I cycle into work and arrive to the Weston Library just before 9am. I collect my keys from the staff key cabinet, which luckily (and unusually) recognises my fingerprint after only one attempt. I head up to the staff common room to refill my water bottle and unlock my shared office as I’m the first in.
9:05
Today is a Tuesday, which means it’s a web archiving-focused day. I check the web archiving email alias to make sure we don’t have any new website nominations. We don’t, so I fire up our Bodleian Libraries Web Archive quality assurance tracker and log into Archive-it, our web archiving platform. As it’s nearing the end of the month, we are nearly done with the quality assurance process. I finish checking the quarterly crawls of sites in our University of Oxford collection, and luckily the automated ‘web crawler’ that navigates through sites and captures snapshots of pages did so pretty successfully! I ‘patch’ in a few API URLs on a site’s staff page that the crawler missed and then move on to checking our crawl of the university’s independent student newspaper. I notice that the website has recently updated its layout, but luckily this doesn’t seem to have affected the crawl quality. While I’m waiting for more pages to load in the archived version of the website, I read a profile of the new university chancellor.
10:30
I take my daily coffee break with some of my colleagues. Most days we spend it on one of the couches in the staff common room, but today we decide to treat ourselves at the reader café. One of my colleagues had a meeting yesterday with the daughter of the woman whose archive she is cataloguing, so I ask her how it went. She tells me the meeting went well, and it was especially helpful to have her look at some photographs and identify the people in them. Then we get distracted and discuss our favourite Hollywood classic films.
11:05
I head back to my office and log back into Archive-it. The Archive-it web crawler failed on a few different websites at the beginning of the month, and the recrawls I set are the last piece of QA work to finish. I double check the ‘seed scoping rules’ I tweaked to try to direct the crawler to the correct URLs, and then get to work checking that the website captures aren’t missing any pages or content that is meant to be there. The seed scoping rules worked!
13:00
Time for my lunch break. Today it is a bit grey, so instead of taking my lunch outside, I head down to the Weston’s Visiting Scholars Centre, which allows food but is usually a bit quieter than the staff common room. I eat while working on a module for my Aberystwyth University Archives and Records Management diploma. I read about the ‘More Product, Less Process’ theory of archival processing.
14:00
Even though Tuesdays are normally devoted to web archiving, I have a chance to continue working on one of the Africa & Commonwealth collection print catalogues that I am converting to a digital format, since my fellow trainee and I have finished our web archiving work. I am looking forward to attending a training about EDI in libraries tomorrow afternoon as part of the Oxford Libraries Graduate Trainee Programme, but this means that I’ll miss a half day of A&C ‘retrocon’ work, so I am grateful for the extra afternoon. I’m currently converting a collection of microfilm of records from the National Library of Zimbabwe, which is a bit unusual. These microfilm reels are on the open shelves, and the digital catalogue will need to reflect this. This means I get to flex my technical muscles and write the catalogue directly in EAD/XML, a standardized markup language for archival description, as that is the easiest way to add access restriction metadata. In the printed catalogue, I notice a handwritten note that suggests some of the printed reel numbers don’t match up to the reel numbers listed on the microfilm. I email the senior archivist responsible for the collection to ask for clarification and start working on a different catalogue conversion instead.
15:05
I pick a catalogue of the archive of a Colonial Office administrator who worked in Egypt, modern-day Lesotho, and South Africa in the 1870s–1890s. This catalogue is much more straight-forward, which means I can quickly go through my typical process of cleaning and reformatting text data using OpenRefine and arranging it in an Excel import template from ArchivesSpace, our archives information management platform. Eventually, I run into a challenge: there is a discrepancy in the number of diaries the catalogue lists and the number of years that correspond to them. The diaries are boxed individually—I’ll have to figure this out so readers can order the correct material!
16:15
I am grateful for the chance to stretch my legs and head downstairs to the stacks to check on the diaries, but I have to hustle so I don’t get locked in at the end of the day! Despite the time crunch, I spend a bit of time looking at the advertisements for different Victorian medicines printed in some of the diaries. I am intrigued by “Eno’s ‘Fruit Salt’”, which “PREVENTS any OVER-ACID state of the BLOOD”.
16:40
I make it out of the stacks on time and head back upstairs to my office. I quickly transfer my paper notes about which diaries of which years are in which boxes into my spreadsheet, but I’ll have to finish the rest of the catalogue conversion tomorrow. I shut down my computer, grab my backpack and bike helmet, and head out the door at 5pm.
On March 18, 2025, the Bodleian Libraries invited representatives from the United States Library of Congress to the Weston Library in celebration of 10 years of the Weston Library and the 175th anniversary of the Public Libraries Act. As an American working at the Weston, I was excited for the opportunity to hear some familiar accents and learn more about how the national library of the U.S. was both coping with and responding to great political upheaval.
The impact of the aforementioned upheaval was immediately apparent on the day: Dr. Carla Hayden, the Librarian of Congress, was due to speak to Bodleian and Oxfordshire County Council Library staff in the morning, but had to remain in D.C. due to the shifting political situation. Roswell Encina, the Chief Communications Officer of the Library, spoke in her place. Encina discussed the “balancing act” required to ensure the Library fulfils its obligations as both the library and research service for Congress and as a library for the American people. He highlighted the ‘Library for You’ campaign that has sought to make the Library more inviting and accessible for the public through both in-person events and exhibitions and digital and crowdsourced projects.
The audience was particularly interested in hearing about how the Library is handling the targeting of libraries in “culture wars,” such as calls for libraries to ban books telling LGBTQ+ and Black American stories―a phenomenon that is also growing in the U.K. Encina spoke about the need to let “books battle it out on the shelves,” rather than restricting what books people have access to. He also highlighted the role of libraries in the fight against “innovative” misinformation by making resources accessible and teaching information literacy, as well as by upholding citation standards and “fixing” information by providing access to persistent identifiers, such as DOIs.
Additionally, Encina spoke about the relationships the Library is trying to build with other libraries and archives globally, including a collaborative exhibition with the Royal Archives in celebration of the 250th Anniversary of the U.S. Also a part of this conversation, he mentioned an effort by the Library of Congress to digitize all public domain Haitian legal publications (see p.969) following the devastating earthquake in 2010 that wiped out the country’s parliamentary library. This struck me amidst the news breaking about cuts to USAID. As a nonpartisan entity, I wonder, would the Library of Congress have the political capital (or resources) to do something like this again in a time of growing American isolationism? Encina seemed hopeful.
In the evening, Dr. Hayden virtually joined a panel alongside Encina, Bodley’s Librarian Richard Ovenden, and other library leaders from the U.K.―Amina Shah, the National Librarian of Scotland, and Neil MacInnes, the Head of Libraries for Manchester City Council. In her keynote, Hayden spoke about libraries having a “central role in protecting civil liberties” by providing access to resources and information, as well as the ways that libraries have extended their service provisions to meet broadening user needs.
The panelists’ conversation highlighted the advocacy skills needed to challenge outdated notions of what a library is and does, especially to political leaders and funders. This came on the back of a March 14 executive order from the Trump administration that mandated the elimination of the Institute of Museum and Library Services, an independent federal agency that is a major source of grant funding for libraries in the U.S. (All IMLS staff have now been placed on administrative leave.) An audience member challenged the panelists with the question of what they would say to Prime Minister Keir Starmer or President Donald Trump, were they present at the discussion. Dr. Hayden succinctly responded, “Be open-minded about the impact of libraries.”
