Trainee Showcase 2025: Part 4

Posted on 29 August 2025 by khany — No Comments ↓

This is the fourth and final post in our series on the 2025 Trainee Showcase. If you missed the previous three posts, you can find them directly below this one!

Jake Banyard – Improving user access: wayfinding and resource signposting at Teddy Hall

Written by Millie Krantz

Jake’s trainee project tackled a problem intimately familiar to many library staff: how can we make libraries as approachable and intuitive as possible for readers?

Teddy Hall has a beautiful but imposing college library – it’s housed in the converted medieval church of St Peter-in-the-East and retains many original features like fifteenth-century stained glass. When libraries are in historic buildings that were built to intimidate and impress, readers can understandably have apprehensions about using the space, which poses a problem when we as library professionals want to welcome students in and encourage them to use our resources. In addition, the fact that it isn’t purpose-built means that it can be a bit of a maze, even to users who are familiar with academic libraries. Since it tends to be difficult to knock down medieval buildings just to make them easier to navigate, Jake has had to settle on improving accessibility by reworking the map, improving signage, and ensuring that accurate and up-to-date information is circulated on the college website.

An image of a computer on a desk, accompanied by a keyboard and mouse, a map, a sign about searching the catalogue, and a small teddy bear — Jake’s new and improved map and book-finding guide alongside an important member of staff

Jake’s improved maps take a seemingly simplistic approach, but one that is impressively pulled off: stripping out excess information while retaining and adding things that are actually useful. Anyone who has spent hours trying to rework their library’s map in Canva will understand how hard it can be to include as much useful information as possible without everything becoming visually overwhelming, but Jake’s tactic of splitting up and naming the different sections makes navigation much easier. Jake’s use of icons to indicate amenities not only makes it easier for students to look up where their section might be in the library, but also provides a common language of locations so that giving directions becomes easier, and represents the amenities in a visually different way to reduce the amount of clutter on the map. Furthermore, the maps provide an idea of the building’s actual layout and structure in order to help students navigate their way to the books rather than getting stuck at dead-ends. Jake has made sure to display the map at points where students would need it, alongside other useful resources, like a basic guide to using SOLO. On top of this, his map is designed to function in tandem with improved signage that indicates where study and accessibility aids can be found, improving wayfinding in general.

Webpages and social media are also important ways of helping students use our services easily, especially in college libraries that remain open outside of staff hours. Jake’s useful updates to the Teddy Hall websites ensure that students have easy access to information about printing and accessibility aids, and that various different pages are better linked, enabling students to be more independent and confident in their library usage. Jake also made several posts on Teddy Hall Library’s Instagram explaining what the library has to offer; this direct social media outreach provides an invaluable counterpart to the wayfinding and signage improvements inside the library.

All in all, Jake has planned and executed a number of highly useful improvements to Teddy Hall’s reader provisions, ensuring that the library will better serve the needs of students and that they will get more out of everything the library can offer them.

Hannah Richmond – Data, displays and digital support: my year in review

Written by Ash Lammers

Hannah’s presentation took us through her three main projects this year, which are paradigmatic of the various ways in which we as trainees make lasting impacts on our libraries.

Shortly after Michaelmas started, Hannah set out to collect and analyse data from the student induction tours that the Law Library runs for new (and returning) students. She aimed to make these tours more effective for staff and students in three key areas: engagement, satisfaction and workforce. For engagement recommendations, she reviewed keywords that appeared most often in positive feedback about the tours (helpful and informative, if you are wondering!), as well as collecting attendee numbers for each tour or induction session held by the library. By combining this data with the improvements suggested by attendees, she concluded that increasing the awareness of inductions among students would be useful to make sure that all who might benefit from an induction could attend, and to increase satisfaction among those already attending. For workforce recommendations, Hannah collated a spreadsheet which compared the number of staff members involved in giving the induction and tours, and came to the conclusion that a reduction in the number of tours/inductions given would be beneficial for both staff workload and student engagement. Naturally, this data came presented beautifully in highly readable pie charts, spreadsheets and diagrams – what’s not to love?

A collection of books related to Green Action Week arranged into a book display

A second project that accompanied her all throughout the year was the setup of the themed book displays in the Law Library. By curating themed displays for events such as Black History Month and Disability History Month, Hannah was able to highlight the diversity of the law collection and specific intersections of marginalised identities with the law. If you are interested in Hannah’s process, our earlier Disability History Month blog post features some examples from not only the Law Library’s display, but also the Social Science Library and New College Library. While it is widely known that trainees’ hopes of books being taken off the display and read typically remain but a distant dream, Hannah noted significant interest in readers walking past, who would stop to browse.

Her final project involved recording three bitesize videos on Panopto, in which she took students through the basic steps of how to access digital support materials to assist them in their studies while at Oxford. These videos are currently available online, and will hopefully help many more students in the years to come.

Lilly Wilcox – Fresco: managing web archiving in preparation for the move away from Oxford Mosaic

Written by Elena Brearley

Over the course of the year, Lilly has presented on a few occasions about her work as a Digital Archivist, and each time I have been so impressed by her knowledge and passion for the subject. On the day of the showcase, she explained to us that University IT services are currently transitioning from the web publishing platform Mosaic to the new platform, Fresco. Lilly told us how her work as a Graduate Trainee Digital Archivist working with the Bodleian Libraries Web Archive (BLWA) has been impacted by this change.

To begin with, Lilly confronted us with an intriguing question: ‘Why archive the Web?’. She argued that we should archive the web for the same reason we archive any other kind of material: web archives have legal and evidential value as well as cultural, social, and historical importance. They are a significant resource for research, including for use in data sets.

