The Maison Française d’Oxford (MFO) is a bit of a hidden gem – you might walk right past without knowing it’s there. It’s only twenty minutes’ walk from the city centre, and a short distance away from various university buildings, but most people aren’t aware it exists. I certainly wasn’t, until our trainee cohort got in contact with the librarian, who was kind enough to offer us all a tour.
We met Janet (the librarian) in the lobby, where she began our tour by giving us a brief overview of the MFO’s history and purpose. The Maison Française is a residential research institute at the heart of the university’s inclusive culture. It hosts an ever-changing cohort of international students and external academics, whose stays might last anything from six months to three years. It’s also open as a public library, and it frequently hosts exhibitions, conferences, and other events. It’s governed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in collaboration with the Universities of Paris and Oxford, making it a unique space among the rest of the university’s facilities. Notably, the Maison Française is not a Bodleian library, and it’s not associated with any particular college; it’s something all its own.
Books, old and new!
Initial plans for a French cultural centre in Oxford date back to the start of the twentieth century, but it was only following WW2 that the project actually became feasible, and the MFO was founded in 1946 to consolidate British-French relations and to promote research collaborations across the Channel. These were humble beginnings: the original building was a tiny house rented from a college, there was only one British resident, and the library only had seventeen books in the collection! The project persisted, though, and a cohort of long-term residents and loyal readers slowly built up. The space slowly took on a unique role as a small French enclave in the middle of England, designed to emulate a Parisian bookshop in its atmosphere and its holdings. The early collections were mostly contemporary French literature, newspapers, and journals, although this began to diversify over time. This modern collection was very carefully curated to avoid overlapping heavily with the Taylor Institution, as the Maison Française wasn’t designed to be a subject library or teaching space, but a cultural hub. After two decades the collection had grown to over 17,000 items and the MFO moved to its current purpose-built location at 2-10 Norham Road.
Even having outgrown its unusual origins, the library is still a small operation, staffed by one librarian part-time. It’s far from the chaos of a college during term! Despite this, the main reading room has a friendly and comfortable vibe, full of quiet chatter. The little ‘open’ sign outside reminded us all of a bookshop, and that energy moves inside with you as you spot the new book display by the entrance and see what’s come in recently. Janet introduced us to the collections, showing us some examples of the original collection and highlighting how the range of material has evolved and shifted over time. While it’s a foreign language library, the collections aren’t limited to language and literary studies, and there’s books on just about every subject under the sun. This includes children’s fiction, and a few trainees were delighted to spot some of the Asterix books in the collection!
Janet then took us to the basement, where some of the lower-use items are kept. These include back issues of journals and newspapers, fragile books, and oversized items. There’s also a small archive collection tucked away in the basement, which mostly consists of institutional records and documents related to the institute’s past, but also some more unconventional objects. As part of its role as a cultural centre, the Maison Française holds a few patrimonial items on permanent loan, helping preserve aspects of Anglo-French culture and heritage. These items aren’t often brought out but can make for some very fun displays when they are – this death mask of Napoleon Bonaparte caught our attention. It’s not every day you come across an old French emperor behind the enquiry desk!
As mentioned, the Maison Française operates as a public lending library. It’s open to all readers equally, differentiating it from college and subject libraries, with a threefold user base of university members, external researchers, and the general public. Contending with the different needs of these groups is a careful balance, and the library really makes the most of the space and resources it has to keep readers coming back.
The MFO does have a collections development budget, and pretty much all the books they buy are ones that readers have specifically asked for (the list of requests gets longer every year!). In addition to this, a lot of their new material is also donated by academics, benefactors, or members of the public, which has really diversified the collection from its original focus on contemporary news and fiction. On average the library currently receives somewhere between 300-500 acquisitions a year – an impressive amount to process for such a small institute.
Janet also took us through some of their ongoing projects. Alongside the regular events, exhibitions, and seminars run by the wider MFO, the library is working to build links with schools and organisations around Oxford, to encourage language learning for children. The library has a wealth of children’s books and DVDs available to borrow, and they’re enthusiastic to share these resources more widely with the community. There’s also a long-term reclassification process happening, designed to rationalise at least six outdated in-house shelfmarks into one cohesive system (Dewey decimal, for anyone curious). This is a tricky process as there’s a lot of books to get through, and some items need their catalogue records amended during the process. The perils of accepting those large donations…
Books in the MFO were originally colour-coordinated by subject. If only it could always be that simple!
