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 micro-internship in Assessment

Posted on 27 June 2025 by evansl — No Comments ↓

As part of our trainee programme, we’ve had some particularly inspiring sessions about ‘assessment’. You might be forgiven for wondering how the words ‘assessment’ and ‘inspiring’ go together. Happily, assessment in this context has nothing to do with exams or inspections; it’s about evaluating library life in a whole variety of ways.

With Dr Frankie Wilson, who leads the Bodleian Libraries’ Assessment Team, trainees explored how stats, surveys and feedback can inform improvements to how libraries do things. We saw how assessment can also demonstrate the impact of what libraries already provide, in a world where physical library spaces and library staff expertise may be undervalued. In a follow-up workshop, we had fun experimenting with research methods ourselves – going undercover in the street observing how a space functions, exchanging ‘break-up letters’ to companies that have bitterly disappointed us and testing glasses that track your eye movements.

I’ve enjoyed being involved in research activities such as focus groups myself, and I quite often find myself thinking about how decisions can be made in an evidenced way. So I was intrigued to see more during a day-long ‘micro-internship’ with the Bodleian’s Assessment Team. Here’s how it went:

9:00 I arrive at the historic Clarendon Building where I’m meeting Rachel Childs, User Experience (UX) Librarian. Initially we have a slightly awkward wait to get into the building because some newly-weds are having official pictures taken in its photogenic archway. (The perils of working in a beautiful part of town…) Once inside, we get settled and say hello to colleagues Debra Hampton and Tom Pouncy.

^{The Clarendon Building: it’s a looker. Image by Peter Dreisiger on Flickr.}

We start the day with a discussion about ‘usability testing’ of a particular tool (for example, an online reading list system). Unlike software user testing, which might answer questions such as “Does this button do what it is designed to do?”, usability testing asks a broader question: “Does this tool offer an optimal experience, given what we can observe about users’ behaviour and expectations?” Usability testing implies multiple rounds of testing of each iteration of a tool over a number of weeks. Looking at the flowchart of the whole process with Rachel, and hearing that testers are often time-pressed student volunteers, I could see how important it would be to plan ahead with everyone involved.

^{The bible of UX techniques: A Handbook of User Experience and Design in Libraries, by Andy Priestner}

10:00 Rachel gives me some background on User Experience research techniques in general, which represent a combination of anthropologists’ methods (‘ethnographish’ techniques) and Design Research processes. Rachel explains that it is important to mix and match your methods; we need both attitudinal and behavioural research to answer a specific question, so that we can see not just what impressions a library-user reports about doing something, but how they actually go about something in reality, too.

10:30 Next, Debra talks me through the gathering of quantitative data from libraries in the Bodleian network. This includes physical occupancy data (how many people are using each library, when), as well as ‘service catalogue’ data (how often particular library resources are used, etc.). She explains that data often needs to go through a cleaning process to weed out errors and for data protection reasons. She introduces me to the software tools used, and explains that individual libraries tend to have one designated stats person who takes responsibility for recording the relevant numbers and passing them on to the team. This makes me realise I have no idea who does this at my own library!

After talking with Debra I have time for a tea break and a quick visit to the Bodleian Publishing team in the same building, to say hello and admire their lovingly-produced books!

11:15 I’m now with Tom, Business Data Analyst, to learn about KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) and data visualisation. Tom has worked on developing KPIs for strategic projects in the Bodleian Libraries organisation. On paper, some aspects of the organisational strategy might sound quite difficult to quantify, such as ‘deliver an inclusive public engagement programme’. We look at the way in which broad goals filter down into programmes, then individual projects, with KPIs attached to define success in a measurable way. Tom shows me how Power Bi is used to bring together accessible graphics and breakdowns illustrating what’s been achieved so far.

12:00 I have a chat with Frankie around midday about the priorities and challenges of her role as Head of Assessment. “It’s my job to tell the truth,” she summarises. The Assessment Team sits outside of the main Bodleian divisions and maintains an independent, user-centred approach. Frankie and her colleagues will undertake projects across the Bodleian as a whole (an organisation-wide Reader Survey has recently taken place, for example). But they also support individual libraries with their own research ideas and sometimes work with external partners as well. Relationship-building and listening skills are therefore really important for understanding different perspectives and making influential recommendations; Frankie credits some of her previous library roles, e.g. as a subject liaison librarian, with helping her to develop these.

14:30 After lunch I am tasked with archiving some images from a ‘Cultural Probe’. Not as ominous as it sounds, this study was ‘probing’ into participants’ experience of library support for their doctoral studies. Each person was given a physical journal with a prompt on each date. It could be a direct question about how they located the books/articles they had been using that day. Or it could be an instruction to ‘take a picture of something that has surprised you today’ (hence there being images for me to process). The thinking is that, by asking people to express themselves in a range of ways, a cultural probe can get to insights that more conventional methods may not. To me, this study looks quite enjoyable for participants and useful to them personally as a reflective log of this time in their lives. For the Assessment Team, it provides a really rich source of feedback that could be analysed in a variety of ways.

15:15 Tom sets me a small challenge: interpreting data from the feedback forms of workshop attendees and picking out the parts that are relevant to a KPI we have seen this morning. Initially I am a little apprehensive about putting my GCSE Statistics into practice, but soon I’m converting the attendees’ satisfaction ratings into a visual format using Excel tools and deciding which style would be most effective for telling the story at a glance.

