Spot Attends a Pop-Up Display

Posted on 17 April 2023 by Ruth — No Comments ↓

During the odd lunchtime during term, the Upper Library at Christ Church becomes host to pop-up displays of special collections material. Part of my Graduate Trainee role that I’ve really enjoyed is assisting with these displays, whether through invigilation, talking with visitors about the collection or selecting texts for display. Today I’ve put together a selection of texts that featured in our display on Early Modern conceptions of skin. Through the lens of travel books, anatomical texts and medical manuals we invited visitors to explore a range of cultural and medical understandings of skin during this period. I’ve chosen just three items from this display to share in this post today – read on for fugitives (of a kind), duels, and medical drama…

Johann Remmelin’s Catoptrum Microcosmicum

It’s possible that one comes across most lift the flap books during childhood. Literary giants such as Eric Hill’s Spot Bakes a Cake[1] come to mind. In this charming story flaps serve as an important ingredient of the mischief and excitement of the book. A flap that takes the form of a wave of chocolate cake batter can be lifted by the intrepid reader to reveal Spot stirring up a storm beneath, for example.

A screen shot of a listing of spot bakes a cake on a book seller's site. The cover features spot the dog at a mixing bowl and the listing titles asys 'original lift the flap book'. — Literary masterpiece, Spot Bakes a Cake

Much to my dismay, we do not hold Spot Bakes a Cake in our collection at Christ Church, but that does not mean we are completely bereft of lift the flap books. Despite Abe Books listing this as the ‘Original Lift the Flap’, there are in fact earlier examples of such a technique, and one such text featured in our display.

Johann Remmelin’s Catoptrum Microcosmicum (Augsburg, 1619) is the first anatomical atlas to use flaps to illustrate layers of anatomy. Instead of joining Spot in his mission to bake a birthday cake for his dad, you are invited to step into the shoes of the 17^th century physick, learning about the intricacies of the muscles, bones and beyond of the human body. The plates show first a male and a female figure surrounded by figures of isolated body parts, including the eye, ear, tongue and heart. All of these are represented at their different levels with flaps – the man and woman to a depth of 13 superimposed layers. Each new layer reveals what can be found in the body at different stages of a dissection.

A page from Johann Remmelin’s Catoptrum Microcosmicum

A later edition of this text, published in 1670, sets out on the title page that this book contains:

‘an anatomie of the bodies of man and woman wherein the skin, veins, nerves, muscles, bones, sinews and ligaments are accurately delineated. And curiously pasted together, so as at first sight you may behold all the outward parts of man and woman. And by turning up the several dissections of the paper take a view of all their inwards’ [2].

The face of an 'ogre' or Medusa is the top layer of the femal figure on this page from Remmelin's book — A Medusa-like figure with snake hair is the first layer to this pregnant body – a somewhat foreboding starting point…

The flaps themselves are referred to as ‘dissections’ here, the act of the reader lifting a flap becoming amalgamated with the incision of the anatomist’s scalpel. ‘Curiously pasted together’ is a good description – the nature of the ‘lift the flap’ anatomy book imbues the medical diagram with an enact-able curiosity that only increases with interaction with the different layers.

Despite my attempts to tip the balance with this blog post, when it comes to breath-taking 17^th century anatomical books, the phrase ‘lift the flap’ is not bandied around with much regularity. Strange! Rather, they are grouped within a pioneering class of anatomical print known as the ‘fugitive sheet’ or ‘compound situs’. This technique is first recorded as being seen in 1538 in works by Heinrich Vogtherr, which made use of layers of pressed linen[3] to create the same effect we see in Remmelin’s Catoptrum Microcosmicum.

These fugitive sheets would have been a fantastic way for users to understand the internal workings of their bodies, even without proximity to a cadaver. However, writing about Remmelin’s anatomised Eve, one commentator notes how the figures in these engravings ‘[sit] amid the horrific attributes of sin and death […]. If this is self-knowledge, one might prefer extroversion.’[4]

Gaspare Tagliacozzi’s De curtorum chirurgia per insitionem

Also included in our display was Gaspare Tagliacozzi’s De curtorum chirurgia per insitionem (Venice, 1597). The copy held at Christ Church is a pirated edition of the first book devoted entirely to plastic surgery. In fact, multiple un-official editions of this text appeared soon after the original due to its popularity[5].

Tagliacozzi’s stylish suit in action

The realities of plastic surgery met a real need in the 1500s, largely because duelling and violence were pretty rife. If you had taken a rapier to the face in a duel for your honour (perhaps your reputation is on the line when the last slice of chocolate cake has disappeared and you are found with crumbs round your mouth) a spot of light plastic surgery might be just what you’re after.

Around thirty years before Tagliacozzi wrote De curtorum chirurgia per insitionem, the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe was taking some time out from considering the stars and turned to the far more terrestrial pursuit of losing his nose in a duel against Manderup Parsberg, his third cousin. While he and Parsberg later became friends, Tycho was landed with wearing a prosthetic nose for the rest of his life. Word on the 16^th century street was that this prosthesis was crafted from finest silver, but when Tycho’s corpse was exhumed in 2010, it was a brass nose that was found, not silver.[6]

While coming a little too late to be of use to Tycho, Tagliacozzi’s text focuses on the repair of mutilations of the nose, lips and ears, using skin grafts in an operation that became known as the ‘Italian graft’. This technique allowed for facial reconstruction via a skin graft taken from the left forearm. The graft would remain partially attached to the arm while grafted to the mutilated area so the skin cells would not decay. Tagliacozzi’s talents did not stop at medical innovation however – he also had an eye for (practical) fashion. Due to the importance of the patient being able to hold their arm to their face after the surgery to facilitate the complete adherence of the graft, Tagliacozzi designed a complex vest, not unlike a straightjacket, to make sure there was no unwarranted movement. The process was supposed to take from two to three weeks.

William Cowper’s Anatomia corporum humanorum

The final book that will feature in my post today is William Cowper’s Anatomia corporum humanorum (Leiden, 1750) and at the heart of this text is one of the most famous controversies in medical history.

The plates that feature in Anatomia corporum humanorum were not originally produced for this text, but rather the earlier Anatomia humani corporis, by Govard Bidloo (1649 – 1713). Originally published in 1685, Anatomia humani corporis features 105 striking copperplate engravings of the human body. The plates illustrate the muscular, skeletal, reproductive, and systemic organization of the human body and are seen alongside scientific commentary.

An English contemporary of Bidloo, William Cowper, bought the printing plates from the printing house and reissued them under his own name with new accompanying text in his Anatomy of humane bodies. A text that, in a profound lack of tact, also featured ‘numerous harsh criticisms towards Bidloo’s contributions’[7]. Unlike today, plagiarism – especially over national boundaries – was largely tolerated at the time, as it was difficult to police. Bidloo objected strongly to this instance of plagiarism from Cowper, however, promptly and publicly excoriating him in a published communication to the Royal Society.

What could be termed as Cowper’s lack of imagination when swiping someone else’s prints was more than made up for by Bidloo’s creative insults in this pamphlet – on one occasion calling him a ‘highwayman’, and another a ‘miserable anatomist who writes like a Dutch barber’[8]. I think I’d rather be on the anatomist’s table than have such lines about me circulating in print. All’s fair in love and science I suppose…

An image of microscopic drawings of the layers and surfaces of skin. Different diagrams fill a large page. — A closer look at skin in this text

Title page from Vesalius's De humani corporis fabrica — Title page from Vesalius’s De humani corporis fabrica

The plates in question were produced by the Dutch painter Gerard de Lairesse. For Lairesse, the anatomical illustrations commissioned by Bidloo were an opportunity for an artistic reflection on anatomy. They are very different from the tradition kick-started by the Vesalian woodcuts in De humani corporis fabrica[9].

Lairesse displays his figures with a tender realism and sensuality, which at first glance seems unfitting for an anatomy book. The figures seem docile, as if in a light sleep rather than deliberately posed objects of scientific inquiry. In these illustrations dissected parts of the body are contrasted with soft surfaces of un-dissected skin and draped material. Flayed, bound figures are depicted in ordinary nightclothes or bedding, as if they will soon be put back together again and woken up.

That’s all I’ll share today – I’m off to make a case for Spot Bakes a Cake as being a prime investment for Christ Church library’s collection.

References

[1] https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/122786/spot-bakes-a-cake-by-hill-eric/9780723263586

[2] https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo2/A93593.0001.001/1:1?rgn=div1;view=fulltext

[3] Find out more here! https://artsci.case.edu/dittrick/2014/06/26/flipping-through-anatomical-fugitive-sheets/

[4] Review: Paper Bodies, by Mimi Cazort https://www.jstor.org/stable/41825971?seq=4

[5] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24610608/

[6] https://www.britannica.com/biography/Tycho-Brahe-Danish-astronomer/Mature-career

[7] https://digex.lib.uoguelph.ca/exhibits/show/bidloo-and-cowper–anatomists-/the-beginnings-of-conflict–pu

[8] https://digex.lib.uoguelph.ca/exhibits/show/bidloo-and-cowper–anatomists-/criminis-literarii–anatomists

[9] https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/358129

Celebrating Female Authors: Diana Wynne Jones

Posted on 4 April 2023 by fierrol — 1 Comment ↓

Diana Wynne Jones was one of the most exceptionally prolific, beloved, and influential British children’s writers of the twentieth century. Born in 1934, she published more than 40 children’s fantasy books over the course of her career. She would have written more had cancer not caught up to her: at the time of her death in 2011, she was in the middle of writing a novel and already planning another.