Lilly introduced us to some key tools and programmes that web archivists use to do their work. An important tool for web archiving is a ‘web crawler’, which is an automated bot that ‘crawls’ and browses through the internet, capturing and archiving websites as it goes. Crawlers are used in other contexts too: Google uses them to find and bring together resources relevant to a search, and AI companies use them to scrape information to feed to Large Language Models.

Another key term for those such as myself who are new to learning about web archiving is ‘Seed URL’. Seed URLs function as a starting point for web crawlers to begin their journey working through and collecting data from a website. Web archivists can schedule crawlers to visit seed URLs at different points in time, and each captured version of the site is then saved to a WARC (Web ARChive) file. This means that past iterations of the site can be compared to the live version.

A screenshot of the Bodleian's Archive-It page

Bodleian Libraries Web Archive, which Lilly works on, was started in 2011 and is primarily focused on archiving University of Oxford websites. Until recently, these websites had been supported by the content management system Mosaic, a system which has posed some challenges to web archivists, including content frequently missing from captures due to being pulled through Application Programming Interfaces (APIs).

With the transition from Mosaic to the new content management system Fresco, Lilly’s team had to quickly make some challenging decisions about which websites to document for the Bodleian Libraries Web Archive. With the limited time, resources and budget available to them before the migration took off, they appraised over 1000 sites and decided to begin archiving over 150 additional websites, mostly for lab groups, centres, institutes, and departments. As they were in this process, sites were already being removed, so they had to work quickly and ended up gathering an enormous amount of data.

Fresco is being rolled out to the university community slowly, so the BLWA team is still learning how archive-friendly Oxford Fresco will be. Lilly emphasised the importance of collaboration and communication with web archivists from the outset of projects such as this one and hoped that people might gain more awareness of web archiving when creating websites (including designing them to be crawler friendly).

Lilly closed with a profound message on the importance of digital archiving, especially in times of political change, pointing to the recent change in administration in the US earlier this year and the drastic changes to government websites that have ensued. A question from the audience prompted Lilly to talk further about the implications of AI crawlers and how some sites have banned crawlers altogether. Hopefully in the future site owners and web developers will be open to working with web archivists to allow permission for their crawlers to carry on their work of documenting the World Wide Web.

Lilly is an effective and persuasive advocate of Web Archiving. She has certainly given me new insight and perspective onto how impermanent and slippery the internet is, and how necessary it is to document its changes over time. I hope she continues to be a champion for this important work!

Gia Simmons – Working papers and a small ‘archive’

Written by Lilly Wilcox

Last but certainly not least, Gia Simmons gave us a look into some of the work that she has done this year on two unconventional collections at the Social Science Library: a small archive of papers from the former International Development Centre Library and a large donation of working papers from the University of Bradford. For her project, she helped the SSL make steps toward understanding the makeup of these collections, where they belong, and how to make them accessible in future.

A collection of books and archival boxes from the Queen Elizabeth House collection

The International Development Centre Library was originally based at Queen Elizabeth House, home to the Department of International Development. This collection of papers came into being from a precursor to the IDC called the Agricultural Economics Research Institute and was created between ca. 1900–1980s. The papers were eventually inherited in 2005 when the contents of the International Development Centre Library moved into the SSL. Because of the complicated chain of custody and time that passed between when the papers were created, acquired by the SSL, and when Gia began looking at them, it had become unclear what the collection comprised.

In this larger collection from the International Development Library, Gia discovered a series of papers from the House of Lords for which the SSL had no record of the contents. The four boxes of material comprise miscellaneous papers relating to the creation of the 20th Report of the select committee on the European community’s agriculture and the environment during parliamentary sessions from 1983–1984. These made their way into the archives through a former Oxford Lecturer in Agricultural Economics, Dr Rosemary Fennell, who served as an advisor to the committee and deposited the papers with Queen Elizabeth House. Gia documented the different archival material in the boxes, taking note of their titles, creators, publishers, and dates of creation, as well as the mysterious set of codes with which the documents were labelled. Equipped with a new understanding of what is in the collection, the SSL is now looking for an archive with which to deposit these papers so they can be made accessible for research.

The second collection was a donation of working papers relating to international development donated to the Bodleian by the University of Bradford, which is weeding their collections. To integrate this donated material with existing SSL collections, Gia researched the full institution names and series names behind the working papers (which weren’t always evident from existing records and the material) to determine whether that series and its papers were already held by the SSL. With this information she was able to either match the material up with an existing shelfmark and barcode them for physical processing, or work toward creating shelfmarks and records for materials that were completely new to the SSL collections.

Gia’s presentation was a fascinating look into the sometimes-unconventional ways that our libraries acquire new material and the massive amount of work that is required to understand and make available these acquisitions.

And Finally, Our Farewell

Sadly, with this post, our time as the 2024-2025 graduate trainees has come to an end. We want to thank all of you who supported us, read our blog posts, or simply put up with us as we tried to make sense of the wacky world of the University of Oxford libraries. Hopefully we will see you all again, but if not…

So long, and thanks for all the fish!

Trainee Showcase 2025: Part 3

Posted on 27 August 2025 by khany — No Comments ↓

This is the third of a four-part series of presentation summaries for the 2025 Trainee Showcase. If you missed the previous posts, you can find them directly below this one!

Ash Lammers – From reclassification to Hebrew manuscripts: a tour through my trainee year

Written by Hannah Richmond

Choosing to present on three medium-sized projects rather than one larger one, Ash took us through a busy year of reclassifying sections of Jesus College’s collections, enhancing catalogue records for Hebrew manuscripts and rare books, and starting a book club alongside the college EDI Officer.