16:30 In the final part of the day, I help Rachel prepare handouts for the next session of a co-design project she is running with neurodivergent students. ‘Co-design’ is about tailoring a new initiative to its users as closely as possible by involving them in every step of its conception. The focus of Rachel’s project is left intentionally open-ended at the start: participants work together to define an area of the library experience that they may want to rethink, and go from there. I could see that this approach benefits from a lot of preparation and openness/responsiveness on all sides. It is also quite exciting; it makes complete sense that engaging the target demographic in the creation of a new service is going to enhance its relevance and effectiveness. From a participant perspective, I could also imagine this being an interesting and empowering learning process.

17:00ish I head home, my brain starting to digest everything we’ve done and discussed. I feel as if I’ve gained a tangible insight into the Assessment Team’s work, combining day-to-day monitoring of library performance with some quite experimental and innovative projects to influence library life for the better. Thanks to Rachel, Debra, Tom and Frankie for such an illuminating day!

by Lindsey Evans

Adventures in Reclassification

Posted on 3 April 2025 by lammersa — No Comments ↓

Classification systems – we all know them (even if our readers don’t), we love them, we dislike them, we use them every day. Many Bodleian Libraries use Library of Congress (LCC), but it’s not uncommon, especially for College Libraries, to have their own classification systems (Jesus College being no exception). These in-house systems can be a pain – for example, we do not have a General Chemistry section and nobody knows why – but they offer a lot of flexibility to adjust to both your readers and your collection. Sometimes, of course, that means that shifting, updating or reclassifying of the books is required, whether for the sake of accuracy, facilitating easier browsing or improving outdated elements of the collection. As part of our ongoing effort to make the library more accessible, diverse and inclusive, I have recently undertaken several small reclassification projects and am in the process of working my way through more.

Before I get into the thick of it, here is an example of our classification system at work: if I were to write a book about music culture in East Germany, it would be shelved under LG7 LAM. The last three letters denote my surname (Lammers), the first three digits the location. L is Jesus’ letter for History, LG for German History, and LG7 for German history 1945-89. While some sections have fewer initial digits, the underlying concept remains the same.

Project 1: Linguistics

Books on a free desk space to ensure continued borrowing access while reclassifying!

This was the biggest and first classification project I undertook. Until a few weeks ago, all of our general linguistics and translation books lived in NE2. As you may be able to deduce, N is our Language section, with NE being English Language. Not only is the housing of general linguistics books in this particular section confusing, it also posits English as the default language. Given the history of the British Empire and the prevalence of English to the point of eradicating and replacing others’ languages, this arrangement is highly problematic in its implications.

To remedy this, I browsed NE2 and pulled out all books that were not primarily about the linguistics of the English language, collected them on my desk until I was thoroughly walled in before changing their shelfmarks in ALMA, the software behind SOLO. I also changed the shelfmarks on the books’ title pages and went through an entire roll of label protectors and many sheets of stickers for relabelling before shuffling around NE1 and reshelving them. The new section is now N2, Linguistics, and NE2 remains English Language and Linguistics only.

Project 2: African History

The second project was much smaller in scope. Our African history section, comprised of around 60 books, had all been living in just one shelfmark: LV1. This was strange since, usually, when sections are not subdivided, they do not contain numbers. In itself that doesn’t necessarily create a problem, but it did lead to several situations where books were mistakenly classified as LV instead of LV1. The idea of tidying that up and creating subsections had been floated a while back, and I finally decided to go ahead with it.

In addition to our LV1 confusion, there were two other reasons for overhauling the African history section; firstly, there were enough books on a variety of topics (from Nelson Mandela to medieval Egypt and nineteenth-century colonialism) that having separate sections would make browsing easier and thereby improve accessibility and usability for our students. Secondly, expanding the level of detail for underdeveloped subsections is an important part of reducing the impact of past colonialism on our libraries.

Subdividing the section means that our classification system acknowledges the breadth and depth of African history, even if is smaller than, for example, our British History collection. The relative sizes of our collection of course correspond to the subjects taught at Oxford, but by affording the same care and attention to both, we are ensuring that we do not maintain an approach to African history that perpetuates colonial ways of thinking about African history. Colonial attitudes, by virtue of inherent inferiority/superiority dynamics, disregard and erase the diversity of African histories, cultures, lifestyles, beliefs, and more.

There is, however, an important caveat: if we had a mere ten books in the section, subdivisions may be superfluous. This is because they serve a primary purpose of discoverability, and this is already given if there is a small number of items to begin with. As such, our African history section may have once been too small to warrant the divisions but, as it continues to grow, it is vital to pay attention to when a pragmatic choice of action becomes a politically charged, problematic choice of inaction.

Unlike N2, where the new section already had a clear name and purpose when I started, for LV I needed to start with researching which subdividing system would work best for our collection and our students. While most of our history sections are divided by time period, a geographical division may have made more sense depending on the items we have. With an ALMA-generated list of everything classified under LV1, I got to sorting them into the two possible subdivision styles. I consulted Wikipedia for broad, sensible chronological divisions that would allow for some flexibility but adhere to the general pattern of historical developments on the African continent. I soon noticed that a system based on geographical region would end up looking extremely skewed, therefore rendering the potential for easier browsing moot, and so I settled on a time-period-based reclassification. The time periods I chose to use as subdivisions allow for growth and future changes within the collection. Our new African history classification now looks as follows:

LV1 – General
LV2 – to 1884
LV3 – 1884-1960
LV4 – 1960-

Currently we don’t have any books on African history prior to the medieval period (except for what is in Ancient History), but this system allows for an integration of these should we acquire them!