An elderly white woman with curly grey hair looks towards the camera with blue eyes. She wears a pale blue sweater and a black leather strapped watch on her right wrist. She is resting her chin on her right arm which is propped up on a table. Her left arm rests horizontally on the table near a piece of paper and a pen. — Dianna Wynne Jones, photographed in ‘The Times’

When she passed away, a flurry of obituaries celebrating her life and work appeared in the nation’s newspapers. Writing in the Guardian, Christopher Priest described her fantasies as ‘of seminal importance for their bridging of the gap between “traditional” children’s fantasy, as written by CS Lewis or E Nesbit, and the more politically and socially aware children’s literature of the modern period.’ The Telegraph noted that ‘[her] 40 or so books maintained a remarkably high standard in both inventiveness and the elegance of their prose.’ Charlie Butler, writing for the Independent, goes so far as to say ‘that Jones never won either the Carnegie Medal or Whitbread/Costa Award is both a mystery and, in retrospect, a scandal.’

Diana Wynne Jones’s work combines a wonderful originality in concept with well-considered execution, regardless of her chosen subject matter. Many writers who produce in anything like the sort of volume she did manage it by sticking to a winning formula, but Jones continued to experiment throughout her life. She wrote mainly for children, but also for adults; she wrote stories set in our contemporary world, and stories set in fantasy worlds; she wrote her own versions of Arthurian tales, and even wrote about schools for witches and wizards before they took the world by storm. She did all this informed by a keen understanding of human nature and a clear sense of how stories are constructed.

A black and white image of two young white girls. The younger girl wears a white dress and has light curly hair, she's crawling on the floor and smiling. The older girl also in a light dress and boots with curly fair hair has one hand on her sister's head and the other to her own. The girls seem to be in a doorway and the room behind them has a patterned carpet and various other pieces of low furniture. — Diana and her younger sister Isobel, 1937 (Diana Wynne Jones, Reflections on the Magic of Writing)

In autobiographical material, Jones’s childhood casts a long shadow. She describes a childhood disrupted by war, and complicated by parental neglect and emotional abuse. Writing in 1988, she said ‘I write the kind of books I do because the world suddenly went mad when I was five years old.’[1] Although born in London, Jones lived for a time with her father’s relatives in Wales after the outbreak of the Second World War, and later in the Lake District. There she met both Beatrix Potter and Arthur Ransome, though she was impressed by neither (according to her, they both hated children). Nonetheless, she was impressed to learn that books were something real people wrote, and she was determined from a young age to be a writer.[2]

Perhaps echoing her difficulties growing up with her parents, her child protagonists often have complicated relationships with their parents. She resorted to writing her own stories when her father denied his daughters books and other reading material;[3] and her relationship with her mother never recovered from their time apart during the war.[4] In her books, these women may be loving, but distant and wrapped up in their own lives or careers, or perhaps subtly cruel. In The Lives of Christopher Chant (1988), for example, the eponymous protagonist’s mother is ambitious, but more interested in her social life than in her son.

Other family members are sometimes obstacles or villains, or good in appearance yet tarnished underneath. In Cart and Cwidder (1975), a boy’s family has revolved around his charming, larger-than-life father, who turns out to be both an underground freedom fighter and utterly without care for his wife’s individuality. So, is he a good person? That is left for the reader to decide.

Diana Wynne Jones does not condescend to her young readers and writes about the sorts of problems they face with respect and compassion. Often her plots are small dramas writ large. In Dogsbody (also published 1975), a girl’s unhappy life with her foster family is disrupted—and brightened—by the addition of a dog. The dog turns out to be the star Sirius, sent to earth in punishment. The everyday struggles of a child are contrasted, and yet wholly enmeshed, with a cosmic struggle.

A black and white image of a small room lined with bookshelves. Interspersed between the shelves and below large windows are desks with seats for six people and a reading lamp. The room has pale walls and parquet flooring. — The Library at St Anne’s College, 1952

Six people are gathered outside the entrance to St Ann's college. Two, a white man and woman both with dark hair are sitting on the back of a scooter. The woman is in a floral dress and the man a matching suit. He is reaching his hand out towards another young man standing beside the scooter. He has dark hair and wears a light jacket and dark trousers and holds a tabby cat in his arms. Behind them Two men and a woman stand watching with smiles on their faces. The men both wear light jackets and dark trousers, one has dark curly hair and the other paler straight hair and wears a bow time. Between them stands the woman with light curly hair she wears a pale shirt and dark skirt and has her arms crossed, — St Anne’s students in 1957

(Photos courtesy of St Anne’s College)

The fantastical was having a resurgence around the latter half of the twentieth century owing, in part, to renewed interest in medieval works as pieces of literature. Indeed, when Diana Wynne Jones came to Oxford to read English at St Anne’s College in the early 1950s she found her curriculum full of dragons.

Jones very nearly didn’t make it to Oxford. She had applied to Somerville, her mother’s old college, and not been accepted, so she made a late application to St Anne’s in December 1952 and was accepted for the following autumn. Her headmistress had recommended her as ‘an exceptionally able girl’ and ‘probably the most original girl in the school’. At Oxford, her tutors universally praised her imagination, liveliness, and originality, all while lamenting her lack of effort. Rather unfortunately, her father had passed away unexpectedly during her first term, which seems to have set the tone for her university career. It was not a happy time for her, and she found it difficult—and sometimes dull—to get on with her work.[6]

Nonetheless, it was at Oxford that she encountered Beowulf, Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur, and Langland’s Piers Plowman, among other medieval classics, and attended lectures by both J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, who had both had a hand in setting this medievalist curriculum. [7] Diana Wynne Jones’s fantasies clearly show this influence, though perhaps not as one might expect. She eschews the overt popular signifiers of medievalism—castles, serfs, noble kings—while deliberately incorporating its stories and aesthetic qualities.

Diana Wynne Jones felt that children, more than any other kind of person, looked to the future and not to the past. Children, she thought, would relate better to tales set in a ‘story time’ that was identifiable as their own, like medieval people did in their own imagination.[8] Just as artists and writers in medieval Europe reimagined the stories of their past as happening in something like their own time, so could fantasy literature in the twentieth century be set in a world recognisable to its readers. For example, in Eight Days of Luke (1975), Diana Wynne Jones reimagines mythological figures in a small English town. The protagonist befriends the trickster god Loki, here present in the guise of another young boy, and over the course of a week successively meets other Norse gods and gets involved in their disagreements.

While many fantasies, including those by Tolkien and his imitators, look to the Middle Ages as a period of unique heroism and to a medieval hierarchical order as the rightful mode of organisation for society, Diana Wynne Jones´s work rejects this proposition. In her Dalemark series (1975-1993), which is at its core set in a pre-modern fantasy world, she openly challenges medievalist nostalgic notions of the past. Her protagonists, though imbued in a mythic past where the undying figures of folk religion wander the land, are recognisably human and flawed. In the land of Dalemark, the weight of history makes itself felt, but substantial technological and societal innovations are also welcome: the land is going through its own industrial revolution, with uprisings resulting in better conditions for workers; and the ancient roads which connect the country´s historical sites are brought to life as the foundations for modern railways.

Nonetheless, several of Diana Wynne Jones´s novels are in direct conversation with the medieval literary tradition. For instance, her 1993 novel Hexwood weaves in Arthurian myth into a twisting story set in a contemporary English wood off a housing estate, which turns out to be partly a supercomputer-generated environment under the control of a galactic empire. Jones’s reimagining of myth is a far cry from historicist narratives which place King Arthur in a version of the real past, as in the works of Rosemary Sutcliff or T.H. White. Neither do her novels present themselves as didactic, and they do not come with a neat moral at the end. Instead, they are a mirror for the world in which her readers live, raised in understanding: not an instructional manual but an opportunity for reflection.

Although Diana Wynne Jones started publishing in earnest in the 1970s and had become well-respected by the 1980s in fantasy circles—and was widely-read by school-aged children—she did not achieve worldwide success until the turn of the millennium. Following a resurgence of interest children’s fantasy as well as the popular anime adaptation of her 1986 novel Howl’s Moving Castle by Japanese film director Hayao Miyazaki in 2004, many of her novels were reissued, introducing them to new audiences. They were reprinted in the UK, and published in translation in Spain, France, Germany, and Israel, among other countries.

Diana Wynne Jones’s work has been foundational for many children’s and fantasy authors writing today. Children’s author and 2019-2022 UK Children’s Laureate Cressida Cowell named Jones’s The Ogre Downstairs (1974) as one of the most important books she had read as a child. Katherine Rundell, recent winner of the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize, was inspired to become a writer like Diana Wynne Jones, and believes she is underrated, as ‘infinite estimation is what she deserves’.[9] Frances Hardinge, the only children’s writer to win the Costa Book Award besides Philip Pullman in 2001, named Jones´s The Time of the Ghost (1981) as one of the stories to have shaped her.

Fantasy author Neil Gaiman, who was her friend and protégé for several decades, considers her ‘the best writer for children of her generation’[10] and fondly remembered Jones’s feedback on his early work. Megan Whalen Turner, whose novel The Thief was runner up for the 1997 Newberry Medal, admired Diana Wynne Jones’s power of invention and referred to her Dalemark novels as an example for the kinds of stories she wanted to write. UK-based Malaysian writer Zen Cho, whose fantasy is part of a wave of young writers decolonising genre fiction, remembers Diana Wynne Jones as one of the great British fantasists of her childhood. There are countless more examples.

