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Database Spotlight: Victorian Popular Culture

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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.

 

 

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

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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.

Database Spotlight: Not all those who wander (in the Ashmolean) are lost

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Despite having visited it on many a rainy Sunday, I always seem to stumble across new rooms in the Ashmolean every time I go. Perhaps through a form of architectural respawning, or maybe just my poor sense of direction, many of the permanent exhibitions in the museum remain shrouded in mystery for me.

Picture of a staircase in the Ashmolean. Tall windows dimly light the area, silhouettes of statues stand in the alcoves.
Shot of some mysterious lighting in the Ashmolean to help prove my point.

 

I was scrolling through the databases available through SOLO while thinking about what I would write this post on. There were many that caught my eye – perhaps I could plunge into ‘Religion and Urbanity online’, or maybe enter the world of the Utrecht Psalter…tempting as these avenues were, when I spotted the Ashmolean online Catalogue, an idea began to form.

Perhaps this post would be my chance to get to the heart of the museum, once and for all. No more oohing and ahhing over the textile gallery (or the cakes in the cafe) on the lower ground floor. No more slumping in awe on the (rather too comfortable) velvet couches in the cast gallery right next to the entrance. This time I was going to overcome every eye-catching obstacle and make it all the way to the top floor. Using the database as my guide, I would make sure to select objects from  parts of the museum I’d never before stepped foot in.

 

The Database

The Ashmolean is the University of Oxford’s museum of art and archaeology and it holds a collection that spans over ten thousand years. In recent years, they have been working on digitizing their collection. The Digital Collection programme was established in 2015[1], and as of now, you can now browse or search 200,000 of the treasures of the Ashmolean online.

With this catalogue at my fingertips, I felt sure I held the key to the most enlightening yet efficient visit to any gallery ever before experienced.

 

The plan

My plan, as it stood, was simple:

  1. Choose the items I want to visit from the data base.
  2. Plan a route.
  3. Get cultured.

 

Familiarising myself with the database

Whether you’re looking for something specific or just there for a fun like I was, the online collection is a fantastic resource. You can search items based on object type, date, artist/maker, material…the list goes on.

In a moment of weakness, I was in the mood for some 17th century sculpture, so that was where my hunt began.

 

Screen shot of the Ashmolean database page. A grid with object type and date is showing.
Selecting preferences on the database

 

Once you select object type and date, you can filter your results in the ‘sort by’ drop down. Here is where you could select a specific artist, place, etc. if you so wished. I went for ‘random’, as beyond my predilection for something early modern, I was happy for the database to surprise me.

A feature I found helpful for my purposes was the database showing you whether an item is currently on display or not – if you can visit it in the museum, there with be a small eye icon next to the entry on the online catalogue.

Another great feature for those with a thirst for knowledge in all its forms is the ‘further reading’ section. Catalogues that feature the item you’re looking at will be linked to the page for your convenience. There’s also a ‘reference URL’ so you can easily save the page you’re looking at for later! Perhaps you wish to share this particularly handsome fellow with a pal over coffee (https://collections.ashmolean.org/object/95623), or muse over what Ethel might be thinking of on your commute home after a long day (https://collections.ashmolean.org/object/383401).

 

Choosing my victims

Once I had settled on date and object type, it was as simple as choosing the items that caught my eye. A mix of small and large, intriguing and classic slowly filled up the top bar of my laptop screen as I opened many a background tab.

After a rigorous selection process (click on the thing that looks cool – patent pending) these beauties made it onto my list:

Items:

  • One of a pair of Fowlers – 17th century bronze figure

https://collections.ashmolean.org/object/746352

 

  • Sword hilt – mid-17th century

https://collections.ashmolean.org/object/746315

 

  • Mystical ring – 16th – 17th century

https://collections.ashmolean.org/object/349813

 

  • And finally, as this is a library blog after all, a magnificent book case, literally named ‘The great Bookcase’. Mid 19th century

https://collections.ashmolean.org/object/351723

 

Items selected and museum locations jotted down, I was ready to embark on my mission.

You’ll note that some of these items are not quite sculpture – one is even a book case! My search was also bolstered by the Ashmolean podcast Museum Secrets and some of the fascinating items that are discussed in the bite-sized episodes. The database was a fantastic resource that allowed me to see instantly whether the objects that featured in the episodes were currently on show.

 

Visiting

Wall of busts at the Ashmolean
Wall of busts at the Ashmolean

With a plan of action, I felt close to unstoppable. With only my poor sense of direction hindering me, I set out on my mission to get cultured. Item list in hand, I was ready to boldly go where most Oxford inhabitants have gone before…the Ashmolean!

Despite having a slightly humbling few minutes of dithering at the bottom of the what I thought were the stairs to the second floor (but, alas, were not), having a list of the rooms I needed to visit made me feel like something of a consummate gallery-goer. I strode through great halls and corridors with a feeling of purpose, only ever so occasionally getting distracted by the odd shiny thing…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Items

Small bronze sculpture of a man crouching with a brace of birds on his belt
sculpted by Italian Renaissance sculptor, Giovanni Bologna

The first stop on my self-made tour was the second floor, gallery 46. Here I was searching for two of the items on my list: the bronze sculpture of a fowler, that is, someone who hunts wildfowl, and the sword-hilt.