Speaking of donations, there’s good and bad news. The bad news is… some donated items never make it to the open shelves. In a small library like this one space is a constant issue, so weeding and careful stock intake is really important, because it ensures the open shelves are kept accessible and stocked with books readers actually use. While librarians would love to keep everything given to them, a lot of the time it’s just not feasible, and donated items might not enter the collection. (This applies to pretty much every academic library, not just the Maison Française.) The good news is… they’re free to a good home! The library has put together a free book table stocked with all the books removed from the collection, so that these items can find a new life somewhere else. According to Janet, it’s a very popular feature of the library, and even the most niche books end up being claimed.
With our tour finished and our libraries calling us back to work, the only thing left for the trainees to do was thank Janet for showing us around, register as readers ourselves, and pick out some books to borrow. Reading in French can be a bit of a challenge, but with a dictionary, a translate app, and a lot of determination, we’ll make it work.
The MFO’s collections are searchable on SOLO (although if you want to borrow anything, you’ll have to register specially), and they’re always ready to welcome new readers. For more information about the library and the institute in general, you can have a look at the Maison Française d’Oxford website, or head to Norham Road and take a look for yourself.
P.S.
We’re aware that trainee interviews are coming up next week, and some of you might be last-minute prepping by looking through the blog. We hope this post gives you a good idea of the sort of opportunities you can arrange for yourself as a graduate trainee in Oxford! For more insight into the training, shadowing, and tours you have access to through a library traineeship, have a look at our ‘Training Sessions’ page. If you want to know more about what you’ll be doing day-to-day as a trainee, look at our archive of ‘Day in the Life’ posts from over the years. Finally, if you want some guidance on how the interview might go, look at this post on Library Interview Tips and Techniques from a few years ago. Good luck!
Did you know there’s (part of) a real dodo hidden in an Oxford library? How about the oldest pinned butterfly in the world? Or the first illustrated life cycle of an insect?
As we’ve said before, one of the great advantages of the traineeship is the training itself. As well as our scheduled sessions we’re encouraged to explore different aspects of library work, and there are loads of great opportunities for shadowing across the university. So, as a few of us wanted to learn more about other GLAM1 careers, we decided to arrange a group visit to the Oxford University Museum of Natural History to see what goes on in a museum library. During a rare training-free week, we braved the winter chill to gather at the entrance and meet Danielle, the museum’s lead Librarian and Archivist, for a tour.
Our intrepid tour guide took us to the site of the original library to start with, as she gave us a brief overview of the museum’s history. OUMNH was founded in 1860 with the intent to modernise and promote natural philosophy at Oxford. Previously, science faculties had been scattered across different colleges and institutions, usually without suitable teaching and research space. The museum was designed to house all these departments (and their collections) in one purpose-built location, with a 500-seat lecture theatre, specialised laboratories, and a large library.
The library in particular was designed as a grand intellectual space unifying art and science, in line with contemporary ideas about natural theology. The interior design was crafted to be educational as well as decorative, and while the layout has been altered significantly over time, parts of the original structure remain. This library wasn’t just for private study: it was used for teaching and hosting events too, and many famous feet trod the boards of the museum. Some actually visited before it was fully opened! The museum library was the site of Wilberforce and Huxley’s famous ‘Great Debate’ on natural selection, held before the collections were even installed.
Unfortunately, the lack of light and climate controls in this grandiose Victorian building meant it wasn’t the best space for preserving collections. The library was eventually moved to more suitable rooms on the other side of the building, and this space now holds the museum’s sizeable insect collection – the second largest in the country, with an estimated five million specimens! The Hope Entomological Collections (named for their founder F. W. Hope) particularly focus on historic material, and the museum even holds the world’s oldest pinned entomological specimen: a Bath white butterfly from 1702. We also learned about other gems of the collection such as the world’s largest known bee, Charles Darwin’s beetles, and an individual collection of 140,000 flies. These are all stored safely in their cabinets, protected from harsh sunlight and fluctuating temperatures which could damage them long-term. The perils of beautiful old buildings…
These insects aren’t managed by the library or archives staff as they need more specialist care, but they are available for viewing and study by appointment. Apparently, they’re a very popular topic!