It’s hard to quantify the impact of a writer such as Diana Wynne Jones. As writer Marcus Sedgwick said in his introduction to the Folio Society’s lushly illustrated 2019 edition of Howl´s Moving Castle: ‘The seeds of Jones´s work can be seen in myriad other writers. […] We pass the tools of storytelling from generation to generation.’ I do not believe fantasy writing would look the way it does today without her contribution.

Selected Works by Diana Wynne Jones

The Ogre Downstairs (1974)

Eight Days of Luke (1975)

Dogsbody (1975)

Dalemark series:

Cart and Cwidder (1975)

Drowned Ammet (1977)

The Spellcoats (1979)

The Crown of Dalemark (1993)

Time of the Ghost (1981)

Howl’s Moving Castle (1986)

The Lives of Christopher Chant (1988)

Hexwood (1993)

[1] Diana Wynne Jones, ‘Something About the Author’, in Reflections on the Magic of Writing (Oxford: David Flicking Books, 2012), p. 210.

[2] Jones, ‘Something About the Author’, pp. 216-17.

[3] Jones, ‘Something About the Author’, p. 230.

[4] Jones, ‘Something About the Author’, p. 214.

[6] For this information I am grateful to St Anne’s College, who allowed me access to Diana Wynne Jones´s student file from her time as a student in 1953-56.

[7] For a discussion on the English curriculum at Oxford at this time, see Maria Sachiko Cecire, Re-Enchanted: The Rise of Children’s Fantasy Literature in the Twentieth Century (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2019).

[8] Diana Wynne Jones, ‘Inventing the Middle Ages’, in Reflections on the Magic of Writing (Oxford: David Flicking Books, 2012), p. 165.

[10] Neil Gaiman, ‘Foreword’, in Reflections on the Magic of Writing (Oxford: David Flicking Books, 2012), viii.

Celebrating Female Authors: Jan Morris

Posted on 20 March 2023 by morganashbycrane — No Comments ↓

I first knew of Jan Morris as a name attached to several ‘travel’ books while I was working as a bookseller – as much as she herself resisted the label of being a travel writer. Not very much later in that same role, an elderly gentleman told me about how she had publicly transitioned as a woman, some time after her account of the ascent of Everest. Both these facts suddenly illuminated the figure behind the very beautifully but impersonally published perennial titles of hers that we stocked: Oxford, Venice, Spain etc.

By the time she passed away in 2020 I had seen several more of her memoirs and essays published, and I had a much fuller sense of this woman who had typified transgender identity for several generations of the reading public. I felt like I missed her for what she meant to many people, even if I had been perhaps too young, but mostly too ignorant, to have read her work in her lifetime.

Biography

Jan Morris was born in Clevedon, Somerset, in 1926. She was educated in Oxford first at Christ Church Cathedral School, where she was a chorister.¹ After enlisting and serving in the British army in Italy and Palestine, she returned to Oxford to undertake a degree at Christ Church College.² During this time she was also had a stint as editor of Cherwell, the student newspaper.

A Photograph of Tom Quad, Christchurch College Oxford: A gothic styled sandstone quadrangle, with lawn and statue set within. — Image credit: Dmitry Djouce (Distributed without alteration according to license: CC BY https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/)

Her early career as a journalist was crowned by the report to the Sunday Times of Edmund Hilary and Tenzing Norgay’s ascent of Mount Everest in 1953, with later prominent reporting on the first proof of French collaboration with Israel in the Suez conflict, 1956.³

In 1974, her account of her gender transition, Conundrum, became a worldwide bestseller, and is an early example of a transgender narrative in the public eye. Reviews from the time are not altogether as hostile as might be expected, but some critics thought that Morris’ writing was incompatible with womanhood, for example Rebecca West’s New York Times review.⁴ There seems to be an uncritical belief in an écriture féminine to which, they argue, Morris does not conform. This particular branch of feminist thought, that certain styles of writing are better able to express and demonstrate women’s perspectives, might be something that we find more problematic as an assertion today.

Favourite Book

As a reader of fiction, especially science fiction, more than the genres Morris most often wrote in, I love Last Letters from Hav.⁵ I think it’s wonderfully uncanny, as a result of the sense of credibility with which Morris imbues a fictional place. The recent editions are accompanied by an introduction from Ursula K. Le Guin, which is a sensible publishing decision; fans of Le Guin’s novels, whose science fiction elements draw on imagined or speculative social systems, will find similar care taken by Morris to construct an imagined society in a moment of crisis.

Things to see in Oxford relating to Jan Morris

Morris’ connection to Oxford is obviously tied closely to Christ Church College. The Cathedral is publically accessible for services and prayer, with choral services on Sundays at 11am and evensongs Tuesday through Sunday at 6pm. Copies of Cherwell can be called up to Bodleian reading rooms, including volumes from Jan Morris’ tenure as editor.

Morris’ favourite places to see, for those wanting to follow in her footsteps, include the tomb of Dr. Richard Baylie, which can be viewed within the eponymous chapel on tours of St John’s. Morris noted that ‘he is dressed in his academicals, and is leaning with one knee cocked against a pile of books; his forefinger keeps his place in one volume, and he is looking preoccupied up into the sky, as if his train of thought has momentarily escaped the argument of the page, and true to the Oxford method, has soared away to more celestial syllogisms’.⁶

A photograph of the memorial to Richard and Elizabeth Baylie. A stone carving of Richard Baylie depicts him lying at ease, resting on a pile of books in academic dress. — Image credit: St John’s College, University of Oxford (Distributed without alteration according to license: CC BY-NC: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)

Morris’ writing on Oxford is certainly rooted in time; her description of Summer Eights seems farcical, where men rowed and women looked ‘vacuously’ on asking brothers to explain the crews, before retiring as ‘happy little groups of people, white and blue and polka-dotted, strolling through the meadows’.⁷ This seems a far cry from Summer Eights today, the interspersed men’s and women’s crews, with onlookers of all varieties far too drunk on warm, fruitless Pimms to recognise all but the first boats in each division, all to the competing club music emanating from each boathouse’s gym.

One point on which Morris and I definitely agree is in the best treasure in Oxford: the Alfred Jewel. An enamel portrait (of Christ, most likely) in a gold setting, fronted by a thick piece of quartz, the jewel is on permanent display at the Ashmolean, and represents the energy with which Alfred sought to revitalise literacy during his reign. Modern scholarship is confident that the jewel is the end piece of an aestel, a rod for pointing to a text as it is read; several were donated to Alfred’s bishops alongside manuscripts of Gregory the Great’s Pastoral Care, newly translated into Old English.⁸ As a symbol of Alfred’s intention to associate wealth, prestige and learning, it is a powerful and affective piece.

Jan Morris, Conundrum. (London: Faber & Faber, 2018).
Richard Lea, ‘Jan Morris, historian, travel writer and trans pioneer, dies aged 94’, Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/nov/20/jan-morris-historian-travel-writer-and-trans-pioneer-dies-aged-94 [accessed 20th March 2023]
Lea, ‘Jan Morris, historian, travel writer and trans pioneer, dies aged 94′.
Rebecca West, ‘Conundrum’, New York Times. 14 April 1974, p. 5.
Jan Morris, ‘Last Letters from Hav’ in Hav (Chatham: Faber and Faber, 2006), pp 1-187.
Jan Morris, Oxford (Cary: Oxford University Press, 1987), p. 161.
Morris, Oxford. p. 133.
Leslie Webster, Anglo-Saxon Art. (London: British Museum Press, 2012).

Celebrating Female Authors: Jane Austen

Posted on 10 March 2023 by JAI — No Comments ↓

As part of our International Women’s Day celebrations, the trainees have decided to highlight female authors with a connection to Oxford. We’re starting things off with Jane Austen, but watch this space for more posts to come!

An illustrated portrait of Jane Austen. She is sitting in a chair looking to her right with a neutral expression on her face. Her signature is below the portrait — Portrait of Jane Austen

Jane Austen, the seventh child of the Reverend George and Cassandra Austen, (née Leigh) was born in Hampshire in 1775. Her family, a large and lively community, shared a love of learning that encouraged Jane’s creativity, and she began writing at an early age. Her life amongst the landed gentry and a wide network of friends and family no doubt provided ample inspiration for her writing. The family lived in Steventon, Hampshire until Jane’s father retired, after which they moved on to various locations including Bath, London and Southampton. Jane died at the age of 41 from Addison’s disease, and was buried in Winchester Cathedral. [1]

Connection to Oxford

Jane had a variety of connections to Oxford. Her older brother James attended St John’s, as did their father, and their paternal grandfather was rector of All Souls College. When Jane was eight, she was sent to Oxford with her cousin (another Jane) and her sister Cassandra to be educated by Mrs Cawley, the widow of Ralph Cawley, a former Principal of Brasenose. [2]

In 2022, the Friends of the National Libraries led a campaign to save the Honresfield Library, a huge collection of manuscripts and books by a range of British authors, including Austen. The campaign to raise over £15 million was a success, which has ensured continued public access to the collection. [3] The Jane Austen collection from the Honresfield Library has been donated to the Bodleian Libraries and Jane Austen’s House. It features first editions of Pride and Prejudice, Emma and Northanger Abbey, as well as two letters from Jane to her sister in 1796. Letters from Austen are incredibly rare, as Cassandra destroyed or censored many of them. [4]

A red brick building with a white sign in the foreground that reads 'Jane Austen's House Museum' — Jane Austen House

Literary Career

Jane Austen wrote many short stories in her teenage years. Three surviving notebooks are held in the British Library and the Bodleian Libraries. These stories were often lively and action-packed, and not entirely dissimilar from what teenage girls might write about now – typically getting into trouble, romantic or otherwise. [5]. In the somewhat tumultuous years after her father’s death, Jane did not have as much time for writing. It was only once settled in Chawton on her brother’s estate that she began to edit Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice for publication. The former was published anonymously in 1811, and the later in 1813. Mansfield Park and Emma were published in 1814 and 1815 respectively. Following Jane’s death in 1817, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion were published later the same year, and were the first of her books to identify her as the author.