Project 3: History of Gender and Sexuality

This project was entirely the spontaneous work of an afternoon in week six of Hilary, which also happened to be during LGBTQ+ History Month. I was in the process of assigning a shelfmark to a new acquisition (The Shape of Sex: Nonbinary Gender from Genesis to the Renaissance by Leah DeVun), and, as tends to be the case, multiple options appeared as appropriate: LB, for European history, L1, for General history, or S7, for Family and Women’s Studies, which is where lots of our queer books live. I opted for L1, my manager for LB, and so I wondered out loud if we had enough books on historical aspects of gender and sexuality to just create an entire subsection. At that point we had L1 for General history and L2 for History of science, and lots of lettered subdivisions by geographical region. After receiving the go-ahead to do some investigating, I used my tried-and-true method of browsing the shelves and also did several subject searches on SOLO, limited to the holdings of Jesus College Library. I came up with about 30-40 books which were worth grouping together. I pulled books from General History and Family and Women’s Studies but left any period-specific books in their original subsections. As you can probably predict, I then went into ALMA records, crossed out old shelfmarks and stickered plenty. As for the name of the new section, I landed on “History of Gender and Sexuality” after consulting with both my manager and my fellow trainees. While I really loved the idea of its shelfmark being LQ, all the other lettered subsections in L (History) denote geographical regions rather than discipline related subtopics, so we agreed on L3 to reduce the potential for confusion.

The inclusion of history of gender and sexuality as a subcategory serves as a useful pointer for those interested in queer history and related subjects and highlights queerness explicitly rather than letting it disappear in the depths of General History. That is not to say that everything in general history is automatically less important, but a subject like History of Gender and Sexuality is so young that its own shelfmark can serve as a pointed nod that we value and appreciate this part of the collection.

Projects to come: Asian history and 21st century philosophy

Me with some of the stacks of books that lived on my desk.

Our Asian history section, containing approximately 275 books, could definitely improve in terms of browsability, consistency and the amount of outdated and/or problematic language used. I am currently working out what a good alternative would be that both serves our students needs and does our collections justice. I am also soon going to be taking a look at the contents of Q14, which is our later 20th century philosophy section and bursting at the seams. We don’t yet have a separate 21st century philosophy section, even though some of what is housed in Q14 may be better suited to living there. So, if you find yourself in Jesus College Library and Q15 does not yet exist, please feel free to hound me about it!

Something unusual about all of these classification projects is that I did them all in the middle of Hilary term. The regular order of procedure for any kind of reclassification project is to wait until the end of term, so that the amount of disturbance is kept to a minimum and that the maximum amount of books are back on the shelves. However, since many of the books could have been checked out and therefore not included in my reclassifying adventures, I take great care to pull out all potential candidates out of the returned books pile to subject them to the same procedures so that the end result can be a uniform, logical classification system.

While I know that many of our students never really become aware of our classification system as A Thing underlying the entire library, and deal with it only in the context of finding a specific book they already know the title of, these reclassification endeavours are important – not only for addressing and reducing the impact of colonialism, but also for inclusion efforts, for improved usability of the collection, and most importantly, for the case that a student does look at our system, and is not taken aback by an inherited, flawed classification system that is long overdue an update. Making people feel welcome and that they and their history belong in the library is crucial. While our material focuses on providing study material, it is also nonetheless meant to be a place where students feel welcome and seen.

Women’s History Month Book Displays 2025

Posted on 27 March 2025 by giasimmons — No Comments ↓

March is Women’s History Month and International Women’s Day fell on 8^th March, which means that it’s time for another book display update from the Trainees! In this post, you will find information all about the book displays that were put together in the Social Science Library, New College Library, Taylor Institution Library, and the Sainsbury Library at Saïd Business School.

If you would like to find out more information about Women’s History Month or International Women’s Day, why not have a look at the International Women’s Day website. To find other resources on Women’s History, check out the Bodleian’s Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies LibGuide.

Gia Simmons – Social Science Library

Happy Women’s History Month! We do love our book displays here at the SSL and this month is definitely no exception. For this display, I was able to collaborate with a few colleagues to create an extensive two-part book display.

While creating this display, I decided to set myself a challenge. I wanted to include at least one book on the subject of at least one woman from as many of the subjects that are housed in the Social Science Library as possible. This was definitely not an easy feat as we house a wide variety of subjects such as Politics & International Relations, Economics, Anthropology, Geography, International Development, Refugee and Forced Migration Studies, Sociology and more. For the other section of the display, one of my colleagues compiled the books on women’s history more generally.

In deciding to try and create a display with women from each of our subjects, I was able to explore new historical figures that I had not been previously aware of. Some of the subject librarians in the SSL were kind enough to give me some suggestions of women to research and I added many of them to the display. Here is the list of books about these women that were included in this display with the name of the women written in bold:

