Elena Trowsdale, All Souls Library

Hello All! I am Elena Trowsdale, the current trainee at All Souls College Library. As far as oxford libraries go, All Souls is rather puzzling since it functions both as a college library whilst also admitting many external readers from the wider university- and beyond! Our collections are mainly focussed on History, but also involve an entire room devoted to Law texts, and contain extensive Military and Naval History collections as well as lots of Early-printed materials. Contrary to popular belief, All Souls is not as mysterious and unenterable as one may think. The college itself is open to visitors 2-4pm every weekday, and the library is open to readers who are University members through a simple registration system. For me, this means I am able to perform a wide range of tasks, serving both external readers and internal fellows with book fetching, answering queries and many other requests. I am thoroughly enjoying my traineeship at All Souls, and hope to continue working in libraries when the year is completed- whether as a library assistant, cataloguer or a bibliographic researcher.

Photo of All Souls 'Great Library', a building from over 200 years ago with dark grey ornate shelving and a balcony. The books are behind mesh doors and the desks are oldfashioned wooden school desks. The floor is grey, white and black flagstones in a diamond pattern.
All Souls College, Great Library.

Prior to the traineeship, I was completing my MSc in Digital Scholarship at Corpus Christi college, in which I was researching early modern women’s devotional writing and how to create optimal digital editions of these works which are most often found in manuscript form. Alongside this research, I worked part time at Christ Church Library as after-hours Library Assistant and completed a summer internship in the Rare Books department of the Weston Library. All of these experiences grew my love of the world of librarianship, and increased my interests both in manuscripts and rare books, but also in the digital futures of libraries and their collections. I am glad to say that I believe I will be able to develop these interests even further during my traineeship here at All Souls.

Picture of Elena at All Souls Library, sat down with a blue and white checkered dress on. She has light brown hair and blue eyes and is smiling.
Me at work!

The first month of my traineeship has been extremely busy. Alongside learning my basic routine tasks such as journal processing, we prepared for and took part in a number of events such as Oxford Preservation Trust’s ‘Open Doors’, a conservation workshop and the All Souls Fellowship Examination preparations. I also moved a part of our law collection to a new location and have been taking part in web development and preparing the library for term time, when readers are allowed to enter the library again. It has been an exciting time, with many new Visiting Fellows being inducted to the library and lots of visits from schools.

In the coming months, I am looking forward to completing some projects such as exhibitions and blog posts for All Souls, as well as learning more in our training about ALMA, cataloguing and looking after readers. I hope that once I become more accustomed in my role, I will be able to assist in more complex projects and help continue the current librarians’ excellent work in exposing our library and collections to new readers.

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