After publication, her books were generally received favourably (although it’s interesting to consider if this would have been the case if it was known from the beginning that they were penned by a woman), and commended for their portrayal of everyday life. Alfred Tennyson wrote that “Miss Austen understood the smallness of life to perfection,” highlighting her skill for social observation. [6] Now, 200 years after her death, Jane Austen is celebrated as one of the most beloved British writers, whose works have been translated into multiple languages and adapted for the stage and screen.

Most Iconic Character

Sometimes, the most obvious answer is, in fact, the right one. Elizabeth Bennet is a British icon in her own right, with her quick-witted nature and sharp tongue (perfectly encapsulated in one of the most savage insults in literary history: “I had not known you a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world on whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry.”) Lizzie’s misjudgement of poor Mr Darcy is something I’m sure many of us relate to, and the changing nature of her opinion of him throughout the novel is what makes me return to it (and the iconic masterpiece that is the 2005 film version) time and time again.

Favourite Book

My favourite Jane Austen novel is (unsurprisingly) Pride and Prejudice. The themes of the novel – love, social hierarchies and dealing with irritating family members offering “delicate little compliments” remain incredibly relatable to this day- the language may have changed, but our lives are not that dissimilar to the characters in Pride and Prejudice.

References

Library Interview Tips and Techniques

Posted on 9 March 2023 by Alice — No Comments ↓

Some of the advice in this article stems from a training session we were given by Tom Dale and Jane Falconer in January 2023, many thanks go to them for their invaluable advice and support.

This article is intended to help and reassure those of you applying for the Oxford Graduate Trainees roles or any other entry level library position. If you’re applying for the Bodleian Traineeships then interviews are right around the corner, so we thought we’d offer up some tips and techniques that will help you feel confident and prepared when walking into the interview.

What not to worry about

First off, a few things to set your mind at ease. Below is a list of common concerns prospective trainees have raised – and the reason why you don’t need to worry! We’ve also tried to include advice for how to manage these concerns at interviews as well as links to introductions from previous trainees who were in the exact same position as you! These are only a small collection of our previous trainees and you may find others who have similar life experiences to you by browsing through our Former Trainees page.

I don’t have any library experience… You don’t need any library specific experience to succeed at interviews. Over the years there have been plenty of trainees who have never worked in a library before being accepted into a trainee position. You only need to show that you have the skills to meet the job description, you can pull evidence of these skills from any area of your life such as jobs in other sectors, clubs, or volunteer work.
Trainees like me: Sarah Smith, Sackler Library; Martyna Grzesiak, Lady Margaret Hall; Tom Roberts, Taylor Institution Library; Alice Shepherd, Radcliffe Camera; Charlie Ough, Bodleian Old Library
I’ve never had a full-time job… The traineeship is a graduate position, so it doesn’t require you to have previous full-time work experience. Many trainees have been recruited directly after finishing their undergraduate degree, as before, so long as you can prove you meet the job description, you’re in with a chance! Don’t forget extra-curricular society roles are a great way to evidence skills like time management and working in a team.
Trainees like me: Jessica Jones, English Faculty Library; Connie Bettison, St John’s College Library; Evie Brown, Bodleian Reader Services ; Léa Watson, Bodleian Law Library
I don’t live in Oxford… Not living in Oxford before or even during the traineeship won’t harm your chances, and you’ll probably find that most trainees weren’t Oxford locals before taking on the job. Luckily Oxford has incredible transport links including a station, bus, and park and ride service, as well as being pretty bike friendly so if you do end up needing to commute in every day, you’ll have a wealth of choices for how to do it. The job doesn’t require you to be located anywhere specifically, so long as you can make it into work!

Trainees like me: Luke Jackson-Ross, Social Science Library; Amy Douglas, St Hugh’s College Library;
I didn’t study at Oxford… You definitely don’t have to have been an Oxford student to work at the Bodleian. There might be a few bits of Oxford jargon for you to get used to once you start working, but no one will expect you to know these ahead of time, and if you’re not sure about some terminology used by the interviewers then please just ask! The interviewers want you to do the best that you can, so they should be trying to avoid using any terms you won’t understand.
Trainees like me: Nicky Hilton – University Archives; Diana Hackett, Oxford Union Library; Alan McKechnie, Sainsbury Library; Ivona Coghlan, Bodleian Law Library; Jenna Meek, Bodleian Law Library;
My degree is in an unrelated discipline… Although it may seem as though every librarian has a degree in either History or English it’s very much not the case. Previous trainees have had degrees in a wide variety of subjects including maths or science related disciplines. What you studied in the past isn’t going to adversely impact your chances so long as you can meet all the criteria of the job specification.
Trainees like me: Siobhán O’Brien – Jesus College; Kat Steiner, Bodleian Law Library; Emma Quinlan – Kathleen Major Library, St. Hilda’s College; Leanne Grainger, Christ Church Library; Izzie Salter, Sackler Library; Jenna Ilett, Sackler Library;

I graduated a while ago… Whether you graduated 2 years ago or 20, so long as you have a bachelor’s degree you count as a graduate. As with many of these questions, the key is to use your life experience to show that you have the skills to meet the job specification. Those skills can be demonstrated through all kinds of activities so if you’ve had a break in your career you can look to things like volunteer positions and societies or clubs.
Trainees like me: Diana Hackett, Oxford Union Library; Tom Vickers – Sainsbury Library; Grace Exley, Jesus College Library
I’ve had a previous career outside of libraries… No matter what you’ve been up to before applying the key thing is to use your experience to your advantage and show your interviewers exactly why it makes you the best candidate for the role. Maybe you previously worked as a teacher and therefore have fantastic written and oral communication skills thanks to all the classes you’ve had to teach and learning materials you needed to produce?
Trainees like me: Diana Hackett, Oxford Union Library; Chloe Bolsover- Taylor Institution; Grace Exley, Jesus College Library; Miranda Scarlata, Weston Library

What will the interview be like on the day?

Every interview is different but at least at the Bodleian, they should all follow a similar schedule.

Tour

First you will be given a tour of the library you’ve been invited to interview at. A current member of staff, sometimes even the current trainee will take you around the library and tell you around the building, explaining a little about what the job entails on a day-to-day basis. This is not part of the interview.

The person giving you the tour has nothing to do with the interview process and is often actively discouraged from talking about you to the members of the interview panel. Obviously, that’s not to say you can start hurling insults their way without expecting repercussions, but if you worry that you said something that’s lacking your usual level of wit and intellect or walked straight into a glass door (we’ve all been there), don’t worry – your interviewer will likely never find out!

Take this opportunity to calm your nerves and find out more about the library you might be working in. Don’t forget, an interview goes both ways, and you want to be sure you’ll be happy working in this environment, so don’t be afraid to ask questions!

Test

Before the interview itself starts you will take a quick test. This is designed to test your ability to use finding aids or understand shelf marking systems and normally take around 20 minutes. There’s no way to find out the test questions ahead of time, and you’re not expected to already know anything you’re being tested on. The interviewers are purely looking at how you tackle searching for materials and whether you’re capable of adapting quickly to new ways of sorting and searching through information.

It’s best not to worry too much about this part of the day. The test is short and is not the main way you will be assessed.

Interview

The interview is normally conducted by a panel of about 3 people, sometimes more, sometimes less. They will all introduce themselves before the interview begins but don’t worry too much about learning all their names and career histories, instead focus on answering their questions to the best of your ability.

The interview itself should take around 30 minutes and will consist solely of your interviewing panel asking questions and you blowing them away with your carefully planned answers! There is no set time that it should take to properly answer a question, it really depends on what you need to say. So long as you feel you’ve adequately addressed the question and provided good evidence of your ability it doesn’t matter if the question takes 30 seconds to answer or 2 minutes! There should be a little time at the end for you to ask your own questions as well – again this is an opportunity to get a feel for the work environment and decide whether this is the right job for you!

Remember, no matter what the schedule of your individual interview is, the key thing is to keep yourself as calm as you can. Everyone involved in the process is human – and sometimes things don’t work out quite how you’d predicted, but if you can give off an aura of positive confidence (fake it until you make it is the name of the game) then you’ll give off a great impression no matter what might go awry!

What can I do to prepare?

The key element to passing any exam is to know the syllabus requirements, familiarise yourself with the types of questions you might be asked, then practice your answers. It’s the same with a job interview – in this case however, the syllabus is the job specification. You should do your best to read the job spec thoroughly, so you fully understand what is being asked of you.