Becoming/Michelle Obama https://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/permalink/44OXF_INST/fnp0l/alma990225479650107026
The impact of war on children: a review of progress since the 1996 United Nations Report on the impact of armed conflict on children/Graça Machel https://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/permalink/44OXF_INST/fnp0l/alma990152729910107026
Jacinda Ardern: a new kind of leader/Madeline Chapman https://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/permalink/44OXF_INST/fnp0l/alma990226655670107026
Living for change: an autobiography/Grace Lee Boggs https://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/permalink/44OXF_INST/fnp0l/alma990132428420107026
Vindication: a life of Mary Wollstonecraft/Lyndall Gordon https://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/permalink/44OXF_INST/fnp0l/alma990159973620107026
Dust tracks on a road: an autobiography/Zora Neale Hurston https://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/permalink/44OXF_INST/fnp0l/alma990102991660107026
‘They say’: Ida B. Wells and the reconstruction of race/James West Davidson https://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/permalink/44OXF_INST/fnp0l/alma990165797190107026
Simone de Beauvoir/Judith Okely https://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/permalink/44OXF_INST/fnp0l/alma990162281360107026
The life of Isabella Bird/Anna M. Stoddart https://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/permalink/44OXF_INST/ogbd98/alma991025406227607026
Feminism and voluntary action : Eglantyne Jebb and Save the Children, 1876-1928/Linda Mahood https://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/permalink/44OXF_INST/ogbd98/alma991025464234907026
Helena Normanton and the opening of the bar to women/Judith Bourne https://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/permalink/44OXF_INST/35n82s/alma991022207784507026
Joan Robinson/G.C. Harcourt and Prue Kerr https://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/permalink/44OXF_INST/1tb00os/alma990171409740107026
Barbara Ward: her life and letters/Jean Gartlan https://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/permalink/44OXF_INST/35n82s/alma990172717330107026
The best we could do: an illustrated memoir/Thi Bui https://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/permalink/44OXF_INST/q6b76e/alma991025464235307026
Wangari Maathai’s registers of freedom/[edited and with an introductory essay by] Grace A. Musila. https://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/permalink/44OXF_INST/ogbd98/alma991025332624407026
Women political leaders in Africa/Rosemarie Skaine https://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/permalink/44OXF_INST/ogbd98/alma990167170320107026
Mary Robinson: An authorised autobiography/Olivia O’Leary and Helen Burke https://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/permalink/44OXF_INST/ogbd98/alma990138280170107026

The theme for International Woman’s Day this year was Accelerate Action. Although I did not follow a specific theme for this display, the inclusion of women from a wide range of disciplines was of paramount importance to me, as each of these women have been a notable force for change in their fields. Some of these women you may have heard of, some you may be unfamiliar with. Nevertheless, I would highly recommend that you look into the impact that they have made on their fields. If you would like more information on the book display, I also wrote a blog post for the Social Science Library Blog.

Jess Pascal – New College Library

For this year’s Women’s History Month display, I first checked out last year’s display so I could avoid repeating too many books and give others a chance in the limelight, though some were just too good to miss! In the same spirit, I drew on as many interesting acquisitions I’ve seen recently as possible – this is an advantage of processing the majority of new books that come into the library. A particularly useful source of new books about women’s history was the Warden’s kind donation of all the books longlisted for the Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize for non-fiction books, which is associated with New College. This included several titles on women’s history, including The Waiting Game and Shakespeare’s Sisters.

Fortunately, there were a lot of books to choose from on women’s history – the hardest part of this display was getting my initial longlist down to just 12 books! In line with the UN’s theme for International Women’s Day this year, ‘For ALL women and girls: Rights. Equality. Empowerment’, I aimed to represent a diverse cross-section of women’s history within the scope of the library’s collections. Nevertheless, the display has a bias towards English women, as they are most represented in the library here at New College to align with teaching priorities.

Books used:

Ackelsberg, Martha A. Free Women of Spain : Anarchism and the Struggle for the Emancipation of Women. AK Press, 2005.

Briggs, Robin. The Witches of Lorraine. Oxford University Press, 2007.

Burke, Jill. How to Be a Renaissance Woman : The Untold History of Beauty and Female Creativity. Profile Books Ltd, 2023.

Clark, Nicola. The Waiting Game : The Untold Story of the Women Who Served the Tudor Queens. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2024.

Ferry, Georgina. Dorothy Hodgkin : A Life. Granta Books, 1998.

Gregory, Philippa. Normal Women : 900 Years of Making History. William Collins, 2023.

Jenkins, Lyndsey. Sisters and Sisterhood : The Kenney Family, Class, and Suffrage, 1890-1965. Oxford University Press, 2021.

Romney, Rebecca. Jane Austen’s Bookshelf : The Women Writers Who Shaped a Legend. Ithaka, 2025.

Rupp, Leila J. Worlds of Women : The Making of an International Women’s Movement. Princeton University Press, 1997.

Saunders, Corinne J., and Diane Watt, editors. Women and Medieval Literary Culture : From the Early Middle Ages to the Fifteenth Century. Cambridge University Press, 2023.

Simone, Nina, and Stephen Cleary. I Put a Spell on You : The Autobiography of Nina Simone. Second Da Capo Press edition., Da Capo Press, 2003.

Targoff, Ramie. Shakespeare’s Sisters: Four Women Who Wrote the Renaissance. riverrun, 2024.

Lindsey Evans – Taylor Institution Library

For our Women’s History Month display, I was keen to showcase books and films about women’s achievements across the breadth of cultures represented in the library’s collections. Since the Taylor covers a very wide range of modern European languages – from French to Frisian, Spanish to Yiddish – this gave plenty of scope. Almost a daunting amount of scope, in fact.

The finished displays (with one item taken away by an interested reader 😊 )

For the broad topic of ‘women’, it would have been impractical to canvas everyone in the team of subject librarians for recommendations. (Also this month we have a dedicated St Patrick’s Day display going up, which has been curated by our Celtic subject librarian, Janet.) And so I began a solo process with SOLO, the catalogue, to narrow things down.

Initially my thinking went to works by, or about, celebrated female authors and feminist theorists, past and present. (“One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman,” wrote Simone de Beauvoir, on whom there are several hundreds of books in the Taylor, for example.) Another consideration in my mind, however, was to highlight the impact of women whose voices might be less well known. In the end, I settled on a range of titles documenting women’s contributions to art, politics or society at different points in history and in various language communities. These women include crofters in the Hebrides, Welsh women shaking up the status quo, powerful noblewomen of 18^th-19^th century Russia, female creators in 19^th century Germany, and sisters (in the literal sense of blood relatives) who were active in Irish public life over the ages.