The conversations about preserving access to information caused me to reflect on my own work. Part of what I do as a graduate trainee digital archivist is manage the Bodleian Libraries Web Archive. Just a few weeks after the Trump administration took power on January 20, 2025, changes to U.S. government websites to remove so-called “woke” language and deletions of entire pages hit the headlines. This is continuing to happen as the Trump administration recently altered the government’s COVID website, which originally provided public health information but now promotes the argument that the virus spread due to a “lab leak” (this theory is unproven). No U.S. government sites are in scope for the BLWA (though many are for the Internet Archive), but this was an important reminder of the challenge of digital decay of the internet, and how it is sometimes deliberate and harmful. The BLWA preserves at least one corner of the internet, and I hope it proves useful to future researchers when so much else of the web is likely to be lost. As a trainee (and future) archivist, I hope I can play a small role in making information accessible when it is clearly under attack.
Classification systems – we all know them (even if our readers don’t), we love them, we dislike them, we use them every day. Many Bodleian Libraries use Library of Congress (LCC), but it’s not uncommon, especially for College Libraries, to have their own classification systems (Jesus College being no exception). These in-house systems can be a pain – for example, we do not have a General Chemistry section and nobody knows why – but they offer a lot of flexibility to adjust to both your readers and your collection. Sometimes, of course, that means that shifting, updating or reclassifying of the books is required, whether for the sake of accuracy, facilitating easier browsing or improving outdated elements of the collection. As part of our ongoing effort to make the library more accessible, diverse and inclusive, I have recently undertaken several small reclassification projects and am in the process of working my way through more.
Before I get into the thick of it, here is an example of our classification system at work: if I were to write a book about music culture in East Germany, it would be shelved under LG7 LAM. The last three letters denote my surname (Lammers), the first three digits the location. L is Jesus’ letter for History, LG for German History, and LG7 for German history 1945-89. While some sections have fewer initial digits, the underlying concept remains the same.
Project 1: Linguistics
Books on a free desk space to ensure continued borrowing access while reclassifying!
This was the biggest and first classification project I undertook. Until a few weeks ago, all of our general linguistics and translation books lived in NE2. As you may be able to deduce, N is our Language section, with NE being English Language. Not only is the housing of general linguistics books in this particular section confusing, it also posits English as the default language. Given the history of the British Empire and the prevalence of English to the point of eradicating and replacing others’ languages, this arrangement is highly problematic in its implications.
To remedy this, I browsed NE2 and pulled out all books that were not primarily about the linguistics of the English language, collected them on my desk until I was thoroughly walled in before changing their shelfmarks in ALMA, the software behind SOLO. I also changed the shelfmarks on the books’ title pages and went through an entire roll of label protectors and many sheets of stickers for relabelling before shuffling around NE1 and reshelving them. The new section is now N2, Linguistics, and NE2 remains English Language and Linguistics only.
Project 2: African History
The second project was much smaller in scope. Our African history section, comprised of around 60 books, had all been living in just one shelfmark: LV1. This was strange since, usually, when sections are not subdivided, they do not contain numbers. In itself that doesn’t necessarily create a problem, but it did lead to several situations where books were mistakenly classified as LV instead of LV1. The idea of tidying that up and creating subsections had been floated a while back, and I finally decided to go ahead with it.
In addition to our LV1 confusion, there were two other reasons for overhauling the African history section; firstly, there were enough books on a variety of topics (from Nelson Mandela to medieval Egypt and nineteenth-century colonialism) that having separate sections would make browsing easier and thereby improve accessibility and usability for our students. Secondly, expanding the level of detail for underdeveloped subsections is an important part of reducing the impact of past colonialism on our libraries.
Subdividing the section means that our classification system acknowledges the breadth and depth of African history, even if is smaller than, for example, our British History collection. The relative sizes of our collection of course correspond to the subjects taught at Oxford, but by affording the same care and attention to both, we are ensuring that we do not maintain an approach to African history that perpetuates colonial ways of thinking about African history. Colonial attitudes, by virtue of inherent inferiority/superiority dynamics, disregard and erase the diversity of African histories, cultures, lifestyles, beliefs, and more.
There is, however, an important caveat: if we had a mere ten books in the section, subdivisions may be superfluous. This is because they serve a primary purpose of discoverability, and this is already given if there is a small number of items to begin with. As such, our African history section may have once been too small to warrant the divisions but, as it continues to grow, it is vital to pay attention to when a pragmatic choice of action becomes a politically charged, problematic choice of inaction.
Unlike N2, where the new section already had a clear name and purpose when I started, for LV I needed to start with researching which subdividing system would work best for our collection and our students. While most of our history sections are divided by time period, a geographical division may have made more sense depending on the items we have. With an ALMA-generated list of everything classified under LV1, I got to sorting them into the two possible subdivision styles. I consulted Wikipedia for broad, sensible chronological divisions that would allow for some flexibility but adhere to the general pattern of historical developments on the African continent. I soon noticed that a system based on geographical region would end up looking extremely skewed, therefore rendering the potential for easier browsing moot, and so I settled on a time-period-based reclassification. The time periods I chose to use as subdivisions allow for growth and future changes within the collection. Our new African history classification now looks as follows:
LV1 – General LV2 – to 1884 LV3 – 1884-1960 LV4 – 1960-
Currently we don’t have any books on African history prior to the medieval period (except for what is in Ancient History), but this system allows for an integration of these should we acquire them!
Project 3: History of Gender and Sexuality
This project was entirely the spontaneous work of an afternoon in week six of Hilary, which also happened to be during LGBTQ+ History Month. I was in the process of assigning a shelfmark to a new acquisition (The Shape of Sex: Nonbinary Gender from Genesis to the Renaissance by Leah DeVun), and, as tends to be the case, multiple options appeared as appropriate: LB, for European history, L1, for General history, or S7, for Family and Women’s Studies, which is where lots of our queer books live. I opted for L1, my manager for LB, and so I wondered out loud if we had enough books on historical aspects of gender and sexuality to just create an entire subsection. At that point we had L1 for General history and L2 for History of science, and lots of lettered subdivisions by geographical region. After receiving the go-ahead to do some investigating, I used my tried-and-true method of browsing the shelves and also did several subject searches on SOLO, limited to the holdings of Jesus College Library. I came up with about 30-40 books which were worth grouping together. I pulled books from General History and Family and Women’s Studies but left any period-specific books in their original subsections. As you can probably predict, I then went into ALMA records, crossed out old shelfmarks and stickered plenty. As for the name of the new section, I landed on “History of Gender and Sexuality” after consulting with both my manager and my fellow trainees. While I really loved the idea of its shelfmark being LQ, all the other lettered subsections in L (History) denote geographical regions rather than discipline related subtopics, so we agreed on L3 to reduce the potential for confusion.
The inclusion of history of gender and sexuality as a subcategory serves as a useful pointer for those interested in queer history and related subjects and highlights queerness explicitly rather than letting it disappear in the depths of General History. That is not to say that everything in general history is automatically less important, but a subject like History of Gender and Sexuality is so young that its own shelfmark can serve as a pointed nod that we value and appreciate this part of the collection.
Projects to come: Asian history and 21st century philosophy
Me with some of the stacks of books that lived on my desk.
Our Asian history section, containing approximately 275 books, could definitely improve in terms of browsability, consistency and the amount of outdated and/or problematic language used. I am currently working out what a good alternative would be that both serves our students needs and does our collections justice. I am also soon going to be taking a look at the contents of Q14, which is our later 20th century philosophy section and bursting at the seams. We don’t yet have a separate 21st century philosophy section, even though some of what is housed in Q14 may be better suited to living there. So, if you find yourself in Jesus College Library and Q15 does not yet exist, please feel free to hound me about it!
Something unusual about all of these classification projects is that I did them all in the middle of Hilary term. The regular order of procedure for any kind of reclassification project is to wait until the end of term, so that the amount of disturbance is kept to a minimum and that the maximum amount of books are back on the shelves. However, since many of the books could have been checked out and therefore not included in my reclassifying adventures, I take great care to pull out all potential candidates out of the returned books pile to subject them to the same procedures so that the end result can be a uniform, logical classification system.