I love the tiny details on this first piece! The clothing, the birds hanging from the belt, the barbs of each feather etched into the surface…also I am jealous of his stylish little hat.

What I first noticed first in this gallery, but also throughout my visit, was that going into a space and being on the hunt for specific objects really changed the energy of my experience. It was less of a passive dander, waiting to be impressed by something amazing, but a pointed search, engaging with each item in order to find what I was looking for.

It was also really cool to see the objects I’d looked at in isolation on the database in the context of some sculpture housemates. Looking at these sculptures in the Ashmolean, you see the object not against a plain background as when photographed for posterity, but amongst other bodies.

 

 

In my photographs of the ivory sword hilt you can spot the pair of Fowlers posing in the background. Different materials colour the back drop, the deep red gallery walls lending no small amount of drama.

 

My next stop was the ring display in gallery 56. Here I was looking for the rather murky toadstone rings.

A glass octagonal case with rings in each frame.
The glorious ring case on the second floor

Toadstone, or bufonite (bufo being Latin for toad), was thought to be great for protecting against poison. Not just a moody fashion statement, toadstones have a history of being worn as a protective amulet or charm[2]. It seems that the logic went as follows: toads are poisonous, therefore toadstones (believed to be formed in the heads of toads) protect against poison and even detect it. Please do not bother any of your friendly neighbourhood toads – this origin of the toadstone does not boast the electrifying acclaim of being peer reviewed. Fun fact – toadstones have nothing to do with toads at all, but are actually the fossilised teeth of an extinct genus of ray-finned fish![3]

Toadstone was allegedly most effective when worn against skin. A lot of these rings that have toadstone in them have open backs so the stone is always in touch with the wearers hand. It was believed that the stone would alert its wearer if they were ever poisoned by heating up or even changing colour. They were seen as something of a cure all, used in treatments for countless conditions and were even thought by some to protect ships from getting wrecked at sea.

Despite all these rather delicious claims to fame, the rings don’t particularly stand out in the display. In fact, I had to lap the jewellery case a couple of times before spotting these mystical little beauties. If you want to take a look for yourself, there is a helpful catalogue of the rings in the display case in folders that are kept near the case in gallery 56.

 

Toadstone ring, no. 115

 

For the final item we step away from the 17th century and into the Victorian age – peeking round the door of the office of William Burgess, a famous designer and architect of the gothic revival persuasion.[4]  Made to hold Burges’s art books, this elaborate bookcase had 14 painters contribute to it –  many of them being big names from the pre-Raphaelite movement. Edward-Burne Jones, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Simeon Solomon were among the artists involved.  Each one was handsomely rewarded at £5 apiece.

 

Large ornate bookcase. Trimmed with gold and with a red background, this bookcase is covered in paintings of different people, animals and plants
The Great Bookcase in all its glory!

 

The external decoration relates to the books that would have been housed on that shelf so there is a great variety in the decoration. Biblical scenes mirror stories from ancient Greece and Egypt, and the entire piece is covered in depictions of animals and plants.

 

 

This piece is part of the spotlight trail at the Ashmolean, so you can scan the QR code and listen to some of the background of its creation.

 

With their target of making 25% of their objects available to view online by 2020 reached, the Ashmolean is continuing to make even more of its collection accessible. Collections currently being digitalised include the Egyptian collection and portraits from the collection of Revd F. W. Hope.

What I enjoyed most about this experience was the difference between browsing online to searching for my chosen objects in a physical space. I think I felt more connected to the pieces because I had sought them out. This is not to say I had laser focus…Drifting from room to room in the Ashmolean is a process of delightful distraction – you walk through different exhibitions to reach your destination and charming and unexpected pieces unavoidably catch your eye.

 

 

These bonus pieces are not unlike side quests that enhance your journey to your true aim: immunity to everything via proximity to a toadstone. I plan to visit it once a week for the rest of my days in order to experience maximum benefits.

I hope to bug my friends some weekend soon with this makeshift tour – why not put one together yourself with the Ashmolean online database!

 

[1] https://collections.ashmolean.org/collection/about-the-online-collection

[2] Listen to Lucie Dawkins’ podcast Museum Secrets here for a great mini-podcast in which Matthew Winterbottom, curator at the Ashmolean, discusses toadstones and other magic jewellery at the Ashmolean! https://www.ashmolean.org/museum-secrets

[3] https://www.ashmolean.org/museum-secrets, at the 5:00 minute mark exactly

[4] https://www.britannica.com/biography/William-Burges

‘Why digitise?’: A trainee’s introduction to getting special collections on the internet

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As part of my traineeship at the Weston Library, I’m undertaking a project to improve access to the Broxbourne collection—some 4000 items, including 2000 specimens of fine binding from the 12th to 20th centuries, donated by John Ehrman in 1978 in memory of his father, Albert Ehrman. The project has two major objectives: capturing high-quality images of these excellent examples of bookbinding, making them available online on a public platform; and writing the copy-specific notes for each book in ALEPH (our library management software) so that they are searchable on SOLO. To date, over 350 books and their descriptions are available on the Bodleian Rare Books Flickr page.