With the Taylor being home to a large DVD collection, and even a bookable space for library users to watch them in, it’s also great to be able to publicise films as well as books on a theme. I chose a sample of films by foreign-language female directors to highlight women’s contribution to cinema. I aimed to include some directors who are less familiar to Western audiences, so alongside the French filmmakers Agnès Varda, Céline Sciamma and Claire Denis, we also find the Czech director Věra Chytilová, Ann Hui of Hong Kong and the Saudi Arabian director Haifaa al-Mansour.

Charlotte Edwards – Sainsbury Library

As the Sainsbury Library is embedded into Saïd Business School , I was able to see the celebrations for International Women’s Day extend through the whole school. We had a women’s day themed social, the catering team put together a great cake display (photographed by my supervisor) and there was a book talk by Iris Bohnet and Siri Chilazi on their new book Make Work Fair: Data-Driven Design for Real Results (which I of course included in our book display in the library!).

More focussed in the library, I also gave the Sainsbury Library Women in Business Libguide a refresh, including some of the books I found as part of my book display research.

It was nice to be able to highlight some physical books unique to the Sainsbury Library:

Make Work Fair: Data-Driven Design for Real Results / Iris Bohnet & Siri Chilazi
- A book talk was hosted at Saïd Business School on 10^th March when Bohnet and Chilazi presented their evidence-based approach to create fairness in the workplace by providing an even playing field. In line with this year’s theme, Accelerating Action, they present ‘Actionable solutions’ to establish this fairness in the workplace.
The Mental Load: A Feminist Comic / Emma
- Appearing on our Inclusive Leadership reading list, I discovered this book by a colleague’s recommendation. This comic covers the sometimes-frustrating reality of being a woman in a male dominated workplace in an engaging, easily digestible form. And yes, I ended up reading this in one sitting.
The Lockdown Lowdown: Women and Covid, a gendered pandemic / Sarah Lightman (ed.)
- The Lockdown Lowdown: Graphic Narrative for Viral Times are graphic narratives written by a diverse range of artists during the first COVID lockdown in 2020. The series highlights the strange experiences and emotions felt during this time. This special edition of The Lockdown Lowdown demonstrates how women experienced the pandemic differently to men, both negatively and positively. In a textbook-heavy library it is exciting and refreshing to find other narrative forms such as The Lockdown Lowdown and The Mental Load.
Beyond Leaning In / Melanie Ho
- This book is based on research about Business but is formatted as a novel. Ho creates a narrative intended to begin a conversation between people from friends and family to co-workers. The variety of characters across different genders and ages aids in giving readers new perspectives on the issue as to why it is so hard to close the gender gap.
Why do so many Incompetent Men become Leaders? (and how to fix it) / Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic
- When browsing our shelves in the Annexe, I came across this book and admittedly loved the title. Chamorro-Premuzic explores why competent women and men who don’t fit the stereotypical leader profile (many organizations identify leadership with negative qualities like overconfidence and narcissism) are passed over for leadership roles. And the negative impact of this. Chamorro-Premuzic explains what really makes a leader and how new systems could rectify having the wrong people in charge.
Women’s Economic Empowerment: Insights from Africa and South Asia /
Kate Grantham (ed.), Gillian Dowie (ed.) & Arjan de Haan (ed.)
- Aimed at students, researchers, practitioners and policymakers, this book presents research coming from the International Development Research Centre’s (IDRC) Growth and Economic Opportunities for Women (GrOW) programme. The research covers topics such as unpaid domestic work and childcare, the influence of social and cultural norms that prevent women participating in better paid economic sectors and more in the Global South.

When researching for books I tried to keep my focus very Business and Management based, drawing on some books that are on reading lists for Inclusive Leadership. As World Book Day was happening whilst I was compiling my display (for which we had another book display) I also thought to include some more general feminist literature, so some of my book display picks may already be known to you, but hopefully there is something new here as well.

Other Books Included:

African Women and Intellectual Leadership: Life Stories from Western Kenya / Maurice Nyamanga Amutabi (ed.) – Ebook
Bad Feminist / Roxane Gay
Boss Lady: How three women entrepreneurs built successful big businesses in the mid-twentieth century / Edith Sparks
Sister Outsider / Audre Lorde
The Authority Gap: Why women are still taken less seriously than men, and what we can do about it / Mary Ann Sieghart
The Woman President / Ramona Vijeyarasa
We should all be Feminists / Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Women & leadership : lessons from some of the world’s most powerful women / Julia Gillard & Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala
Women in Leadership: Contextual Dynamics and Boundaries / Karin Klenke
Women, Money, Power: The Rise and Fall of Economic Equality / Josie Cox
Women’s Contributions to Development in West Africa: Ordinary Women Extraordinary Lives / Kelly Ann Krawczyk (ed.) & Bridgett A. King (ed.)

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.

Have you seen this book?

Posted on 30 January 2025 by lammersa — No Comments ↓

Since we as trainees get the chance to visit many libraries, and spend a lot of time in them day-to-day, I thought I would introduce to you a different kind of library today: The Library of Lost Books. Like the name suggests, it’s not so much a physical space (anymore) but rather a virtual collection of book titles and their locations around the world that once used to be housed together in the Library of the Higher Institute for Jewish Studies in Berlin.

