Bonfire Night and the Development of a Tradition

Posted on 8 November 2023 by hatwelll — No Comments ↓

5th November 1605. A day that would live on in a nation’s memory for centuries, encapsulated by a rhyme which few remember ever being taught:

Remember, remember the fifth of November.

Gunpowder, treason and plot.

Supposedly the nursery rhyme goes beyond these two sentences, however the passage of time has determined that only the first two are the most important.

For what is a rather macabre celebration, if you think too much into it, Bonfire Night is an incredibly fun night. Modern celebrations now revolve mostly around dramatic firework displays, at least this is the case in Oxford, but the bonfires remain. Over the years it has developed into one of Britain’s biggest commemorations, celebrated by children and adults equally.

We all know the story, how Guy Fawkes was discovered in the cellar, about to light the barrels of gunpowder, hoping to assassinate both King and Parliament. Following his arrest and the discovery of the plot, King James I (and VI) declared the 5th November to be a day of Thanksgiving to celebrate their escape from annihilation. And so, the tradition began. Guys in prams as children called ‘a penny for the guy’, homemade Guys placed onto bonfires to be lit, fireworks and sparklers.

5th November 1605, Journals of the House of Commons, Vol. 1 1547 – 1628, pp. 256 – 7, Official Papers, Bodleian Law Library.

Such events are a far cry from a locked shelf on the bottom floor of the Law Library, where the Journals of the House of Commons describe those hallowed events of November 4th/5th, 1605 [1].

It describes the arrest, as they discovered ‘One Johnson, Servant to Mr Thomas Percy’. John Johnson was the pseudonym which Guy Fawkes had picked (no relation to the John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera held by the Bodleian Library, although we would encourage you check that out!) [2]. It was picked because it was British and commonplace – one look at the Wikipedia page for ‘John Johnson’ and you will see he chose rightly. Thirty-six barrels of gunpowder were found underneath the House of Commons with the intention of blowing up the ‘King, and the whole Company, when they should there assemble’. The origins of ‘The Plot’.

The House of Commons Journals are not the only contemporary artefact of the Plot nearby, as on another Oxford ground floor, only 15 minutes away, the Ashmolean Museum holds the iron lantern supposedly carried by Guy Fawkes the night of his arrest [3]. The lantern was gifted to the University in 1641, by Robert Heywood, whose brother Peter was one of those who discovered Guy Fawkes in the undercroft and, as the story goes, took the lantern off him, preventing him from setting off the gunpowder.

It was not the first of such attempts by Catholic conspirators to assassinate the Protestant King James, but perhaps it was how close they were to success that led James to proclaim a day of Thanksgiving. A celebration of his escape from death, but a warning too, to any conspirators who may follow.

The events of the night of the 4th/5th of November 1605 and those of 21st century Bonfire Night are hard to reconcile. While reading the Journals of the House of Commons, one cannot help but muse on the development of tradition.

Title page, Journals of the House of Commons, Vol. 1 1547 – 1628, Official Papers, Bodleian Law Library.

What if you’d told Guy Fawkes in October 1605, that his own name, not his pseudonym, would become a part of everyday conversation? Or, that he was the namesake of one of Britain’s most enduring holidays? He would surely assume it was for entirely different reasons than we remember.

The concept now, of celebrating a failed assassination attempt with bonfires and fireworks, is albeit an odd idea, but one only has to ask around the Oxford colleges to learn how much odder traditions survive. Such traditions are captured moments in time, perhaps not of the authentic activities, but of how societies viewed themselves. Libraries hold a fundamental role in the safeguarding of tradition and staring at the House of Commons Journals brings a reminder of the vital role of information preservation in our world. Bonfire Night is a fascinating snapshot of what our ancestors believed would be important for our generations to remember. One wonders, in another 400 years, in another library, what events from our day will be written on the pages of tradition.

The Official Papers Collection is housed on the ground floor of the Bodleian Law Library.

Official Papers | Bodleian Libraries (ox.ac.uk)

[1] 5th November 1605, Journals of the House of Commons, Vol. 1 1547 – 1623, pp. 256 – 7, Official Papers, Bodleian Law Library.