The latest batch of uploads (the capture process is always evolving) clock in at around 100MB per photo, and are available for download in high resolution. From elaborate Grolieresque gold-tooled bindings to outstanding examples of blind-stamped religious panels from England and the Netherlands, the Flickr platform is so far a visual success. This is due (in no small part) to the nature of the collection: Albert Ehrman amassed one of the greatest collections of fine bindings in Britain. Many possess fascinating provenances, such as a presentation copies (Broxb. 24.3, bound for Robert Dudley with his bear-and-ragged-staff emblem, comes to mind), or even a book whose boards have been hollowed out to house a dead man’s will (Broxb. 14.8). Some exceptionally beautiful items include embroidered bindings (typically executed to a pattern, but unique each time), books with painted enamel plates (Broxb. 12.16), and several fine Louvain ‘Spes’ panels.

 

Detail from Broxb. 26.3 (‘Consonantiæ Iesu Christi’) showing a ‘Lucretia’ panel, which often accompanies the ‘Spes’ (‘Hope’) panel. The panel is Dutch, mid 16th century, blind-tooled onto brown calf.

 

At the start of my traineeship, I loved books and appreciated a good binding, but was inexperienced in describing them, let alone in recognising ‘sixteenth century Saxon pigskin, rebacked’. Even the best compendia of bookbindings rely strongly on an informed readership, taking for granted many bibliographic terms and descriptions. Six months ago, when I began my traineeship, I had no idea what most of these things meant. The Flickr project has been a revelation, providing visual reference-points for these often complicated descriptions—and I hope that it will be useful to others in this way, too.

Nevertheless, even the copious eye-candy that digitising provides does not make a collection ‘accessible’. Our Flickr platform is designed to complement—not replace—the proper catalogue records (no matter how good it might look!). Physically, these books are still located in the Weston Library’s vast underground stacks, sitting in grey conservation-grade boxes. This isn’t to say that Broxbourne has been underappreciated (it hasn’t, and great studies of bookbinding have been written about it) but we want them to be found by anyone, not just the specialist who already knows where to look. Albert Ehrman’s books are a highly valuable scholarly resource which can contribute to research not only about bindings, but also into the book trade, ownership, art and cultural taste, and so on. To that end, all the information they contain must be findable as metadata in the Bodleian’s library catalogue. Writing copy-specific descriptions for these books continues the work of the incomparable Paul Morgan, who compiled the card index to Broxbourne in the 1980s, and is a matter of putting in all the valuable information (such as its country of binding, time period, material, style, provenance, and bibliographic references) to transform the findability of our records. Here’s a Broxbourne record, with all the new bibliographic data highlighted in yellow:

 

 

Before, there were no descriptive elements; anyone looking for ‘lions rampant’ would have missed Broxb 28.6. The metadata simply wasn’t there. It’s a bit dramatic—but not too much of a stretch—to say that a significant amount of Ehrman’s collection, beyond the really famous stuff, would have gone to waste. And that’s only if you know what you’re looking for!

Another, major advantage to taking libraries into online spaces is the ability to share resources and research. Even in these early stages of the Broxbourne project, we’ve been enabled to bolster our own records (and even challenge assumptions written about binders in the bibliographic canon) thanks to other projects—notably the British Library Bookbindings Database, Philippa Marks’ exemplar after which many decisions about my own project have been modelled. The short version of one of our best discoveries is that Broxb. 24.4 was bound by the ‘Salel’ binder not Etienne Roffet—a discovery that would not have been possible without digitised resources (see below).

I would encourage anyone with a manageable selection of books, especially fine bindings, to consider creating a digital collection. In this, I’m guilty of propping up a bad habit of ignoring trade bindings and cheaper books, but, as is widely known, finer books are more likely to survive (and carry their artistry, provenance, waste paper, marginalia, and all manner of treasures with them). As a teaching resource they have great potential to provoke an interest in materiality and histories; as topics of academic research there is great benefit to a system that allows straightforward and immediate side-by-side comparison (not in the least because many are too fragile to handle regularly). And they’re even nice to look at on a rainy afternoon at home, when a global supervirus threatens life as we know it.

Follow the Broxbourne Project here.

 

Collage of the Salel binder’s work, showing (i) Broxb. 24.4; (ii) Esmerian 66, from a digitised page of the ‘Bibliothèque Raphaël Esmerian’; and (iii) Davis229, the British Library copy. Matching tooling errors allowed us to confirm the binder.

 

 

Reinventing Libraries- Part 2 of E Developments Graduate Trainee Session

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On 20th November 2019, the graduate trainees attended a session on E Developments at the University of Oxford’s Libraries. The first talk was given by Sally Rumsey, Head of Scholarly Communication and Data Management. She covered open access regarding academic research, which was featured in a blog post last week. The second talk was given by Michael Popham, and was all about digital developments at the Bodleian libraries.

When I first told my family and friends that I had got a job as a trainee in an academic library for a year, most of them were very supportive and happy for me. Others, not so. The most frequent comments I received was…

‘Do we still need physical books when everything is online?’