While I know that many of our students never really become aware of our classification system as A Thing underlying the entire library, and deal with it only in the context of finding a specific book they already know the title of, these reclassification endeavours are important – not only for addressing and reducing the impact of colonialism, but also for inclusion efforts, for improved usability of the collection, and most importantly, for the case that a student does look at our system, and is not taken aback by an inherited, flawed classification system that is long overdue an update. Making people feel welcome and that they and their history belong in the library is crucial. While our material focuses on providing study material, it is also nonetheless meant to be a place where students feel welcome and seen.
March is Women’s History Month and International Women’s Day fell on 8th March, which means that it’s time for another book display update from the Trainees! In this post, you will find information all about the book displays that were put together in the Social Science Library, New College Library, Taylor Institution Library, and the Sainsbury Library at Saïd Business School.
Happy Women’s History Month! We do love our book displays here at the SSL and this month is definitely no exception. For this display, I was able to collaborate with a few colleagues to create an extensive two-part book display.
While creating this display, I decided to set myself a challenge. I wanted to include at least one book on the subject of at least one woman from as many of the subjects that are housed in the Social Science Library as possible. This was definitely not an easy feat as we house a wide variety of subjects such as Politics & International Relations, Economics, Anthropology, Geography, International Development, Refugee and Forced Migration Studies, Sociology and more. For the other section of the display, one of my colleagues compiled the books on women’s history more generally.
In deciding to try and create a display with women from each of our subjects, I was able to explore new historical figures that I had not been previously aware of. Some of the subject librarians in the SSL were kind enough to give me some suggestions of women to research and I added many of them to the display. Here is the list of books about these women that were included in this display with the name of the women written in bold:
The theme for International Woman’s Day this year was Accelerate Action. Although I did not follow a specific theme for this display, the inclusion of women from a wide range of disciplines was of paramount importance to me, as each of these women have been a notable force for change in their fields. Some of these women you may have heard of, some you may be unfamiliar with. Nevertheless, I would highly recommend that you look into the impact that they have made on their fields. If you would like more information on the book display, I also wrote a blog post for the Social Science Library Blog.
Jess Pascal – New College Library
For this year’s Women’s History Month display, I first checked out last year’s display so I could avoid repeating too many books and give others a chance in the limelight, though some were just too good to miss! In the same spirit, I drew on as many interesting acquisitions I’ve seen recently as possible – this is an advantage of processing the majority of new books that come into the library. A particularly useful source of new books about women’s history was the Warden’s kind donation of all the books longlisted for the Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize for non-fiction books, which is associated with New College. This included several titles on women’s history, including The Waiting Game and Shakespeare’s Sisters.
Fortunately, there were a lot of books to choose from on women’s history – the hardest part of this display was getting my initial longlist down to just 12 books! In line with the UN’s theme for International Women’s Day this year, ‘For ALL women and girls: Rights. Equality. Empowerment’, I aimed to represent a diverse cross-section of women’s history within the scope of the library’s collections. Nevertheless, the display has a bias towards English women, as they are most represented in the library here at New College to align with teaching priorities.
Books used:
Ackelsberg, Martha A. Free Women of Spain: Anarchism and the Struggle for the Emancipation of Women. AK Press, 2005.
Briggs, Robin. The Witches of Lorraine. Oxford University Press, 2007.
Burke, Jill. How to Be a Renaissance Woman: The Untold History of Beauty and Female Creativity. Profile Books Ltd, 2023.
Clark, Nicola. The Waiting Game: The Untold Story of the Women Who Served the Tudor Queens. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2024.
Ferry, Georgina. Dorothy Hodgkin: A Life. Granta Books, 1998.
Gregory, Philippa. Normal Women: 900 Years of Making History. William Collins, 2023.
Jenkins, Lyndsey. Sisters and Sisterhood: The Kenney Family, Class, and Suffrage, 1890-1965. Oxford University Press, 2021.
Romney, Rebecca. Jane Austen’s Bookshelf: The Women Writers Who Shaped a Legend. Ithaka, 2025.
Rupp, Leila J. Worlds of Women: The Making of an International Women’s Movement. Princeton University Press, 1997.
Saunders, Corinne J., and Diane Watt, editors. Women and Medieval Literary Culture: From the Early Middle Ages to the Fifteenth Century. Cambridge University Press, 2023.
Simone, Nina, and Stephen Cleary. I Put a Spell on You: The Autobiography of Nina Simone. Second Da Capo Press edition., Da Capo Press, 2003.
Targoff, Ramie. Shakespeare’s Sisters: Four Women Who Wrote the Renaissance. riverrun, 2024.
Lindsey Evans – Taylor Institution Library
For our Women’s History Month display, I was keen to showcase books and films about women’s achievements across the breadth of cultures represented in the library’s collections. Since the Taylor covers a very wide range of modern European languages – from French to Frisian, Spanish to Yiddish – this gave plenty of scope. Almost a daunting amount of scope, in fact.
The finished displays (with one item taken away by an interested reader 😊 )
For the broad topic of ‘women’, it would have been impractical to canvas everyone in the team of subject librarians for recommendations. (Also this month we have a dedicated St Patrick’s Day display going up, which has been curated by our Celtic subject librarian, Janet.) And so I began a solo process with SOLO, the catalogue, to narrow things down.
Initially my thinking went to works by, or about, celebrated female authors and feminist theorists, past and present. (“One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman,” wrote Simone de Beauvoir, on whom there are several hundreds of books in the Taylor, for example.) Another consideration in my mind, however, was to highlight the impact of women whose voices might be less well known. In the end, I settled on a range of titles documenting women’s contributions to art, politics or society at different points in history and in various language communities. These women include crofters in the Hebrides, Welsh women shaking up the status quo, powerful noblewomen of 18th-19th century Russia, female creators in 19th century Germany, and sisters (in the literal sense of blood relatives) who were active in Irish public life over the ages.
With the Taylor being home to a large DVD collection, and even a bookable space for library users to watch them in, it’s also great to be able to publicise films as well as books on a theme. I chose a sample of films by foreign-language female directors to highlight women’s contribution to cinema. I aimed to include some directors who are less familiar to Western audiences, so alongside the French filmmakers Agnès Varda, Céline Sciamma and Claire Denis, we also find the Czech director Věra Chytilová, Ann Hui of Hong Kong and the Saudi Arabian director Haifaa al-Mansour.
Charlotte Edwards – Sainsbury Library
As the Sainsbury Library is embedded into Saïd Business School , I was able to see the celebrations for International Women’s Day extend through the whole school. We had a women’s day themed social, the catering team put together a great cake display (photographed by my supervisor) and there was a book talk by Iris Bohnet and Siri Chilazi on their new book Make Work Fair: Data-Driven Design for Real Results (which I of course included in our book display in the library!).
More focussed in the library, I also gave the Sainsbury Library Women in Business Libguide a refresh, including some of the books I found as part of my book display research.
It was nice to be able to highlight some physical books unique to the Sainsbury Library:
A book talk was hosted at Saïd Business School on 10th March when Bohnet and Chilazi presented their evidence-based approach to create fairness in the workplace by providing an even playing field. In line with this year’s theme, Accelerating Action, they present ‘Actionable solutions’ to establish this fairness in the workplace.
Appearing on our Inclusive Leadership reading list, I discovered this book by a colleague’s recommendation. This comic covers the sometimes-frustrating reality of being a woman in a male dominated workplace in an engaging, easily digestible form. And yes, I ended up reading this in one sitting.
The Lockdown Lowdown: Graphic Narrative for Viral Times are graphic narratives written by a diverse range of artists during the first COVID lockdown in 2020. The series highlights the strange experiences and emotions felt during this time. This special edition of The Lockdown Lowdown demonstrates how women experienced the pandemic differently to men, both negatively and positively. In a textbook-heavy library it is exciting and refreshing to find other narrative forms such as The Lockdown Lowdown and The Mental Load.
