Legal Deposit operations and e-resources), as well as afternoons shadowing a college librarian and the English & Film subject librarian. I’m hoping to find another library job in Oxford at the end of the trainee year, then in the next few years I would like to do a Master’s in Library Studies and in English Literature (but I haven’t decided which one should come first yet).

Jessica Woodward | Taylor Institution Library | Mansfield College Library
This year has been wonderful and I feel very lucky to have taken part in the trainee scheme. I entered librarianship via part-time jobs at Corpus Christi and St Peter’s Colleges, began the trainee year navigating the Taylorian’s labyrinthine book stacks, and in May 2017 embarked on the new challenge of a maternity-cover Assistant Librarian post at Mansfield College. There have been many highlights, but I’ll particularly value having met so many friendly librarians, handled the Taylorian’s amazing manuscripts, and indulged in Mansfield’s delicious lunches! I’ll be at Mansfield until February 2018 and am excited for the months ahead‘

Harry Wright | Jesus College Library
Having come from a Graduate Traineeship in a busy secondary school library, Jesus College has been a comparative haven of calm! I have particularly enjoyed the higher-level nature of research enquiries, and learning about students’ and researchers’ information needs. I’m currently looking for library work around Oxford and will be spending the next year gaining more experience, hopefully in a slightly different, more specialised role, before going on to qualify.

10:45 | PART I

10:45 – 10:55 | Welcome

10:55 – 11:05 | David Phillips | Bodleian Social Science Library
Visualising the SSL

I use data visualisation to tell you a story about the SSL.

11:05 – 11:10 | Chantal van den Berg | Bodleian Social Science Library
Can Inductions be Made More Interesting

My trainee project focuses on how to make library inductions more interesting for students. Readers receive a lot of information on how to use the library during these sessions, and we hope that short videos made with PowToon will make it easier to digest the information and to keep the reader’s attention.

11:10 – 11:15 | Stephanie Bushell | All Souls College Library
You shall not pass’: Or, an attempt to survey, shift and deaccession collections in two not-so-accessible areas.

My project will involve managing two collections under the jurisdiction of the Codrington Library to which we have (very) limited access. This project will involve surveying and rearranging the existing collections with a view to deaccessioning extraneous material. I also plan to cover some highlights of my time here in the Codrington.

11:15 – 11:25 | William Shire | Taylor Institution Library | Philosophy and Theology Faculties Library
A Year at the Bodleian – A Comparison of Two Libraries

Throughout my Trainee year, I have worked at two different Bodleian Libraries – the Taylor Institution Library and the Philosophy and Theology Faculties Library. The projects I have been involved in throughout my year have therefore been varied – ranging from the creation of a blog post and a Powerpoint presentation for the Library Information Screen to an extended reclassification project. My presentation will therefore detail these projects and reflect on how the similarities and differences between the two libraries I have worked in have affected them.

11:25 – 11:35 | Jessica Woodward | Taylor Institution Library | Mansfield College Library
Two Taylorian Projects and a Term at Mansfield

In this presentation, I will discuss the trainee projects I undertook at the Taylorian: creating a flow chart to help staff process donated books, and writing a blog post on some fascinating hidden treasures from the Rare Books Room. I will then take attendees on a virtual tour of the Mansfield College Library – where I currently work – and explore some of the differences between college libraries and Bodleian libraries.

11:35 – 11:45 | Questions

11:45 – 12:00 | Morning Break

 

12:00 | PART II

12:05 – 12:15 | Amy McMullen | History Faculty Library [Radcliffe Camera]
Reading List Provision in Undergraduate History

Serving one of the largest faculties at Oxford and meeting the demands of hundreds of varied and often complex reading lists that make up our undergraduate History degrees is a challenge to the staff at the History Faculty Library. With growing popularity of Reading List management software, I wanted to help our library assess its current procedure by investigating how other academic libraries deal with reading list provision and whether we can use that to improve our practice.

