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June Headlines

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First things first…

Most of our readers will hopefully have heard the good news by now, that the proposal to move the Oriental Institute Library’s collections into the Sackler Library has been withdrawn.

Library staff are delighted with the news and would like to extend an enormous

Thank you!!

to everyone who signed petitions, spoke up in various meetings and generally made lots of noise on our behalf. We realise that there were many reasons besides the ones we had for not taking the option to move us out of the Oriental Institute (not least the disruption it would have caused to the readers and staff of the Sackler), but the end result is just as important and just as welcome. We all look forward to remaining where we belong and to continuing to provide a friendly and efficient library service to all our users, be they from the faculty or from everywhere else in the world.

It really is an enormous relief, and it has been lovely to talk to many indignant regular readers who were unanimous in telling us how much they wanted us to stay put.

June Headlines

Well, there’s not much we can say to top that, is there? We have had a busy month in terms of the reader numbers, and hope that everyone’s exams went – or are still going – smoothly.

Automated Finalist notices went out last week, which resulted in a flurry of readers bringing in books and paying off fines. If you still have items to return, please do so before your card expires as you may find it harder to get into the building afterwards!

For other borrowers we are now in the Vacation Loans period; all books borrowed from the Library will be due for return on the 13th October (Tuesday of 1st week) unless your card expires before that, in which case they will be due the day before the date on your card.

Readers who are in on Thursdays and Friday evenings will have met our new colleague, Vasiliki Giannopoulou, who started working with us at the beginning of June. Vasiliki comes to us with experience of the Library of Congress Classification as she also works at the History Faculty Library. We would like to welcome her to OIL, and we look forward to her pointing out all the weirdly shelved books in the LC section!

On the subject of LC classification, Kate will be doing some moving over the next few days to accommodate the ridiculously crowded DR (Turkish History) section. These books (formerly in DS 162 and DS 165 in the old sequence) have taken over what was previously a relatively small area and the reorganising of shelves from PJ back to DS in order to make room is necessary as Kate was finding it was taking longer to make space for the reclassified books than it was to reclassify them in the first place.

A larger move, which will see all the LC books shifted round to the empty spaces left by the reclassification of the DS section, will take place towards the end of the summer.

Finally, advance warning that the SunRays (the computers by the windows which don’t require a log-in) are being retired on July 10th. The good news, however, is that they will be replaced by a similar system the following week. We’ll put something on here or on the Facebook page when that has happened.

 

 

March Headlines

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Oops!

Yes, we know… this is a bit of a belated post, but in our defence it seemed a little redundant to post on the blog on the Thursday before Easter given that the Library was closed.

March was a productive month for the Library staff, even as most of the students drifted away for the Easter vacation.

The PCAS photocopiers underwent a software upgrade at the start of the vacation which has altered the interface slightly, but they still work as they did before. As far as we know the odd issues which were encountered when the upgrade occurred (none of which affected us) have been resolved, but do let us know if there are any problems.

Natalija has been barcoding some of the uncatalogued Japanese books in the basement, which will be a help when people borrow them as previously we have had to create records from scratch, which can result in a bit of a wait at the desk.

Meanwhile Kate has been doing some shuffling round in the Library of Congress section again, too. The “D” and “DS” sections in particular were becoming heavily congested as that is the area where she is adding to the shelves with the reclassified materials, and it had reached “critical mess” by the end of term. She has moved things around in the “B” and “BP” section, reducing some of the over-estimated growth space there to make space in the “D” and “DS” areas. Please be aware that many books in this section will have therefore shifted position (sometimes up to 20 shelves away from where they were!). The labels on the ends of the bays have been adjusted accordingly, but do ask staff if you have any problems finding anything. The Library of Congress shelves now look a lot less crowded, and Kate is optimistic that she won’t need to move things again until at least the end of the summer vacation!

It’s Competition Time!

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Announcing… the Michaelmas Term competition at OIL!

After the success last year of the “Mystery Object”, the decision has been taken to run another competition for readers at the Library during Michaelmas Term 2014.

In the absence of any more obviously “mysterious” objects (the previous incumbent being a piece of reinforced concrete bent into an interesting shape after being rescued by a former member of staff during a refurbishment project), we have instead decided to link our new competition to a bit of library psychology, and equipment.