Break it down

A fantastic way to ensure you know the job specification as well as you possibly can is to break it down into its component parts. Each criterion might list more than one skill that is required of you, so it’s good to make sure that you’re addressing the whole thing and not just part. A spreadsheet might be useful at this point to keep track of all the different skills you need to demonstrate. Once you have your list of skills, you should look at your previous experience (it doesn’t matter if this is professional or personal) and choose examples of times where you Demonstrate You Fit the Job Criteria to match each skill. You can record these on your spreadsheet too! One thing to note is that you don’t need library specific experience to meet these criteria. A lot of library work is reader services (helping readers) and experience in the service sector like shop work or hospitality roles can be a great way of demonstrating your sk.

Think like an interviewer

Once you have your skills and your examples, try to come up with interview questions for each skill. The questions you’re asked will be designed to help you show off your abilities and demonstrate that you fit the job criteria. Try to come up with as many different questions as you can so that you cover every single way you might be asked about a certain skill. Remember, some, maybe even most questions can cover more than one skill requirement at a time, so don’t just address them one by one, come up with some questions that combine related skills, especially if they’re listed together on the job specification.

Answer your own questions

Now you have a list of practice questions it’s time to do the dirty work. You need to come up with concise but comprehensive answers that fully cover everything asked of you. Focus on answering the question as it’s written, not the questions you wish the interviewers would ask. Maybe you have a great piece of work experience that you think would blow your interviewers socks off, but you should only bring it up if you can show them how it’s directly relevant to the question being asked.

Practice Practice Practice!

Once you’ve drafted up your answers to the practice questions you’ve come up with, it’s time to practice saying them aloud. Even better would be to get a friend to help by choosing random questions for you to answer. Remember – the goal here isn’t to memorise your answers, but to get yourself comfortable talking about your skills off-the-cuff. Feel free to adapt and improvise as you go, just make sure that you’re always demonstrating those key skill requirements and presenting yourself in the best possible light.

Do a dry run

If you have the time and means, then visiting the library that you’re interviewing at ahead of time is a great way to help you panic less on the day. Not all libraries are open to members of the public, but even just practicing making the journey so you’re not stressing over public transport links can be helpful – but this is by no means essential to having a good interview. Whether you can travel there in person or not it’s always good to familiarise yourself a little with the collections and style of the library. Is it a listed building with little room that mainly caters to academics, or a modern space with all the newest library amenities for students and members of the public? Small things like this might not seem overly important, but they could influence the approach you take in interview answers, and showing you have prior knowledge of the library itself can never hurt. You can find all this information and more about the many different Bodleian Libraries here: Find a library | Bodleian Libraries (ox.ac.uk)

The 2022-23 trainees would like to wish you all the best of luck for your future applications and interviews. No matter how things turn out, making it to the interview is a significant achievement so even if you don’t get this job, don’t let it deter you from applying to others. The key thing is to learn from your experience, gather as much feedback as possible and do your best next time around!

Opening Doors: Libraries in the Community

Posted on 8 March 2023 by Alice — No Comments ↓

This is Part IV of our four-part series on our interview with Richard Ovenden.
For more background information on who Richard Ovenden is and how he came to be Bodley’s Librarian please see Part I.
For information about how libraries and the Bodleian itself aim to tackle issues of accessibility, please see Part II.
For a discussion of the role of libraries moving forward into the digital age, please see Part III.

Last week we discussed the duty and future of libraries and archives especially with regards to the digital age. This week, in our final post of the Richard Ovenden Blog Post series, we will look at some examples of how libraries are able to collaborate and serve their various communities.

“we’re [not] just a supporting service … we are actually part of the University.”

As previously mentioned in our first post of this series, Richard Ovenden is Head of Gardens, Libraries & Museums (GLAM) as well as being Bodley’s Librarian. This is a post he took over from Professor Anne Trefethen early last year, “I became head of GLAM in February”, which Richard Ovenden has described as involving “trying to build on all of the work of my predecessors as head of GLAM in supporting the cultural and scientific collections in the University”. Following our interview, Richard Ovenden mentioned that he had a meeting with “the University and Strategy Plan Programme Board which is working on the University’s new strategy”. In particular, Richard highlighted his aim of emphasising the importance of libraries, and their contribution to the University of Oxford: “What I’m trying to do is to help the University develop a strategy that has these kinds of issues that we have just been talking about, as centrally as possible” libraries are “[not] just a supporting service” but instead “we are actually part of the University.”

Uma, an Indian woman with grey hair cut into a bob stands smiling next to Richard Ovenden, a tall white man with short white hair. Uma wears a blue dress and orange and purple scarf around her nexk. She's holding a copy of Richard Ovenden's book. RIichard wears glasses and a navy suit with blue sweater underneath. Both are standing by red sofas in front of one of the windows in the Weston Library. — Richard and Uma Mahadevan Dasgupta at the Weston Library

Throughout our interview, Richard makes a point of discussing Libraries within the context of the communities that they serve. For the Bodleian that primarily encompasses the staff and students at the University of Oxford (although not insignificant are the various independent researchers and even members of the general public who may also interact with our collections). But each library will have diverse communities that they need to determine how best to provide for.

One anecdote in particular that stood out was Richard’s mention of Uma-Mahadevan-Dasgupta, a woman he met who is not a Librarian, but in fact “a civil servant in India … her whole raison-d’être is to build a public library network in rural India”. The community she serves in this process is one that is “disenfranchised from knowledge, if you like, and as part of their educational experience they don’t have those opportunities and that seems to me tragic.” But the work that she’s striving to achieve is “just incredible … it’s very, very simple stuff but it’s kind of transforming the opportunities for people in rural India – young people opening books for the first time, it’s just phenomenal.” Richard’s admiration for Uma and the work she’s doing is clear, and understandable. There are few library staff who wouldn’t see the appeal in getting to create, shape, and expand a new network of libraries across a nation with previously limited access to such resources. As Richard says, “she’s been one of the most inspirational people I’ve met in a long time, and just incredible.”

“Public libraries are on the front line serving their community in every possible way that they can.”

But one doesn’t need to travel all the way to India to see ways in which libraries can change to better serve their underrepresented communities. Richard mentions a recent trip to Berlin where he “gave a talk in a public library”. He describes the library itself as, “a very good public library with a children’s library section and books, but not many. Small, on a modest scale.” It serves “an area of Berlin that has a big immigrant community, they’re facing defacement and vandalism from the far right because they have services directed towards the Turkish” and other marginalised groups. These groups are just as fundamental a part of the local community as any of the other residents and these “public libraries are on the front line serving their community in every possible way that they can.” The talk Richard was giving was in fact directly intended to address the issues of vandalism faced by the library and the wider community, it was on the subject of “censorship and banning books” which shows just how much work even ‘modest’ libraries will put in to serve and protect its users. As Richard says, “they’re really standing up for [their community].”

Two older man stand in a room with yellow walls and wood panelled details. Behind them is a desk with chairs and a portrait of a man in a gilded frame on the wall. Both men have short white hair, wear glasses and dark suit jackets. The man on the left is wearing a grey sweter over a light blue shirt and jeans, whereas the man on the right wears a plain white button up shirt over dark suit trousers that match his jacket. — Richard and Achim Bonte, the Director of the Staatsbibliotek in Berlin

On the same trip to Berlin, Richard made a visit to the director of the Staatsbibliotek, or ‘Berlin State Library’. The Staatsbibliotek is a part of a wider organisation called the Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz, or ‘Prussian Culutural Heritage Foundation’ which is “responsible for the museum and state libraries and state archives, state everything.” The Foundation is one of the largest cultural organisations in the world and “responsible for these amazing institutions.” Lucky for us then that Oxford’s Gardens, Libraries and Museums (of which Richard is the head) already have “an MOU” (Memorandum of Understanding – a non-binding letter that says the institutions will work together.) “with that organisation, which sits alongside the MOU between Oxford university and the four Berlin universities.” As Richard says, “this is a cultural and knowledge partnership alongside the academic partnership,” the opportunity for two such prestigious institutions to be able to work together on future projects is a wonderful opportunity for both parties. However, as this MOU was signed just before the pandemic “we haven’t really been able to do much collaboration.” Now that restrictions are loosening however, “we actually have an agenda for collaboration between the Bodleian and the Staats.” This agenda is hopefully one that will continue into the future as, “next year we’re re-signing the MOU with the Stiftung and GLAM.”

One can’t help but feel that this all harks back to the advice Richard gave in our first article. The importance of networks and connections between library staff is central, not just to developing one’s personal career trajectory, but also between institutions as a way of supporting global efforts to protect and preserve knowledge and serve individual communities. Libraries can only continue to do the fundamental work that they are engaged in if they cooperate, share knowledge, and support one another. After all, isn’t that really what libraries are all about?

We would like to thank Richard Ovenden for very generously giving up some of his time to meet with us. We really enjoyed our conversation with him and learned a lot by listening to his experiences of the library world. We hope these blog posts will be useful to those wanting to learn more about what happens behind the scenes at the Bodleian and the wider world of libraries!