12:15 – 12:25 | Hannah Medworth | Sainsbury Library
From Eureka to Egrove: A journey into embedded library provision for Executive Education

A year of change at the Sainsbury Library has provided me with some exciting experiences. As I share snapshots of several projects and tasks, from managing research repository submissions to providing copyright clearance for reading lists, I will reflect on the skills I have learnt along the way. Finding myself in the unique world of an Executive Education library, I investigate what makes this type of provision distinctive, and explore some recent and ongoing developments to meet the evolving demands on library services.

12:25 – 12:35 | Sophie Welsh | Bodleian Library [Reader Services]
Relegating the Bodleian Library’s Handlists

Methodically adding information and detail to ALEPH records for Bodleian open shelf items so that the handlists (card catalogues) are no longer required.

12:35 – 12:45 | Fiona Mossman | Bodleian Law Library
Just keep moving: Moys, moves, and miscellanea at the Bodleian Law Library

Between renovation work and reclassification work, the library and its books have been on the move lately. My part in that has been in my contributions to the moving of the Reserve collection, early on in my post, my ongoing reclassification work, and the upcoming ‘mega-Moys’ move in the summer. These will be the main focus of my talk, together with some mini-projects that I’ve undertaken throughout the year.

12:45 – 12:55 | Questions

12:55 – 13:25 | Buffet Lunch

 

13:25 | PART III

13:30 – 13:50 | Guest Speaker | Andrew Bax

Andrew Bax has had a long and successful career in publishing, culminating in the creation of his own medical publishing house, Radcliffe Publishing.  Since the sale of that company, he has been producing fiction under the imprint Bombus Books and has been involved in various charitable ventures.  He will be sharing some entertaining stories from his professional life, with a focus on his experiences of working with some big names of 20th-century publishing.

13:50 – 13:55 | Questions

 

13:55 | PART IV

14:00 – 14:10 | Ashleigh Fowler | Digital Archives
The Archives of Hilary Bailey and of The Macirone Family

A talk on the process of cataloguing two different archives; one of the science fiction and general fiction writer, Hilary Bailey, the other of the Victorian middle class Macirone family.

14:10 – 14:20 | Connie Bettison | St. John’s College
Working with Modern Literary Papers

Over the past year at St John’s, I have spent part of my time working with the library’s modern literary special collections. In an ongoing project, I am cataloguing some personal papers of A.E. Housman and uploading the records onto ArchivesHub: an update from a typescript card catalogue of basic information. Using the broader collection of literary papers, the exhibition I arranged for the start of Trinity Term showcases a collection of the Library’s literary letters.

14:20 – 14:30 | Olivia Freuler | Sackler Library
Artists’ books at the Sackler Library

A brief look into the world of artist’s books and an introduction to the collection originally donated to the Taylor Institution Library by W.J. Strachan and now housed in the Sackler’s Archive Room.

14:30 – 14:40 | Questions

14:40 – 14:55 | Afternoon Break

 

14:55 | Part V

15:00 – 15:10 | Laura Kondrataite | St. Hilda’s College Library
The Golden Age of Children’s Literature

The presentation will give an insight to the organisation of and topics covered in an exhibition on Victorian children’s literature from St Hilda’s College library’s special collections.

15:10 – 15:20 | Harry Wright | Jesus College Library
Creating a Welfare Collection in 10 Easy Steps

This presentation will outline the expansion and development of Jesus College’s Welfare & Student Support Collection, an ongoing project which I have led. Issues of privacy and confidentiality are crucial to such a collection, but how feasible are they in the context of a busy working library?

15:20 – 15:30 | Sami Anderson-Talbi | New College Library
Proposals on Space and Collection Management for the Law Reading Room of New College Library

An investigation into the current configuration of the Law Reading Room, with proposed changes to how both space and collection management can be improved. Also including results of a recent survey of our readers, which focused on the provision of study space in the library

15:30 – 15:40 | Tom Cook | Lady Margaret Hall Library
The Literary Treasures of LMH

An account of planning, compiling and launching a successful exhibition from our comparatively limited rare-books collection. This culminated in a sold-out evening event, with guest talks from Simon Armitage and a DPhil researcher called Noreen Masud, which was open to the public and packed out the Old Library hall here in college.