As ignorant as that comment seems, the people that said it did have a point. If you have a browse on Solo or any other academic catalogue, many resources have been digitized and are available electronically. My former university’s library advertised its resources available online with posters describing how their collections of physical books was ‘only the tip of the iceberg’. Their E resources appeared to be vast and unlimited in comparison to their smaller, physical book collections.

The physical books are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to academic libraries!

Michael Popham, head of Digital Collections and Preservation, opened his talk discussing how digital libraries are the future. The Bodleian already has a Digital Library. At the moment, the library is purely online, where it pulls all digital collections into one discovery platform. However, Michael suggested how a digital library could become a physical space. It is interesting to think of how this space would look. Would a digital library be a place to study with a few more PCs than a regular library? Michael suggested that the word ‘digital’ implies that the library would be expected to be open 24/7. Anything digital, after all, should be instantly usable and accessible even on Christmas Day! A digital library would contain services and tools to support discovery, access, and reuse of digital content.

So if digital libraries are the future, will we now see less of the printed book? Maybe, but not at such a fast rate as one would expect. There are many issues with digitization and for the Bodleian Libraries, the main problem is that digitization lacks consistency. This is because the university currently relies on grants and funding, in order for projects to go ahead. Books which are earmarked for projects tend to be strongly visual in nature, as digital collections are driven by what the team receives funding for. According to Michael, the funding bodies and even the team behind the digitization process often have an agenda which affects how the digitized books are presented. There could be more of a focus to digitize certain aspects of manuscripts and subconsciously ignoring other areas of interest. These issues are difficult to address, as accessing funds is integral to enable a digitization project.

The Bodleian was the first outside of the US to join the Google Books Partner Scholarship. It was a huge project which aimed to digitize the library’s vast collection of non-copyright material. Google digitized books at an incredible rate. Overall, 300’000 works were digitized, including board games, binding designs, museum objects, CDs, and tapes! However, there were many cases of books which had not been moved or opened in over 150 years, being unable to fit on their previous shelves. During the digitization process, these books had expanded, leading to a huge pile up when it came to reshelving. Books involved in digitization projects are often older and rare manuscripts, so they require further special handling and conditions which affect the cost of projects. In order to digitise such material, the Bodleian uses special scanning machines. The cradle of these machines uses a vacuum which gently sucks the pages down. These machines are certainly cool, but are not without their high financial cost.  

Digitization isn’t just for old manuscripts either. The Bodleian Electronic Archives and Manuscripts (BEAM) is a digital repository service which manages born-digital archive and manuscripts. The service was established as the Bodleian was receiving an ever-increasing amount of digital material. This material can come in the form of whole computers, disks and other types of external media. This brings the future of digitization into a new light. How do we process information which is already digital? The files stored on devices may appear in older file formats with no equivalent paper form. BEAM’s existence is integral as it allows the Bodleian to adapt to the digital age. Electronic legal depositories are important as in 2003, the revised Copyright Act of 2003 recognised that much of the nation’s published output in digital form was being lost. The Legal Deposit Libraries (Non-print) Regulations 2013 was passed to address this. Any digital publication is covered under the Regulations including CD-Roms, works published online that are issued from a UK domain, and items on microfilm. The British Library and the National Libraries of Wales and Scotland collect the material on behalf of all Legal Deposit Libraries. Bodleian readers can access these resources using the British Library’s digital system. Restrictions do apply, as these resources will often display an amber dot next to it on Solo. This indicates that the digital resource can only be accessed on a Bodleian terminal. These restrictions are often annoying for readers who may have to patiently wait their turn to view a resource, as the system will only allow one viewing at a time. However, preservation of digital material is essential to prevent future loss.

Preserving digital material is essential

So is digital preservation the future for the Bodleian? It certainly seems so, but the scale of digitization is not as rapid as one may think. There are 13.2 million printed items at the Bodleian libraries, with only half a million digitized. Overall, that is only 3-4% of all collections. Rare manuscripts are being digitized, but that does not mean they are instantly thrown away! They are reshelved and preserved for future generations to enjoy. So, the printed book isn’t going anywhere. The digital age also poses new problems for digitization, in that digital resources can easily disappear if technology does not exist to access them. 

E Developments at the Bodleian appear to be concentrated on adapting to the rise of the internet, either by ensuring that good quality research is freely available and that manuscripts and digital records continue to be digitally preserved. One may say that the concept of libraries is being reinvented. Information does not need to exist physically in order for there to be a need to organise, maintain, and preserve it. Libraries are no longer necessarily physical spaces, they can be virtual ones which are easily and freely accessible. And that certainly makes for an exciting future. Many thanks to Michael Popham; this post is based on his original and fascinating talk.