Having identified the use of dated and often inaccurate terms being used within the library’s collections, Ash began to reclassify these sections in the hopes of providing a more up to date and browsable collection with a reduced use of colonialist terms. They aimed to achieve this through the following steps:

Dividing larger categories into two or three smaller ones (e.g. dividing Philosophy into 20th and 21st Century Philosophy)
Removing English as a default language
Creating separate sections for certain subjects (e.g. History of Gender and Sexuality, Drama).

For the library’s Asian History section, Ash confronted dated Eurocentric language and inconsistencies between this section and others in the collections. They made the decision to divide this section by geographical region rather than by time period due to the geographical scope. This resulted in separate subdivisions for South Asia, South East Asia, Middle East, East and Central Asia, and Oceania.

Similar to the above, Ash also reclassified the African History section in an attempt to address the perpetuation of colonialist impact and to more accurately reflect the true complexity of African history. For this they settled on reclassification by time period, dividing them by colonial and post-colonial events.

To add to their already impressive and impactful efforts, Ash will be spending the summer months reclassifying the approximately 9000 items that form the Celtic library.

An image of an open manuscript filled with densely-packed Hebrew writing — An example of the manuscripts Ash was working on

Ash then took us through their second project improving current catalogue records for various Hebrew manuscripts, including copies of the Torah and Haftarah housed at the Weston. Ash is currently adding corrections and additions, hoping to increase the discoverability and knowledge of these items. They also tackled two poorly catalogued Hebrew books, transcribing and translating colophons and title pages in order to extract publishing details.

To round off, Ash brought up their book club, which they created alongside the college’s EDI Officer. The group meets termly to discuss books with significant diversity representation or themes. It has gained positive feedback thus far and Ash is hoping to continue it during the upcoming Michaelmas term.

Lindsey Evans – A dive into archives and digitisation

Written by Harry Whattoff

In her presentation, Lindsey spoke about the process of creating a Taylor Edition using an item from the Fiedler Archive at the Taylor Institution Library. For those who are unfamiliar with Taylor Editions, these are essentially texts or images from the Taylor Library’s collections which have been digitised by the Medieval and Modern Languages Faculty, the wider digital scholarship community here at Oxford, or, as in this case, by library staff such as Lindsey!

To begin her presentation, Lindsey shed some light on the Fiedler Archive and its namesake. Hermann Georg Fiedler (1862-1945) was a renowned German scholar and Chair of Oxford University’s German department from 1907 to 1937. He was also a tutor to the Prince of Wales – later to be King Edward VIII before his eventual abdication – and the two kept in touch for many years. In fact, after Fiedler supervised the extension of the Taylor Library, it was the Prince of Wales who reopened it in 1932. As for the archive, Lindsey noted how its expansive contents are mostly uncatalogued and tend to illustrate Fiedler’s complicated relationship with and feelings towards World Wars I and II.

In terms of choosing a text to be digitised, Lindsey outlined a clear approach: assessing the archive contents, carrying out complementary research, and calculating the potential project scope against the time available to undertake it. For the project to be manageable, the item which Lindsey chose had to be suitable in length and complexity, relevant to the Taylor’s wider collections, and out of copyright. As such, she settled on a copy of The Oxford Cosmopolitan from 1908 which details a lecture Fiedler gave on World Literature on February 25th of that year.

The process of creating the Taylor Edition had six main steps: to scan the source text, transcribe, encode in XML, check quality, fix any issues, and publish. Lindsey mentioned that she had not had much prior experiencing of XML encoding, so it did take a little while to acclimate to it. In terms of fixing any issues, this involved clarifying any ambiguities in the text, changing misspellings of Fielder’s name, and integrating links to external sources for further context. The main outcome of the project is that the Taylor Edition has officially been published and can be seen on the Taylor Editions website. Furthermore, the extensive research and sources which Lindsey compiled over the course of the project is being handed over to the team at the Taylor. This ultimately will help contribute towards future goals to document the Fiedler archive more widely and assist in the potential creation of an online discovery tool for it.

Emma Brand – Trapped in the dungeon: reimagining art’s approach to damaged books

Written by Phoebe Lawson

Emma’s presentation this year was all about the dungeon. Until this year, I didn’t even know that the Art library had a dungeon. Apparently, ‘the dungeon’ refers to the Lower Ground Floor Office where, for many years, damaged books went, never to return.

Books had been pulled from the shelves for repairs and a spreadsheet, the perennial favourite of librarians everywhere, had been created to keep track of them. However, many of the books had ended up languishing in the dungeon for far too long. Enter: Emma. Emma’s project was to try to create better workflows and new resources concerning damaged books, and to try to raise staff and student awareness of book repairs so that the books might one day be released from the dungeon.

She started by organising the dungeon, sorting through the books to make everything flow better so that people could easily see what work needed to be done. Emma also created fancy new triage slips to make it easier to triage damage, new signage for the shelves, a whole new (and colour-coded) spreadsheet for book repairs, and a decision tree for people to identify types of book damage. She even created an ID booklet for recognising damage and, my personal favourite, the most adorable awareness posters.

Honestly, I was blown away by the amount of work Emma put into her project this year. Book damage is something which, as librarians, we come across quite often, but which we sometimes don’t know what to do about. I feel like her project has the potential to really help improve book repairs at Art (and maybe free the poor trapped books from the dungeon once and for all).

A poster featuring a labelled diagram of a damaged book — Emma: Graphic design is my passion

A poster entitled 'books are friends not food!' that features a book being attacked by bugs — Emma: Graphic design is my passion

Going forward, Emma is working to finish her ID booklet and other information sources, and continuing to implement her spreadsheet and slips across the Art library (and maybe a few others). At the end of her presentation, she offered to share her resources with anyone else who might want them and, to be honest, I hope people do take her up on that… if only so I can see her cool posters everywhere.

