On my journey to work, I start to think about how I’m going to organise my day. I usually try to split it into four parts, with a different project or goal for each section. It works well by keeping me busy and my work varied!
8:40-10:50
I’m not on the desk this morning, so I settle into the office and get started on my current favourite task: updating our LibGuides! The Business and Management LibGuide has information on databases and journals (which only occasionally changes), but our Hot Topics need more frequent attention.
The one I am currently refreshing is the Business of Arts, Culture, & Entertainment, which involves scouring the internet for books, news sources, and consulting firm insights to ensure MBA students taking this elective have up-to-date information.
10:50-11:10
I reach a natural stopping point and, deciding it’s time for a coffee, head downstairs to the café with my latest book in hand. Being able to order virtually any book from Offsite Storage has revived my love of reading after university, and I enjoy squeezing in a few pages whenever I can.
11:10-12:00
Back upstairs, I turn my attention to exploring a new database that the library staff have been given trial access to. The goal is to compare it with some of the databases we already subscribe to, to see whether it offers anything different or complementary. I spend the next hour clicking through its features, keeping it open in one tab while some of our most-used databases sit open in others, and jotting down notes as I go.
12:00-1:00
Lunchtime! Today I have roast pepper chicken with jollof rice, and a muffin for dessert. Thanks to staff discounts at the Business School, the whole lunch costs under £3 – a definite perk.
1:00-3:30
I’m on the enquiry desk for the afternoon, one of my three half-day desk shifts each week. I begin by bringing five Oxford Futures Library boxes upstairs and scanning them in on ALMA using our dummy patron ID. Part of my trainee project is working towards producing standardised catalogues for these collections, which means creating a record for every individual item.
I enjoy doing this task on the desk, as it’s easy to pause while helping readers, and there’s much more space to lay materials out than at my office desk. However, some archive boxes contain more than 30 items, so it can be a very time-consuming process.
3:30-3:50
Time for an afternoon break! I grab a green tea and take a short walk, passing the many statues that have recently appeared around the Business School.
3:50-5:00
The final part of the day is busy with enquiries, both by email and in person. Most questions we get on the desk relate to setting up accounts for databases and news sites, but there are always a few more unusual – and often very niche – data requests that come in by email. Between enquiries, I also set up our Personal Development library display, designed to support students with research skills, mindfulness, and productivity during Hilary term. Closing up is straightforward, as the library remains open for as long as the building does, so it’s just a case of tidying the desk and office before heading home.
Leave for work. I’m lucky to live walking distance from the Art library and don’t have to rely on public transport- the only things that slow me down are my own legs or crowds on Cornmarket Street!
08:45
Arrive at work. I pop up to the staff room to put my lunch away, probably get distracted talking to everyone else doing the same, then head to the front desk. At the Art library, desk shifts are usually 3 hours long, either in the morning or afternoon, and two people sit at the desk together.
Today I’m on desk in the morning, so I turn on the self-issue machine and login to a PC. Our Reader Services Teams chat is named after an animal and changes most days- and today I change it to Pleasing Fungus Beetle.
08:55
Get started on the lapse list. At the Bodleian Libraries, readers can request books from our offsite storage facility to be sent to libraries. Some of this material is loanable and can be given to readers to take away, but some of it has to stay in the library. This is stored on the Self-Collect shelves, and the lapse list involves taking items off the self-collect shelves that needs to be sent back offsite. I take these books off the shelves, scan them out and put them in crates that get picked up every afternoon.
09:15
The Art library opens at 9am, and even outside of term time can get quite busy. By this time we already have a fair few readers, some of which have been queueing to get in! Now I’ll sit at the desk and help readers. Most of the time, readers need pretty straight forward help- loaning or returning books, finding the toilets, locating a printer or PC they can use… but sometimes people ask a tricky one and you have to hit them with a “let’s try and find out together…”
The Art library can be quite confusing to use as there are a lot of different shelfmark systems on the books, and the library is round so you can end up walking in circles for a while. It took me a while to feel confident helping readers find books, but I’m getting a hang of the collections and can usually direct people to where their book is. I still sometimes walk readers in a loop around an entire floor before I know where to look!