The blog below was the inspiration for this year’s adventure:

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To summarise, the author mentions that staplers which have been given a name tend not to be broken as quickly as those which remain nameless, possibly because the users identify with them a little more as objects. With this in mind we have decided to run a “Name the Stapler” competition, having acquired over the summer a large, heavy-duty stapler which we would rather not die too soon. Anyone wishing to read the whole post can find it at: http://tragicoptimist.wordpress.com/2012/11/15/on-the-care-and-feeding-of-academic-library-staplers/

The rules of the competition are simple: find a name for the stapler. Entries can be via the Facebook Page or at the Library Desk, where a suitable receptacle will be found for paper entries.

Entrants must be a member of the University or hold a valid Library card.

The top prize for this year’s competition is a £10 book token, generously donated by Dinah Manisty. There will also be a chocolate-related runner-up prize.

Please refrain from any offensive or obscene suggestions; this is a bit of fun. Anything we deem inappropriate may be reported.

The winner and a runner-up will be announced during 8th Week.

September Headlines

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September at OIL is often the calm before the storm. Before the return of the students and researchers who make the library so much more lively during the winter months, before the chilly weather sets in and the nights begin to lengthen.

This September, however, we have been rather busy. The ongoing reclassification project for the David Reading Room in the Weston Library – now open and looking splendid – has been occupying various members of staff, who have been valiantly rearranging the hastily moved books into their proper Library of Congress order. There is still a way to go, but they already look very smart. Sadly, photographs are not permitted as the architect has requested that no pictures are made available until the Grand Opening next March, so you will have to take our word for it.

Meanwhile at OIL (where photos are permitted), we celebrated Dawn’s 10-year anniversary with an amazing cake:

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(thanks to Dinah Manisty for arranging this, and to Gillian Evison for the champagne!)

Kate has been moving the LC books again, this time into the space which was vacated by the folios when they were shuffled down the library to their current location. She began this small move on one of the days when we were closed for St Giles’ Fair, and was suitably perturbed by the bloodcurdling screams emanating from the rides on the other side of Blackfriars!

The Library reclassification project has been carrying on now that we are no longer doing so work for the Weston materials. We are happy to announce that the totals for the academic year 2013-14 are:

1993 shelfmarks, and a total of 2515 actual items, which reflects the fact that there have been a number of large sets reclassified over the year, including at least one 20 volume set, a couple which numbered around 15 volumes and numerous 10-volume sets, all of which are now to be found in the Library of Congress section. If you have problems finding anything which has moved, as ever, do ask the staff.

So, next comes October! The Library Open Day falls on Friday 10th October this year, and we look forward to meeting our new intake and seeing some old faces.

July News

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As usual, once the vacation gets into full-swing, we have been busy in the library.

Firstly, in collaboration with Professor Sebastian Brock, we have now moved books on Syriac and Armenian subjects which were housed in the Library of Congress section into a new Eastern Christianity Library (ECL) collection in the basement, round the back of the staircase where the Minor Collections materials are still kept. The labels are slightly different – they now have a prefix [ECL] – but otherwise those books which could be borrowed before still will be. If you have problems finding anything do ask the library staff.

Secondly, as part of the ongoing reclassification into Library of Congress of the general collection on the ground floor, the Short Loan “Apply Staff” books which are held in the front office have now been reclassified. This will mean that items which were once in a particular place on a shelf will have moved, but please rest assured that we have not removed anything from the shelf (with the exception of a box containing three audio cassettes which nobody remembered being there in the first place). We think they look much better with their smart new labels! Please check SOLO for updated shelf marks for the Short Loan collection.

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Over the next few weeks staff from OIL will be undertaking more reclassification work, this time for the Oriental materials which are going into the Weston Library. We will post more about this later in the summer.

Finally, on Tuesday 29th July we said a fond goodbye to Andrew Blades, who has been covering Friday afternoons and Saturdays at OIL since 2010, and who worked in various other parts of the Bodleian for a number of years before joining us. Andrew is leaving for an exciting teaching post at the University of Bristol, and we wish him all the best and thank him for his dedicated service.

Announcements for August

The Library will be open as normal over the next month, apart from the August Bank Holiday – we will be CLOSED on Saturday 23rd and Monday 25th. There will be further closures in September for St Giles’ Fair, but we will remind everyone of that nearer the time. Notices will be posted accordingly.

June News and Summer Announcements

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First and foremost, a fond farewell to the last of our departing finalists – and a last ditch plea to those of you who have outstanding fines to please pay them off before you go. While the University is not able to prevent you from graduating because of outstanding library fines, there is still the possibility of repeat offenders being referred to the Proctors, and nobody really wants that.