[2] About the John Johnson Collection | Bodleian Libraries (ox.ac.uk)

[3] GUY FAWKES’ LANTERN | Ashmolean Museum

A Visit to the Collection Storage Facility

Posted on 3 November 2023 by mendonckw — No Comments ↓

Picture of a long aisle of high warehouse shelving filled with cardboard trays of books — Looking down an aisle at the CSF

In South Marston, just on the edge of Swindon, there’s an unremarkable-looking, medium-sized warehouse that contains a sizeable chunk of the world’s knowledge. Unlikely location as it might seem to those imagining the Bodleian and other famous libraries as crenelated holdfasts of forgotten tomes, it is in fact here, among the prefab walls and steel girders, that most of its collections are housed. The Book Storage Facility – soon to make good its new name as the Collection Storage Facility (CSF) – has for twelve years now been keeping safe more than 10 million titles, together with maps and other miscellaneous objects, on more than 150 miles of shelving. 30-ish aisles of more than 10 metres high filled with books ordered by size alone (!) are navigated by large picker-like assist vehicles that echo hollowly in the cavernous space. Despite the seemingly random placement, any book can be procured within a minute: if you order up your CSF materials in any Bodleian library by 10.30 am, you are guaranteed they will be available the same afternoon. At the same time, the CSF team works through an enormous mass of scan requests, often more than a hundred a day (more than a 1000 in the first week of Covid!). It was at this massive information management operation that we trainees got a look last week, and boy, were we impressed.

Photo of multiple bays of high warehouse shelving stacks filled with books — The high reaches of knowledge

There was a time, as our wonderful CSF guide told us, when Bodleian book transit meant a horse-drawn dray going between different Oxford locations, the horse reportedly refusing to pass by the King’s Arms pub without a drink (one might think the driver had something to do with this, though). Today, vans go out twice daily from the CSF, where storage is optimised for efficiency. Books are sized (from A to E), sorted and packed onto short acid-free cardboard trays (assembled on site) in the large workroom. Then, they’re shelved several rows thick in the 70-metre long aisles of one of the four temperature- and humidity-controlled storage rooms (outfitted – for obvious reasons – with a massive sprinkler system: wet books, as we learned, can be repaired – charred books can’t). Because all items and trays are barcoded, the electronic request system is able to immediately show staff the most efficient way to fetch any item. It is people, though, who have had to input all these books onto that system: when the facility opened in 2010 (at a cost of more than 20 million pounds), 7.5 million items had to be ‘ingested’ into the facility in one go. These had been gathered together from previous storage locations, including the ‘New Bodleian’ (Weston) library and Gladstone Link, the former Nuneham Courtenay storage facility, and even deep storage in Cheshire salt mines! As a continuation of this mammoth operation (which took a mere 15 months!), two days a week new material still arrives from the Special Collections and Legal Deposit teams: indeed, once again, and in what is a stable motif in the history of the Bodleian, space is becoming a precious commodity, especially for the largest-size material! The planned new storage chambers will surely be very welcome.

Picture of temporary storage caddy filled with trays of books — Newly ingested or audited material being readied for storage

The CSF, it should be stressed, does not just contain academic books: its materials are as varied as you could imagine. There’s university paperwork. There’s Mills and Boon. There are boxes of free toys that came with magazines. There are up to 2 million maps stored across multiple floors filled with planchests, some of which we got to have a look at (the relief map of Britain was a firm favourite!). There is archive material. There are busts. There are death masks. And all this mass of material is managed fulltime by only 23 people: that is, as our guide pointed out, almost half a million books per person. If that is not impressive, I’m not sure what is.

We all loved it. This visit was a privilege, and a joy, not least because of the warm welcome we received (thanks to the CSF staff!). Looking down from a platform over a vista of high shelving, a picker bleeping unseen in a distant aisle, and, when the door opens, a flash of Iggy Pop playing in the background, it’s actually a rather emotional sight: here they are, all of these books that writers poured their heart and time into, being kept safe for the future, in a warehouse in Swindon.

Happy Halloween (or autumn) from the Oxford Library trainees!