Personally, I really enjoyed Emma’s presentation. I loved the quality of the resources she produced, and I’m amazed by the sheer amount of work and effort that must have gone into her project this year. Also, in a day filled with many different spreadsheets, Emma’s colour-coded book repair spreadsheet remains my favourite. I think she’s done a fantastic job with her project and that it might very well have a major impact on how book repairs are handled at the Art library.

Zac Draysey – Building an LGBTQ+ History LibGuide

Written by Yasmeen Khan

Zac’s trainee project revolved around the creation of an LGBTQ+ History LibGuide – a daunting but necessary task that would help to promote the wealth of under-represented resources on this subject to the wider global research community.

Due to ever-growing academic interest in the topic of gender and sexuality, the staff of the History Faculty Library had been quietly working on the creation of an LGBTQ+ History LibGuide for a while. Zac’s arrival to the library thus came at the perfect time, and he was given the task of taking the project across the finish line.

As a research endeavour like this would be far too much for one person handle in such a short time, the team thought it wise to draw on the knowledge of the wider Oxford community by having Zac host a history hackathon. The aim of this event was for participants to track down reputable, accessible, and free resources on LGBTQ+ history within a limited span of time. Each participant was sent a specification as to what kind of resources were acceptable for inclusion in an Oxford LibGuide and then were left to roam the internet in search of any and all relevant sites. The hackathon was a resounding success, with over 70 participants tracking down nearly 500 resources for further consideration.

From there, the task became only slightly less monumental, as Zac would have to research, vet, and categorise each of these resources while helping to create the LibGuide itself. Although this may sound straightforward, two major problems were quickly discovered.

A screenshot of the LGBTQ+ History LibGuide homepage

The first of these problems was a matter of scope. Whilst the History Faculty Library had circulated guidance as to what constituted an ideal resource in the hackathon’s specification document, the reality of the resources found resulted in a variety of grey areas for Zac to grapple with. He pointed out, for example, the difficulty of determining what constituted ‘good’ or ‘reputable’ academic research when so much LGBTQ+ history has been passed down in ways that traditional academic practice is not equipped to handle.

The second of these issues surrounded the categories that had been chosen for the hackathon and LibGuide. Although certain topics were inundated with resource suggestions, others received little to no submissions despite the best efforts of the hackathon participants. Zac thus had to reconfigure the categories to create a more equal distribution of resources while not losing the variety that made the original range of categories valuable.

Despite the intimidating size of this task, Zac’s efforts have already resulted in a beta version of the LGBTQ+ History LibGuide being soft-launched on the Bodleian’s LibGuides platform. Just over half of the original resources had made it onto the LibGuide by the day of Zac’s trainee presentation – a testament to the incredible work of Zac, the History Faculty Library staff, and the hackathon participants.

Trainee Showcase 2025: Part 2

Posted on 22 August 2025 by khany — No Comments ↓

This is the second of a four-part series of presentation summaries for the 2025 Trainee showcase. If you missed the previous post, you can find it directly below this one!

Gareth Smith – Uniomachia: a new Digital Edition in TEI XML

Written by Zac Draysey

The yellowed title page of Uniomachia, featuring its title, author, and a small illustration of a tree being chopped down by a disembodied hand with an axe. — The title page of Uniomachia

Gareth’s presentation was an engaging deep-dive into Uniomachia, a forgotten gem of comic classical parody unearthed during his traineeship at the Oxford Union Library. Drawing on his strong background in Classics and Ancient History, Gareth recounted his excitement upon discovering this obscure 1833 satirical poem written in a mix of Ancient Greek, Latin, and English. The poem, penned by Oxford students Thomas Jackson and William Sinclair, parodies Homeric epic to dramatize a real political schism within the Oxford Union, transforming an internal dispute into a mock-epic battle between ‘heroes.’ Gareth walked us through how the text not only imitates Homeric style but also includes absurd scholarly commentary in Latin, designed to mock academic pretensions.

Gareth’s project focused on producing a digital edition which aimed to make this otherwise inaccessible work available to a modern audience. His work involved producing a facsimile, transcription, English translation, and detailed commentary, all encoded for Taylor Editions. He illustrated the complexity of the task through a textual analysis of a passage from the poem that showed how deeply layered the satire is, touching on everything from Classical allusions to real Oxford figures like A.C. Tait, a future Archbishop of Canterbury. The audience got a glimpse of the wit embedded in the text and the scholarly humour behind the pseudo-critical notes. Gareth’s blend of insight and humour made for a fascinating presentation, and he ended with a playful farewell, echoing the spirit of the original text.

Kate Hanson – Adventures in digitization

Notes by Gia Simmons, written by Yasmeen Khan

As the graduate trainee based at Christ Church College, it was almost inevitable that Kate would end up interacting with the legacy of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (better known as Lewis Carroll). It was perhaps a little unexpected, however, when she was handed several hundred of his personal letters and asked to digitise them.

Those who know a little about Carroll will likely know that alongside being an author, mathematician, and photographer, he was also a prolific letter-writer – so prolific, in fact, that his logs show him sending and receiving 98,721 letters in the last 35 years of his life. Christ Church was fortunate enough to get their hands on some of these letters through an incredibly generous donation by Jon A. Lindseth, and they quickly realised that they needed to increase global access to these items whilst reducing the number of people physically handling them. Thus, it was decided that the best course of action would be to digitise as many of them as possible.

A photography studio in a library — Kate’s photography set-up

In an act that mirrored one of Carroll’s own 19th century photography set-ups, Kate was equipped with an ad-hoc digitisation studio and banished to the attics of Christ Church to photograph each and every item in crisp detail. Her patient and detail-oriented work bore fruit, and Kate ended the project having successfully digitised 232 out of the original 235 items; unfortunately, the wear and tear of time meant that the remaining three items were too fragile for digitisation. In total, Kate took over 600 images of the books, photographs, letters, envelopes, slips, and pictures that make up the Jon A. Lindseth Collection. The project rounded out with a 24 GB file size, allowing viewers to examine the items in minute detail – Kate pointed out, for example, that it is possible to make out the grain of the paper in some photographs.