For More Information:

To see the Digital Bodleian for yourself: https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/

For more information on BEAM: https://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/beam

Picture Credits:

Iceberg, Rita Willaert, https://www.flickr.com/photos/rietje/76566707/in/photolist-7LqBD-FR7C4F-4oN9jm-YMrydu-PPqJhB-ZjKcnp-nriVKy-24teKYF-2cspuq7-bzN6sW-Ewoi2-7ryN1h-9cr7Hf-utjEv7-HhMKU-j2UXkm-7M5qKc-SCgvfN-uCnjP-6FzvPG-8SjsBk-JcZy8S-6sgjc-Ews2ai-Vyzdyv-7C5VU3-CHq3N3-hTp4Dg-VuEuZB-dRuMzt-F4qkYF-EfrZaX-Nn2nXz-bJQusz-6r7MwV-Cd2ngQ-7XiHcy-D3fkcT-oe39w-53biiQ-5V5evP-7JqhZY-23SzkvZ-7jLyJG-gcucpK-4CgUBb-2hiaBzm-8qxaMx-6r7MMt-5PUh2p

Memory stick, Sh4rp-i, https://www.flickr.com/photos/85638163@N00/4193757695/in/photolist-7oA74a-6tUYAs-6tUYzy-6tUYyw-p8gg6K-8DvsW-4HNdv7-261BKnD-H43vF2-6hcXNN-4TxvvC-9hneDd-6hcXJj-mFWvM-9hneA3-9hj7yM-6DWkAB-mFWFM-E78fsZ-HRD28U-4KCZUd-6Fz4Qj-71ZiH9-8hQQ4w-7W6m5B-DmgcFC-ouDJ95-6m23DD-22fMfJp-5U19C6-22YwBXe-21cVaTX-24jSdC1-wBgEv-bjZCoo-oqisc3-3Wxph-5ZuNL2-mGG5Dn-pVxW13-4sTq9Z-dhm2pq-MnVMJS-dhm2UQ-dhm2C3-KPWTmF-7nzMe3-dhm1g8-BVCg6H-MnVMW5

 

Reinventing Libraries- Part 1 of E Developments Graduate Trainee Session

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On 20th November 2019, the graduate trainees attended a session on E Developments at the University of Oxford’s Libraries. The first talk was given by Sally Rumsey, Head of Scholarly Communication and Data Management. She covered open access regarding academic research.

The Oxford Research Archive (ORA) was established in 2007 and aimed to provide open access research to researchers. Its establishment was viewed as important after the research charity Wellcome Trust released a position statement in 2005 in support of open and unrestricted access to published research. They would fund research, but it had to be made freely available.

Before 2012, it was only Sally and one assistant who were the main team behind ORA. The digital repository was established in 2007 and had been plodding along with a mere 100 research articles to process each year. Then 2012 hit and in Sally’s words ‘all hell broke loose’. Suddenly, the team were receiving over 1200 articles to process into ORA, as well as their first budget of £800,000!

So what happened to cause such a barrage of  information? The 2012 Finch report was published by the UK government which recommended that all funded research had to be made freely available. The rise of the Internet since the early 1990s appears to have been underpinned by a desire to provide easily accessible information and research. At the time, Tim Berners Lee was honoured at the Olympic Games in London as the inventor of the World Wide Web, where as part of the ceremony he tweeted ‘This is for everyone’.

Was online academic research for everyone? If you tried to access articles on publisher’s sites, they would generally attempt to seduce you into signing up for a subscription fee (and this still happens!). The average cost for a subscription is certainly not cheap as chips. Needless to say, this did not provide an incentive for the public to want to gain reliable and good quality information. The Finch report highlighted this issue and recommended that everyone should be entitled to gain access to information. It was clearly time to tear those paywalls down.

In 2014, the big cheese, the Research Excellence Framework announced a policy which required researchers to deposit publications into their institutional repository within three months of acceptance. This led to ORA beginning to request academics to Act on Acceptance in 2016. This means that when an academic has a paper accepted for publication, they must deposit the final peer-reviewed version into ORA within three months of acceptance.

As you may imagine, publishers have had to slowly come around to the idea of open access. The author pays model as highlighted in the Finch Report is becoming increasingly popular. The author or institute pays a fee to the publisher in order for their research to be published. This enables the research to be freely accessed. According to Sally, you can have a fully open access journal where all contributors are paying to publish. But then, there are hybrid journals which have an author pays model but also a subscription fee for readers. This has been labelled by critics as ‘double dipping’ as the publisher benefits twice.

And it’s not just money that’s another issue with publishers and open access.  Academics may end up forfeiting their rights to their own work if they are not too careful. Sally said that publishers started to put restrictions on what could and could not be used when researchers wished to use their work elsewhere. SHERPA/RoMEO is a handy online database which has records researchers can assess, so they can find out what exactly they are permitted to do with work published in various journals. Although SHERPA/RoMEO is undoubtedly a useful source, the publisher’s policies can be so confusing that Sally’s team often have to decipher the terms in order to work out what the researcher can actually do.

Wherefore art thou…a right to own my work?!

This can mean that if a researcher innocently posts their work on sites like Academia.edu and ResearchGate, a publisher may take action since they are seen as going against the copyright agreement. The savvy academic will get around this by choosing to remove the terms they don’t like from the agreement with a black marker before signing it. We may assume that this would incite the publisher to come after the badly behaved academic with an iron fist, yet Sally says that often publishers will merely shrug. The Creative Commons, a non-profit organisation, also allows academics to retain control of their research since it enables users to choose a free copyright licence in order to share their work. ORCID is also another way of being able to share research without infringing copyright law. Researchers can apply for a unique identifier which they can use to get credit for their own work.