10:30
Break time. I head up to the staffroom to make a coffee, browse the biscuit tin and chat to people over the jigsaw. We always have a jigsaw on the go in the staffroom, right now it’s Agatha Christie themed.
10:50
Back at the desk, and now it’s a bit quieter I can do some new book and journal processing. We get sent a lot of new material each week that we need to check is catalogued properly, has all the correct stickers on, and then we can scan it into the library. New books are displayed on our ground floor New Books Displays each week. I’ll do processing in between helping readers and responding to emails and Teams messages.
12:00
I’m off desk now, so take all the books I’ve processed to our workroom to be put on display next week. While there, I hear that we’re swamped with scan requests so I roll up my sleeves and help out. The Bodleian offer a scan and deliver service for PDFs of journal articles or sections of books. If readers don’t feel like trekking all the way into the library for a single article, they can send us a request and we’ll usually get it back to them by the next day. Among the scans today are a chapter on Tudor portraits, an article about ancient Greek poetry and a chapter on food in Bronze Age Britain.
1:00
I go up to the staff room, warm up my lunch, eat it while half-heartedly helping people with the jigsaw, then pop out for a walk. I try and walk every lunch time if the weather’s okay, and today I go to the University Parks and listen to a podcast.
2:00
I head back to the Art library and go to the Haverfield room on the ground floor to work on my trainee project. The Haverfield room is a small, slightly chaotic room mainly filled with books about ancient coins. My project is to do my part in making it slightly less chaotic, which for now involves doing an audit of some large folios at the back that haven’t been looked at in a long time. I take each one off the shelf, note down the barcode (if it has one), note the condition of the item and if it’s in poor condition, measure it so it can be boxed in conservation approved boxes. There’s very little information available for some of the items, so I have a look through and try to see if a) it’s relevant to our collections and b) where it came from. It’s easy to get distracted looking at books on early Christian art in catacombs, or the symbology in German coats of arms.
A page of coats of arms from Numismatisches Wappen-Lexicon des Mittelalters und der Neuzeit : Staaten und StädtewappenA drawing of a bird in Bildzeichen der Katakomben
3:10
I go for another break, omitting coffee this time and instead have a tea and chat to people.
3:30
I’ve finished the shelf I was working on in the Haverfield room, so now I go down to the Craft Cave (also referred to as the Repairs Dungeon, or more politely, the Basement Office) to do some book repairs.
At the Art and the Taylor we’re trialling a scheme where reader services staff carry out small repairs on books to extend their lives and get them back on the shelves quickly (the previous Art trainee Emma made a great triaging system and resources for minor repairs that we still use now, you can read about her project here).
Down here I carefully repair broken covers, loose pages and fraying corners, and nearly forget to look at the clock close to home time!
5:00
I say goodbye to the evening staff who are just arriving, and head home.
Hello potential graduate trainees of 2026! With applications now open for the 2026/27 cohort of graduate trainees, we thought we’d give you a snapshot of life at the Bodleian.
(If you’re reading these to prepare you for your application or interview – fear not, we did the same. Have a look at this post on application tips and the interview process if you want more advice.)
Summer Mainstone-Cotton, Social Science Library trainee
08:10ish
Get the bus to work. Small sprint to the bus stop with my housemates, 2 other library trainees. Most years, there’s at least one trainee house in Oxford – it makes for a lot of library talk in the kitchen!
08:45
Open up! Once a week, I open up the library with another colleague – I love walking around the library when no one else is there – it’s quite dark and eerie in winter with the lights low and the bookstacks plunged into darkness. Opening up consists of turning on self-issue machines, printers, making sure the monitors haven’t gone walkabouts in the library, checking the phone for voicemail, and bringing in the overnight returns trolley.