Four people stand in front of a corner where a panelled wall meets a window. Outside the window is Christmas tree. The first person on the left is woman with light skin and short, dark curly hair. They're smiling widely and wearing a green patterned vest on top of a black turtleneck. To their left is an older man with gtrey hair and glasses. He's also smiling at the camera and wearing a dark suit with a blue sweater over a white shirt and dark tie. Next is a young woman with brown hair pulled back in a ponytail. She smiles and wears a blue jumper with a red and white crest and a blue plaid shirt underneath. On the far right is a smiling young woman with brown curly hair down to her shoulders/ She wars glasses and a multicoloured patterned sweater. — Richard Ovenden with Ruth, Alice and Léa, the trainees who worked on this interview

Database Spotlight: Victorian Popular Culture

Posted on 6 March 2023 by Ruth — No Comments ↓

The A-Z database list on SOLO can take you to many weird and wonderful places. Each database provides a window into a new personality. Will I be the person who knows an uncanny amount about Early Zoological Literature[1]? Or perhaps seleucid coinage[2]? It seems that even just a little light reading in these databases would get me ahead of the pack – though perhaps Oxford is a city in which that is not reliably the case…

As tempting as these avenues of identity re-invention are, I have a feeling that I would have to somewhat crowbar these topics into conversation. Talking a lot about coins is something that is a little less charming when you’re the one who brought them up… Perhaps, I thought, it might be sensible to choose something a little more mainstream. So, this month I decided not to start a new chapter of my persona, but revisit an old one. The topic I’ve selected for this month indulges a subject I was obsessed with as a child, and the database itself is one that finds the perfect balance between accessible and delightfully specific: the database of Victorian Popular Culture. A sprawling resource with countless entries, this database is still extremely navigable and filled to the brim with treasures.

Arriving at the Database

When first opening the database of Victorian Popular Culture, you are greeting by a well laid-out menu. The initial drop down tab is arranged into the sections:

‘Introduction’ to give users a sense of what they can do with the resource

‘Browse documents’ for broad umbrellas of research topics

‘Explore’ for the researcher just dipping their toe into Victorian waters (ideally they’d also be wearing a very fetching Victorian bathing suit to boot)

‘Visual sources’ for photographs, plates, cinema footage – the list goes on

‘Help’ – for a more detialed guide of how to make the most of the database and further information

Screen cap of the home page of Victorian Popular Culture, with the drop down menu open — The drop down menu will take you wherever you want to go!

Having a Browse

While all the headings in the ‘Browse Documents’ section looked tempting, I decided to look into Circuses. Once in the item list, I was met with even more (delightfully organised) drop down boxes. Not unlike SOLO or the Ashmolean Database (our previous database spotlight), here you can select the item type you’re looking for. Perhaps it’s ephemera, or playbills. At this stage you can also filter by the Library/Archive that holds the item. This is a great feature for those that wish to find items they can visit in person.

Screen cap of list of items with thumbnails by each entry

Deciding not to filter the results at this stage, I began scrolling through the items. With thumbnail images of each item, you get a pretty clear idea of the sort of thing you’ll be looking at when you select an item. As I scrolled, enjoying snapshots of photographs and sheetmusic, my eye was caught by a diving figure of gold foiling on the cover of Acrobats and Mountebanks by Hugues Le Roux (1890)[3].

Gold foiling of an acbrobat mid-flip on a dark blue back ground — An eye-catching front cover!

Acrobats and Mountebanks

Clicking into the item took me to the catalogue page with publication information and item type. For example, here I learnt that this text is kept as part of the National Fairground Archive at the University of Sheffield[4]. If I absolutely had to get trapped in an archive overnight, due to what I’m sure would be very legitimate and even likely circumstances, I could do worse than this one. (These are the kinds of scenarios you begin to ponder when you become a library graduate trainee…). If one database just isn’t enough, treat yourself to a browse of the NFCA and find materials on illusions, menageries, pleasure gardens and fairground rides[5].

The text of Acrobats and Mountebanks was digitized and I had the option of browsing the whole text page by page or navigating by chapter. I was struck by the high quality of the images, so entered into the world of the Victorian circus without a particular destination in mind. Weaving through the acts and attractions described in the book I could feel the the ghost of the author’s excitement; gorgeous illustrations throughout the text draw you into a world where horse drawn carriages carry ladies in smart dresses to the fair (p. 38), where ‘everyone is come for amusement and intends to get it’ (p. 39). In the preface it is promised that the reader will be led to ‘the threshold of an unknown world’ (p. vi) and I felt a little like someone about to attend the circus myself.

Page by page view – Chapter 9: The Equilibrists

The thumbnail option makes for a convenient skim through

Further into the book, in the chapter titled The Private Circus, Le Roux writes of a certain number of people for whom simply attending the Circus was not enough. So allured were they by the world of the trapeze artist and conjurer that they would seek out and enter a very particular tent. It seems that during this period, it was possible for the circus itself to be a place that would not only dazzle spectators with the art of acrobatics, but teach them how to perform it themselves. With a suitably mythical turn of phrase, the transition from circus-goer to circus performer is described by Le Roux as a ‘metamorphosis’ (p. 308).

One such individual who engaged in this act of transfiguration was Lieutenant Viaud. A man of many military and literary achievements[6], he gains another string to his bow with his acrobatic endeavours:

‘One feels that in him exists that spring of elasticity which raises a body from the soil and wrests it from the laws of gravitation’ (p. 309).

Despite finding this text through such an ordered sequence of tabs, drop down menus and chapter links, the quality of the digitized images and the ease of navigation within the database made for an immersive reading experience. I was as drawn into the world of the Victorian circus as Lieutenant Viaud, though my forward roll may yet leave something to be desired.

London Low Life

Closing the flap of the circus tent for now, let’s creep a little further into to the back streets of Victorian London with a dictionary of slang[7]. This extensive resource can be found on the ‘London Low Life’ a sister page of the Victorian Popular Culture database. Here is where you can find all things ‘street culture, social reform and the Victorian underworld’. After the bright lights of the circus a little shadiness might do us good.

Screen cap showing entries under the letter 'A' in the London slang dictionary — This dictionary can be browsed in alphabetical order and similarly defined phrases are grouped together for ease of navigation!

Scanning through the entries, a few favourites jumped out. I particularly enjoyed ‘a pig’s whisper’ (a grunt) ‘a bantling’ (a young child) and ‘knights of the rainbow’ (waiters, footmen, lacqueys). Having topped up my slang vocabulary, I thought I would round off my venture into the world of databases with a hop across to the Oxford English Dictionary, or OED.

Oxford English Dictionary Online

Available through SOLO, the OED is an incredible resource: ‘the definitive record of the English language’[8], no less.

The OED serves as a guide to the meaning, history, and pronunciation of 600,000 words— including those that have dropped out of use – from across the English-speaking world.

Every entry has example quotations from across the period the word is/was used in, from literary examples to specialist periodicals, film scripts to cookery books.

Screen cap of OED entry for bantling — Entry for ‘bantling’

As you can see in the red text on the top right of this page from the OED, this entry has not been fully updated. The entries in the OED undergo constant revisions to stay up to date, each revision ‘subtly adjusting our image of the English language’^[9].My deep dive into the word ‘bantling’ shows off some of its uses over time, both literal and figurative.

I hope this mini excursion goes some way to show how different databases, available both through SOLO and online, can work together to provide richer detail for whatever it is you’re researching. In my exploration into the world of Victorian circuses, I dipped into the database of Victorian Popular Culture, the National Fairground Archive and the Oxford English Dictionary. Knowledge breeds knowledge! So many potential rabbit holes showed themselves on this digital journey, and I can’t wait to keep digging – right after I’ve perfected my acrobatic routine.

References:

[1] http://www.animalbase.uni-goettingen.de/zooweb/servlet/AnimalBase/list/references?digitzed_only=true%20target=

[2] http://numismatics.org/sco/

[3] Don’t have a SOLO log in? No problem! View the book here instead https://www.gutenberg.org/files/45587/45587-h/45587-h.htm

[4] https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/nfca

[5] https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/nfca/collections/subject

[6] https://www.britannica.com/biography/Pierre-Loti

[7] https://www.londonlowlife.amdigital.co.uk/research-tools/a-dictionary-of-slang

[8] https://www.oed.com/ In a recent bid for my heart, it seems, the OED published their word for 2022: ‘Goblin mode is our 2022 Word of the Year, recognising our desire, particularly as we emerged from the pandemic, to engage in ‘unapologetically self-indulgent, lazy, slovenly, or greedy’ behaviour that typically ‘rejects social norms or expectations’.’ Powerful stuff.

[9] https://public.oed.com/about/

Opening Doors: The Future of Libraries in the Digital Age

Posted on 1 March 2023 by Alice — No Comments ↓

This is Part III of our four-part series on our interview with Richard Ovenden.
For more background information on who Richard Ovenden is and how he came to be Bodley’s Librarian please see Part I.
For information about how libraries and the Bodleian itself aim to tackle issues of accessibility, please see Part II.
For a look at how various libraries are able to collaborate and serve their individual communities, please see Part IV.

We’ve previously discussed Richard’s own career in librarianship and the impact of mentors and varied experience on his career trajectory. We’ve also talked about issues of diversity in librarianship and how the Bodleian aims to address these. This week, we will be addressing the duty and future of libraries and archives especially with regards to the digital age. We’ll look at the threat posed by wealthy individuals to libraries, information and public knowledge, and the importance of archiving and preserving information found online.