Posted on 31 October 2023 by trowsdalee — No Comments ↓

Whether you celebrate Halloween or not, it is hard to deny that autumn is an atmospheric, spooky

Radcliffe camera with a sunset illuminating its top half and shadow on the bottom. Blue cloudy sky behind. — Photo of the Radcliffe Camera at sunset.

time to be in Oxford. Walking around the city in October, the trees are turning auburn, the mist is setting in, and, as the clocks change, the orangey streetlamps lamps are illuminated earlier and earlier. The night sky turns a deep royal blue. The clamour of ghost tours resonates around Radcliffe Square, reminding readers in the Old Bodleian of the city’s ghastly and rather gory history.

To honour this, I thought that there was no better time to explore some of the more ghoulish stories from the history of the Bodleian (and Oxford College) Libraries. For a Library which can trace its history back to 1320, you can imagine that these stories are plentiful. Through periods of history such as the town vs gown riots, which saw a Brasenose student killed by a local murderous mob, Radcliffe square has a hidden gruesome history. Thanks to Old Bodleian trainee Nia Everett, I have been informed about an even more prolifically gory historical function of this beautiful square: the Old Bodleian Anatomy school.

Founded in 1617, the Old Bodleian Anatomy school was active in this location for over 60 years, with frequent dissections occurring to instruct students on all aspects of physical human anatomy, including the slimy bits! For a current student or librarian, only allowed to take liquids into the library if contained in a keep-cup or sealable bottle, such activities are impossible to imagine taking place within the walls of the current Bodleian. However, to 17th century readers in anatomy, this study formed a crucial part of their daily scholarly practice. Such readers were able to demand the body of anyone executed within 21 miles of Oxford for use in their dissections and examinations.

A particularly oddly-spooky story from the Anatomy school is the tale of Anne Green’s

Early modern woodcut reading 'behold god's providence' with an image of anne green being hung and her resurrected from her coffin. — Image of Anne Green’s hanging

resurrection at the hands of William Petty, the Reader in Anatomy at the time of her execution. Anne was hung in Oxford castle yard, accused of committing infanticide. On a cold December night, awaiting to be dissected on the operating table, Anne Green was resurrected by Petty and his colleagues after they detected a faint pulse. Though she was brought back to life, her story ends with arguably another early modern horror: being married off to a man.

Turning away from horrors carried out within the Bodleian building, and towards its collections, there are plenty of spooky, magical, occult and alchemical manuscripts within the Bodleian’s special collections. For example, the Ripley Scroll, almost 6 metres long, as illustrated in this excellent TikTok from the Bodleian libraries: The Ripley Scroll. This manuscript instructs the reader how to create the philosophers stone- an item which Harry Potter readers will know can grant immortality. Additionally, many grimoires used by medieval priests to exorcise demons still remain within the Bodleian’s collections, such as this manuscript whose facsimiles are hosted on Digital Bodleian: MS. Rawl. D. 252.

To finish, I would ask you to consider the history all around you. Students at many Oxford Libraries can look up and see hundreds of years of architecture and artistry. College libraries can be over four hundred years old (Corpus Christi), or can be moved to cloisters (Brasenose) or be so grand, like my library at All Souls, that there are metres and metres of intricate cornices, shelving and windows to gaze up into. At the time of Halloween, All Souls requiems and frosty mornings, the vale between the present and the past becomes ever thinner, and the weight of history ever heavier.

Tia Blassingame at the Weston Library

Posted on 25 October 2023 by mendonckw — No Comments ↓

What’s in a library? “Information” is perhaps the most exhaustive answer to that question. But what counts as information, and who decides? Even as library trainees, especially in a digital age, we might be tempted to think of the words on the page as rather abstract concepts, rather than of their shape, the page that carries them, the material book that preserves them, or any of the ways in which the physical material of library and archive collections – paper, pictures, binding, type – can be meaningfully shaped. These, however, are important things, and not only for the archivist. On this blog, we like to think about questions like this, and highlight the library talks and events that suggest them. Because that is another thing that can be in a library: discussion, the library as a space for figuring out its own role, the nature of books, images and text, and the ways they interact with and are shaped by their social context. A library is anything but silent. Just like a book is anything but silent, and its very materiality can itself serve as a medium for relevant artistic expression. More than that: as Tia Blassingame argued at the Weston Library this week, the artist book – art in the form of the book – can serve as a ‘vehicle for social change and racial unity’.