Sunlight and fresh air is great for living specimens… not so great for preserved ones
Once we’d finished staring at drawers full of bugs, we left this room behind and headed to the new library. The bookstacks hold information on all the collections areas in the museum: zoology, entomology, geology, general natural history, and more! However, one unusual feature of the library is a total lack of plant biology. OUMNH doesn’t cover any botanical science, as they try to avoid significant collections overlaps with other university institutions. They coordinate their collection development with the Botanical Gardens and Herbaria (which hold all the university’s plant specimens and literature) and the Radcliffe Science Library (Oxford’s main science library), although a lot of their new material is donated rather than actively sought out. Danielle explained that this means a lot of the collection is highly specific and niche material produced by subject experts. The library also contains a lot of small-scale periodicals and amateur publications – in some cases, it holds the only publicly available copy of an item! While a lot of this content isn’t in high demand, it’s incredibly useful for in-depth research, and people travel from all over to consult the collections.
After this overview we learned about some of the ongoing projects within the library – mostly to do with organising the collection. As previously mentioned, the museum was originally designed to host all the non-medical sciences in one space. As each of these faculties gradually moved out, they left behind some of their books and papers, which got quietly absorbed into the wider library. While this was useful for expanding the collection, most of these items weren’t re-labelled or updated. This means the library now has a huge variety of shelfmarks and classification systems to contend with, which can make finding certain things a real challenge if you don’t know where to look! The library is in the process of a massive stock inventory and re-classification process to try and alleviate the issue but given the scale of the collection, it’s definitely going to take a while. Thankfully, the collection is fully catalogued, so all these items are traceable online. As trainees, it’s always interesting to see how other libraries manage their collections and what projects get prioritised; there’s always a million jobs to be done in a library, and never the time to do them all…
After that, we moved into the next room to see the archive. Anything which isn’t a book or a specimen goes here, including historical photographs, research notes, old journals, and other relevant ephemera, as well as all the artwork on display in the galleries. If a specimen is in the museum, accompanying field notes are almost certainly held in the archive. The museum also has a smaller institutional archive for important documents and items related to the building’s history. We saw a photo of the museum when it opened, and a picture of the original bird display which featured the remains of an actual Dodo! These remains are still held within the collection (although not on public display), making it the only place in the world to still have a soft tissue Dodo specimen. The nature of archives means that all these items are rare or unique, and the collection is full of unusual gems like a (mildly creepy) cast of a face and an old professor’s shoes.
As a rule, every archive does have at least one item that nobody can quite explain, and this one was no different: Danielle showed us this unidentified old helmet which was allegedly pulled out of a taxidermized camel’s hump!
Now it was time for the really fun part: the treasures of the collection. Every librarian loves to talk about their favourite books, and we loved listening to it! We got to look through a lot of really interesting items, like a handwritten letter from Charles Darwin, the engraved trowel used to lay the museum’s foundations, a handmade eighteenth-century book of botanical and entomological art (left), and a book of butterflies which helped inform Linnaeas’ taxonomy (right).
Not your average library books!
My personal favourite was the first book on natural history written in English: ‘The History of Four-Footed Beasts and Serpents’ (centre).
Produced in London in 1658, the author Edward Topsell had actually never left England, and was working mostly from the descriptions of other naturalists. This meant he had never seen most of the animals he was drawing and describing… and it shows. The book features cats and hedgehogs alongside unicorns and lamiae, each with pages of detailed description. While the animals might not all be real, and some of the drawings are certainly questionable, the fact it’s written in English is historically significant, and it represents an admirable effort to compile and share scientific information.
Another particularly interesting find was the first nationwide geological map of Britain (or any country, actually). The map was produced by William ‘Strata’ Smith, a canal surveyor looking to make some extra money. Smith began noticing consistencies in the strata he saw while working: they were always arranged in a predictable pattern, and usually followed the chronological succession of fossil groups. In search of a way to represent his findings, he developed a detailed geological map of the area around Bath, which he later extrapolated into a map of the entirety of England and part of Scotland. He didn’t find much success or fame during his lifetime unfortunately, but he’s now recognised as the father of English geology and his work is still famous today. Fun fact: he produced each map individually and numbered them, so you can identify where he corrected his own work over time if you look through them in order.
Having seen all there was to see, we said our goodbyes and left, though not without a last glance at the galleries and a few photos of our favourite items. After all, is it even a natural history museum if you don’t see a dinosaur?