09:00
As I’m not at the desk until 11, I start my day with a leisurely cup of tea and checking emails. The SSL trainee is responsible for managing the SSL queries inbox. As term hasn’t started yet, we’re not getting many emails from readers – this morning there’s an offer of a book donation from Hong Kong and a couple of chapter requests from readers wanting to use the Scan and Deliver service.
09:15-10:00
After a relaxed start, I decide to crack on with my trainee project – transcribing and compiling data on a large book donation to the SSL. A single donor has offered approximately 70 shelves of books and journals to the SSL, mainly texts on the USSR and Chechnya. A few months ago, the subject librarian for Slavonic and East European Studies photographed all the books for us to digitally sort through and decide which ones we wanted. It’s my job to go through hundreds of photos and compile a list of every text with a Latin script, noting down as much bibliographic data from the spine as I can find, and then identifying if the item has a record on SOLO and which of the Bodleian libraries have a copy. Whilst most books do seem relevant to us, somehow, I doubt the SSL needs a copy of Delia’s Complete Cookery Course!
10:00-10:40
I write up a blog post for my latest book display: Reading Resolutions. One of the great parts of working at the SSL is the opportunity to regularly write posts for the library blog and contribute to its social media. This month, along with new year’s resolutions, we’re also promoting Veganuary as part of our Green Initiative – so I’ve been liaising with the green team on vegan/plant-based recipe books to include in my display.
10:40
Snack Time! I take my 20-minute break on the sofas in the staff break area and happily eat a mince pie from the communal snack table – plenty of treats left from Christmas still!
11:00-12:00
I generally spend about 1.5-2 hours a day on the desk helping readers with their questions, loaning books and equipment, and handing out requested texts from the CFS. This hour is quiet as there aren’t many readers around at the moment.
12:00-13:00
So much book processing! With the start of term approaching, the acquisitions team at the SSL have been ordering lots of books for our subject reading lists. Practically, this means the book processing shelf is constantly refilling– each time I remove a handful of texts for physical processing, another pile soon replaces them. In book processing, I check that the shelfmarks have been added to ALMA, add reading list codes and then physically process the material by adding Bodleian and Social Science Library stamps, a tattle tape sensor, SSL library slip, and finally add shelf mark stickers and library use only/short-loan labels as required.
13:00-14:00
Lunch time – as it’s not raining, I take my lunch and go for a walk in University Park. The SSL is very conveniently located right by University Park, making it an excellent lunchtime spot. In the spring, I’m planning on going a bit further afield and visiting the Botanical Gardens during my lunch break.
14:00 – 14:30
An email has come in from ARACU (Accessible Resources Unit) requesting an SSL book for them to scan for a student. I go searching for the book on our shelves, scan it out to ARACU on Alma, and then pop it in a parcel to send in the internal mail.
14:30-15:00
CSF delivery. I unpack the blue totes delivered from the CSF (Collections Storage Facility). Readers request a mix of loanable and library-use-only texts from the CSF, and both are kept behind the inquiry desk. It’s always a mystery each day which niche materials have been ordered up – my favourite so far has been 5 massive books containing volumes of the Bell Ringers magazine from the 1880s!
15:00-16:00
Scan & Deliver Triage – unlike some of the other trainees, I don’t do the scanning for scan and deliver, I just triage the requests. I start my shift by checking how many scan requests there are (8) and if there are any scans to be sent from yesterday’s shift (no). Triaging means making sure the requests fit within copyright rules – readers are only allowed 1 chapter or 5%, and ensuring requested texts aren’t available online. I also check to see if any of the requested chapters have been scanned previously by the SSL, track down those scans and send them to the readers. Overall, 3 chapters have been scanned already, and I added 5 books to the fetching list to be scanned by our evening library assistants.