15:40 – 15:50 | Questions

15:50 – 16:00 | Thanks

Enquiries:jessica.woodward@mansfield.ox.ac.uk or david.phillips@bodleian.ox.ac.uk
This programme may be subject to change.

Summaries of Showcase Talks

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

If anyone’s wondering about the sort of work the trainees get up to during their year in Oxford, below are the summaries of the talks we gave at the Showcase. Slides from the presentations can be found on Slideshare. Due to technical issues, Clare Hunter’s presentation has been uploaded as a separate file.

Read more Summaries of Showcase Talks ›

Graduate Trainee Showcase – Lee Colwill

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

This year’s Graduate Trainee Showcase was held at the Ashmolean’s Headley Lecture Theatre. In previous years, it’s been held in the training rooms at Osney, but the Ashmolean benefitted from being a space specifically designed for conferences, as well as being in a central location, which probably upped the attendance.

CC BY Image courtesy of Newton2 on Wikipedia.
CC BY Image courtesy of Newton2 on Wikipedia.

Full disclosure, I was one of this year’s organisers, and I’m trying very hard to steer away from being too self-congratulatory, but as far as I’m aware, everything went pretty well on the day, and everyone seemed happy (although that may have been down to the Ashmolean’s excellent catering). We won’t talk about the 15 minutes of pure panic where it looked like the presentation remote I’d brought wasn’t going to connect to the computer. Or the bit where trying to change between presentations caused the entire computer to freeze up for five minutes.

Read more Graduate Trainee Showcase – Lee Colwill ›

Graduate Trainee Showcase 2015 – The Programme

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

When the email came round asking for two trainees to organise the Showcase, Hannah and I volunteered without really knowing what we were letting ourselves in for! It turned out to be a great experience and, despite a few nagging emails, not as stressful or as complicated as we feared.

As part of our planning we decided it would be nice to have a programme to give out on the day. Sadly Hannah’s idea of black and white headshots like a theatre programme never did come to fruitition! However, we  did get each Trainee to write a short paragraph on their highlights of the year and their future plans which I have included below. Enjoy!

Emily Chen – Digital Archivist Programme
I can’t believe it’s been nearly a year! I’ve loved learning how all the different parts of the library (many of them parts I didn’t even know about!) work together. A few of the highlights of my year were: my colleagues who are all amazing to work with; participating in workshops and talks and seeing how readers use our unique collections; and the variety of projects, big and small that we’ve had a chance to work on. Next year I will be continuing with my traineeship and hopefully applying everything I’ve learned and finishing my professional qualification.

Lydia Wright – Sackler Library
With my background in Arabic and Eastern Art I could not have spent my graduate trainee year in a better place than at the Sackler Library. The Sackler has almost an entire floor dedicated to Eastern Art and as well as helping out with this collection I have used my language skills to assist with the cataloguing of Arabic and Persian material. However one of the best aspects of doing my traineeship at the Sackler has been the variety of experience I have gained both at the front desk and behind the scenes, always supported by an amazing team and a constant supply of cake, biscuits and cheese. In the future I hope to go on to work specifically with my academic area of interest, becoming more involved with cataloguing, special collections and subject specialist tasks.

Bethan Watkins – Taylor Bodleian Slavonic & Modern Greek Library
My highlight of the year has been learning about how a library is run, both through my experiences at work  in both TABS and Taylor Institution, and through our training. I will study Information Management part-time at UWE, and will be working in Bristol.

Yannis Choupas – Taylor Institution Library
Having already worked in libraries for more than a year before starting the traineeship, the highlight of my trainee year was the freshers’ inductions back in October. Their lack of awareness of basic things, such as shelfmarks, was a powerful reminder of the value of the librarian’s role; I learnt to not take anything for granted when answering readers’ enquiries. (By the way, most of the freshers have made excellent progress in finding their way through the Taylorian labyrinth by now!) In August, I am returning to Greece, hoping eventually to be able to do the masters by distance learning.

Jamie Stokes – Sainsbury Library (Said Business School)
The highlight of my trainee year has simply been working with a genuinely wonderful team, each member of which has been generous, supportive and excellent by nature. Being given the responsibility to work on both my own and joint projects throughout the year, in between a large amount of face time with students and other patrons on the enquiry desk, has been invaluable in reinforcing and refining my future plans. Next year I’m heading to University College London to study the MA in Library and Information Studies course full time.