The real stars of the show
Oxford Museum of Natural History is a fascinating place, with over 150 years’ worth of collections and a rich institutional history. If you want to learn more about the items mentioned in this blog post, why not see them for yourself! The library covers a huge range of subjects, and the entire collection is searchable via the university catalogue and the museum website, with access open to anyone by appointment.
Gardens/Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums ↩︎
A highlight of being a trainee is the access to… well, training! Every Wednesday we have a different session, on topics such as cataloguing, supporting disabled readers, or using the Bodleian databases and software. This week, we were shown around the Conservation and Special Collections areas in the Weston Library, a.k.a where all the rare books magic happens!
The Weston Library holds the majority of all the special collections items within the Bodleian libraries, although much is also held at the Swindon Offsite Storage Facility (CSF). After dropping off our belongings in the lockers (no liquid or even pens allowed in the areas with rare books), we made our way to the conservation area for our introduction to conservation and collection care.
The workspace the conservation team use was bright and peaceful, with long desks lit by many big windows that overlook the city. Each workspace was full of mysterious implements: bone folders, brushes, Japanese paper, display shelves of crushed pigments. Dozens of grey archival boxes were stacked in piles, full of rare books and oddities.
An Introduction to Preventive Conservation
Our first talk was with Catherine, who works in Preventive Conservation, focusing on environmental pest control. There are many things in the environment that can damage a book, whether that is damp, mould, or as we saw – insects! For example, silverfish are very destructive and can do quite drastic damage to paper. They chew through natural fibres, leaving a distinctive lacy pattern behind.
Furniture beetles (otherwise known as carpet beetles or book worms) are also a problem, as they chew straight through furniture like bookcases… and any books that are on them. Not a pleasant guest to have in your library! They bore through bookcases so thoroughly that you can line up the damage to determine which books were placed next to each other on a historical bookshelf. Luckily, this critter needs over 65% relative humidity to thrive, so it won’t visit our modern humidity-controlled collections.
Some calling cards of Silverfish……and Furniture beetles
Fun fact: If you look at the ‘frass’ left behind by a Furniture beetle under a microscope, it looks a bit like rice crispies!
A Genizah Conservation Project
We were then introduced to two conservators working on a long-term rebinding project. This three-year conservation project is focused on preserving items from a Genizah in Cairo for future study. A Genizah is a place in a Jewish synagogue where documents are stored before being ritually buried, as it is forbidden to throw away writing containing the name of God. Typically, items are only stored for 7 years, but the Cairo Genizah contains additions from over 1000 years! There is a huge collection of religious and secular works in around 10 languages (mostly Hebrew and Arabic).
A guardbook being worked on
Many of these valuable paper fragments were bound together into volumes called ‘guardbooks’. The interesting thing is, guardbooks can house texts next to each other which have no intellectual connection, or shared language. The same text could continue in different places within the same guardbook, or across several different guardbooks entirely. These might even be held in different institution’s collections. The University of Cambridge, for example, currently has the largest single unified collection – around 200,000 items from the same Genizah our conservators are working on.
A fascicule containing material from the Genizah
As part of this project, the conservators are working on rehousing these items – disbanding them and putting them into more permanent guardbooks. Some are also put into ‘fascicules’, which are like large A1 pamphlets, where the historic paper is mounted and then attached to the pages flexibly. This means that the pages can be opened flat and examined without damage, whereas the previous bindings could only be opened carefully to a V.
But if the conservators are rebinding the fragments anyway, why don’t they reunite the parts of a text that have been bound in separate guardbooks? Surprisingly, it’s not simply because the papers are fragile. The conservators explained that they need to preserve the historic arrangement of texts in each guardbook, and the shelfmark they were originally classified under. This is so that all the previous research which references those shelfmarks will still make sense. Helpfully, many of the guardbooks have historic marginalia notes which mention where to look to find the rest of the text.
This is a huge project: there are around 12,500 leaves in this collection, and around 217 physical bindings to rehouse. The collection is heavily used and historically important. Many of the items are digitised, but readers and researchers still need to be able to access the originals. It was very interesting to learn more about this long-term conservation project!
Book Conservation – When to Repair?
We also were also shown three examples of individual books being conserved by the Assistant Book Conservator, Alice Evans. One of these examples was Tolkien’s copy of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Tolkien thoroughly annotated it and repaired it with tape – something we hope no reader will do to our books! In this case, despite the tape degrading over time and staining the book, the tape will not be removed or replaced with acid-free archive-safe tape. That’s because the value of this object for researchers comes from Tolkien’s interaction with it and the signs of use – including all the tape fragments. Who knows, someone might end up doing a PhD on his use of tape someday!