But these impressive results naturally came with a few difficulties. Kate had to quickly get to grips with the subtle art of digitisation while grappling with the reality of the material as she found it. Not only were many of the items completely different sizes (forcing her to deal with the havoc of adjusting the lighting and focus), but many had been attached to or tucked inside other items and had to be recorded as such in the photographic record.

Overall, Kate’s trainee project was a fascinating meeting-point between the 19th century and modern day. Although her prior lack of Carroll knowledge meant that she had to quickly come to terms with both his triumphs and controversies, she found that reading his personal letters humanised him immensely. Kate’s brilliant project will not only allow people to encounter the legendary Lewis Carroll, but to interact with the sometimes-overlooked Charles Dodgson. Her work over the course of this year will not only have a lasting impact on Christ Church, but the greater field of Carroll Studies as a whole.

Millie Krantz – Some men in Oxford: queer life at All Souls

Written by Jake Banyard

Millie’s valuable project explored a history of queer experience at All Souls College and the wider university that has often lacked visibility and attention.

The project culminated in the curation of an exhibition of Millie’s findings, and her presentation began with an examination of the role of exhibitions in a college environment. Exhibitions can provide useful opportunities for college libraries to encourage reader engagement and promote their collections, as well as providing justification for Librarians to carry out interesting research and get to know their collections better. Millie raised the interesting question of who exhibitions should be aimed at: academics, students, readers, or the public? In the context of All Souls, Millie also considered the wide range of library users in the college, from fellows using the significant early printed book collection, to law undergraduates and naval history researchers. Who of these would be interested in the exhibition? For Millie this project also served as a way to begin to answer that question.

An exhibition case featuring a selection of books and papers pertaining to queer life at All Souls — Part of Millie’s exhibition

The focal point of the exhibition was the life and papers of John Sparrow. Made a fellow of All Souls in 1929, he remained so until his death in 1992 and served as the College’s Warden from 1952-1977. Sparrow lived through a time of great change in the lives of queer people in the UK and by using his papers (which were left to All Souls in his will) Millie’s exhibition presented an insight into Sparrow’s personal experience of the 20^th century, and the experiences of those he knew and corresponded with.

Due to the nature of the materials exhibited, Millie’s project involved a certain amount of ‘crossing the floor’ from the realm of Library collections and delving into the College archive. Archival practice within Oxford colleges has historically often been haphazard and informal, which means that catalogues can be incomplete or that past sensitivity reviews (if they have been carried out at all) have led to overzealous access restrictions or a lack of any access restrictions whatsoever. These were problems Millie soon ran into: one box of the Sparrow material was restricted simply because, despite Sparrow’s sexuality being publicly known, it “concern[ed] homosexuality”. Fortunately, upon consultation with the College’s current archivists, the restrictions were altered, and Millie was able to access the material.

Perhaps therein lies a concrete example of the value of Millie’s work. Instead of remaining uncatalogued or behind restricted access, queer experience and history has been made more visible, and awareness of the existence of these kinds of collections has been promoted. Millie’s ideas for the future of the exhibition involve potentially creating a permanent digital version, a longer-running physical exhibition, or using the material for outreach purposes in the library – so watch this space!

Yasmeen Khan – The Rhodes less taken: approaches to ethical cataloguing in the former Rhodes House Library material

Written by Charlotte Edwards

Based in Resource Description, Yasmeen had the opportunity to navigate a unique and highly sensitive project. Years before her arrival, the department had received a collection of resources from the Rhodes House Library, mostly pertaining to 20th and 21st century African and Commonwealth Studies. As many of these items were completely uncatalogued, Yasmeen took on the task of getting as many of them onto the system through ethical cataloguing practice as she could.

A colourful selection of books and magazines laid out in a collage — Some of the Rhodes material

Due to the nature, content, and physical location of the material, Yasmeen had many things to consider when starting her project, such as:

A duty of care to readers – there are pictures, language, and references in these resources that can be distressing.
Library ethics – the material is not held in an ideal location at Osney, is not accessible to researchers, and has lots of confusing metadata that makes it difficult to catalogue.

The first step of Yasmeen’s project was learning to catalogue – not an easy feat! She then started experimenting with serials and monographs (both would be needed for the vast array of material she would encounter in this collection) and began researching ethical cataloguing, eventually pulling together a ‘Bodleian Cataloguing Code of Ethics’ based on her research.

Yasmeen’s real-life approach to cataloguing was not priority-based, as she proceeded in the order of what item was next on the pile. The records were full-level, the descriptive fields were left intact, and she altered subject headings if it was both necessary and possible. In a few cases, she also restricted access to items with graphic images – due to their nature, it was felt that these items should only be viewed in private areas in the reading rooms. An attendee asked Yasmeen at the end of her presentation how she herself dealt with the material she was seeing. Indeed, we often consider how a reader would react to the material, but not the staff encountering it. Yasmeen’s approach was to take time to be mentally prepared for what she might see, especially after being taken by surprise at the beginning. It was also beneficial that she would only work on this collection for a couple of hours per week and so could restrict her overall exposure.

There are limitations when cataloguing, especially when cataloguing a collection like this, and Yasmeen touched on her ‘Dream Approaches’ regarding ethical cataloguing. Ideally, rather than relying solely on individual cataloguers, ethical cataloguing would occur on multiple levels, such as having institutional cataloguing policies that are regularly reviewed to ensure alignment with ethical principles.