Book artist Tia Blassingame pictured with print proofs — Tia Blassingame at work

Tia Blassingame, an example of whose work is featured in the new Weston Library exhibition Alphabets Alive!, is a book artist, printmaker, educator, Associate Professor at Scripps College, current printer in residence at the Bodleian Bibliographical Press, and founder of the Book/Print Artist/Scholar of Color Collective. Her talk, ‘We Rise (Together): Taking and Making Space for BIPOC Book Arts Creatives, Cultures, and Histories’ (part of the We Are Our History Conversations at the Bodleian), presented the work of the Collective in advocating for and forging collaborations between BIPOC/Global Majority book artists and scholars, illustrated by a wealth of wonderful photographs. Its audience was introduced to, among many other works and artists, the giant pop-up books of Colette Fu celebrating ethnic minorities in China, the traditional handmade Korean paper (Hanji) dresses of Aimee Lee, Colette Gaiter‘s handcrafted editions of Black Panther artist Emory Douglas’ writing, and the woven book art of Skye Tafoya. It was interesting to see how books can evoke meaning not only in the words and information that they contain, but in their actual physical composition, like Sun Young Kang’s work In Between Presence and Absence, I. And fascinating questions were asked: what qualifies as paper, for instance, and why? What if we remove those qualifiers, and see links between fibre-working traditions from Hawaii to Korea? What if quilting might be regarded as a very meaningful African American paper making tradition?

Amidst all her examples, from paper cast sculptures over Japanese woodblock printing to miniature illumination and experiments in bookbinding, Tia Blassingame was pointedly sparse in talking about her own work in letterpress and print. Instead, she practised the solidarity at the heart of the Collective’s purpose of what she called taking and sharing space, through project grants, artist residencies, and celebrating members’ work. At the same time, she also noted the importance of established institutions’ (like the Bodleian) and individuals’ allyship – making space, through fundraising assistance, commissions, and more thoughtfulness in giving space to artists and scholars. A thought-provoking talk, that opened up to us the social aspects of book arts, as well as the material side of library information, and how the library can be a venue for discussing and creatively thinking about both.

Celebrating Black History Month at the Taylor Institution Library

Posted on 20 October 2023 by oxleyc — No Comments ↓

The Research Collection’s Black History Display in the Enquiry Desk room

As Oxford University’s library of modern languages and literature, the Taylor Institution has around 750,000 items in its care. These collections represent and explore a wide range of research interests, from Europe to the Caribbean, Celtic nations to Africa, and beyond. In doing so, the collections also recognise the problematic, colonial role Europe has played in Black history around the world. To celebrate Black History Month 2023 at the Taylor, and to demonstrate the diverse yet complex nature of our subject specialisms, I was given the opportunity to put together two book displays, one in the Teaching Collection and the other in the Research Collection, to celebrate this BHM’s theme: Saluting our Sisters. Here, I want to describe the display to you, as well as explain some of the reasoning behind picking out the books that I did!

The Books

Deciding where to start when choosing books for the display was difficult, to say the least – there were so many books that deserve the spotlight! Eventually, I settled on attempting to provide a taste of the wide range of resources we provide at the Taylor, while sticking to the theme as closely as possible. I also wanted to demonstrate the ever-evolving nature of the scholarship available. As a result, I decided to start with texts on Black feminism to give readers the chance to understand the theoretical background of the other materials on display. For the most part, these texts can be found in the gender studies section of the Main Reading Room and include the likes of Patricia Hill Collins’ Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment (2009) and Jennifer C. Nash’s Black Feminism Reimagined: After Intersectionality (2019). These texts focus on theories of intersectionality and the lived realities of Black women. Collins explores the complexities of Black women’s experiences in dealing with hierarchies of oppression and power. Meanwhile, Nash’s more recent work provides a new perspective by challenging the direction that Black feminist theory is currently headed within the field of women’s studies. By suggesting these two texts, I hoped to provide a basis from which to understand Black feminist theory, as well as an indication of where the field is headed.

The Black History Month Book Display on the First Floor of the Teaching Collections.