When repairing an object, one of the most useful tools is Japanese paper. This paper is harvested in a way that keeps the fibres long, and it is activated using only water. It’s non-intrusive and removable, making it perfect for conservation. Conservators want to preserve the signs of use, and the vulnerability of the object itself, repairing as minimally as possible in places with vulnerable edges or tears. You can see some of the long fibres from a torn edge of Japanese paper in this photo.
As Alice told us, everything is degrading anyway. Conservators and curators weigh up what we want and need here and now, what is useful to us today. Those are the items they prioritise and conserve.
Introduction to Special Collections
The last part of the afternoon was a tour and talk with Chris Fletcher, Keeper of Special Collections. The tour included the Centre for Digital Scholarship, the Mackerras Reading Room, the rooftop patio, and a chat with one of the archivists, Frankie. Continuing our accidental Tolkien theme of the day, Frankie was working on cataloguing and digitising the Tolkien papers. There were tables full of rare items and historical objects, and yet more archive boxes of mysterious sizes. We saw Tolkien’s leather suitcases, and a box full of a surprisingly large collection of pipes!
Then we were shown to a reading room where Chris had pulled out a selection of interesting Special Collections books. These included an 18th Century book of animal and plant illustrations (which had the pictured vaguely horrifying rodent with green toenails), a series of 3D pop up Artist Books by Tamba Auerbach, and a copy of John Clare’s The Village Minstrel that contained a unique handwritten poem.
After that, the items got a little unusual. What makes a book a book? Bibliographic detail, a cover, publication date, author, contents, edition? If that’s what a book is, then Ted Hughes’ ‘Laureate’s Choice’ sherry bottle also fits the bill:
As is traditional for a Poet Laureate, Hughes got his own barrel of sherry. This bottle has one of Hughes’ drawings reproduced on the label.
Then, there was my favourite item – the cheese book! Created by Ben Denzer, 20 Slices is a book where the pages are packaged American style cheese slices, bound with a cover. Denzer’s speciality is poking fun at, and interrogating, ideas of value. What better way do to this than to make the cheapest kind of cheese into a valuable art object and book?
The book was bought by Bodleian for £200 – £10 per slice of cheese. The copy we have is one of ten copies that exist, including the artist’s own copy. Denzer has refused to allow the Bodleian to replace the cheese with a replica cheese. When the time comes, the cheese pages will need to be replaced with more Kraft singles! Although that might not be for some time – when we saw the book, the cheese was 10 years old and still looked normal, with only a bit of white crumbling at the corners. American cheese is something else!
That rounds up our afternoon of rare books adventures! The day was a great introduction to what Archivists and Conservators do, and we saw many weird and wonderful items. The Bodleian’s collections are vast, and there is always something new to discover.
The 2026/27 trainee scheme is now open for applications, so we hope that our blogs will give you some insight into the work you might be doing. Good luck to anyone who will be applying!
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.
A cultural probe kit ready to go
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!
In April a few of us trainees adventured to the beautiful city of Cambridge, also known as “The Other Place”, for a whirlwind tour of some of their libraries.
Our first stop was the Judge Business School, located in the former Addenbrooke’s Hospital building with colourful balconies and floating staircases (think Hogwarts meets Art Deco meets 1920s fairground). The Library is a small but welcoming user-friendly space catering for the needs of Judge Business School staff and students, with access to the specialised business databases Bloomberg and Eikon. My personal highlight has to be beanbags within the stacks. Or potentially the graffiti wall for readers to leave question drawings, messages of hope (or dread), for the librarians to respond to. Student wellbeing and enjoyment of the space was clearly a key consideration, with sections such as ‘Boost’ for wellbeing books and a less formal ‘Weird Ideas and Disruptive Thinking’ section.
Judge Business School Library
Floating staircases in the Judge Business School (Photo Credit: JBS)
Next we took the bus over to the West Hub, a sustainable three-storey development open to all departments at Cambridge University and members of the public. The library in this building, forming part of the Technology Libraries Team and Biological Sciences Libraries, is on the upper floor, which is naturally quieter than the lower floors thanks to the architectural design of the building. There are study spaces to suit everyone, comfortable booths and sofas, areas for group work and individual study pods. With huge floor to ceiling windows looking out onto what we’re assured will soon be lakes, gardens, and urban orchards, the building was incredibly bright and open. It was incredible to visit such a green and modern space, a completely different world to some of the medieval libraries in both Oxford and Cambridge. I have since declared that every library should have a tree growing inside.