Due to the collection’s vastness, the comparatively low priority of the collection, and the lack of departmental guidelines on ethical cataloguing, the collection could not be fully catalogued by the end of Yasmeen’s traineeship. To combat this open-endedness, Yasmeen is proceeding to write a report for any future cataloguers who want to continue this well-thought out and important work.

Yasmeen’s presentation was a fascinating insight into the decisions that are made when cataloguing sensitive material, and as an audience member I found her presentation highly enlightening and engaging.

Trainee Showcase 2025: Part 1

Posted on 20 August 2025 by khany — No Comments ↓

The Next Few Posts

As long-time readers of the blog will know, every graduate trainee in the Bodleian has the opportunity to undertake a project over the course of their traineeship. This is not mandatory – rather, it is an opportunity for trainees to try their hand at tasks outside of their everyday job scope and leave a lasting mark on the libraries they worked at. The culmination of all this hard work comes in the form of the Graduate Trainee Showcase: a day-long event where every trainee is given the opportunity to talk about their project in front of a bustling audience of librarians, fellow trainees, and interested colleagues.

This year’s showcase featured sixteen presentations and was held at the Social Science Library. Over the next two weeks, we will be posting short summaries of these presentations in hopes that those of you who couldn’t make it on the day can experience a snippet of what it was like.

Before we begin, however, a massive thank-you goes out from all of the trainees to those who supported us in our projects, came to the showcase, or guided us as line managers or training facilitators over the year. We also particularly thank our fellow trainees Elena Brearley, Gia Simmons, Charlotte Edwards, and Hannah Richmond for their hard work organising the showcase – without you, this wouldn’t have been possible.

Now, without further ado, on with the showcase!

Charlotte Edwards – Student wellbeing at Sainsbury Library

Written by Yasmeen Khan

Charlotte’s fascinating trainee project focussed on the creation of a wellbeing collection for the Sainsbury Library.

Drawing on her experience as a student and on various conversations with friends, Charlotte identified a need for wellbeing provisions that targeted business students. The idea that this was both necessary and desirable was furthered by the coincidental creation of a wellbeing module for the Saïd Business School’s MBA. This proved not only that academic interest in the subject existed, but that a core group of students with an interest in wellbeing was already present at the Sainsbury Library.

Although some wellbeing provisions already existed in the library, student feedback informed Charlotte that there were several areas that could be improved upon. Drawing on this, she then implemented a few meaningful changes to the library’s wellbeing provisions, such as creating a wellbeing book recommendation box and moving the library’s pre-existing puzzle collection from a busy public space to a more secluded area in the annexe room.

However, as there was only so much that could be done with the library’s current wellbeing provisions, Charlotte knew that a large portion of her time would have to be put towards identifying, collating, and expanding the library’s wellbeing resources and book collections. After using a series of webinars to scope out how other libraries were approaching wellbeing, Charlotte began her search for the material that would make up the body of her new collection. While the Sainsbury Library already had some relevant books on the topic, Charlotte’s in-depth research meant that she was successful in her endeavour to have some new books purchased for the collection as well.

A pile of books on the topic of wellbeing — A selection of the Wellbeing Book Purchases

Once she had gathered the relevant materials, it was simply a matter of turning this gathering of resources into an actual collection. As the books were drawn from a wide variety of topics (and physical locations in the library), it became clear that creating a physical collection on the shelves would create more issues than solutions. As such, Charlotte came up with the idea of creating this collection digitally by labelling each of the wellbeing collection’s items with a public note on SOLO.

The culmination of all this hard work was the creation of a beautiful promotional book display in the Sainsbury Library. Not only did this attract public attention to the new collection, but it briefly allowed for a physical version of the Wellbeing Collection to exist in the library.

With the completion of this project, Charlotte has not only demonstrated an impressive range of skills, but has left an important and positive mark on the Sainsbury Library’s wellbeing provisions.

Elena Brearley – Zines and wellbeing in the Bodleian Old Library

Written by Lilly Wilcox

One of the fearless leaders of the graduate trainee showcase, Elena Brearley, presented on her project to incorporate zines into the Bodleian Old Library Wellbeing collection.

Elena helped us by trying to define what a zine is—a notoriously tricky medium to pin down. A zine is typically an independent, self-published, and self-distributed DIY magazine. It can be physical or digital, made by an individual or a group, include a variety of forms of creative expression (like writing and visual arts), and cover pretty much any topic the zine maker wants. Essentially, a zine is a zine if the zine (maker) says so!

Around 30 zines laid out in three rows — Just a handful of the new zines

Based on her experience as a zine maker and reader, Elena thought zines would be a perfect addition to the Old Bod wellbeing collection created by last year’s trainee, as the medium is engaging and zines often discuss themes relating to wellbeing and community. Elena looked to other zine libraries in Oxford—like the Balliol College Library wellbeing collection—and beyond—like the Glasgow and Salford Zine Libraries. From conversations with and research into other zine libraries, Elena identified a few challenges that come with adding zines into library collections. For example, they can be difficult to catalogue as they often have multiple collaborators, unclear publishers and publication dates, and more. Additionally, other ethical questions surround the inclusion of zines in libraries, such as whether they are meant to be ephemeral. Ultimately, she decided that zines that were already published by creators in online libraries and zines submitted by makers who opted in to preservation of their work at the Bodleian would be appropriate for the collection.

In addition to identifying, printing, and assembling zines from online zine libraries, Elena also organized a zine donation drive to expand the collection. She started by sharing a call for zine donations around Oxford including at the Bodleian Zine Fair and through the staff newsletter. From this, the Bodleian communications team picked up on the project and were able to share it through social media where it completely took off! Elena received over 130 zine donations from six countries in multiple languages covering a variety of topics. This huge influx of donations meant that Elena had to appraise the donations for zines that fit the wellbeing theme of the collection. After appraisal, the zines could be catalogued as part of the Old Bod wellbeing collection and classified along with zines that already exist in the permanent collection and zines from the free digital zine libraries.