Works on the literature of Afro-Caribbean and Lusophone African writers also feature on the displays. In particular, they focus on the works of Black women such as Maryse Condé and Gisèle Pineau, with the likes of Reimagining Resistance in Gisèle Pineau’s Work (2023) and Conversations with Maryse Condé (1996) highlighting their work. Pineau’s novels are especially important in challenging Europe’s “colour-blindness,” and many of her works are available at the Taylor in the original French, such as Un Papillon dans la Cite (1992) and L’exil selon Julia: Récit (2020). Condé, on the other hand, is famous for her transgressions of identity, whether that be racial or gendered. She draws heavily on history to inform her own writing, for example in her work Ségou (1984) and Moi, Tituba, Sorcière (1986). To offer background for these texts, I also included American Creoles: The Francophone Caribbean and the American South (2012), as I thought this shed an up-to-date and exciting light on the historical impact and future potential of Caribbean literature.

Natalya Vince, *Our Fighting Sisters: Nation, Memory and Gender in Algeria, 1954-2012*

In terms of history, some of the texts also explore the contributions that Black women made in establishing civil rights, as well as national independence from colonial oppression. Two that stood out to me the most included Tiffany N. Florvil’s Mobilizing Black Germany: Afro-German women and the making of a transnational movement (2020) and Natalya Vince’s Our Fighting Sisters: Nation, Memory and Gender in Algeria, 1954-2012 (2015). Florvil focuses on sexuality and race to demonstrate the impact that Black German women played in forming the cultural, intellectual and social movement of Black German liberation in the 1980s. Meanwhile, Vince bases her research on women’s oral testimonies of the Algerian fight against French colonialism from 1954 to 2012. In doing so, she provides insight into how women perceived their nation post-independence and how this impacted wider national memory. Both are completely different in their methodological undertakings but are equally fascinating areas of twentieth century history!

Tiffany N. Florvil, *Mobilizing Black Germany: Afro-German Women and the Making of a Transnational Movement*

Lastly, as I pulled the displays together, picking books and narrowing down my choices, I found that themes of resistance and identity were very strong in almost all of the texts. To provide background for this, I felt it was also necessary to display Franz Fanon’s seminal work on anti-colonialist theory, The Wretched of the Earth (2004 [1961]), as well as the more recent work on postcolonial writings such as postcolonial writings such as American Creoles. Ultimately, this tied into my aim with the display: to recognise where today’s scholarship in Black history and literature stems from, and where it is going now.

***

Check out our X (Twitter) page to find out what else we Trainees have been doing to celebrate Black History Month!

Bibliography:

Collins, Patricia Hill Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment, 2nd edition, (London: Routledge, 2009)

https://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/permalink/44OXF_INST/35n82s/alma990168122200107026

https://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/permalink/44OXF_INST/35n82s/alma990214674470107026 (Tenth Anniversary e-book edition)

Connell, Lisa A. (ed.), Reimagining Resistance in Gisèle Pineau’s Work (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2023)

https://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/permalink/44OXF_INST/35n82s/alma990234024960107026

Condé, Maryse and Françoise Pfaff (ed.), Conversations with Maryse Condé (London: University of Nebraska Press, 1996)

https://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/permalink/44OXF_INST/35n82s/alma990121592680107026

Fanon, Franz, and Richard Philcox (trans.), The Wretched of the Earth (New York: Grove Press, 2004 [1961])

https://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/permalink/44OXF_INST/35n82s/alma990159505740107026

Florvil, Tiffany Nicole, Mobilising Black Germany: Afro-German women and the making of a transnational movement (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2020)

https://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/permalink/44OXF_INST/35n82s/alma990223034800107026

Munro, Martin and Celia Britton, American Creoles: The Francophone Caribbean and the American South (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2012)

https://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/permalink/44OXF_INST/35n82s/alma990193363250107026

e-Book edition: https://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/permalink/44OXF_INST/q6b76e/alma991022071082907026

Nash, Jennifer C., Black Feminism Reimagined: After Intersectionality (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 2019)

https://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/permalink/44OXF_INST/35n82s/alma990217959030107026

E-Book edition: https://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/permalink/44OXF_INST/35n82s/alma991002555199707026

Vince, Natalya, Our Fighting Sisters: Nation, Memory and Gender in Algeria, 1954-2012 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015)

https://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/permalink/44OXF_INST/1mkpd6e/alma990203307750107026

Lara Hatwell, Bodleian Law Library

Posted on 13 October 2023 by hatwelll — No Comments ↓

Hello! I’m Lara, one of two trainees at the Law Library this year, alongside Wanne, who beat me to the punch with his introductory post!