So what is the future for open access when it concerns academic research? Research Data Oxford (RDO) is a data management plan which provides guidance for each stage of the research process. RDO is a multi-disciplinary effort, involving various teams across the university including Sally’s, but also legal and ethical teams. In this way, researchers can be guided through the minefield that is online publishing.

The Reproducible Research Oxford (RRO) initiative will also come into play in January 2020. This is managed by a group of academics who believe in ensuring that research is bullet proof and good quality- which means that the methods academics use in their research should be made freely available too! Through this, RRO aims to lay the groundwork of a culture of research reproducibility at the University.

Finally, there is the Plan S  initiative. Plan S requires that by 2021, scientific publications which result from research funded by public grants must be published in compliant Open Access journals or platforms. This may sound like a policy but it isn’t. Plan S is guidelines funders may choose to use, but don’t be fooled that it’s entirely optional. Supporting funders include The Wellcome Trust, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Health Organisation and the European Union.

Hopefully, with more policies and initiatives like the ones discussed in this post, the world of academia will be able to continue to adapt to the idea of open access and digitized research. Many thanks to Sally Rumsey who gave the original, interesting talk on which this post is based on. Next week will feature the second talk given by Matthew Popham. It will be all about Digital Developments at the Bodleian Libraries, so stay tuned! Also coming up very soon is a post about the Copyright Training staff can receive.

Useful Links:

For a general history of open access in academic research https://osc.cam.ac.uk/open-access/brief-history-oa

To read the Finch report https://www.acu.ac.uk/research-information-network/finch-report-final

For more on the double-dipping phenomenon https://www.enago.com/academy/hybrid-journals-are-publishers-double-dipping/

To check out SHERPA/RoMEO http://sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/index.php

Follow the link if you are interested in obtaining an ORCID http://ox.libguide.com/orcid

To find out more about Research Data Oxford http://researchdata.ox.ac.uk/

For more information on Reproducible Research Oxford https://rroxford.github.io/

To find out more about Plan S https://www.coalition-s.org/

Picture Credits:

‘This is for Everyone’- Tama Leaver https://www.flickr.com/photos/tamaleaver/7674657708/in/photolist-cGbCmC-cF54aq/ image was cropped and resized

‘SHERPA/RoMEO’- Dasapta Erwin Irawan https://www.flickr.com/photos/d_erwin_irawan/36487105886/in/photolist-XAeXow image was unaltered

 

 

UK Web Archive “Mini” Conference

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Based at The British Library and officially a collaborative effort between all six legal deposit libraries, UKWA has been at work since 2005, although their scope and reach have expanded since then and have records going back to 1996, even if their team is still small for such an encompassing endeavour. To put that in perspective, the World Wide Web only came into existence as a publicly accessible network in 1990. Jason Webber, the team lead, tries not to worry too much about those intervening six years, although you can tell that if anyone had that data he’d want UKWA to incorporate it.

In 2013 UKWA made their first full annual trawl of everything that could be considered a UK public website. That’s millions of websites, billions of individual assets, and hundreds of terabytes of data every year, and it’s growing all the time. They don’t get anything private, no emails, nothing from behind a log-in, and the rise in streaming is proving a challenge, but everything they do get is captured to look and work just as it did when it was live. Jason is keen to make it clear they do their best, but there may still be bad links here and there in the vast amount of data they process, and some websites, retail especially, are too much to handle in their complete form. “We collect a representative sample of the UK web space” is the line they’re comfortable with for now.

The event which myself and Hannah attended on November 4th was described as a “mini” conference, and with only maybe 30 to 40 delegates it’s not an inaccurate name. The whole UKWA team consists of eight people, four technical and four curatorial staff. This small staffing means that for all their efforts there are still difficulties accessing the archive, and, along with legal deposit restrictions, that there’s a major limit on what’s possible in terms of Big Data analysis and research. Most collected websites are only accessible in legal deposit libraries. The website for BUDDAH (Big UK Domain Data for the Arts and Humanities), as presented by Prof. Jane Winters from the University of London, summarises the current situation in most fields best:

Despite the limitations, improvements to the user interface are a top priority at UKWA. There’s hope that as the archive “becomes history” and its relevance grows that increased interest will see increased use and development. The achieve was able to save a database of Conservative party speeches that was otherwise removed from public domain back in 2013 while the privately organised Internet Archive was blocked from doing so (UKWA had its legal obligation to gather the data to protect it). 90% of UKWA is no longer live, so instances like this are likely to occur more often in the future – their Brexit collection is already seeing higher traffic than previous curations and holds evidence of the notorious bus-pledge on the Vote Leave campaign’s website.

More events of this kind are planned and it’s evident the UKWA team want to see the project grow. Presentations by researchers at the mini-con showed the breadth of what the archive can be used for. Public assistance also helps – archiving a website is an option for anyone and can be done easily and rapidly at https://www.webarchive.org.uk/en/ukwa/info/nominate Sites like this one with a “.uk” domain are atuomatically included, but anything else requires nomination. Don’t hold back – as the team made sure we were aware, every website matters.