This book is based on research about Business but is formatted as a novel. Ho creates a narrative intended to begin a conversation between people from friends and family to co-workers. The variety of characters across different genders and ages aids in giving readers new perspectives on the issue as to why it is so hard to close the gender gap.
When browsing our shelves in the Annexe, I came across this book and admittedly loved the title. Chamorro-Premuzic explores why competent women and men who don’t fit the stereotypical leader profile (many organizations identify leadership with negative qualities like overconfidence and narcissism) are passed over for leadership roles. And the negative impact of this. Chamorro-Premuzic explains what really makes a leader and how new systems could rectify having the wrong people in charge.
Aimed at students, researchers, practitioners and policymakers, this book presents research coming from the International Development Research Centre’s (IDRC) Growth and Economic Opportunities for Women (GrOW) programme. The research covers topics such as unpaid domestic work and childcare, the influence of social and cultural norms that prevent women participating in better paid economic sectors and more in the Global South.
When researching for books I tried to keep my focus very Business and Management based, drawing on some books that are on reading lists for Inclusive Leadership. As World Book Day was happening whilst I was compiling my display (for which we had another book display) I also thought to include some more general feminist literature, so some of my book display picks may already be known to you, but hopefully there is something new here as well.
Many of us trainees are tasked with, or collaborate with, colleagues on creating book displays in our libraries. This gives us a chance to further explore our libraries’ collections and conduct research on topics that we are passionate about, or topics which are entirely new to us! The month of February is LGBT+ History Month and this year’s theme is Activism and Social Change. In this blog post, three trainees (from the Social Science Library, New College Library and the English Faculty Library) talk about LGBT+ History Month in their libraries, the process of creating displays, and the relevant titles which they are currently exhibiting.
If you would like to learn more about LGBT+ History Month, head on over to the Schools Out! website for more details. There has been a great deal of work done on the accumulation of LGBT+ history resources in recent years. The History Faculty Library held a LGBT+ history hackathon in November 2024 with the aim of crowdsourcing information and resources on LGBT+ history. One of our 2024/25 trainees was involved in the organisation of this event.
Social Science Library – Gia Simmons
Hello again from Manor Road! It’s Gia here, the SSL trainee. One of the most interesting and creative parts of my job is the work that I get to put into the book displays. Luckily for me, we do a lot in the SSL! Every few weeks I get to update our new book display with both Legal Deposit and Research acquisitions as well as our eBook displays. In addition to this, around once a month, we put together a special pop-up display in the SSL. These displays generally surround a particular theme, event or the time of year. This month is LGBT+ history month, so I got to collaborate with one of my colleagues to create a display that fell into the categories of this year’s theme, which was Activism and Social Change. The theme for the month is decided by the founding organisation, Schools Out!
A colleague of mine in the SSL is the EDI Co-ordinator for Academic Library Services. Once I had come up with my very extensive list of items that I could include in this display, she very kindly helped me to narrow down the resources that I had accumulated throughout my search. Here are the books that were included in the display:
Sometimes, there are multiple displays happening in the SSL at once. We are very lucky that we have the space for them all! The other book display that took place at the start of February was Green Action Week.
By curating these book display, I not only get to become more familiar with the collection in my library, but I also get to show off the wide range of resources that the SSL and the wider Bodleian collection has to offer.
Furthermore, I created a suggestion booklet to be included in the display. This allows readers to indicate books on LGBT+ history to us which are important to them and also gives them the opportunity to suggest something for the library to purchase that we may not have in our collection. We also included this call for suggestions on the blog post that I wrote for the SSL blog.
We’ll see you next month with our Women’s History Month display!
New College Library – Jess Pascal
Never one to shy away from a themed book display, this month I’ve put one together for LGBT+ History Month. Having a smaller library collection to work with, I wasn’t able to stick closely to the theme of Activism and Social Change, however, I selected as many books as possible relating to this theme, such as We are everywhere: protest, power, and pride in the history of Queer Liberation. I also put the most relevant books at the top of the display, as these will be the most visible. Searching for titles to include in this display was relatively easy, as books about gender and sexuality are grouped together in New College library’s in-house classification system under the fairly new shelfmark Q. This meant I could go to that section and browse for the appropriate books. I aimed to incorporate as much variety as possible; this meant including various identities under the queer umbrella as well as differing geographical locations and time periods to showcase the diversity and extent of the queer community. With this in mind, I designed the label for the display around the progress pride flag and included a variety of flags representing queer identities that aren’t yet consistently included in books about LGBT+ history. As always, the final step is to publicise the display here and on our social media, reminding people that these books are there to be read!
Whilst the English Faculty Library does not have a designated LGBT+ History Month display like some other libraries do this year, we are, of course, still celebrating in style. Each year, for both LGBT+ History Month (February) and Pride Month (June), the library dons its most colourful finery (various pride flags) and doesn’t it look lovely! Furthermore, our current display (curated by yours truly) is particularly topical and refers to one of the most famous queer books to be banned: The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall (1928).
The display is titled “TO BE DESTROYED:” The Legal History of Book Censorship in the UK and it is essentially a (mostly) complete timeline of the major events/publications that resulted in the creation of the 1959 Obscene Publications Act. This piece of legislation, which is still in use today, took huge steps in reforming previous laws aimed at curbing the publication, sale, and distribution of material deemed to be obscene and corruptive. In numerous instances, these historic laws resulted in the censorship of an array of queer literature such as that of Radclyffe Hall.
Whilst her book was unfortunately banned until after her death, Hall’s case was a landmark one in showcasing the frustration of censorship laws of the time and the need for change; as such, this year’s LGBT+ History Month theme (Activism and Social Change) is especially relevant. Wan writes that “Norman Birkett, the defence lawyer, had assembled a formidable group of witnesses, including E.M. Forster, Desmond McCarthy (the editor of Life and Letters), Leonard and Virginia Woolf, [and] Vita Sackville-West” (150) to defend the novel and oppose censorship. Most of these figures were queer creatives, and all were members of The Bloomsbury Group – an influential artistic social circle of the early twentieth century. The obscenity trial which took place received a huge amount of publicity and consequently, Hall’s status as a lesbian icon was firmly cemented. In many ways, Hall’s trial also led to wider exposure to this so-called ‘obscene’ material, thus, having the opposite of the intended effect.
Changes to obscenity laws would only come about in 1959 after much legal back and forth. To find out more about this, and Radclyffe Hall’s case, head on over to our own blog site here for a more in-depth view. Additionally, please do pop into the EFL for a look at the display – it covers almost 600 years of a long, complex history so it’s not one to be missed!
*It is important to note that, whilst Radclyffe Hall can indeed be viewed as a courageous advocate for social change, her personal politics can divide opinion. To understand more about her life, I would recommend listening to the Bad Gays podcast featuring Jana Funke, Professor of Modern Literature and Sexuality Studies at Exeter University. The link to the episode can be found here!*
Works Cited
Wan, M. (2016). “The Well of Loneliness trials: lesbianism and the return of the repressed.” Masculinity and the Trials of Modern Fiction, Routledge, 2018, pp. 138-170.
Since we’re not beholden to specific opening/closing times at Osney One, we have a little more control over what time we choose to come into work. I usually aim to get in for an 8 o’clock start, but I could theoretically come in at 10 o’clock if I so wanted.
08:00 – Work begins!
Thursdays are special days in English Cataloguing, as they’re when we dismantle our Virtual Book Display (VBD) to send the current week’s Legal Deposit books to their new homes. It can be a bit of a fiddly process to sort out the different categories of books, but since this week’s VBD is quite small it shouldn’t take too long. First up are the Shared Cataloguing Programme books, which need to be given to specific cataloguers. I pick them off the shelf, put them onto their trolley, and wheel them over to their new overlords.