Immediately before joining the trainee programme, I had just finished my undergraduate degree in Ancient and Modern History at Lincoln College – so I haven’t travelled far! Despite this, I had never once set foot in the Law Library, and was pleasantly surprised with how it looked inside, as from the outside it looks rather square and imposing. As most young people who love books, I’d always entertained the idea of working in a library, but was unwilling to fully commit to taking another degree, without knowing whether library work was the right fit for me. While working in some other historic sights of Oxford, such as the Ashmolean Museum and Christ Church college, I saw the trainee programme and I knew it was an opportunity I couldn’t miss.

The two Law Library trainees are split between Information Resources (me) and Academic Services (Wanne). This means I am much more involved with initial processing of books, and have spent much of my first month labelling, stamping and figuring out how to work the printer (the labels always print slightly slanted so this is a much harder task than it first may appear). Aside from this, a rather unexpected, but particularly enjoyable undertaking has been the sorting of official documents sent from the Irish Government. This is because the Law Library is also home to Official Papers, which houses British and Irish parliamentary papers and publications of other international organisations such as the United Nations. I am acquiring niche knowledge on various Bills and Acts (such as in 2021 the Irish Government banned the import of non-native honeybees – Bill No. 133 of 2021), which I hope will one day be put to use in a dramatic final round of a pub quiz.

Over the past week, the library has begun to grow much more alive, having been quite quiet when we first started. It’s been great to chat to all the new and returning students, although it really is challenging my knowledge of where everything is – I promise I do usually know, what I have yet to work out is how to give easy-to-follow directions. In the coming months, I’m looking forward to exploring all the different facets of academic librarianship and mastering the ground plan of the library!

Nia Everitt, Bodleian Old Library

Posted on 11 October 2023 by everittn — No Comments ↓

Hi! I’m Nia and I’m the new Graduate Trainee at the Bodleian Old Library. The Old Library contains two reading rooms, as well as the Duke Humfrey’s Library- of Harry Potter fame. It features as the restricted section of Hogwarts Library, but it is certainly not restricted to students wanting to study or read in there. The staff study in DH has also been home to me whilst completing my mandatory training- the most aesthetically pleasing place any online work training has taken place, I’m sure!

A few months ago, I was studying at the University of Manchester for my undergraduate degree in English Literature. Manchester is home to some amazing libraries and archives, and it is during my time as an undergrad that I discovered my love for this area of work. I volunteered at the Portico Library, located in Manchester city centre, which has a great collection of 19th century ‘polite literature’. I also spent some time archiving for the Pankhurst Centre, which is a women’s centre, heritage site and museum all–in–one.

Working at the Old Library, however, is quite different to anything I’ve experienced before. You really feel the significance of hundreds of years of history, with the eyes of 202 great scholars and thinkers following you as you wander the Upper Reading Room. This collection of portraits is called the painted frieze. It’s exciting to play a part in such an awe-inspiring facility.

So far, my favourite part of my job has been that I get to chat to so many different people every day. The Old Library has such a variety of readers and visitors. When I’m working on the Main Enquiry Desk, I answer emails from people who are in the neighbouring building, to scholars on the other side of the world! I’ve also learned how to process new books going on to displays or the open shelves, which includes tattle-taping and stamping items. There is a desk dedicated to this, which sort of feels like an arts and crafts corner. It’s safe to say I am thoroughly enjoying getting to grips with all the different facets of working at the library.

A heron we’ve noticed on our trips back from The Punter- which we hope to see again and are dutifully searching for an ‘H’ name for- any suggestions? Humfrey? Hildegard?

As a student who spent their first year of university locked down in halls, my library was a sanctioned place I could go to feel less isolated. Although we’ve emerged out of the pandemic, I believe that the importance of this has not waned, and so I’m really keen to get involved with using the library as a place to promote student wellbeing. Aside from this, the training sessions that introduce us to different careers in librarianship, such as our recent talk on cataloguing, will be incredibly useful in helping me decide on how to move forward in this field. It also helps that there is a great cohort of trainees this year and that we’ve enjoyed many trips to the pub already!