A banner in grey at the top of the page reads: "Trump Twitter Archive V2". Below, all in black text on a white background, is a search bar with filters for retweets, deleted items, dates, device and an export button. The site lists 56,571 tweets and lists them in reverse chronological order. — A screenshot of the Trump Twitter Archive

We spoke with Richard Ovenden about the problems created by social media, which allows individuals to share, edit or delete a wealth of information at just the tap of a button. Indeed, Richard raised the example of Donald Trump: “he didn’t need a whole army of PR people, he just needed a phone and a Twitter account to dominate global politics through that media. Richard highlighted the extent of Trump’s engagement with social media, and his ability to edit or remove information from public knowledge: “He tweeted 26 thousand times in his presidency, but he deleted 1300 tweets shortly after sending them – or someone in his office did”. Richard Ovenden compares Trump’s actions with Elon Musk, a more recent example of a figure able to change a platform of public knowledge “at a stroke” when “he took over Twitter” last year. As a result, developing archival strategies to capture and preserve the digital history left by “prominent individuals in public life” on social media, websites and other online platforms “in case it disappears”, is “the kind of thing we need to engage in across libraries” as “part of our democratic function”, according to Richard Ovenden. Richard emphasises that “we have to do more in the digital sphere, particularly as more knowledge is created in digital formats”.

“We have to do more in the digital sphere, particularly as more knowledge is created in digital formats”

One group aiming to preserve information shared online, Richard points out, is “an activist archivist group” who “set up an automatic screenshotting for all of his [Trump’s] Twitter history to capture all of his deleted tweets and pass them to the National Archives for the Trump presidency”. Richard explains that the Bodleian is aiming to do something similar: “At this very moment, we’re figuring out an archival strategy for the Twitter profiles of the Bodleian Library, various University Twitter feeds, prominent people in the University who use Twitter as a platform for communication [and] various prominent individuals in public life”. Last October, the trainees had the opportunity to attend the UK Web Archive Conference with talks about the Archive of Tomorrow Project, the Queen Elizabeth Platinum Jubilee Collection, the Climate Change Collection and many more, exploring ways in which online information has successfully been picked, collected and preserved by members of libraries and archives across the UK. Attending the UKWA Conference, coupled with listening to Richard Ovenden speak about archival strategies, has highlighted the positive effects of libraries and archives working together on preserving information found online.

However, whilst it was important to Richard that we dispel the myth of libraries as nothing more than big old buildings full of books, “we can’t not do all the stuff in the physical world that we’re already doing.” The need for the physical space still exists, “look at people walking into the Bodleian … it’s incredibly busy”. The buildings themselves are still being used as “a place for convening – a knowledge space. So, we need to do both of these things and that’s one of our biggest challenges.” Unfortunately for libraries “it’s not an either-or situation.” Resources need to be expended both on maintaining our physical presence and expanding our digital one.

But with all these demands pulling on their resources, it doesn’t surprise anyone to learn that Richard believes “libraries are under threat”. The danger is that the gap that libraries are currently doing their best to try and fill in the digital sphere is being taken up by “big tech companies”. Richard’s fear is that the “knowledge sphere becomes increasingly commercialised – and public knowledge is the product of that commercial entity”. Not only are technology companies increasingly making profits off of public knowledge, they’re additionally taking potential revenue away from key public services like libraries. Richard argues for an “attack on the profits of the big tech companies to come back to the library sphere”. As far as he’s concerned, “some of that [money] needs to be ploughed back into the true knowledge sphere: libraries and archives”

Ground floor of the Weston Library, called Blackwell Hall. There is a reception desk stationed on the right-hand side, and above it a floor with shelves of books. — The Weston Library’s Blackwell Hall, where we Interviewed Richard Ovenden, includes a tearoom open to the public

Not all this is the fault of big tech companies, however, librarians themselves share some of the blame. “Libraries tend to be very good at their customer relations … But we’ve been less good I think at working with our clients, and we have just tended to take things on the chin”. This willingness to pull-through means that as a sector, libraries have sometimes been overlooked, particularly since “other parts of the society have been much more aggressive about defending their patch.” Of course, fighting for proper funding is never easy, “it’s very difficult, particularly at times … when the budgets are under pressure.” When asked which key areas Richard feels we need to be most vocal in as an industry, the answer is quick: “Library funding. Public libraries. School libraries.” However, he has got plans in place at the Bodleian to ensure that our collections will be available for generations to come, regardless of the willingness of other people to recognise the importance of libraries. We need to be “trying to diversify our audience and diversify our income streams – like drinking coffee and eating cake,” he gives a playful nod to the hot drinks and sweet treats sitting on the table in front of us, “the profits of which get ploughed back to the Bodleian bottom-line.”

But even with these new income streams in place, work still needs to be done on ensuring libraries maintain their relevance. Richard believes there are a “senior echelon of decision makers” who “benefitted from libraries when they were young but then have stopped and then moved and accessed things online and don’t think that libraries are important.” This issue is not unique to high-level decision-makers. “Even in this University when I talk to certain colleagues … some think ‘Oh, well I haven’t walked into a library for 20 years, I get everything online’ as if that has got nothing to do with the Bodleian.” Unfortunately, as Richard points out, “some of that misconception is actually our fault because we have not done enough advocacy in the past decades. Particularly, with communities [such as] the lab-based sciences … where the library has come to them rather than them going to the library.” Whilst this is fantastic in terms of providing an excellent service to our users, we are seeing ramifications in the way that libraries are perceived as a dying industry, when in fact we’re an industry in the midst of radical change. Richard describes this birth of the digital information age as “the revolution that happened 25 years ago”. However, he notes that “our predecessors at that time did not do enough to build those connections with those communities.” So today, those who benefit most from our services are often those who are least aware of them.

“We need to be more assertive. Perhaps even aggressive, about the work that we do and the difference that we make”

The issue with this lies not only in funding, but also in a fundamental understanding of the way libraries work. “[A]s school libraries become defunded, the danger is that we end up with universities with plenty of students who have no experience being in libraries. Particularly, actually, middle-class students whose parents can afford books and things.” Whereas previously this might have been one of the demographics where you’d expect to see a high level of understanding of libraries and the services they provide, today things look very different. But although the issues facing libraries today are myriad and complex, Richard sees one clear solution that comes up time and again. “We need to be more assertive. Perhaps even aggressive, about the work that we do and the difference that we make.” He believes the onus is on us as librarians to provide the rallying cry and make people aware of the value of our services. “We need to be more self-confident about the role that we play in society,” and “we need to engage more in the policy sphere, in the political sphere to argue the case. And to form allies and to be more public about it.” This advocacy needs to be done, “at all levels of society – both age and class and so on.” Without greater societal support libraries won’t be able to emerge out the other side of the digital age and continue their important work of preserving and protecting knowledge for generations to come.

Opening Doors: Accessibility and Diversity in Libraries

Posted on 24 February 2023 by Alice — No Comments ↓

This is Part II of our four-part series on our interview with Richard Ovenden.
For more background information on who Richard Ovenden is and how he came to be Bodley’s Librarian please see Part I.
For a discussion of the role of libraries moving forward into the digital age, please see Part III.
For a look at how various libraries are able to collaborate and serve their individual communities, please see Part IV.

Last time we spoke about Richard’s early career and how he was supported by mentors and colleagues as well as having a solid grounding in a variety of different libraries and library jobs. This time we focus more on one of the biggest issues facing librarianship as a career: accessibility.

Accessibility issues are a wide topic for discussion, encompassing not just physical accessibility of, in many cases, listed buildings, but also the accessibility of the profession to people who are members of certain marginalised groups. “If you look at the make-up of the Bodleian staff it doesn’t reflect society as a whole.” Richard acknowledges. For him part of this issue is “how can we change that when – the make-up, particularly when you go up the organisational structure it’s increasingly white.” And race isn’t the only issue, “there are other forms of diversity that are slightly better represented but still not adequately represented.” One of the more recent comprehensive surveys of the LARKIM (Libraries, Archives, Knowledge and Information Management) industry backs this up. It found that the lack of ethnic diversity within the profession is pronounced and whilst we are a female dominated profession, there is still a significant gender pay gap.

“This is one of the major issues for our industry at the moment.”

A statue of a man standing on a dais between two columns. There is pigeon mesh stretched in front of the statue and windows on either side. — The controversial statue of Cecil Rhodes which still stands atop Oriel College

For Richard Ovenden, accessibility is “one of the major issues for
our industry at the moment.” An issue that he acknowledges is not unique. “We share that across the museums and the cultural and scientific collections at Oxford. Particularly thinking about Oxford as an institution that has been … very implicated in empire and all of what that entails.” It’s a legacy that will take more than a few years to undo, but the Bodleian is in the process of addressing at least some of the issues it caused. This impetus for change is coming from the very top. Richard mentions a “Bodleian strategy to address diversity and equality” and looking at the Bodleian Libraries Strategy for 2022-2027 you can see that the drive to improve diversity runs throughout the objectives laid out, as well as being explicitly stated as one of the core Guiding Principles in delivering the strategy.

Pre-dating this strategy, however, is an ongoing project called ‘We are our history’. The project involves several teams working on a variety of key issues related to improving diversity. One aspect of this is metadata, or the information we keep about the items in our collection. This can range from something as simple as the title and author of a work to descriptions of the item, its provenance or even how and when it was printed. With so much information to consider there are many ways in which we need to pay mind to the language we’re using and how we’re using it. As Richard puts it: “is our metadata fit for purpose, and how do we change that?”

Another aspect that Richard mentions is “How do we diversify the collecting of books?” The Bodleian libraries are of course one of six legal deposit libraries in the UK, meaning that we are entitled to a copy of every book published here. But as Richard points out, “we’re one of the great libraries for the study of Sub-Saharan Africa – are we buying books from African publishers, are we supporting the book trade in Africa? Or are we just buying books because it’s easier and cheaper to do it from library suppliers in the UK?” Being aware of where we source our collections and the potential biases that might entail is crucial to ensuring we have a strong and diverse body of knowledge available to our readers.