16:00-16:20
Second break – at this point in the day, I’m lagging a bit, so I eat a flapjack to boost my energy and read my current book: Babel – very appropriate to read while working for the Bodleian!
16:30-17:00
I have a meeting to discuss the donation project with my line manager and the subject librarian in charge of the donation – I’m nearly 50% of the way through inputting the donation material into a spreadsheet, and reassuringly, I haven’t made any terrible mistakes so far!
17:00-17:15
Final stretch of my day, where I tidy up my desk and check the inbox for any final emails that have come through. When it gets to 5:15, I say hello/goodbye to the evening staff coming in and head home.
A highlight of being a trainee is the access to… well, training! Every Wednesday we have a different session, on topics such as cataloguing, supporting disabled readers, or using the Bodleian databases and software. This week, we were shown around the Conservation and Special Collections areas in the Weston Library, a.k.a where all the rare books magic happens!
The Weston Library holds the majority of all the special collections items within the Bodleian libraries, although much is also held at the Swindon Offsite Storage Facility (CSF). After dropping off our belongings in the lockers (no liquid or even pens allowed in the areas with rare books), we made our way to the conservation area for our introduction to conservation and collection care.
The workspace the conservation team use was bright and peaceful, with long desks lit by many big windows that overlook the city. Each workspace was full of mysterious implements: bone folders, brushes, Japanese paper, display shelves of crushed pigments. Dozens of grey archival boxes were stacked in piles, full of rare books and oddities.
An Introduction to Preventive Conservation
Our first talk was with Catherine, who works in Preventive Conservation, focusing on environmental pest control. There are many things in the environment that can damage a book, whether that is damp, mould, or as we saw – insects! For example, silverfish are very destructive and can do quite drastic damage to paper. They chew through natural fibres, leaving a distinctive lacy pattern behind.
Furniture beetles (otherwise known as carpet beetles or book worms) are also a problem, as they chew straight through furniture like bookcases… and any books that are on them. Not a pleasant guest to have in your library! They bore through bookcases so thoroughly that you can line up the damage to determine which books were placed next to each other on a historical bookshelf. Luckily, this critter needs over 65% relative humidity to thrive, so it won’t visit our modern humidity-controlled collections.
Some calling cards of Silverfish……and Furniture beetles
Fun fact: If you look at the ‘frass’ left behind by a Furniture beetle under a microscope, it looks a bit like rice crispies!
A Genizah Conservation Project
We were then introduced to two conservators working on a long-term rebinding project. This three-year conservation project is focused on preserving items from a Genizah in Cairo for future study. A Genizah is a place in a Jewish synagogue where documents are stored before being ritually buried, as it is forbidden to throw away writing containing the name of God. Typically, items are only stored for 7 years, but the Cairo Genizah contains additions from over 1000 years! There is a huge collection of religious and secular works in around 10 languages (mostly Hebrew and Arabic).
A guardbook being worked on
Many of these valuable paper fragments were bound together into volumes called ‘guardbooks’. The interesting thing is, guardbooks can house texts next to each other which have no intellectual connection, or shared language. The same text could continue in different places within the same guardbook, or across several different guardbooks entirely. These might even be held in different institution’s collections. The University of Cambridge, for example, currently has the largest single unified collection – around 200,000 items from the same Genizah our conservators are working on.
A fascicule containing material from the Genizah
As part of this project, the conservators are working on rehousing these items – disbanding them and putting them into more permanent guardbooks. Some are also put into ‘fascicules’, which are like large A1 pamphlets, where the historic paper is mounted and then attached to the pages flexibly. This means that the pages can be opened flat and examined without damage, whereas the previous bindings could only be opened carefully to a V.
But if the conservators are rebinding the fragments anyway, why don’t they reunite the parts of a text that have been bound in separate guardbooks? Surprisingly, it’s not simply because the papers are fragile. The conservators explained that they need to preserve the historic arrangement of texts in each guardbook, and the shelfmark they were originally classified under. This is so that all the previous research which references those shelfmarks will still make sense. Helpfully, many of the guardbooks have historic marginalia notes which mention where to look to find the rest of the text.