Graduate trainee training continued: the end of Hilary Term and the start of Trinity Term

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Our training afternoons are scheduled in line with the eight-week terms of Oxford, the names of which can bemuse newcomers to the university, though now, at the end of Trinity Term, I think that I have assimilated it. Since the last update in February, there have been many more training courses, including lots of library visits—everyone likes a library visit.

First, though, there were several talks by people working elsewhere in the Bodleian and even in other sectors, such as the session on the book trade, where we heard from people who work at Blackwell’s and the antiquarian dealer Quaritch. This was an interesting look into a different, though related, area of work. Talks by those who worked at Osney in the Collections and Resource Description department, which is a central Bodleian Libraries department, were also very interesting. This covered areas such as the processes of acquisitions (ordering, processing, and all the many and diverse tasks attached, on behalf of the main Bodleian and several smaller libraries), electronic resources (the only element of the Bodleian that is completely centralised), legal deposit operations (including developments in electronic legal deposit), resource description and open access. Much of the information here was on things that I already knew about tangentially through my work at the Law Library, or explanations of mysterious processes that I know of but didn’t know the background of. It made me feel part of the community, however, being able to nod wisely at the mention of Swets’ demise or the fact that legal deposit books beginning with ‘M’ are catalogued at Osney as part of the Shared Cataloguing Programme run by the British library.

Photo credit: <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/27195496@N00/4507753567/">FlickrDelusions</a> Flickr via <a href="http://compfight.com">Compfight</a> <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/">cc</a>
Blackwell’s bookshop, where much of my trainee wages have been spent this year.

In Trinity Term we have also had talks from subject librarians on the role of subject consultant, and talks by the Head of Assessment and the Head of Heritage Science for the Bodleian Libraries. We learnt that a liaison librarian, a reference librarian and a research support librarian may be a similar job to a subject consultant, but that by the same token, a subject librarian’s role is very particular to their institution and their department. The various responsibilities were covered, from those to do with the subject collection and library management duties, to reader services, library projects and outreach and conferences. We then had an exercise on handling budgets, which saw my team – in charge of the slightly larger budget for science – overspend by £14,000. Before any future employers bury their heads in their hands, I’d like to point out that the game was rigged! It was pre-ordained that science’s budget would be the one greatest hit by expensive e-journal packages and VAT increases, no matter how conservative we were with our money initially. We definitely kept our readers happy with lots of resources though, even though the central finance department probably wouldn’t be best pleased. In the later set of talks, Frankie Wilson, Head of Assessment, told us all about how to gain meaningful feedback on library services, while David Howell showed us round his bespoke lab in the Weston Library in order to tell us a bit about the role of science in uncovering library treasures, a unique aid to research and one that hit the headlines when David’s hyperspectrometry revealed an ancient Mexican codex palimpsest.

Then there were the library visits. First, to the digital archives and then to All Souls’ Codrington Library, which was a striking contrast between the old and the new: the latest in digital archiving systems at the Bodleian Electronic Archives and Manuscripts department and the long tradition in All Souls’ Codrington Library, founded in the fifteenth century. At BEAM, we learnt that a hard drive has roughly half the lifetime of a cassette tape, and digital archiving seeks to preserve many types of slowly obsolescing technologies. The challenge of collecting and storing data from diverse electronic mediums, including floppy disks, CDs and flash drives, is considerable, and we learnt about the various strategies that are in place for each of them. There is also the task of archiving the web, and the Bodleian has several areas of interest that are regularly crawled and archived, a process that is also not without its challenges. By contrast, at the Codrington, the weight of centuries lingers in the air. The beautiful hall and the wonderful librarians’ office (with its spiral staircase and wall-to-wall books, it’s every bookworm’s dream) have a history all of their own, and we had a talk from the librarian, Gaye, on both the library and some of its collections. We heard about our fellow trainee and her role in the small library team, and had the chance to ask some questions.

Photo credit: <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/10287726@N02/7988424697/">simononly</a> Flickr via <a href="http://compfight.com">Compfight</a> <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/">cc</a>
The main hall of Codrington Library.

Next there was the Alexander Library of Ornithology, the Sherardian Library and the Radcliffe Science Library, which were fascinating, despite not having a single science degree among us. In the Sherardian, we heard about the Herbarium, where pressed plants that act as authority records for plant types, and are accompanied by the print collections which are used alongside the library of plants in order to support current and historical research in botany. We saw a first edition of Charles Darwin’s ‘Origin of Species’, and William Dampier’s account of his circumnavigations of the globe which brought a wealth of knowledge back to Britain (as well as being the inspiration for books such as R.L. Stevenson’s ‘Treasure Island’), and we also learnt about figures such as Sherard, Druce, and Fielding, important for the Oxford collections. At the RSL, after a quick tour, the pièce de résistance was clearly the 3-D printer. Having been sceptical about when I first saw it on the itinerary, I went away understanding how such technology services fit into the RSL’s ethos and enthusiastic about what we’d be shown. By offering access to such technology early on, as they did with e-book readers and will be doing with virtual reality hardware, the RSL is able to grant students and researchers access to technology that would be hard to find elsewhere, and facilitate learning through their services—in other words, exactly what a library is there for.