A large black sign lists the exhibition title. Attached to it is a strip of Union Jack bunting that connect to one of the exhibits. There is a display case on the wall behind with books and labels and a small interactive screen tucked next to the entrance sign. — Part of the “These Things Matter” Exhibition at the Weston Library

But it’s important also to consider how we present that knowledge to the wider public, to “look at our exhibitions” as Richard explains. We’re sat with him in the main hall of the Weston library and he gestures behind him, “as you can see here at the moment”. Currently the newest exhibition at the Weston is ‘These Things Matter’, a fantastic collaboration between the Museum of Colour, the Bodleian, and Fusion Arts. The exhibition examines items from the Bodleian’s collection that illustrate the horrific legacy of colonialism and slavery, and invites seven artists to interpret and respond to the material in a variety of mediums, including sound, art installations and digital displays.

Beyond even the collections, however, we also need to think about our staff. Richard points out that biases can creep in “even in how we advertise our jobs”. He wants to strive for job postings that are “easy for people who might not have thought about working at the Bodleian – from communities who do not usually send their members to work in university libraries.” Unless we are able to employ a diverse staff, these projects become more difficult to carry out, and less impactful.

“It’s got to be part of our everyday business”

Whilst all these initiatives under the ‘We are our history’ project are fundamental to addressing these issues of accessibility, Richard warns against becoming too complacent. “Funding has allowed us to get a project manager to help co-ordinate that but really, it’s for my senior colleagues in the library to take the responsibility for that. So, it can’t just stop when the funding for the project has run out. It’s got to be part of our everyday business.” Until we make accessibility and diversity as intrinsic to libraries as the books themselves we cannot really say we have made true progress. And as Richard rightly points out, “that project’s really looking most at race and ethnicity but there’s also gender, equality, sexuality, even disability to think about.” Libraries are meant to protect and preserve information to be accessed by everybody, and unless we consider the different needs of some of the myriad groups who, arguably have greater reason than many to make use of our services, we’re falling short of the basic requirements of the profession.

Opening Doors: The Journey to Bodley’s Librarian

Posted on 22 February 2023 by Alice — No Comments ↓

OPENING DOORS WITH RICHARD OVENDEN BLOG SERIES:

Richard Ovenden is the Bodleian’s 25th Librarian and has been in this position since 2014. In addition to being Bodley’s Librarian, Richard holds several professional roles including Head of Gardens, Libraries & Museums, President of the Digital Preservation Coalition, Director of the Bodleian’s Centre for the Study of the Book, Board Member of the Council on Library and Information Resources as well as a Member of The Academic Advisory Board at Deutsches Literaturarchiv [1]. All in all, a very busy man!

Richard has delivered numerous talks about the delivery of e-content by libraries in the UK and the US, the role of libraries and archives, and the 2018 Tolkien: Maker of Middle Earth exhibition at the Weston [2]. He has also written a number of articles, essays, research reports, and is the author of ‘Burning the Books: A History of Knowledge Under Attack’ [3], which was shortlisted for the 2021 Wolfson History Prize.

Last year a few of us trainees had the very exciting opportunity to speak with Richard Ovenden at the Weston Café over tea (and delicious cakes). Throughout the next few weeks, we will be sharing what we discussed in a series of blog posts, beginning with Richard Ovenden’s journey to Bodley’s Librarian – his interest in librarianship and where it came from

[1] https://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/about/media/richard-ovenden-head-of-glam

[2] https://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/permalink/f/n28kah/oxfaleph021143627

[3] https://www.balliol.ox.ac.uk/richard-ovenden-0

Opening Doors: The Journey to Bodley’s Librarian

This is Part I of our four-part series on our interview with Richard Ovenden.
For information about how libraries and the Bodleian itself aim to tackle issues of accessibility, please see Part II.
For a discussion of the role of libraries moving forward into the digital age, please see Part III.
For a look at how various libraries are able to collaborate and serve their individual communities, please see Part IV.

After settling down with our beverages and cakes, we asked Richard how his journey into libraries began.

A red brock building sits at the corner of two streets. It has large paned windows on three floors and the college crest carved in stone on the ground floor. Further terraced houses continue up a slight hill to the right along a tarmacked road with a few braches of a tree poking out from the far right. To the left a cobbled road continues down perpendicular to the other. — St Chad’s College Durham, where Richard Ovenden began his library career

For him, it started early, “being taken to my public library with my mum when I was about three. So, borrowing books from one of my public libraries, and then, when I was a teenager, going by myself and reading.” This kind of memory may be familiar to many, but over the years, Richard made the change from reader to staff member after becoming a student librarian at his college library in Durham. The role was fairly typical, “mainly tidying – nothing very exciting”. But it was in his second year there when an opportunity arose that seems to have lit a spark in the young Richard Ovenden. The construction of a new college bar meant that he was offered the chance to move the secondary sequence “which was basically a basement room full of mouldering books” and told that if he stayed over the summer holidays he would be paid for his trouble. As Richard recalls, “this was great. I was the first from my family to go to university so my parents thought this was great as I was being paid.”

“For the first time, I could see myself doing a job.”

Whilst working on this book move, Richard came across some early books, “15th century things”. Not knowing what to do with them he went over to the University Library “to ask someone some advice – literally walking up to the enquiry desk”. The staff there “pointed to this door that had a brass plaque on it, which said: ‘Keeper of Rare Books’, which I thought was quite cool. There was a wonderful holder of the office called Beth Rainey, and she was incredibly kind and generous and patient and helpful, and I thought – wow, this is really good. For the first time, I could see myself doing a job.” After this revelation, he then stayed on as a trainee librarian at Durham with three others. “We moved around different departments of the university library and then went to library school”. For Richard, the event that really shaped his future in libraries “was really that moment – becoming a student librarian and meeting lots of serious professional librarians.”

After leaving the traineeship at Durham, Richard’s career progressed through a number of library jobs. Notably, at one point he became a member of what is now ‘The Rare Book and Special Collections Group of CILIP’ a title equally as impressive to impressionable young graduate trainees as the grand ‘Keeper of Rare Books’ must have been to Richard. But through all of his inspiring career moves, he credits his colleagues as being key mentors who were instrumental in his path towards becoming Bodley’s Librarian.

Whilst he was a member of the special collections group at CILIP, the chair of that same committee, Barry Bloomfield, “was a very senior figure in librarianship. He was just, again, very kind and helpful.” Another key figure in Richard’s early career was Ian Mowat, Chief Librarian at Edinburgh University Library. “He was a fantastic leader,” Richard reminisced. “Just working with him for four years, I learnt a huge amount. Not that he taught me but just watching him – I absorbed it.” After Ian Mowat died young, Richard felt the need to move on. “I couldn’t think of staying there and not working with him. So, I came to Oxford.” Whilst there Richard had the opportunity to work under his two predecessors in the role of Bodley’s Librarian. First was Reg Carr, who was instrumental in the integration of the departmental libraries at the Bodleian. Richard recalls that he “was also very involved in digital things and JISC – in the old days of JISC. So, he was great.” Then Richard’s direct predecessor Sarah Thomas “was a very different character, and I learnt a huge amount from her – I worked very closely with her. So, that was like a masterclass.”

“The variety of libraries continues to be a source of joy and wonder.”

Part of the strength of Richard’s career history is not only in the calibre of colleagues he has had the pleasure of working with

A large Elizabethan house with grey stone walls and a red tiled roof sits in golden afternoon sunlight. The lawns surrounding the house are green and dotted with snowdrops. — Chawton House, containing a library focussed on early women writers thanks to its connection with Jane Austen

over the years, but also the sheer variety of roles he has undertaken. In Richard’s own words, “the older I get, and the more I look across the profession, I think the variety of libraries continues to be a source of joy and wonder.” Obviously he has a strong background in academic libraries, and he admits, “I’ve worked in university libraries most of my career” but as mentioned above he also has experience “in National Libraries and in parliamentary libraries” as well as being “involved in various ways with other special libraries as a trustee, like at the Chawton House Library which is for Rural Studies and has rural literature.”

Richard’s opinion is that “it’s good to be involved with all those different aspects because there are commonalities between them all, but their variety is partly what makes life interesting.” Beyond just keeping the spice in life however, he also makes the point that “they all serve their communities differently,” a sentiment which rings true for many of us in the library world.

We finished our interview by asking Richard Ovenden if he had any final pieces of advice for those looking to pursue a career in Librarianship. Ever the generous boss, he gave us two: Firstly, “just try and visit and talk to as many libraries and archives as possible. Just seeing the work of a diverse range and talking to professionals of a diverse range is just really good.” And finally, “your network – your own network. My network has in the past and continues to sustain me in different ways. I utilise it to ask questions and see who I can get to come and speak and see who I can connect my new colleague with to help him or her and the problem that they’re trying to solve. So that network that you’re building now – think about it as you are doing it. Collect people’s business cards, capture their profiles in your contacts lists, follow them on social media, go on LinkedIn – it’s really, really important. Nurture it and curate it and stay in touch with each other.”

Our hope is that the advice and information provided by this blog will help those of you out there who are also interested in pursuing a career in Librarianship and can serve in some small way to kickstart your own network of information and contacts. Anyone who is interested in connecting with other people at the beginning of a career in Libraries should check out the ECLAIR (Early Career Library & Information Resource) Community.

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