Included in the Old Bod wellbeing collection is a zine created by us graduate trainees at a workshop organized by Elena and instructed by the artist Alice Hackney at the Bodleian Bibliographic Press. Kudos to Elena for organizing such a great activity for us and for all her hard work on the Old Bod wellbeing collection!

Harry Whattoff – Displaying History: Research-Led Exhibitions in the English Faculty Library

Written by Lindsey Evans

In his presentation, Harry talked us through the displays that he has prepared over the course of his year at the English Faculty Library. A dominant focus for the EFL team this year has been to prepare for the library’s relocation to the new Schwarzman Centre. However, alongside contributing to this overarching project, Harry had opportunities to put together regular new book selections and to develop a number of themed displays.

The brief for the first of Harry’s themed displays was to curate a ‘seasonal’ selection of books in the lead-up to the December vacation. This gave a lot of freedom of interpretation, though with a slight sense of pressure to create an Oxford-worthy end result! Harry wanted the seasonal angle to be enjoyable and relevant to library users (some of whom might feel excluded by an overt Christmas theme, for example, if they don’t celebrate it). With two display cases available, Harry decided to present eight texts where snow plays a significant role, for example within the plot or as a metaphor. Drawing on his own reading and further research (Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous was a starting point), Harry brought together a diverse range of works. He prepared explanatory blurbs analysing the depiction of snow in each of the featured texts, which he hoped would prove thought-provoking and increase students’ appreciation of the importance of small details in literary works.

A few months later, in February of this year, Harry went on to develop “TO BE DESTROYED”: The Legal History of Book Censorship in the UK, a display that charted the events and landmark publications leading to the creation of the 1959 Obscene Publications Act. In terms of the research required, this was more demanding and time-consuming than his earlier display work, especially as it involved going back as far as the late 1400s to the introduction of the printing press in England. Among the six titles exhibited was the uncensored 1960 first edition of Lady Chatterley’s Lover that became a test case for a revised legal definition of obscenity. To add visual appeal and convey a ‘timeline’ idea at a glance with limited resources, Harry employed an ingenious use of book tape to connect each book/event to the next in a chronological chain within the display cases. For readers interested in a deeper engagement with the exhibition, he also added news clippings alongside each item that illustrated the historical context. This exhibition was especially topical as it coincided with Pride Month; Harry wrote a piece for the EFL blog to accompany the exhibition and to highlight in particular the relationship between the 1959 act and the suppression of queer literature, such as Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness.

Books and printed information laid out on a brown background as part of the To Be Destroyed Display — One half of the “TO BE DESTROYED” Display

The EFL’s move to the Schwarzman building provided the impetus for a final Trinity Term display on the past, present and future of the library itself. This display was interdisciplinary in scope and allowed Harry to work with items from the archives, such as the diaries of notable figures from the EFL’s history, which meant engaging with copyright considerations around their inclusion. The display looked back to the library’s beginnings and evolution, as well as looking ahead to its future as it joins a new Centre for the Humanities. Again, Harry worked on a blog post to complement the exhibition and present the research behind it.

Something that Harry has really appreciated in his work with book displays and exhibitions this year is being able to integrate his own interests, knowledge of literature, and research skills into their planning. Although it can be hard to measure the impact of library displays, they are an important way for libraries to connect with their readership. By curating displays that are thoughtfully researched and visually interesting, Harry has engaged with the English Faculty Library community and cultivated interest in EFL collections.

Phoebe Lawson – The Red Cross Collection, or; me, Henry Dunant and a great many books

Written by Emma Brand

As much of this content has already been covered in an informative and entertaining blog by Phoebe, this is a short summary of Phoebe’s presentation. This means I get to toot the horn about how great this project was and why – a summary of which you can see in the image below.

A venn diagram made up of three circles on the topic of why James' project suited them. the central point is labelled James' project and is surrounded by the phrases an interest in cataloguing, lots to do, a large donation, lots to see, a love of quirky things, and lots to learn — TLDR on why Phoebe’s project worked so well

To quote Phoebe (as I laugh every time), “at some point between the invention of writing and the modern day, the Law Library received a donation.” This donation was from the Henry Dunant Institute, a research institute for the Red Cross based in Geneva.

There are three critical things to know about this project:

It was LARGE (1000+ books!!)
The collection was diverse, spanning 13 different languages
It took up SPACE (for some years), occupying 25 shelves at the Law library.

Phoebe had an interest in cataloguing which brought about this project – and luckily for Phoebe, cataloguing is done on site at the Law Library. This made receiving valuable MARC record training from the beloved Tanya very easy. It also meant that any strange and wonderful cataloguing queries could be answered quickly so Phoebe could power through the many, many records she was creating.

This training set her up to start making minimum level records so that she could send books to the CSF from the start of December. By the end of January, she had blitzed through the English texts and was onto the other languages, which she finished by the end of March.

As someone who has spent time working at the Taylor library this year and handling material in other languages, I need to point out how impressive this timeline is. Yes, Phoebe does have a background in languages, having learnt Ancient Greek and German, however to catalogue in another language (especially 13 different ones) is very noteworthy. To state the obvious – some were in languages that Phoebe does not speak or read. Additionally, not all countries print cataloguing information in the same way, or in as much detail, making it yet again more challenging to process. Speaking of, over the four months processing these records Phoebe worked through a whopping 624 records. It is without doubt that Phoebe learnt loads about cataloguing and the many variations of it during this project.