Trees growing in the West Hub
The West Hub (Photo Credit: Ståle Eriksen)
Our last stop was the Cambridge University Library, the main research library of the university. One of the six UK legal deposit libraries, the UL is a huge, imposing 1930s structure, designed by the very same Giles Gilbert Scott who designed the Weston Library building here in Oxford, Battersea Power Station, and the red telephone box. The library houses nearly 10 million books, maps, manuscripts, and photographs, stored across 17 floors and more than 130 miles of shelving (which I can imagine is easy to get lost in). Unlike other legal deposit libraries, such as the Bodleian, much of the UL’s material is kept on open shelving for readers to borrow. We got a chance to look around some of the reading rooms and inspect one of the UL’s old card catalogues. It really is an impressive space, with a great view from the tower.
The view from the Tower
Cambridge University Library
We finished the day with a walk around the market place and a quick pint by the river. It was great to see how some of the libraries in Cambridge function day-to-day and their different approaches to what a library should look like. I’m sure we all came away with lots to think about for our own libraries. We’re very grateful to the staff at the Judge Business School Library, the West Hub, and the UL for showing us around, as well as the Cambridge Libraries Graduate Trainees who joined us for some of the tours!
Sitting by the river after a long day (with some oh-so familiar punts!)
Some of the advice in this article stems from a training session we were given by Tom Dale and Jane Falconer in January 2023, many thanks go to them for their invaluable advice and support.
This article is intended to help and reassure those of you applying for the Oxford Graduate Trainees roles or any other entry level library position. If you’re applying for the Bodleian Traineeships then interviews are right around the corner, so we thought we’d offer up some tips and techniques that will help you feel confident and prepared when walking into the interview.
What not to worry about
First off, a few things to set your mind at ease. Below is a list of common concerns prospective trainees have raised – and the reason why you don’t need to worry! We’ve also tried to include advice for how to manage these concerns at interviews as well as links to introductions from previous trainees who were in the exact same position as you! These are only a small collection of our previous trainees and you may find others who have similar life experiences to you by browsing through our Former Trainees page.
I don’t have any library experience… You don’t need any library specific experience to succeed at interviews. Over the years there have been plenty of trainees who have never worked in a library before being accepted into a trainee position. You only need to show that you have the skills to meet the job description, you can pull evidence of these skills from any area of your life such as jobs in other sectors, clubs, or volunteer work.
I’ve never had a full-time job… The traineeship is a graduate position, so it doesn’t require you to have previous full-time work experience. Many trainees have been recruited directly after finishing their undergraduate degree, as before, so long as you can prove you meet the job description, you’re in with a chance! Don’t forget extra-curricular society roles are a great way to evidence skills like time management and working in a team.
I don’t live in Oxford… Not living in Oxford before or even during the traineeship won’t harm your chances, and you’ll probably find that most trainees weren’t Oxford locals before taking on the job. Luckily Oxford has incredible transport links including a station, bus, and park and ride service, as well as being pretty bike friendly so if you do end up needing to commute in every day, you’ll have a wealth of choices for how to do it. The job doesn’t require you to be located anywhere specifically, so long as you can make it into work!
I didn’t study at Oxford… You definitely don’t have to have been an Oxford student to work at the Bodleian. There might be a few bits of Oxford jargon for you to get used to once you start working, but no one will expect you to know these ahead of time, and if you’re not sure about some terminology used by the interviewers then please just ask! The interviewers want you to do the best that you can, so they should be trying to avoid using any terms you won’t understand.
My degree is in an unrelated discipline… Although it may seem as though every librarian has a degree in either History or English it’s very much not the case. Previous trainees have had degrees in a wide variety of subjects including maths or science related disciplines. What you studied in the past isn’t going to adversely impact your chances so long as you can meet all the criteria of the job specification.
I graduated a while ago… Whether you graduated 2 years ago or 20, so long as you have a bachelor’s degree you count as a graduate. As with many of these questions, the key is to use your life experience to show that you have the skills to meet the job specification. Those skills can be demonstrated through all kinds of activities so if you’ve had a break in your career you can look to things like volunteer positions and societies or clubs.