June has been busy for us for various reasons; as well as the general library busyness of the last few weeks of Exams, we have been refurbishing the staff areas. Dawn and Dinah’s office was redecorated at the end of May and all the staff offices now have nice new desks and other furniture which makes for a far more efficient office environment than the previous ad-hoc arrangement of long planks and filing cabinets.

The upgrade of the door entry system was also an ongoing situation during June, but it appears that most people’s cards are now working on the front and Library doors. We will continue to add orange card-holders to the system manually, as we used to on the old one, but blue cards should work automatically. Anyone experiencing problems may need to get an updated card if theirs is too old for the proximity technology, but do ask us and we will endeavour to help.

Vacation Loans have been in force since the middle of the month, so anything borrowed by members with a normal (i.e. non-staff) membership will be checked out until 14th October (Tuesday of First Week, Michaelmas Term). This will only not apply in the event that a readers’ card expires before this point, in which case the due date will be the card expiry date.

Summer Announcements

There are various changes afoot in the Oriental Libraries this summer. While OIL remains constant – our opening hours are the same as for Term: 0915-1900 during the week and 10-4pm on Saturdays – a great deal of change is taking place elsewhere. The Chinese Studies Library will be moving out of the Clarendon Institute in Walton Street to new accommodations in the Dickson Poon Building in the grounds of St Hugh’s College of Canterbury Road from July; and the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies will be moving into the Clarendon Institute in September, from their current base at Yarnton Manor. The website is here: http://www.ochjs.ac.uk/about/announcement/

The Chinese move in particular does concern OIL, inasmuch as we will be the place for people to return any borrowed CSL books during their period of closure, which begins at the end of Friday 5th July. We do not have a definite opening date for the new  Bodleian K B Chen China Centre Library at present due to the logistical complications of the move, but there should be regular updates on the CSL pages of the website: http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/csl/chinese-studies-library-move.

Meanwhile staff at OIL will be assisting Weston Library colleagues in preparations for the movement of the Oriental materials from the current SCRR at the RSL to the new reading rooms; we will update when we know more details, but this should not affect the general running of the Library during this time.

Otherwise we anticipate a fairly quiet summer – bar the inevitable moving round of the Library of Congress collection into the space vacated by the reclassified items!

 

 

A 2013 retrospective

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Happy New Year!

We ran out of time to do our usual December headlines post at the end of last year, so we thought a quick 2013 retrospective would suffice. We hope everyone had a lovely relaxing break while the library was closed.

2013 saw some interesting developments in the Oriental Institute Library.

We welcomed two new members of staff – Kenan Khazendar joined us at the beginning of the year and Hannie Riley has been working here since November, dealing with our increasing Korean collection; and we were also joined by Gillian Evison, the head of the Bodleian’s Oriental section.

After months of preparation and some quite intrusive building works we saw the official opening of the Window on Korea collection in June, which is proving to be a popular addition to the library. We are pleased to see that the books are being used!

Our new website launched (http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/oil), and at the end of the year this blog moved to the new Bodleian blogs site, which gives us a more streamlined identity within the Bodleian Libraries and also guarantees that there will never be adverts on our blog – a good thing!

Our Social Media presence continues to be a success – the Facebook page is now up to 558 “likes”! The OIL Mystery Object Competition, while not garnering too many entries, was a fun way to get people involved in this side of the Library’s work. We are already thinking of a follow-up for the start of the next academic year, suggestions (within reason) are welcome!

We have also improved our electronic resources provision with the eBrary collection, which has now been online since the start of Michaelmas Term we hope that readers are finding this resource useful.

The reclassification project, mostly involving Kate, who is at the Library 3 afternoons a week, is reaching the end of the BP section. We are pleased to report that, in the period since the start of the Long Vacation 847 volumes, representing 729 shelfmarks, have been done! The reclassified books have been amalgamated into the Library of Congress section (at the back of the library, with the white labels); do ask at the desk if something you are used to finding in the old BP section has vanished from its usual place!

Meanwhile, back to the present, remember that books loaned before Christmas are due back on Tuesday 21st January – that’s the Tuesday of 1st week.

It’s probably also worth mentioning, given the current flooding situation, that we are NOT expecting any problems with book deliveries from Swindon at present, but that we will update via the Facebook page if the situation changes.

November headlines and announcements for December

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OIL has seen a change in our staffing this month, as we welcomed Hannie Riley from the Chinese Studies Library, who is now with us on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, while our own Kenan goes to CSL. Hannie will be responsible for the cataloguing of some of the Korean materials which have come to us as part of the Window on Korea project, as well as working on the desk.