Founded in 1872 the Institute was one of the leading liberal rabbinic seminaries in its time, and shaped liberal Judaism in Germany and, through its students, around the world. Rabbis like Dr. Rabbi Leo Baeck and the first female rabbi Regina Jonas studied here. But the Institute also functioned as a social space and as a place of study for those more interested in Jewish Studies without rabbinical ordination. As a flourishing centre of Jewish life and study, the library, led by Jenny Wilde, became one of the world’s most important Jewish libraries, collecting approximately 60,000 titles on Jewish history and culture in at least six different languages. After 1933, the rise of the NSDAP and their repressive measures against Jewish individuals meant that the Institute, seemingly paradoxically, initially flourished as a centre of Jewish life and knowledge. Donations of private collections from those fleeing and the closure of two prominent rabbinical seminaries meant that the library holdings and student body started growing rapidly. It also expanded to secular education and holdings when Jewish enrolments at university and school were capped at 5% in 1933, and finally altogether banned from teaching or studying at German universities in 1938. This is not to say that this continued indefinitely – many fled, were imprisoned or deported, especially after the beginning of the Second World War. By 1942 the classes that the Institute was able to offer were only a fraction of what they once had been.

Jewish prisoners cataloguing and sorting inside a depot for Jewish books – a form of intellectual forced labour.

Because the Institute’s staff, including their librarian, knew that they held valuable, rare books and that Nazis sought to utilise Jewish books to justify their repressive, antisemitic policies or destroy them altogether, they successfully rescued several smaller collections and books by smuggling them out of the country in private collections of people with non-German passports. However, many books remained in the library until its forced closure in 1942. The library’s collection was then transferred to the Reich Security Main Office, where a “Jewish Library” had been set up in 1939 that held all seized items from Jewish libraries all over Germany. It is estimated that the total of the books held there was 2-3 million. Due to the threat of bombing, many of the books were packed into storage in 1943 and distributed to depots all over German-occupied territory; especially, Germany, Poland, and the Czech Republic. Jewish prisoners, including Jenny Wilde, were forced to catalogue, sort and process these collections to make them more usable for the Nazis – a form of intellectual forced labour that some of them nonetheless drew comfort from. Aside from the main Jewish Library in Berlin, there were also book collections set up in various other places, including the Jewish Museum in Prague. Many of these books survived the war inside these depots.

After the end of the Second World War, many surviving former students, employees and teachers of the Institute laid claim to the rescued collections. However, there was no one clear successor to the Institute, and the Allies, who managed the return of all seized books to their owners, decided to instead hand the books over to an organisation called the Jewish Cultural Reconstruction founded solely for this purpose. They distributed the remaining books, for which no previous owner or successor could be found, across Jewish cultural and educational institutions all over the world.

Other depots were raided by special Red Army troops called the Trophy Brigades as they approached Berlin, who sent their loot back to Moscow. It’s unclear how much and if any of these were previously housed at the Institute, nor how likely it is that they will be returned. Yet other books ended up as shelf-fillers in various Berlin Libraries as they were found in destroyed houses or abandoned depots.

As is evident, the books that once belonged to the Institute’s Library could now be scattered far and wide, especially in the UK, Central Europe, Israel and the United States. This is why this library is now called the Library of Lost Books – there is no clear way of tracing the entire collection as it was split up, sold, identifiers covered up, inherited, smuggled and abandoned. Over the years some books have turned up and identified as those previously belonging to the Institute’s collections. This happened especially when they were sold at auction or newly catalogued or consulted.

The initiative ‘Have you seen this book?’ also known as the Library of Lost Books, is run by the Leo Baeck Institute and intends to both publicise the history of these books in a beautifully created interactive exhibition and to appeal to the general public for their support in locating them. One of the main ways that this can happen is by local investigation – grab a book search checklist off the initiative’s website here, order some books into the reading room of your local library, and see if you can find some telling provenance marks such as a bookplate, a stamp, or a so-called paper book tail. Alternatively, you can have a browse through the database of reported books and see if you can put your transcription skills to use!

While a virtual record of all the Institute’s former books is one of the primary aims of the initiative, a physical reunion of the books is not. This has multiple reasons; firstly, the Institute never had a direct successor. While there are progressive rabbinical seminaries in Germany, none of them are, or claim to be, directly related to the Institute. Secondly, many books now found in libraries may have been acquired perfectly legally under the assumption that the book was a genuine, sellable commercial good rather than a looted item. And, most notably, the initiative is more interested in how the books ended up where and which ones survived. Completing the library once again is an impossible task – there is no complete catalogue nor the ability to search private collections or find out what was destroyed. A digital reunion however, coupled with the active efforts of highlighting and fighting against Nazi crime, lets the legacy of the Institute as a place for joyous, transformative Jewish learning live on.

In memory of those who perished in the Holocaust, chasidei ummot ha’olam, and all those seeking to preserve their memory and legacy. Zichronam livracha, may their memory be a blessing.

Libraries on Film

Posted on 17 December 2024 by evansl — No Comments ↓

Contributors: Elena Brearley, Charlotte Edwards, Lindsey Evans, Ash Lammers, Phoebe Lawson, Jess Pascal

As Christmas approaches, we can soon hang up our Bodleian cards for a few days. But why escape the library completely? Maybe you, like us, will be hoping to relax in front of a film or two during the holidays. If so, then enjoy this selection of our favourite depictions of libraries and librarians in cinema.

Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018)

This is the true story of struggling writer Lee Israel. Desperate, and having alienated her publisher due to her ‘difficult’ personality, Lee decides on a new way to monetise her writing: by forging private letters of literary greats, such as Dorothy Parker and Noël Coward. She becomes such a successful imitator that traders in memorabilia start snapping up her pieces, though suspicions are soon raised. Lee’s deception begins with stealing an original author’s letter, when she stumbles across an opportunity in the Special Collections department of the New York Public Library. Later, she lifts material from Yale University, outwitting security and taking advantage of the trusting library staff who just want to support her ‘research’. Word from the wise: don’t do this, it will end badly.

Ghostbusters (1984)

More suspicious goings-on in the world of New York libraries, as the Ghostbusters are called to investigate supernatural activity in the stacks, including an eccentric method of piling books into a neat column. ‘You’re right – no human being would stack books like this,’ remarks Venkman. An alarming amount of ectoplasm is soon found on the card catalogue, before an entire shelf inexplicably falls to the ground, covering our heroes in dust (which is plausible). A mysterious ghostly librarian appears, reminding them to keep the noise down. It’s slightly disappointing that this scene reflects several clichés about libraries, such as: 1) female librarians are matronly figures with their hair in a bun; 2) you are likely to be sternly shushed by one; and 3) staff – undead or otherwise – have time to float around reading all the books themselves. Never mind, we weren’t necessarily expecting subtlety.

Wicked (2024)

This backstory of the Wicked Witch of the West from the Wizard of Oz covers her time at the magical Shiz University, where some classes are taught by talking animals and students have the chance to major in sorcery… so not quite like Oxford! During the song ‘Dancing Through Life’, we catch a glimpse of Shiz University Library – its impressive architecture had me wavering between envy and profound relief that I’ve never had to reshelve books on gravity-defying bookcases that rotate 360 degrees. Warning: library lovers may find the treatment of books in this dance sequence distressing.

Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones (2002)

The Jedi Archives (also known as the Jedi Temple Library) plays a rather small yet significant role in Episode II of Star Wars. In a quest to uncover the roots of an assassination attempt, Obi-Wan Kenobi consults the library for information about the planet Kamino. Unfortunately, however, he is unable to locate any evidence of the planet ever existing – despite the fact that the library is rumoured to contain all galactic knowledge. This bold claim is further underpinned by the librarian, Jocasta Nu, who asserts that ‘if an item does not appear in our records, it does not exist!’ Not only is this concerning because clearly information being missing is an anomaly, but it also implies that the Jedi have developed a perfect acquisition and cataloguing system. Who’s jealous?

In this case, however, Nu’s blind (and reasonable, given this gap in information seems to be a decidedly unusual occurrence) faith in the Jedi cataloguing and acquisitions system means that she is inadvertently helping those seeking to undermine Jedi authority. Instead of being willing to consider that something is amiss in the archives and library, Nu works off the assumption that any existence of anything in the real world must be mirrored by knowledge of it existing in the archives, and therefore, concludes that Kenobi must be wrong. Because Kenobi knows to check his sources, he does go and find Kamino by himself and confirms that someone had indeed been messing with the library. Naturally this is just a tiny piece in the slow unravelling of the future Emperor’s plotting, but it is important nonetheless – the dangerous thing about a perfect system is the assumption that it cannot be flawed.

After the fall of the Jedi, the archives were first confiscated and studied, and later deliberately wiped by Jocasta Nu in order to avoid abuse of the knowledge held by the Jedi. Any remaining holocrons were destroyed after the Emperor converted the Temple into his palace; eventually restored to an archive and library by Luke Skywalker.

Wings of Desire (1987)

Wings of Desire, or Himmel Über Berlin (Heaven Above Berlin), directed by Wim Wenders, is a 20th century art-house classic, a romantic fantasy, which was filmed in West Berlin just a few years before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Two trenchcoated angels, Damiel (Bruno Ganz) and Cassiel (Otto Sander), unseen and unheard, walk the streets of Berlin, ride the U-Bahn, and visit the apartments and dwellings of the residents, guarding over the city from atop the grand statues and building rooftops. They watch and listen, bearing empathetic witness to the inner thoughts, fears, and hopes of the city’s human inhabitants. These ‘city symphony’ style sequences encapsulate the feeling of ‘sonder’, the realisation that others’ lives are as real and complex as our own.

In one of the most beautiful scenes, the two angels visit the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – the Berlin State Library. The angels of the city seem to congregate here amongst the readers and shelves of books, providing solace and comfort to those engaged in the noble pursuit of knowledge.

Intrigued by the mortal world and having fallen in love with the lonely circus trapeze artist Marion (Solveig Dommartin), Damiel gives up his wings, falling to earth to feel for himself at last the joys and pains of the human experience. The film also features Peter Falk (Columbo) as himself, and music and performances from Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.

Party Girl (1995)

Free-spirited New York party girl Mary (Parker Posey) lands in jail after organising an illegal party. She calls her librarian godmother, Judy (Sasha von Scherler), to bail her out. After being firmly reprimanded, Mary ends up taking a job as a clerk in the public library where Judy works, in order to repay her debt and prove she can handle grown-up responsibilities. Unexpectedly, she takes to the work, and her life moves from a world of chaos and disarray into a new library-inspired era of order and balance.

Watching this film from a librarian’s perspective, a highlight is a scene in which Mary’s roommate Leo, a DJ, comes home just before an important gig to find Mary has reorganised his records according to the Dewey Decimal System. He’s exasperated, wondering how he will ever find the records he needs, but Mary reassures him that the system works! Vaguely reminiscent of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, this film is a treat; funny and touching, featuring fabulous fashion, and a dreamy romance. Set against the backdrop of the 1990’s queer New York party scene (catch a glimpse of Lady Bunny within the first few minutes). You can watch it for free on YouTube.