I’ve had a previous career outside of libraries… No matter what you’ve been up to before applying the key thing is to use your experience to your advantage and show your interviewers exactly why it makes you the best candidate for the role. Maybe you previously worked as a teacher and therefore have fantastic written and oral communication skills thanks to all the classes you’ve had to teach and learning materials you needed to produce?
Every interview is different but at least at the Bodleian, they should all follow a similar schedule.
Tour
First you will be given a tour of the library you’ve been invited to interview at. A current member of staff, sometimes even the current trainee will take you around the library and tell you around the building, explaining a little about what the job entails on a day-to-day basis. This is not part of the interview.
The person giving you the tour has nothing to do with the interview process and is often actively discouraged from talking about you to the members of the interview panel. Obviously, that’s not to say you can start hurling insults their way without expecting repercussions, but if you worry that you said something that’s lacking your usual level of wit and intellect or walked straight into a glass door (we’ve all been there), don’t worry – your interviewer will likely never find out!
Take this opportunity to calm your nerves and find out more about the library you might be working in. Don’t forget, an interview goes both ways, and you want to be sure you’ll be happy working in this environment, so don’t be afraid to ask questions!
Test
Before the interview itself starts you will take a quick test. This is designed to test your ability to use finding aids or understand shelf marking systems and normally take around 20 minutes. There’s no way to find out the test questions ahead of time, and you’re not expected to already know anything you’re being tested on. The interviewers are purely looking at how you tackle searching for materials and whether you’re capable of adapting quickly to new ways of sorting and searching through information.
It’s best not to worry too much about this part of the day. The test is short and is not the main way you will be assessed.
Interview
The interview is normally conducted by a panel of about 3 people, sometimes more, sometimes less. They will all introduce themselves before the interview begins but don’t worry too much about learning all their names and career histories, instead focus on answering their questions to the best of your ability.
The interview itself should take around 30 minutes and will consist solely of your interviewing panel asking questions and you blowing them away with your carefully planned answers! There is no set time that it should take to properly answer a question, it really depends on what you need to say. So long as you feel you’ve adequately addressed the question and provided good evidence of your ability it doesn’t matter if the question takes 30 seconds to answer or 2 minutes! There should be a little time at the end for you to ask your own questions as well – again this is an opportunity to get a feel for the work environment and decide whether this is the right job for you!
Remember, no matter what the schedule of your individual interview is, the key thing is to keep yourself as calm as you can. Everyone involved in the process is human – and sometimes things don’t work out quite how you’d predicted, but if you can give off an aura of positive confidence (fake it until you make it is the name of the game) then you’ll give off a great impression no matter what might go awry!
What can I do to prepare?
The key element to passing any exam is to know the syllabus requirements, familiarise yourself with the types of questions you might be asked, then practice your answers. It’s the same with a job interview – in this case however, the syllabus is the job specification. You should do your best to read the job spec thoroughly, so you fully understand what is being asked of you.
Break it down
A fantastic way to ensure you know the job specification as well as you possibly can is to break it down into its component parts. Each criterion might list more than one skill that is required of you, so it’s good to make sure that you’re addressing the whole thing and not just part. A spreadsheet might be useful at this point to keep track of all the different skills you need to demonstrate. Once you have your list of skills, you should look at your previous experience (it doesn’t matter if this is professional or personal) and choose examples of times where you Demonstrate You Fit the Job Criteria to match each skill. You can record these on your spreadsheet too! One thing to note is that you don’t need library specific experience to meet these criteria. A lot of library work is reader services (helping readers) and experience in the service sector like shop work or hospitality roles can be a great way of demonstrating your sk.
Think like an interviewer
Once you have your skills and your examples, try to come up with interview questions for each skill. The questions you’re asked will be designed to help you show off your abilities and demonstrate that you fit the job criteria. Try to come up with as many different questions as you can so that you cover every single way you might be asked about a certain skill. Remember, some, maybe even most questions can cover more than one skill requirement at a time, so don’t just address them one by one, come up with some questions that combine related skills, especially if they’re listed together on the job specification.
Answer your own questions
Now you have a list of practice questions it’s time to do the dirty work. You need to come up with concise but comprehensive answers that fully cover everything asked of you. Focus on answering the question as it’s written, not the questions you wish the interviewers would ask. Maybe you have a great piece of work experience that you think would blow your interviewers socks off, but you should only bring it up if you can show them how it’s directly relevant to the question being asked.