Hannah Hickman – History Faculty Library
This year has been a really enriching experience and I’ve loved being a part of the Radcliffe Camera team. Attending the Committee for Library Provision and Strategy in History was a real highlight for me – it was a fantastic opportunity to learn more about the ways in which the Library and Faculty work together to support student learning. I am going on to a role in community engagement at University of Warwick Library, and hope to pursue an MA the following year.

Michelle Cook – Codrington Library (All Souls College)
The past year has been very interesting, and I have most enjoyed working alongside people in such diverse roles and from varied academic backgrounds. It has allowed me to learn by observation about different facets of librarianship, including conservation, law librarianship, and the cataloguing of a wide range of materials including modern books, serials, early printed books, manuscripts and archival collections. The highlight of the year happened in the period of time when Dr Mir Ansari was cataloguing the Codrington’s Persian manuscripts. His work allowed us to learn about a previously enigmatic collection. More specifically, however, whilst perusing the books at the end of one workday,  and to our great excitement, we discovered small paper stencils between the leaves of MS 373 used to create illustrations in another unidentified manuscript! I will be starting the MA in Library and Information Studies at UCL in September, taking modules on historical bibliography and cataloguing. I would like to follow rare books librarianship, specialising in antiquarian and special collections cataloguing.

Tom Cullimore – St John’s College Library
It has been both a pleasure and a privilege to research, describe and promote items from the St John’s College special collections, a rare, diverse and fascinating resource for any kind of historian. I will take this experience into a librarianship MA at the University of Sheffield, where I will endeavour to explore the field in greater detail and depth.

Rebecca Wray – Social Science Library
While helping readers with varied, weird and wonderful queries has been my favourite part of my trainee post, my highlight has to be all the fantastic training and trips I have had the opportunity to attend. From visiting the vast BSF, to talks from book sellers, voice training, and tours of all sorts of Oxford libraries. I loved our day in London where I got to visit the Natural History Museum Library! Next, I’m going to be working at the Cairn’s Library (which we also got to visit!) up at the JR Hospital and studying for my Masters via distance-learning through Aberystwyth University.

Sarah Arkle – English Faculty Library
I would say that the highlight of my trainee year has been being part of a really nice team that have been really pleasant to work with. Everyone’s been really supportive of me and responsive to my ideas and I’ve been allowed to get involved with lots of different things. The rest of the team really made the EFL a fantastic environment in which to be a trainee. I’ve really enjoyed being allowed to pursue my own projects alongside my more regular duties, which is largely thanks to the encouragement and support of my colleagues. I’m going to be incredibly sad to leave the EFL, but after the traineeship ends, I’ll be moving back up north in September to start my MA in Librarianship at The University of Sheffield, which I’m very much looking forward to.

Ceri Ashwell – Social Science Library
At the SSL I have been very fortunate to get involved in a wide variety of tasks but my highlight has been working on the front line in reader services. I started just one month before the new academic year commenced and it was great to get to know the regulars and help the new readers with what they thought were ‘obvious questions’. They didn’t realise that they were actually helping me to learn too; inadvertently providing me with extra training. These ‘new’ readers are now the regulars who ask more involved queries which I am (mostly) able to answer. There’s always the chance to learn more! It’s been a great experience to have developed with the readers in this way. I hope it’s a feeling I have the chance to experience elsewhere. Currently my future plans aren’t certain. I won’t be taking the masters course next year but I am aiming to find library work in another city and hope to start the masters in September 2016.

Andi Glover – Law Library
I’m Andi, and my trainee post at the Law Library was very varied, with experience of both reader and technical services; as well as finally getting to use my German A-Level, working with EU law textbook catalogues. I’ve applied to UCL for their MA in LIS, and my particular areas of interest are cataloguing and the history of the book. The highlight of my trainee year was volunteering in Rare Books. This included processing a 17th century work on magic and medicine, a meeting with the Weston’s incunabula expert Alan Coates, and learning not to be too alarmed when an old leather binding starts flaking a little in your hand (just extra careful!) At the Law Library, I particularly enjoyed contacting Continental publishing firms for a serials claims project; one publisher even sent me a lovely postcard of an avant-garde clown.