If you see me in the Old Library or in the Radcliffe Camera (I can often be found in the Lower Gladstone Link, staring quizzically at the Nicholson sequence) please don’t hesitate to say hello and ask me any questions you may have!

Jessica Hodgkinson, New College Library

Posted on 11 October 2023 by hodgkinsonj — No Comments ↓

Hello! I’m Jess and I’m the Graduate Trainee Library Assistant at New College, Oxford.

Founded by William of Wykeham in 1379, New is one of the oldest constituent colleges of the University of Oxford, and it’s a truly beautiful place to study and work.

Picture of New College Library — New College Library in the sunshine!

I joined the library team at the very end of my doctoral degree; before I submitted in late September, I was putting the finishing touches to my thesis in the evenings after work! Based at the University of Leicester, my PhD research focused on surviving manuscripts commissioned, copied, owned and read by women in early medieval Western Europe. The experiences and opportunities I had during the course of this research, which included travelling to libraries in the UK, France, and Germany to study manuscripts, inspired me to pursue a library career.

For a medievalist, like me, New College Library’s collections are a treasure trove. The college houses almost 400 medieval manuscripts and has retained more manuscripts from its medieval library than any other Oxford or Cambridge college.

I’m excited to work with some of these manuscripts over the coming year. I will be helping to organise exhibitions and facilitate access for researchers, whose work enhances our understanding of collection items. I will also have the chance to do some of my own research into items within the library’s collections and hope to write up my findings for New College Notes, the college’s scholarly e-journal.

It’s amazing to have the opportunity to look at manuscripts like this early-fourteenth century Anglo-Norman Apocalypse (New College Library, MS 65).

I have joined the New College Library team at an exciting time. Last week, an exhibition about Cardinal Reginald Pole (1500 – 1558) opened at Lambeth Palace Library in which manuscripts from New College Library are on display. The exhibition, which runs until mid-December, explores the life of the last Catholic archbishop of Canterbury. Copies of Reformation Cardinal: Reginald Pole in sixteenth-century Italy & England, an edited collection of essays about various aspects of Pole’s life and work published to mark the exhibition, were delivered to the library last week.

I am very much looking forward to my year here at New College Library. I enjoyed meeting the first-year undergraduate students during 0^th week and giving induction tours of the library. I’m excited to support New College students in getting the most out of the services and resources we provide and hope to encourage lots of them to access our wonderful special collections!

Anna Roberts, Sainsbury Library (Saïd Business School)

Posted on 9 October 2023 by robertsa — No Comments ↓

Hello! I am Anna, and I am the Graduate Trainee at the Sainsbury Library.

The Sainsbury Library is the University’s Business and Management Library and is based on the first and second floor of Saïd Business School, Park End Street. Saïd Business School is the large building next to the train station, with a green ziggurat acting like a look-out tower. We are small, compared to some libraries, with a general purpose lower reading room, a cosy annexe, and a bright, airy upper reading room for silent study. My main duties so far have been to process new journals and books, repairing a book, helping out at the desk and with circulation, assisting with the Executive Education team and their reading lists (which is a whole other blog post!), and assisting with a variety of exciting projects. For instance, I put together a ‘Welcome to the World of AI’ book display (please visit or check out online). I am looking forward to other projects like an ongoing assessment of the sources used by students and making some new Libguides (guides for library users). I have also been learning about the subject of Business Information, in particular, the Business Information Ecosystem and the 60 business-related databases. Unsurprisingly, I still have a lot to learn and lots of database training to do!

The Library has another location at Egrove Park, in Kennington, where Saïd Business school hosts Executive Education courses. I am based at Park End Street but am looking forward to making a visit to Egrove. I have heard it is beautiful location as it is situated in 37 acres of wooded parkland with wildflower meadows. A colleague even spotted some deer waltzing around! However, apparently, the brutalist architecture is not for everyone but I reserve my judgment until I visit.