To help learn more about the Red Cross collection, Phoebe kept two spreadsheets on the books that were catalogued: one for the acquisitions team at the Law library and one for data collecting interests. From this, Phoebe was able to pull out interesting books within the collection, some of which she highlighted during her presentation (and blog post). A fun fact Phoebe came across in Red Cross travels was that numerous North Korean propaganda texts were printed in English, French and Spanish as a way of disseminating information in other countries. My favourite part of the spreadsheets was not the spreadsheets themselves, but the map created from them (what can I say, I am a sucker for visual data). This stellar map shows all of the places that the books in the collection were published.

I thoroughly enjoyed listening to Phoebe talk about her project. The presentation highlighted not only the amount of work she was able to do, but also demonstrated the enthusiasm she has for a solid spreadsheet, clearing shelves, finding quirky books, and cataloguing. I am positive that the Law Library is thrilled that the shelves are clear, and that they have been processed in such a thorough manner.

A Day in the Life of an Osney One Trainee

Posted on 13 February 2025 by khany — No Comments ↓

07:55 – Arrival

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.

An image displaying eight shelves of books. Each of the books have different coloured pieces of paper sticking out of them.

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.

Let’s Talk About Toy Books!

Posted on 5 December 2024 by khany — No Comments ↓

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.

Trainee Introductions – Digitisation and Resource Description

Posted on 24 October 2024 by khany — No Comments ↓

A Broad Overview of the Next Few Weeks

Hello everyone!

For those of you who are returning readers, welcome back to the Trainee Blog! We’d like to say a huge thank you for sticking with us over the quietness of the last few weeks. Rest assured, we shall be back to a regular posting schedule shortly. For those of you who are new readers, welcome! We hope that our content over the next academic year will keep you entertained and informed about the Bodleian Libraries and life as a Graduate Trainee.

As you may have seen in the previous post, a new year means a new cohort of trainees – and since there are quite a few of us, it might be a little hard to keep track of us all. As such, we’ve dedicated the next four weeks to doing a few small introductions to ourselves and our roles within the Graduate Trainee Programme. We hope you enjoy!

Evie Morris – Weston Library

My background before I started in the library was mostly in sciences. I have a BSc in Biology and worked as a researcher and ecologist after I graduated. Like so many people, the pandemic completely up-ended my life and for a while I was lost… I worked a range of jobs in the aftermath, but when I got a Saturday job in the local library, it was a real ‘lightbulb moment’- I knew I belonged in the stacks! At heart, I have always been a polymath, and struggled with the ‘one track mind’ one seemed to need to be a successful scientist. But even my eclectic work history hadn’t imbued me with the experience needed for most full-time library jobs. As an undergraduate, whereas history students (and similar) have to use the primary sources contained in the library, everything I wanted as a researcher in genetics came from the internet.

The traineeship was thus my golden ticket and now I work in the Weston Library (or the ‘New Bod’, despite being *checks notes* yep, almost 100 years old) in Archives and Modern Manuscripts, which means working with records created between 1800 to the present day. As libraries and archives begin collecting materials created more recently, a lot is in digital media. Working in digital archives combines my skill set from computing for science research with my passion for expanding the reach of knowledge. It’s exciting to be working in a field where it’s still ‘all to play for’: if and how we decide to preserve these collections now will impact the scholars and combined knowledge of the future.

At the moment my time is split between the Bodleian Web Archive and a project to digitise catalogues, but that’s another blog post.

Lilly Wilcox – Weston Library

Hello world! My name is Lilly Wilcox, and I am one of two graduate trainee digital archivists with Archives and Modern Manuscripts in the Weston Library.

My academic background is in literature and communication studies, with a healthy dose of digital humanities. During my undergraduate, I worked on a digital humanities project that used the Text Encoding Initiative guidelines for XML to make pre-Victorian women’s writing digitally available and facilitate research on underrepresented writers. I found text encoding so fascinating, I moved to Oxford to do my MSc in Digital Scholarship. During my master’s, I got to design my own TEI/XML projects with Taylor Editions—the digital editions publishing platform run by the Taylor Institution Library—and learn about the variety of digital projects happening behind-the-scenes at the Bodleian Libraries. Now working at the Weston, I’ve swapped TEI/XML for EAD/XML (Encoded Archival Description) to support the retro conversion of the Africa & Commonwealth collection’s print handlists to digital catalogues. I also work on web archiving, so that online information about the running of the University in 2024 is preserved and can be made available for research in the future.

Yasmeen Khan – Osney One

Greetings! I’m Yasmeen, the Graduate Trainee Resource Description Assistant for this academic year. If you’re wondering why you’ve never seen a predecessor of mine on the blog, my position was newly created for 2024-25 – so hopefully there will be many more of us to come!

An image of a desk with two computer screens, a keyboard, and a mouse. On the left of the computer are four small piles of books, and on the right is an open green file — My (very organised and extremely uncluttered) workspace

Perhaps predictably for someone on this scheme I have been circling the idea of working with books for long time. Throughout primary and secondary school I could be found volunteering in various libraries, only taking a break when I went to study books for three years as an English undergraduate. Following my graduation, I worked in a boarding school for a year, where I naturally ended up volunteering in the school library (because I am, at the end of the day, a creature of habit). When my contract at that school came to an end, I finally gave in to the inevitable and applied to be the graduate trainee at Osney One, which houses a lot of the behind-the-bookshelves work that keeps the Bodleian running. Now my days are largely filled with tasks such as sending newly acquired books to their required locations, classifying books, and working to cram as much cataloguing theory into my head as possible. But one of the interesting quirks of my role is that I’ll slowly be shuffling from department to department (and occasionally library to library) over the course of the year, meaning that my workload could look entirely different by the time Hilary hits.

So, if you happen to see a member of staff looking entirely baffled by the mere concept of your favourite library’s shelving system later this year, there’s a good chance it could be me – feel free to come over and say hi!

Author: khany