08:10 – Picking out books
Next up in the process are the books picked by external libraries. As they need to be sent away as soon as possible, I pick them off the shelf, arrange them by library, and change their assigned locations via an immensely helpful spreadsheet. I then take them down to the post room, place them all into the appropriate boxes, and bid them farewell.
08:35 – More picking out books…
After finishing with those books, I pick out the remaining books that have been chosen for reading rooms. A few of them can be sent directly to their new homes, so I hand them to a colleague to alter their location in our records. I place the rest of them on the priorities shelf so that they can be catalogued and sent away as fast as possible.
08:55 – Even more picking out books…
Sometimes we get books that are specialised enough that they need a particular cataloguer to handle them, but as none fall into that category this week, I move on to the X Material. Sadly, this is not an off-brand superhero team, but the name we use for non-academic legal deposit books. After picking them off the shelf, I put them onto a trolley, wheel them over to my desk, and use the previously-mentioned spreadsheet to begin the process of sending them to the Central Storage Facility (CSF).
09:10 – The end of the VBD
At this point, all the rest of the books on the VBD shelves are destined for the CSF. Some can be sent there right away, so I count them, add them to a specific trolley, and wash my hands of them. I put the remaining books onto yet another trolley and wheel them over to my desk, changing their records to reflect the fact that they will remain in our backlog for the foreseeable future. Thus, the VBD is defeated and I can move on with the rest of my day.
9:45 – Cataloguing
Since I’ve finally finished with the VBD, I get on with some good old cataloguing. It’s become easier over time, but every couple of records I’ll find something strange and have to ask my colleagues for some advice. Today’s main issue is an ISBN in a downloaded record that seemingly only exists on Amazon Japan. After taking a moment to marvel at how someone even found it, I cause a bit of debate amongst my colleagues by asking whether or not the ISBN should be coded as being invalid.
13:00 – Lunch
One of the major perks of working out in Osney One is the fact that we sit right in the fork of a river and get to enjoy all the associated flora and fauna. Today, as it’s warm enough that I can sit outside without turning to ice, I grab my sandwiches, wrap up warm, and skedaddle over to our riverside patio to engage in my daily ritual of staring at the water while I eat.
13:30 – Classification
As my colleagues are terrifyingly efficient, many of the books destined for the Art, Archaeology and Ancient World Library are already awaiting classification when I return from my lunch break. As these books need to be classified according to an in-house scheme, I use a folder of shelfmarks to determine which location would best suit each book before assigning them their fate.
14:10 – Back to cataloguing
Since there are no other major tasks that need doing today, I spend the rest of the afternoon doing some more cataloguing. I get extremely distracted looking at an old auction catalogue at one point, but that’s par for the course in this job.
16:00 – Home time!
Like the time I choose to arrive, the time I choose to leave at the end of the day is also quite flexible – so long as I do my contracted hours of work, of course. I could choose to stay a little later to accrue some flexi, but I can feel my new game crying out for attention – and who am I to deny it? I say goodbye to my colleagues, sign out, and begin my journey home.
Since we as trainees get the chance to visit many libraries, and spend a lot of time in them day-to-day, I thought I would introduce to you a different kind of library today: The Library of Lost Books. Like the name suggests, it’s not so much a physical space (anymore) but rather a virtual collection of book titles and their locations around the world that once used to be housed together in the Library of the Higher Institute for Jewish Studies in Berlin.
Founded in 1872 the Institute was one of the leading liberal rabbinic seminaries in its time, and shaped liberal Judaism in Germany and, through its students, around the world. Rabbis like Dr. Rabbi Leo Baeck and the first female rabbi Regina Jonas studied here. But the Institute also functioned as a social space and as a place of study for those more interested in Jewish Studies without rabbinical ordination. As a flourishing centre of Jewish life and study, the library, led by Jenny Wilde, became one of the world’s most important Jewish libraries, collecting approximately 60,000 titles on Jewish history and culture in at least six different languages. After 1933, the rise of the NSDAP and their repressive measures against Jewish individuals meant that the Institute, seemingly paradoxically, initially flourished as a centre of Jewish life and knowledge. Donations of private collections from those fleeing and the closure of two prominent rabbinical seminaries meant that the library holdings and student body started growing rapidly. It also expanded to secular education and holdings when Jewish enrolments at university and school were capped at 5% in 1933, and finally altogether banned from teaching or studying at German universities in 1938. This is not to say that this continued indefinitely – many fled, were imprisoned or deported, especially after the beginning of the Second World War. By 1942 the classes that the Institute was able to offer were only a fraction of what they once had been.
Jewish prisoners cataloguing and sorting inside a depot for Jewish books – a form of intellectual forced labour.
Because the Institute’s staff, including their librarian, knew that they held valuable, rare books and that Nazis sought to utilise Jewish books to justify their repressive, antisemitic policies or destroy them altogether, they successfully rescued several smaller collections and books by smuggling them out of the country in private collections of people with non-German passports. However, many books remained in the library until its forced closure in 1942. The library’s collection was then transferred to the Reich Security Main Office, where a “Jewish Library” had been set up in 1939 that held all seized items from Jewish libraries all over Germany. It is estimated that the total of the books held there was 2-3 million. Due to the threat of bombing, many of the books were packed into storage in 1943 and distributed to depots all over German-occupied territory; especially, Germany, Poland, and the Czech Republic. Jewish prisoners, including Jenny Wilde, were forced to catalogue, sort and process these collections to make them more usable for the Nazis – a form of intellectual forced labour that some of them nonetheless drew comfort from. Aside from the main Jewish Library in Berlin, there were also book collections set up in various other places, including the Jewish Museum in Prague. Many of these books survived the war inside these depots.
After the end of the Second World War, many surviving former students, employees and teachers of the Institute laid claim to the rescued collections. However, there was no one clear successor to the Institute, and the Allies, who managed the return of all seized books to their owners, decided to instead hand the books over to an organisation called the Jewish Cultural Reconstruction founded solely for this purpose. They distributed the remaining books, for which no previous owner or successor could be found, across Jewish cultural and educational institutions all over the world.
Other depots were raided by special Red Army troops called the Trophy Brigades as they approached Berlin, who sent their loot back to Moscow. It’s unclear how much and if any of these were previously housed at the Institute, nor how likely it is that they will be returned. Yet other books ended up as shelf-fillers in various Berlin Libraries as they were found in destroyed houses or abandoned depots.
As is evident, the books that once belonged to the Institute’s Library could now be scattered far and wide, especially in the UK, Central Europe, Israel and the United States. This is why this library is now called the Library of Lost Books – there is no clear way of tracing the entire collection as it was split up, sold, identifiers covered up, inherited, smuggled and abandoned. Over the years some books have turned up and identified as those previously belonging to the Institute’s collections. This happened especially when they were sold at auction or newly catalogued or consulted.
The initiative ‘Have you seen this book?’ also known as the Library of Lost Books, is run by the Leo Baeck Institute and intends to both publicise the history of these books in a beautifully created interactive exhibition and to appeal to the general public for their support in locating them. One of the main ways that this can happen is by local investigation – grab a book search checklist off the initiative’s website here, order some books into the reading room of your local library, and see if you can find some telling provenance marks such as a bookplate, a stamp, or a so-called paper book tail. Alternatively, you can have a browse through the database of reported books and see if you can put your transcription skills to use!
While a virtual record of all the Institute’s former books is one of the primary aims of the initiative, a physical reunion of the books is not. This has multiple reasons; firstly, the Institute never had a direct successor. While there are progressive rabbinical seminaries in Germany, none of them are, or claim to be, directly related to the Institute. Secondly, many books now found in libraries may have been acquired perfectly legally under the assumption that the book was a genuine, sellable commercial good rather than a looted item. And, most notably, the initiative is more interested in how the books ended up where and which ones survived. Completing the library once again is an impossible task – there is no complete catalogue nor the ability to search private collections or find out what was destroyed. A digital reunion however, coupled with the active efforts of highlighting and fighting against Nazi crime, lets the legacy of the Institute as a place for joyous, transformative Jewish learning live on.