Vol. 01[1], t.4: Fraxinus Ornus
A page from the Flora Graeca at the Sherardian Library, digitally available.
More recently, in Trinity Term, we have branched out from academia and visited Summertown Public Library and the Cairns Library at John Radcliffe Hospital. Both gave us insights into these areas of librarianship, public and medical, which bring different daily tasks, rewards, and challenges. In particular, I was impressed by Summertown library’s collaboration with the local council, where council workers and careers advisors came to meet people in drop-in sessions to get involved in two-way training with library staff, meaning that access to computers and internet – needed for everything from job applications to housing and benefit forms – could be coupled with some of the necessary context from professionals. It just goes to show how essential libraries can be. Meanwhile, at the Cairns library, a particular added feature of medical librarianship that I enjoyed hearing about was the literature searches conducted by the librarians—yes, for free—on behalf of the doctors.

Finally, there were a few extra courses that I went on, Advanced Searching: overview of Google and alternative search tools, Annual Review Training for Reviewees, and Practical Skills: minute taking. These were all relevant for my work in the Law Library, and in particular the course on advanced searching with Google, run by Karen Blakeman, was very interesting and has affected the way that I search online. The final run of training in Trinity Term will mark the end of our afternoon sessions, and it will culminate in the Trainee Showcase, where we give presentations on the projects that we have undertaken throughout the year.

Moving to the Weston Library

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It was a bit hectic being one of the first Graduate Trainee Digital Archivists, starting our funded course, and preparing for the move to the Weston; but now that we’ve started a new year I thought it would be a good time to have a look back at the first few months of my traineeship (now that I feel like an old hand!).

Though we attend many of the same skills and development workshops as the Library Trainees, our traineeship focuses on the archives sector, and more specifically, on providing practical experience with the digital curation skills necessary in our technologically driven age. The Bodleian Libraries is supported in their Developing the Next Generation Archivist project through funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund’s Skills for the Future programme.

You’ve probably already seen my colleague’s post about what a week in the life of our traineeship is like, so I guess I’ll talk a bit about the challenges and opportunities that have come up for us. We started both the traineeship and the first Study School for our distance learning course in Archives Administration in September. It was quite funny that because we worked together and were in the same programme people assumed we’d known each other for years when in actuality I’d only met Harriet a week ago!

The Study School was a great introduction to archival theory but when we returned to Oxford we jumped straight into the intensely practical application of packing up our department for the move to the newly refurbished Weston Library. The logistics involved in moving our sensitive collections was eye-opening though it went surprisingly smoothly except for some of our computer equipment which came out a bit worse for wear.

An office with a view. The Sheldonian Theatre in snow.
An office with a view. The Sheldonian Theatre in snow.

Once we settled into our new open plan offices (with the amazing view!) it was really good to have all of Special Collections under one roof (except when you’re queuing for the kettle on your tea break). I really enjoy the variety and flexibility we have as trainees to work on the different aspects of archiving (especially with born-digital content); and once a week I even get to see readers when I work in the David Reading Room!

An Introduction to the Graduate Trainee Digital Archivist Programme

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The position of Graduate Trainee Digital Archivist within the Special Collections department of the Bodleian Libraries was a new role developed in 2014. It combines archival work with study towards a postgraduate diploma in Archives Administration.

There are currently two Graduate Trainee Digital Archivists, myself (Harriet) and Emily. A typical week for us involves:

  • Updating the Bodleian’s Collections Management Database with information from our twentieth-century accessions registers
  • Assisting the Oxfam archivists with the appraisal and cataloguing of Oxfam’s communications work
  • Invigilating in the Charles Wendell David Reading Room, where Oriental manuscripts and Commonwealth and African Archives are consulted
  • Listing, arranging, repackaging and cataloguing small collections
  • Seeking permissions for, and archiving, web sites which relate to the Bodleian’s collecting focuses
  • Working on our joint development project of improving and enhancing the Bodleian’s Collections Management Database. This involves working with a software developer to implement the necessary changes identified through consulting different users

In addition to this, we also have an afternoon a week dedicated to our studies. We use this time to work on our assignments through reading pertinent professional literature and producing reports and essays at determined intervals. As a result, we will finish our two-year contract here as qualified Archivists.

As we continue, we will also soon be involved in capturing digital collection material into the Bodleian’s Electronic Archives and Manuscripts digital repository. This will include such tasks as digitising and processing audio-visual material and ingesting and weeding data stored on deposited hardware.

For me, the best aspect of the traineeship is the variety of work we are able to do. We also have the opportunity to shape our time here to reflect the skills we wish to develop, and this has led to me assisting with certain outreach initiatives which I have really enjoyed. Furthermore, conferences, training and the Graduate Trainee sessions have introduced us to the processes and initiatives of the Bodleian, the University and the wider professional community, and helped us contextualise our work within the information management sector, as well as providing us with an understanding of the careers and opportunities available outside of and beyond the traineeship. As a result, I have been able to consider what I might like to focus on in the future, and can already see how valuable my experiences here will be when I begin my career as a professional Archivist.