This is a huge project: there are around 12,500 leaves in this collection, and around 217 physical bindings to rehouse. The collection is heavily used and historically important. Many of the items are digitised, but readers and researchers still need to be able to access the originals. It was very interesting to learn more about this long-term conservation project!
Book Conservation – When to Repair?
We also were also shown three examples of individual books being conserved by the Assistant Book Conservator, Alice Evans. One of these examples was Tolkien’s copy of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Tolkien thoroughly annotated it and repaired it with tape – something we hope no reader will do to our books! In this case, despite the tape degrading over time and staining the book, the tape will not be removed or replaced with acid-free archive-safe tape. That’s because the value of this object for researchers comes from Tolkien’s interaction with it and the signs of use – including all the tape fragments. Who knows, someone might end up doing a PhD on his use of tape someday!
When repairing an object, one of the most useful tools is Japanese paper. This paper is harvested in a way that keeps the fibres long, and it is activated using only water. It’s non-intrusive and removable, making it perfect for conservation. Conservators want to preserve the signs of use, and the vulnerability of the object itself, repairing as minimally as possible in places with vulnerable edges or tears. You can see some of the long fibres from a torn edge of Japanese paper in this photo.
As Alice told us, everything is degrading anyway. Conservators and curators weigh up what we want and need here and now, what is useful to us today. Those are the items they prioritise and conserve.
Introduction to Special Collections
The last part of the afternoon was a tour and talk with Chris Fletcher, Keeper of Special Collections. The tour included the Centre for Digital Scholarship, the Mackerras Reading Room, the rooftop patio, and a chat with one of the archivists, Frankie. Continuing our accidental Tolkien theme of the day, Frankie was working on cataloguing and digitising the Tolkien papers. There were tables full of rare items and historical objects, and yet more archive boxes of mysterious sizes. We saw Tolkien’s leather suitcases, and a box full of a surprisingly large collection of pipes!
Then we were shown to a reading room where Chris had pulled out a selection of interesting Special Collections books. These included an 18th Century book of animal and plant illustrations (which had the pictured vaguely horrifying rodent with green toenails), a series of 3D pop up Artist Books by Tamba Auerbach, and a copy of John Clare’s The Village Minstrel that contained a unique handwritten poem.
After that, the items got a little unusual. What makes a book a book? Bibliographic detail, a cover, publication date, author, contents, edition? If that’s what a book is, then Ted Hughes’ ‘Laureate’s Choice’ sherry bottle also fits the bill:
As is traditional for a Poet Laureate, Hughes got his own barrel of sherry. This bottle has one of Hughes’ drawings reproduced on the label.
Then, there was my favourite item – the cheese book! Created by Ben Denzer, 20 Slices is a book where the pages are packaged American style cheese slices, bound with a cover. Denzer’s speciality is poking fun at, and interrogating, ideas of value. What better way do to this than to make the cheapest kind of cheese into a valuable art object and book?
The book was bought by Bodleian for £200 – £10 per slice of cheese. The copy we have is one of ten copies that exist, including the artist’s own copy. Denzer has refused to allow the Bodleian to replace the cheese with a replica cheese. When the time comes, the cheese pages will need to be replaced with more Kraft singles! Although that might not be for some time – when we saw the book, the cheese was 10 years old and still looked normal, with only a bit of white crumbling at the corners. American cheese is something else!
That rounds up our afternoon of rare books adventures! The day was a great introduction to what Archivists and Conservators do, and we saw many weird and wonderful items. The Bodleian’s collections are vast, and there is always something new to discover.
The 2026/27 trainee scheme is now open for applications, so we hope that our blogs will give you some insight into the work you might be doing. Good luck to anyone who will be applying!
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