In memory of those who perished in the Holocaust, chasidei ummot ha’olam, and all those seeking to preserve their memory and legacy. Zichronam livracha, may their memory be a blessing.
Contributors: Elena Brearley, Charlotte Edwards, Lindsey Evans, Ash Lammers, James Lawson, Jess Pascal
As Christmas approaches, we can soon hang up our Bodleian cards for a few days. But why escape the library completely? Maybe you, like us, will be hoping to relax in front of a film or two during the holidays. If so, then enjoy this selection of our favourite depictions of libraries and librarians in cinema.
Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018)
This is the true story of struggling writer Lee Israel. Desperate, and having alienated her publisher due to her ‘difficult’ personality, Lee decides on a new way to monetise her writing: by forging private letters of literary greats, such as Dorothy Parker and Noël Coward. She becomes such a successful imitator that traders in memorabilia start snapping up her pieces, though suspicions are soon raised. Lee’s deception begins with stealing an original author’s letter, when she stumbles across an opportunity in the Special Collections department of the New York Public Library. Later, she lifts material from Yale University, outwitting security and taking advantage of the trusting library staff who just want to support her ‘research’. Word from the wise: don’t do this, it will end badly.
Ghostbusters (1984)
More suspicious goings-on in the world of New York libraries, as the Ghostbusters are called to investigate supernatural activity in the stacks, including an eccentric method of piling books into a neat column. ‘You’re right – no human being would stack books like this,’ remarks Venkman. An alarming amount of ectoplasm is soon found on the card catalogue, before an entire shelf inexplicably falls to the ground, covering our heroes in dust (which is plausible). A mysterious ghostly librarian appears, reminding them to keep the noise down. It’s slightly disappointing that this scene reflects several clichés about libraries, such as: 1) female librarians are matronly figures with their hair in a bun; 2) you are likely to be sternly shushed by one; and 3) staff – undead or otherwise – have time to float around reading all the books themselves. Never mind, we weren’t necessarily expecting subtlety.
Wicked (2024)
This backstory of the Wicked Witch of the West from the Wizard of Oz covers her time at the magical Shiz University, where some classes are taught by talking animals and students have the chance to major in sorcery… so not quite like Oxford! During the song ‘Dancing Through Life’, we catch a glimpse of Shiz University Library – its impressive architecture had me wavering between envy and profound relief that I’ve never had to reshelve books on gravity-defying bookcases that rotate 360 degrees. Warning: library lovers may find the treatment of books in this dance sequence distressing.
Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones (2002)
The Jedi Archives (also known as the Jedi Temple Library) plays a rather small yet significant role in Episode II of Star Wars. In a quest to uncover the roots of an assassination attempt, Obi-Wan Kenobi consults the library for information about the planet Kamino. Unfortunately, however, he is unable to locate any evidence of the planet ever existing – despite the fact that the library is rumoured to contain all galactic knowledge. This bold claim is further underpinned by the librarian, Jocasta Nu, who asserts that ‘if an item does not appear in our records, it does not exist!’ Not only is this concerning because clearly information being missing is an anomaly, but it also implies that the Jedi have developed a perfect acquisition and cataloguing system. Who’s jealous?
In this case, however, Nu’s blind (and reasonable, given this gap in information seems to be a decidedly unusual occurrence) faith in the Jedi cataloguing and acquisitions system means that she is inadvertently helping those seeking to undermine Jedi authority. Instead of being willing to consider that something is amiss in the archives and library, Nu works off the assumption that any existence of anything in the real world must be mirrored by knowledge of it existing in the archives, and therefore, concludes that Kenobi must be wrong. Because Kenobi knows to check his sources, he does go and find Kamino by himself and confirms that someone had indeed been messing with the library. Naturally this is just a tiny piece in the slow unravelling of the future Emperor’s plotting, but it is important nonetheless – the dangerous thing about a perfect system is the assumption that it cannot be flawed.
After the fall of the Jedi, the archives were first confiscated and studied, and later deliberately wiped by Jocasta Nu in order to avoid abuse of the knowledge held by the Jedi. Any remaining holocrons were destroyed after the Emperor converted the Temple into his palace; eventually restored to an archive and library by Luke Skywalker.
Wings of Desire (1987)
Wings of Desire, or Himmel Über Berlin (Heaven Above Berlin), directed by Wim Wenders, is a 20th century art-house classic, a romantic fantasy, which was filmed in West Berlin just a few years before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Two trenchcoated angels, Damiel (Bruno Ganz) and Cassiel (Otto Sander), unseen and unheard, walk the streets of Berlin, ride the U-Bahn, and visit the apartments and dwellings of the residents, guarding over the city from atop the grand statues and building rooftops. They watch and listen, bearing empathetic witness to the inner thoughts, fears, and hopes of the city’s human inhabitants. These ‘city symphony’ style sequences encapsulate the feeling of ‘sonder’, the realisation that others’ lives are as real and complex as our own.
In one of the most beautiful scenes, the two angels visit the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – the Berlin State Library. The angels of the city seem to congregate here amongst the readers and shelves of books, providing solace and comfort to those engaged in the noble pursuit of knowledge.
Intrigued by the mortal world and having fallen in love with the lonely circus trapeze artist Marion (Solveig Dommartin), Damiel gives up his wings, falling to earth to feel for himself at last the joys and pains of the human experience. The film also features Peter Falk (Columbo) as himself, and music and performances from Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.
Party Girl (1995)
Free-spirited New York party girl Mary (Parker Posey) lands in jail after organising an illegal party. She calls her librarian godmother, Judy (Sasha von Scherler), to bail her out. After being firmly reprimanded, Mary ends up taking a job as a clerk in the public library where Judy works, in order to repay her debt and prove she can handle grown-up responsibilities. Unexpectedly, she takes to the work, and her life moves from a world of chaos and disarray into a new library-inspired era of order and balance.
Watching this film from a librarian’s perspective, a highlight is a scene in which Mary’s roommate Leo, a DJ, comes home just before an important gig to find Mary has reorganised his records according to the Dewey Decimal System. He’s exasperated, wondering how he will ever find the records he needs, but Mary reassures him that the system works! Vaguely reminiscent of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, this film is a treat; funny and touching, featuring fabulous fashion, and a dreamy romance. Set against the backdrop of the 1990’s queer New York party scene (catch a glimpse of Lady Bunny within the first few minutes). You can watch it for free on YouTube.
Beauty and the Beast (1991) (and maybe a dash of the Emma Watson one)
I love Beauty and the Beast so I’m very excited to talk about this one!
In many ways, libraries are incredibly central to the themes and story of Beauty and the Beast. In fact, there are actually two libraries in the film. The first appears during the first song of the film when Belle goes to the, confusingly named, ‘Bookseller’ from which she has been borrowing books relentlessly. The second appears during a different song later in the film (‘Something There’), where the Beast gives Belle an entire library which, if the animation is to be believed, is approximately a billion storeys tall.
I very briefly want to talk about the gorgeous design of the Beast’s library. I’m not an artist (or art historian), but Google tells me that the library follows a Baroque design. Even if it doesn’t, I think it just looks so absolutely stunning. When we first see the library, it’s accompanied by grand sweeping shots up towards the ceiling which really emphasise just how massive the library is supposed to be and, especially, how impressive it is to Belle, who has never seen anything like this before.
