Summaries of Showcase Talks

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

Lee Colwill (Law Library) General Confusion: Reclassifying the General & Comparative Section of the Law Library

The Bodleian Law Library is in the process of moving from an in-house classification system to a law-specific system called Moys. In this talk, I will discuss some of the issues raised by trying to map a ‘general’ shelfmark onto anything more specific.

Clare Hunter (Social Sciences Library)Establishing Best Practice in Library Communications

A report on best practice in library communications with readers by surveying other Higher Education libraries and looking at what is done well and not so well in comparison to the Social Science Library. Using this information, suggestions will also be made on how the Social Science Library could improve their communications with readers both physically within the library and online.

Emma Quinlan (St Hilda’s)Hilda’s SWeeP 2016

Hilda’s SWeeP 2016 – The exciting but extensive challenge that was the St. Hilda’s College Library Weeding Project. I will discuss my experiences of this complex project and also mention a few other mini projects which have used and developed my LIS skills.

Emilia Henderson (Taylorian)A Year at the Taylorian: Emilia Edition

A whistle-stop tour through my year as a trainee at the Taylorian. Highlights will include the Shelfmark Locator Project (and why it had to be abandoned for now), some interesting aspects about working in the Research Collection, and the challenges of change and reorganisation.

Philippa Taylor (Taylorian) A Year at the Taylorian: Philippa Edition

To help mark this year’s 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, the Taylorian trainees helped with the creation of an exhibition entitled ‘Shall I compare thee? : Shakespeare in Translation’. This presentation will be about our quest for interesting material to put on display, the actual setting-up of the physical exhibition, how we publicised it, and the challenges and rewards we discovered along the way!

Danielle Czerkaszyn (History Faculty Library)Radcliffe Camera Staff Blog

Designing, testing and implementing a department staff blog in consultation with core and OHH staff to improve communication within the Radcliffe Camera team.

C. Wilkinson (All Souls) Consolidating Catalogues of the Vaughan Papers Collection

All Souls holds a collection of the papers of Sir Charles Vaughan (19th century diplomat). Part of the collection was copied onto microfilm some time ago. The company which produced the microfilm sells a 34-reel and a 12-reel set. We have the 34-reel set, but the detailed catalogue of the microfilm collection is for the 12-reel set. For my project, I’m consolidating the typewritten catalogue of the physical collection with the microfilm catalogue, establishing how those relate to the microfilm set we actually have, and producing a searchable digital listing of what’s where.

Sophie Quantrell (Old Bodleian) Clean-up in Selden End

My project for this year has been to do a holdings check of the material in the Duke Humfrey’s Library after the move of Special Collections. This has involved a lot of spreadsheets and trips to the reading room!

Alan McKechnie (Saïd Business School)Archiving the Art Kleiner Collection and the Oxfam Collaboration

I will be discussing my role within the large reformatting and weeding of the Art Kleiner Catalogue and how I rehoused the collection in archive grade boxes within the Futures Library at Egrove Park. I will also discuss my role in the digital presentation within the Sainsbury Library, set up to showcase the new Oxfam Archive and Oxfam’s entrepreneurial spirit, through their use of unique advertising and marketing strategies.

Mary Atkinson (English Faculty Law)A Year of Displays at the English Faculty Library

The English Faculty Library holds a variety of rare books, periodicals and special material. As the trainee I had the opportunity to curate displays to showcase these collections. In this talk I will present a general overview of my displays this year, as well as a more detailed look at how I selected and arranged material for exhibition, focusing on two displays in particular: 18th Century Poetic Miscellanies, and The Margaret Weedon Collection of Children’s Literature.

Tom Dale (Social Sciences Library)Does Shelf Height Affect Circulation?

I have investigated the effect that the height at which a book is stored has on the likelihood that it will circulate. I used data collected from the SSL over a calendar year.

Claire Audelan (St John’s) Do We Need Pictures?: Illustration of the Earliest Printed Books

This talk will introduce an exhibition looking at the development of illustrations in the printed output of the 15th century. Over this period book illustration evolved from hand-applied illumination added after the book’s production to schemes of printed woodcut illustration integrated with the text, and often in dialogue with it.

Rachael Gardner (Digital Archives) Cataloguing the Papers of Katherine Watson

The arrangement, description and repackaging of the papers and correspondence of Katherine Watson: a nun, poet and bookseller.

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