Beauty and the Beast (1991) (and maybe a dash of the Emma Watson one)

I love Beauty and the Beast so I’m very excited to talk about this one!

In many ways, libraries are incredibly central to the themes and story of Beauty and the Beast. In fact, there are actually two libraries in the film. The first appears during the first song of the film when Belle goes to the, confusingly named, ‘Bookseller’ from which she has been borrowing books relentlessly. The second appears during a different song later in the film (‘Something There’), where the Beast gives Belle an entire library which, if the animation is to be believed, is approximately a billion storeys tall.

I very briefly want to talk about the gorgeous design of the Beast’s library. I’m not an artist (or art historian), but Google tells me that the library follows a Baroque design. Even if it doesn’t, I think it just looks so absolutely stunning. When we first see the library, it’s accompanied by grand sweeping shots up towards the ceiling which really emphasise just how massive the library is supposed to be and, especially, how impressive it is to Belle, who has never seen anything like this before.

The first full view of the library and its books (at 1:35 in the clip above) leaves you with the question: ‘Just how many books are there?’ (You know, maybe Lumiere and Cogsworth were right, maybe they do have every book ever written.) It’s not entirely clear which library (or libraries) this may have been based on, but one possibility (and I would like to direct attention to ThatBookBroad whose blog drew my attention to this) is the Admont Abbey Library in Austria, completed in 1776 and, to this day, the largest monastic library in the world.

Admont Abbey library. Image by Elsemargriet from Pixabay.

For the live action film’s library, a commonly-cited inspiration is the Biblioteca Joanina in Coimbra, Portugal, another incredible Baroque library built between 1717 and 1728.

Also, I cannot write this without encouraging you to check out this fantastic recreation of the Beast’s library in LEGO®, made by Sarah Innerebner.

The Breakfast Club (1985)

Although no librarian is ever seen, this 80s teen classic takes place almost entirely in a library. John Hughes takes us through the experiences of five high schoolers stuck in an all-day Saturday detention in their school’s library. Beginning as each character’s prison, the students eventually take control of the space as the film develops (although this does involve some unfortunate vandalism of said library); one very apt proposed title of this film was thus Library Revolution [1]. Much of the chaos revolves around Bender, a detention regular, who falls through the ceiling into the library, rips up a book of Molière’s work, and sets his shoe on fire. The things students can get up to in the absence of a librarian… Anyone familiar with the Bodleian Oath will know that users must swear ‘not to bring into the Library or kindle therein any fire or flame,’ so hopefully nothing of the same will happen here!

In the film, the library is only viewed negatively when an authority figure is hovering over it; it later becomes a sanctuary for the students when they reclaim control. In their confessional, ‘they create a safe space for sharing vulnerabilities, and redefine the function of the library and the school under their own terms’ [2]. The students can open up and find neutral ground in the library. The characters being in the school library for the whole Saturday allows for a suspended reality in which each of them, except Brian, are removed from the setting that stereotypes them. For Brian, the brainy one, the library is arguably the setting to which his stereotype belongs, but with the other students present, it becomes a neutral ground. Therefore, this ground allows for each of them to become an individual beyond their stereotypes, with the prison-like setting ultimately turning into a fun place where they let loose and dance – their punishment turns into play.

Filmed in Maine North High School, this set was constructed in the school gymnasium, based on the real school library. Hughes even gave each actor a piece of the library’s banister as a memento of the film. Being filmed in the 80s, some of its dialogue is indeed dated, but, in 2016, the film was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for being ‘culturally, historically or aesthetically significant’. This film’s essence comes under what Penelope Spheeris describes as, ‘the youth-in-revolt genre’ that ‘has an enduring appeal, since adolescence and early adulthood are when we are forming our identities’ [3]. And so, The Breakfast Club remains a classic nearly 40 years later.

Honourable mentions

Harry Potter (2001-2011)
Inception (2010) – Some of the film was filmed at University College London library (Nolan studied here!).
Inside Out (2015) – Riley’s mind functions like a library of emotions and experiences.
Kill Your Darlings (2013) – Nightly break-in at Columbia University Library.
Matilda (1996) and Matilda the Musical (2022) – The library is a safe space for Matilda to escape to and the librarian, Mrs Phelps, supports and encourages her extraordinary gift for reading.
Seven (1995)
The Day After Tomorrow (2004) – Attempting to stay warm, people stuck in the New York Public Library after an environmental disaster decide to burn books to generate heat.
The Librarian (2004)
The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
Wonka (2023) – A love letter to reading as well as to chocolate. Oxford’s Radcliffe Camera has a starring role as the archetypical fantasy library.

References

[1] Crovitz, D. (2005) ‘Who You Think You Are: The Breakfast Club in the Writing Classroom’, Teaching English in the two-year college, 32(4), pp. 424–432

[2] The Vogue Team (2021) 15 iconic movies that almost had different names, available at https://www.vogue.com.au/culture/features/working-title-23-alternative-titles-of-your-favourite-movies/image-gallery/dcb3f3e2a5e5063481577c4c87808227

[3] O’Sullivan, M. (2016) ‘National Film Registry Honors “Breakfast Club,” “Rushmore” and Other Teen Angst Movies’, The Washington Post (Online), available at https://web.archive.org/web/20180106064753/https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/national-film-registry-honors-breakfast-club-rushmore-and-other-teen-angst-movies/2016/12/13/824a7fbe-be58-11e6-ac85-094a21c44abc_story.html?utm_term=.3b070ff602e3