The first full view of the library and its books (at 1:35 in the clip above) leaves you with the question: ‘Just how many books are there?’ (You know, maybe Lumiere and Cogsworth were right, maybe they do have every book ever written.) It’s not entirely clear which library (or libraries) this may have been based on, but one possibility (and I would like to direct attention to ThatBookBroad whose blog drew my attention to this) is the Admont Abbey Library in Austria, completed in 1776 and, to this day, the largest monastic library in the world.
Admont Abbey library. Image by Elsemargriet from Pixabay.
For the live action film’s library, a commonly-cited inspiration is the Biblioteca Joanina in Coimbra, Portugal, another incredible Baroque library built between 1717 and 1728.
Also, I cannot write this without encouraging you to check out this fantastic recreation of the Beast’s library in LEGO®, made by Sarah Innerebner.
The Breakfast Club (1985)
Although no librarian is ever seen, this 80s teen classic takes place almost entirely in a library. John Hughes takes us through the experiences of five high schoolers stuck in an all-day Saturday detention in their school’s library. Beginning as each character’s prison, the students eventually take control of the space as the film develops (although this does involve some unfortunate vandalism of said library); one very apt proposed title of this film was thus Library Revolution [1]. Much of the chaos revolves around Bender, a detention regular, who falls through the ceiling into the library, rips up a book of Molière’s work, and sets his shoe on fire. The things students can get up to in the absence of a librarian… Anyone familiar with the Bodleian Oath will know that users must swear ‘not to bring into the Library or kindle therein any fire or flame,’ so hopefully nothing of the same will happen here!
In the film, the library is only viewed negatively when an authority figure is hovering over it; it later becomes a sanctuary for the students when they reclaim control. In their confessional, ‘they create a safe space for sharing vulnerabilities, and redefine the function of the library and the school under their own terms’ [2]. The students can open up and find neutral ground in the library. The characters being in the school library for the whole Saturday allows for a suspended reality in which each of them, except Brian, are removed from the setting that stereotypes them. For Brian, the brainy one, the library is arguably the setting to which his stereotype belongs, but with the other students present, it becomes a neutral ground. Therefore, this ground allows for each of them to become an individual beyond their stereotypes, with the prison-like setting ultimately turning into a fun place where they let loose and dance – their punishment turns into play.
Filmed in Maine North High School, this set was constructed in the school gymnasium, based on the real school library. Hughes even gave each actor a piece of the library’s banister as a memento of the film. Being filmed in the 80s, some of its dialogue is indeed dated, but, in 2016, the film was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for being ‘culturally, historically or aesthetically significant’. This film’s essence comes under what Penelope Spheeris describes as, ‘the youth-in-revolt genre’ that ‘has an enduring appeal, since adolescence and early adulthood are when we are forming our identities’ [3]. And so, The Breakfast Club remains a classic nearly 40 years later.
Honourable mentions
Harry Potter (2001-2011)
Inception (2010) – Some of the film was filmed at University College London library (Nolan studied here!).
Inside Out (2015) – Riley’s mind functions like a library of emotions and experiences.
Kill Your Darlings (2013) – Nightly break-in at Columbia University Library.
Matilda (1996) and Matilda the Musical (2022) – The library is a safe space for Matilda to escape to and the librarian, Mrs Phelps, supports and encourages her extraordinary gift for reading.
Seven (1995)
The Day After Tomorrow (2004) – Attempting to stay warm, people stuck in the New York Public Library after an environmental disaster decide to burn books to generate heat.
The Librarian (2004)
The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
Wonka (2023) – A love letter to reading as well as to chocolate. Oxford’s Radcliffe Camera has a starring role as the archetypical fantasy library.
References
[1] Crovitz, D. (2005) ‘Who You Think You Are: The Breakfast Club in the Writing Classroom’, Teaching English in the two-year college, 32(4), pp. 424–432
As we move into December, it feels like the festive season has finally begun to settle over Oxford. But while the joys of the season limit themselves to one month a year for most of the Bodleian libraries, Osney One has the unique ability to retain a little Christmas spark throughout the entire year. This is all down to the presence of one of my favourite collections at Osney: the Toy Books.
What are Toy Books?
Despite the slightly misleading name, Toy Books are not always toys. Instead, they are books from our Legal Deposit intake that require special treatment for the sake of conservation. A book could fall into this category for multiple reasons, but broadly speaking it’s because they have the potential to either damage or be damaged by other books as they are moved around and/or start to deteriorate. We therefore handle this kind of material with slightly different processes to better ensure that they are available for reading and research in perpetuity.
What kind of books ‘require special treatment’?
There are many factors that could transform a regular old Legal Deposit book into a Toy Book. In fact, there are so many heavily contextual reasons that it would be immensely tedious to have to slog through a paragraph or two of reasonings and caveats. So, for your viewing pleasure, I have instead picked out a selection of seven Toy Books that represent a range of conservation concerns. Some of the books could pose threats to others, some could be threatened themselves – but all of them are an absolute joy to look at!
First up we have the triple threat of Spot Says Goodnight: Box and Toy Gift Set, The Yuckiest and Most Fun Counting Book in the World, and Exploring the Adventurous World of the Jungle.
Spot, despite its innocent looks, poses some of the most varied risks of any Toy Book on this list. We have no idea how the degradation of its (adorable) toy might affect any books located nearby, and its box could easily be damaged by the pressure or sharp corners of other books around it. Furthermore, its plastic window may eventually become brittle and shatter with age, creating further possibilities for damage down the line. Similarly, The Counting Book’s fluffy exterior could degrade strangely or leave loose fibres on the covers of other books. Finally, the layered pages of The Jungle could easily catch on other books when being moved around on shelves, causing damage to itself or the other books.
Moving on to our next selection, we have Chinese Proverbs Illustrated: The Wisdom of Cheng-Yu, Dior: Style Icon, and Play Along Humpty Dumpty & Other Songs.
Chinese Proverbs Illustrated is difficult to deal with because of its binding. Although it is a wonderful example of stab binding, the threads could end up fraying or damaging other books were they to end up catching on anything in their surroundings. Moving on, a quick test performed on Dior’s gilded edges revealed that the gilding is liable to come off when rubbed against other bits of paper – which is an issue for a book that could see high use in a library setting. Last but certainly not least, Humpty Dumpty not only comes with a protruding, difficult-to-shelve keyboard, but with one of Osney One’s most feared enemies: a battery. Were we to miss this battery in our initial check of the book, it could end up quite literally exploding right in the centre of the Bodleian’s offsite book repository. This would be (to put it mildly) an absolute disaster.
Finally, rounding out our selection with an image all to itself, is Sun Guoting’s Calligraphy Manual. The source of this beautiful handbook’s conservation concerns is its form; its concertinaed pages have no protective spine to cover them from the sharp corners of other books or the stressors of handling and time. Whilst this might not be a concern for a more specialised library, the regular shelving methods of the Bodleian may expose this handbook to more wear and corrosion than is warranted.
How could you get hold of a Toy Book?
Once we’ve finished the fiddly process of cataloguing a Toy Book at Osney, we place it in a conservation box and send it to the Collections Storage Facility like we would any other book. After it goes through the intake process there, it would become possible to request delivery to Rare Books for in-library use only.
So, if your research endeavours require you to one day meet Spot in-person, it is very much possible to do it through the Bodleian! You would just have to live with the tragic knowledge that you cannot take him home with you – no matter how much you might want to.
Disability History Month runs from 14th November until 20th December 2024 and the theme is Disability, Livelihood and Employment this year. In our job as trainees, many of us create book displays for our libraries. Take a look at the displays for Disability History Month (DHM) in the Social Science Library (SSL), the Bodleian Law Library and the New College Library.
Social Science Library – Gia Simmons
As this month is Disability History Month, one of my colleagues and I have put together a display of books surrounding this year’s theme, Disability, Livelihood and Employment. In addition to creating the book display, I also followed in the footsteps of my SSL trainee predecessor and created an updated ORLO reading list. On this reading list, you can find titles linked to this year’s theme, as well as other resources about disability history more generally.