Whilst I am doing my traineeship in the Business Library, my background is nothing to do with the subject. I did my undergraduate degree in Philosophy and Mathematics at the University of Aberdeen and then an MLitt in Philosophy at SASP (St Andrews and Stirling Graduate programme in Philosophy). Aberdeen’s university library was a wonderful place to study, and the library is famous for looking like a massive ice cube and being inside of it certainly gives a similar impression, with all the outside facing walls being windows of glass. This allows you to see the city, from any point of the library and enjoy the coastline whilst freaking out about exams (hopefully it is calming and not stormy)! I continued working within various universities as a non-medical helper, primarily as Specialist Note-taker (if you need some fast typing let me know). This role meant I got to sit-in on lectures, take notes, and assist students who were studying a whole variety of subjects including Computing, History of Art, Childhood studies and even PGCE teacher training. It was lovely working with students to help achieve their goals and I knew I wanted to continue to assist others in any role I did in the future.

Me, next to part of the book display in the lower reading room, Sainsbury Library

I have always enjoyed libraries since childhood and in Sixth Form had one week of work experience at my local public library. I also worked at Bookends, a student-run bookshop on Aberdeen’s campus where I got a little snippet of shelving, auditing and processing books into our system (much simpler than Alma!). I am interested in librarianship because I believe in the key principle of libraries as preservers of past knowledge for future generations whilst providing access to information and resources to people now. For one of my dissertations, I did a lot of research about the philosophy of democracy. A key pillar of democracy (ideally) is to have a citizenship with a right to access a wide range of ideas and information. This broadens our horizons, helping us to make informed choices and judgements, whilst also holding fellow citizens in roles of responsibility accountable. Every right we have has a corresponding duty/obligation that we have to each other to make sure everyone’s rights are fulfilled. Libraries act as a physical manifestation to fulfil important rights plus they act as great spaces to study and get lost in a book! I think it would be great to work in a field that has this grand role for society, but that achieves these abstract ends in very practical, everyday means by helping readers and preserving our collections. The combination of person-focused support and technical systems means that there is lots of variety in the field, on top of the variety brought by all the different subjects and I think this makes it quite an exciting career choice. I do not yet know if I want to focus on the readers services or the cataloguing/ technical side because, as perhaps shown my joint degree, I am bad at choosing between two things I enjoy!

I hope to be an asset to the team at the Sainsbury Library, not just because they are fun and fantastic, but because they have been without a full-time graduate trainee for several years and they are very happy to finally be fully staffed! I am extremely grateful to be given the opportunity to work within such an esteemed institution as the Bodleian Libraries. Also, participating in their great training sessions on different aspects of librarianships, has so far, and I’m sure will continue, to be great!

Sorrel Fenelon – St John’s College Library

Posted on 9 October 2023 by fenelons — No Comments ↓

Hello! I’m Sorrel and I’m this year’s trainee at St John’s College.

The Ortelius Atlas and other early printed books and manuscripts in the Old Library, ready for a Special Collections appointment

The Library and Study Centre in St John’s is roughly comprised of two main parts: a modern section, completed in 2018, and an older section. The latter comprises the Laudian Library and the Old Library, dating from 1635 and 1598 respectively. Fortunately for me, the beginning of my trainee year coincided with the reopening of the two older libraries, following a long process of renovation. I am lucky to have reason to work frequently in both spaces, shelving in the Laudian and helping with Special Collections consultation appointments in the Old Library.

Like many of the other trainees, my workload is very varied, and no two days are really the same. The past weeks have seen me processing books, checking reading lists, moving manuscripts, photographing early printed books, and preparing posters for new displays. Dealing with Special Collections has definitely been one of the most exciting parts of the job so far. The Library is home to around 400 medieval and modern manuscripts, 20,000 books printed before 1850, and the personal papers of the likes of Robert Graves and Spike Milligan. Some of the materials I have handled in my first weeks include a painstakingly hand-coloured ‘Ortelius Atlas’, dating from 1603, and a 18^th century physician’s scrapbook, with ‘A piece of The tapeworm’ pasted and carefully labelled inside.

Before the traineeship, I was working in France as an au pair, studying French and volunteering at the American Library in Paris in my spare time. Before that, I completed my BA in History at the University of Cambridge, specialising in cultural and social history. Alongside my degree, I worked in a small Art museum, and it was this experience which really got me passionate about helping people to access information and ideas.

In the coming months, I’m looking forward to getting to know the library and the cross-library systems well enough to answer almost any reader enquiry with confidence! I’m also hoping to assist with work to ensure that our collections are accessible to an ever-increasing range of people.

2023/24 Trainees