We have had a reasonable response to our Facebook Mystery Object competition, which is now closed for entries. An announcement will come during 8th week as to who has won the top prize of the £10 Blackwell’s voucher, and who has won the runner-up, chocolate related prize. We are able to divulge that someone actually found the correct-ish answer!

We’ve also had a sudden rush of new likes on the FB page, which has taken us to 538, which is amazing! Hopefully we are getting the balance right of not posting too much and spamming everyone’s timelines. Luckily, SOLO has been behaving, so we’ve not been posting every five minutes like we were over the summer…

While we’re on the subject, we should urge people to book for the Research Skills Toolkit session for Orientalists which is on Wednesday 4th December . It’s only a couple of hours and you may find something very useful!

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Looking forward to December, the Library will close for the Christmas holiday on Friday December 20th at 5pm. This is the same day that the rest of the building closes. We re-open on Thursday 2nd January.

Vacation loans for library books start next Monday, 2nd December, and will take you though to the Tuesday of 1st Week of Hilary Term – January 21st. Any renewals made on or after Monday will also take this into account. 

October Headlines and announcements

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October is usually one of our busiest months, made to seem even more so by the stark difference between the beginning of Term and the quiet of the previous few Vacation months.

This year has been no different; Term proper started on the 14th of October, but before that was the excitement of Freshers’ Week, and the OIL Open Day.

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The Open Day was well-attended, but may have suffered somewhat from its placement at the end of a busy week in that not many people stayed on after the initial presentations took place. Members of the Library staff took turns in introducing themselves and giving a brief talk on various aspects of the Library; Dawn Vaux introduced the library itself, Dinah Manisty discussed electronic resources, Emma Mathieson the South Asian collections, Gillian Evison introduced herself as the Bodleian’s Head of the Oriental Section, Minh Chung gave a brief overview of the Window on Korea collection, and Kate Guest told the new readers about the Library’s Social Media presence, while other colleagues endeavoured to get as many new readers’ cards registered as possible.

We also had a special appearance from Tim Kirtley, the Librarian at Wadham College, who talked briefly about that college’s Persian collection, which is open to any Oriental Institute readers who wish to use it upon application. There are forms at the OIL front desk for anyone wishing to apply to use this resource.

After the talks there was some time for new users to get to grips with SOLO, PCAS and other scary library-related acronyms, as well as a presentation on the new Library Assistant resource in the office, and some lovely Middle Eastern sweets courtesy of Dinah. We hope that our new readers found the session useful and informative, and are, as ever, very happy to answer any questions that readers bring to us.

Meanwhile, in other news:

For those of you who may have missed the original posts, there is now a way of paying library fines online via the University’s shopping pages http://www.oxforduniversitystores.co.uk/browse/product.asp?compid=1&modid=1&catid=2049. We hope that this will be popular with readers.

On Wednesday 30th October, we had a visit from a Korean television crew who were reporting on the Window on Korea section in the basement, which is sponsored by the National Library of Korea, and is now one of the biggest Korean studies collections in the UK.

Finally, and just because we can, another shameless plug for our Mystery Object Competition, which can be found on our Facebook Page. The object itself is near the office on top of the card index, if anyone wishes to have a look at it in the flesh (well, concrete) as it were. Keep those entries coming in!

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August headlines and reminders for September

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Hello!

As usual, this time of year has not been one where news has been particularly forthcoming, given that the Library is very quiet  with only a small number of readers, largely postgraduate students and visiting scholars.

Accordingly, a look back on the Facebook page shows most of the activity around the announcement of the birth of Lidio’s daughter Rosa at the beginning of the month! Other than that, our Facebook content has mostly consisted of alerts that SOLO – which has been undergoing some work this summer – has been up, or down, or up again, but at least one regular reader has told us that this is actually really useful, so we will continue to use the Facebook page to keep everyone informed if there are any further problems.

Kate has been valiantly reclassifying the BP section, as mentioned in last month’s post, and is happy to announce that she has reclassified 427 books – representing 379 shelfmarks – since counting began at the beginning of July.

For the next couple of weeks there will be a small book-move taking place, with the space made by the last few months of reclassification re-distributed, so we apologise for any banging around which might happen . We’ll try to keep it down, but sometimes books fall over without warning and the resounding “BONG!!” from the metal shelves is rather loud.

A quick reminder about some closures coming up:  we are closed next Saturday, Monday and Tuesday (September 7th – 10th) for St Giles Fair. Reminders will be posted on Facebook nearer the time.