While putting this display together, I first had to look to our collections to see what books we had in the SSL that were on theme and also appropriate for the display. As we are the Social Science Library, the books in our display are mainly academic social science books. While selecting my books, I was looking at both their content and physical appearance (because, in reality, we all do gravitate towards pretty books!)
Once I figured out how many physical books and eBooks to include, I had to pull them from our shelves and make sure that they were the right fit. For instance, I checked that they were on topics that were relevant to the theme as well as ensuring that the texts contained up to date information. Once I was happy with the books that I selected, I then had to create the visual elements to go along with them. This included a poster, a display for our screen behind the issue desk, bookmarks that indicated whether a book was loanable or library use only and also a blog post for the SSL blog. A lot of work goes in to our book displays here at the SSL!
I followed the theme for DHM quite closely while selecting the books and used the title of this year’s theme as the key words in my search terms. While searching SOLO, I first looked to titles that were physically in the SSL and then to the Collections Storage Facility. Once I had chosen a few titles that were on theme or very closely linked to the theme, I moved on to select titles which covered other topics in disability history. Of course, some titles are only available via eBook, so I had to decide how best to display those. For this, I adapted a pre-existing template that I frequently use to create our new eBook displays in the SSL. This includes the cover of the book, as well as a QR code that brings readers to the SOLO record.
In my post for the SSL blog, I also included links to other important online resources that have been created in previous years by other colleagues around the Bodleian and the wider University community. For instance, I linked a reading list on understanding disability on ORLO which was created by a joint team of staff across the Bodleian Libraries, College Libraries and the Oxford Union Library. It covers a range of topics from ‘Disability and the Law’ to ‘Neurodivergence’.
Normally when I’m putting together a book display, I’ll go for a walk around the library to look for inspiration under the shelfmarks associated with the theme of the display. However, disability history is so spread out across different subjects that I tried a different approach with this display, and began by searching online. My starting point was the Disability History Resources LibGuide, which provided a list of introductory sources and directions to more extensive reading lists with suggested books that I could then look for in my library.
When choosing books, I tried to cover a range of types of disability, as well as a range of time periods. I picked out as many personal stories from the biography section of the library as possible, as biographies and autobiographies are a relatively approachable form of non-fiction, and I felt it was important to include as many disabled people’s own voices as I could. One difficult decision was whether to use books that contain terms that could be considered offensive to disabled people. I ultimately decided to include the books I was concerned about, as I felt it was clear based on context that the terms they used were being reclaimed by disabled people themselves, and it felt wrong to censor them.
Finally, I had to make a sign, which is one of the most fun parts of putting together a book display, giving me the chance to get a bit creative. I designed the sign around the disability pride flag, because it’s colourful and eye-catching while still being meaningful and relevant to the subject of the display. I made sure to use high-contrast text and a clear, readable font so that it would be as accessible as possible. I always include a reminder that books on the display can be borrowed – it isn’t just there to look pretty!
Books used:
Adam, David. The man who couldn’t stop : the truth about OCD. London: Picador, 2015.
Bauby, Jean-Dominique. The Diving-Bell and the Butterfly. London: 4th Estate, 2019.
Girma, Haben. Haben : The Deafblind Woman Who Conquered Harvard Law. New York: Twelve, 2019.
Hanes, Roy, Ivan Brown, and Nancy E. Hansen, eds. The Routledge History of Disability. London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2018.
Keller, Helen et al. The Miracle of a Life : The Autobiography of Helen Keller. London, New York: Hodder and Stoughton, 1909.
Metzler, Irina. Disability in Medieval Europe : Thinking about Physical Impairment during the High Middle Ages, c. 1100-1400. London: Routledge, 2010.
Ryan, Frances. Crippled : Austerity and the Demonization of Disabled People. London: Verso, 2019.
Shakespeare, Tom. Disability : The Basics. London: Routledge, 2018.
Shakespeare, Tom. Disability Rights and Wrongs Revisited. 2nd edition. London: Routledge, 2014.
Silberman, Steve. Neurotribes : The Legacy of Autism and How to Think Smarter about People Who Think Differently. Paperback edition. London: Allen & Unwin, 2016.
Turner, David M. Disability in Eighteenth-Century England : Imagining Physical Impairment. Abingdon: Routledge, 2017.
Wong, Alice, ed. Disability Visibility : First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century. New York: Vintage Books, 2020.
Bodleian Law Library – Hannah Richmond
With just over half a million volumes on our shelves here at the Law Library, you would think finding items for display would be easy. Despite the hefty collection, however, finding items that are relevant whilst being varied enough to offer a range of perspectives has proven to be a tricky (but extremely rewarding) part of curating displays. Mainly, I am aiming to put the spotlight on pieces of the collection that readers (and sometimes staff) might not be familiar with.
A good way to start is by identifying some keywords to pop onto SOLO. Although this isn’t how I usually find some of the more interesting items, it helps me get an idea of whereabouts in the library I should be looking. I always check official websites early in the process to see if there is a particular focus for the year. In this case it is ‘Disability, Livelihood and Employment’, with UK Disability History Month raising awareness of both the history of employment within disabled communities as well as the barriers still faced by many disabled individuals seeking employment today. I’d recommend checking their website for some really informative resources on the topic, as well as past years’ themes.
I make a list of potential options before embarking on a hunt around the library. This is my favourite part as I often discover really interesting books that weren’t suggested on SOLO, usually because the keywords aren’t in the title. Sadly, this is also where I have to cut some books from the list as I don’t have the space to display everything. For this one, I originally had 30 titles on my list (not including the ones I pick up along the way) but I managed to reduce it to 17.
Accessibility is always a crucial factor in curating a display and is something I aim to improve on throughout the year. Fonts and colours used for any posters should be chosen with everyone in mind, factoring in readers who may have dyslexia or sight impairments, for example. Positioning is also something I try to be aware of. I tend to use the middle shelves and avoid placing heavier items higher up. Having a Disability Liaison check your display and always being receptive to feedback from staff and/or students are two really helpful ways to strive for accessibility improvement.
My QR code booklet
I like to include QR codes in my displays. Just print them out and put them with the relevant item so readers can go directly to the SOLO link. This allows them to view related texts and/or view the shelfmark for future use. One tip is to save the QR codes and print them out on a sheet, which can then be added to a ‘QR code booklet’ kept beside your exhibition space. This grants your display some degree of permanence and allows readers to browse past displays and gain easy access to any of the texts that pique their interest.
Some titles currently on display in the Law Library include ‘Ableism at Work: Disablement and Hierarchies of Impairment’, ‘Deaf People in the Criminal Justice System: Selected Topics on Advocacy, Incarceration, and Social Justice’, ‘The Disabled Contract: Severe Intellectual Disability, Justice and Morality’, and ‘Discrimination, Copyright, and Equality: Opening the E-Book for the Print-disabled’. You can browse the full list here: DHM
While putting this display together, I first had to look to our collections to see what books we had in the SSL that were on theme and also appropriate for the display. As we are the Social Science Library, the books in our display are mainly academic social science books. While selecting my books, I was looking at both their content and physical appearance (because, in reality, we all do gravitate towards pretty books!)
Normally when I’m putting together a book display, I’ll go for a walk around the library to look for inspiration under the shelfmarks associated with the theme of the display. However, disability history is so spread out across different subjects that I tried a different approach with this display, and began by searching online. My starting point was the 
I aim to improve on throughout the year. Fonts and colours used for any posters should be chosen with everyone in mind, factoring in readers who may have dyslexia or sight impairments, for example. Positioning is also something I try to be aware of. I tend to use the middle shelves and avoid placing heavier items higher up. Having a Disability Liaison check your display and always being receptive to feedback from staff and/or students are two really helpful ways to strive for accessibility improvement.
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