Duncan Jones – Bodleian Library
The highlight of my trainee year has been the chance to work at the Main Enquiry Desk and to deal with the great variety of enquiries that pass through it.  I also really enjoyed volunteering at the Weston opening weekend and getting to tell the public about the libraries.  What’s next is still up in the air but I’d like to start studying towards my MA and keep working in libraries!

Harriet Costelloe – Digital Archivist Programme
The highlight of my trainee year has to be meeting and working alongside Emily and my other colleagues. This is because having someone to run things past, collaborate with, and, obviously, take tea-breaks with has made me feel settled and competent much more quickly. I am really looking forward to another year at the Weston Library where my role will focus more heavily on acquisitions and funding, outreach initiatives and cataloguing literary collections, alongside my continuing responsibilities of webarchiving and processing digital material.

Sam Hughes – Law Library
It is difficult to choose a highlight of my time as a trainee as there are many positive aspects to the role. I really enjoy the challenge of finding material in answer to more obscure requests but I also appreciate the variety of tasks that come my way including creating a libguide, Moys reclassification, clerking a Moot, conducting SOLO usability testing and I have even written a blog entry for SLA and been on Twitter. I am delighted to be staying on at the Law Library for another 12 months during the refurbishment works and I am going to start a distance learning library and information management MA in September.

Graduate Trainee Showcase 2015

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

The Trainee Showcase gives trainees the opportunity to deliver a presentation on a project they have undertaken or a particular aspect of work enjoyed during the year.

This year Becca (from the SSL) and Hannah (from the HFL) were the hosts. We were joined by colleagues as well as ex-trainees who came to talk to the group about their experiences after the traineeship.

We’d like to thank everyone who came to support us or impart their knowledge and wisdom of what happens next!

It’s fair to say that the majority of us were quite nervous about going up to present but everyone did a great job and the mix of people in attendance created a great atmosphere!

Here’s a run down of the day:

9.30-9.40 – Welcome!

9.40-9.50 – Emily Chen, Workshop with History and English department students about discovering the authors of anonymous travel diaries through contextual clues
9.50-10.00 – Hannah Hickman, Finding books, surveying students
10.00-10.10 – Jamie Stokes, The Oxford Futures Library – Creating the Art Kleiner Archive Catalogue
10.10-10.20 –Rebecca Wray, Social Science Social Media
10.20-10.30 – Andi Glover, Blues and 852s – Organising and Barcoding a Series of Police Reports

10.30-10.50 – Coffee break!

10.50-11.00 – Ceri Ashwell, ORLiMS: Designing the logo
11.00-11.10 – Yannis Choupas, Creating an online Shelfmark Locator for a labyrinthine library: the work so far

11.10-11.30 – Guest Speaker: Verity Westgate, Bodleian Libraries
11.30-11.50 – Guest Speaker: Charlie Lythgoe, Oxford Brookes
11.50-12.10 – Guest Speaker: Niall Sheekey, Harris Manchester College Library
12.10-13.00 – Lunch!

13.00-13.10 – Sam Hughes, General Year in Review
13.10-13.20 – Duncan Jones, Redesigning/rebranding the Bodleian notices and signs
13.20-13.30 – Bethan Watkins, Preventing book damage
13.30-13.40 – Harriet Costelloe, Cataloguing the papers of the Tilling Society

13.40-14.10 – Break out!

14.10-14.20 – Micha Cooke, #digital: a survey of manuscript viewers in the digital humanities
14.20-14.30 – Tom Cullimore, Leaving Out: Curating livres d’artiste in St John’s College Library
14.30-14.40 – Lydia Wright, A Collection in Review: Bringing the Sackler’s Eastern Art Periodical Collection Up-to-Date

14.40-14.50 – Thanks!

Finally…a little picture collage. Including (maybe) the first Graduate Trainee Showcase selfie! Yes!
Collage