Practice Practice Practice!
Once you’ve drafted up your answers to the practice questions you’ve come up with, it’s time to practice saying them aloud. Even better would be to get a friend to help by choosing random questions for you to answer. Remember – the goal here isn’t to memorise your answers, but to get yourself comfortable talking about your skills off-the-cuff. Feel free to adapt and improvise as you go, just make sure that you’re always demonstrating those key skill requirements and presenting yourself in the best possible light.
Do a dry run
If you have the time and means, then visiting the library that you’re interviewing at ahead of time is a great way to help you panic less on the day. Not all libraries are open to members of the public, but even just practicing making the journey so you’re not stressing over public transport links can be helpful – but this is by no means essential to having a good interview. Whether you can travel there in person or not it’s always good to familiarise yourself a little with the collections and style of the library. Is it a listed building with little room that mainly caters to academics, or a modern space with all the newest library amenities for students and members of the public? Small things like this might not seem overly important, but they could influence the approach you take in interview answers, and showing you have prior knowledge of the library itself can never hurt. You can find all this information and more about the many different Bodleian Libraries here: Find a library | Bodleian Libraries (ox.ac.uk)
The 2022-23 trainees would like to wish you all the best of luck for your future applications and interviews. No matter how things turn out, making it to the interview is a significant achievement so even if you don’t get this job, don’t let it deter you from applying to others. The key thing is to learn from your experience, gather as much feedback as possible and do your best next time around!
On Wednesday 26th October the 22-23 Trainees had their annual Book Storage Facility Tour. As this blog has seen a good 12 years of posts about the facility (we’ve been visiting since its grand opening in 2010) this year we thought we might do something a little different. Rather than wax lyrical on its 11m tall shelves (which would stretch 153 miles end to end) and its incredible collection of around 12 million items, we thought we’d start a little smaller and look at the life cycle of a single, solitary BSF book.
Ingenious Ingesting
Boxes for books
New books first arrive at the BSF through the Delivery Room and then progress onto the Processing Floor to undergo the process of ingestion. No, this has nothing to do with any bodily functions (thankfully), instead it’s the term we use to describe an item being welcomed into the Bodleian’s collections. For our book, this means first being given an all-important barcode. Barcodes are to Librarians what ear tags are to animal conservationists, we use them to track the movements of our respective objects of study. Without this barcode it would be impossible to find the item once it disappeared onto the near endless shelves of the BSF. Barcodes are assigned to books based on how they were acquired, barcodes starting with a number 7 are legal deposit items, and non-legal deposit books will start with either a 6 or 3.
Now that our book has a barcode attached to it, its height is measured, and it’s placed into a special paper box with other books of the same size. Our book gets only the best as this box is made of special acid-free paper sourced from Germany. The handle is also a specially made plastic, tested thoroughly to ensure that it won’t melt in a fire. The BSF has thousands of these incredible boxes across the site, and its one poor person’s task to take the flat nets and build them up into boxes. I’m told it’s one of the riskier jobs on the rota given the likelihood of vicious and painful paper cuts.
With our book safely nestled in its new home it’s time to go through some more scanning. Having already had a barcode stuck to its front cover and scanned into the system; the book now has its barcode scanned again to attach it to the barcode of the box it’s sitting in. It goes through this process not once, but twice, to ensure it’s not missed the first-time round. This method of grouping books into boxes based on their height rather than their contents may seem to be a textbook case of judging a book by its cover, but I can assure you that the BSF isn’t organising its books this way just to fit in with the latest BookTok trends. There is a logic to this madness.
Organising the books by height, as some storage-savvy librarians may already have guessed, is the most efficient way to
BSF shelves and cherrypicker
make use of the space. Rather than one shelf accommodating books ranging in size from the tiny ‘Old King Cole’ (clocking in at a miniscule 0.9mm) to the unwieldy ‘Birds of America’ (an impressive 1×0.72m in size), the shelves at the BSF maximise their use of space and ensure no large gaps are left from having to accommodate books of diverse sizes. A further benefit to mixing up the collections this way, is that should the unthinkable ever happen and disaster strike, causing damage to some of the books, you’re less likely to lose an entire curated collection all at once. Happily, this is not something the BSF has ever really had to worry about, as it has a stellar record on the safety and well-being of the books in its care (12 years and no major incidents!)
So, it is with great care that various boxes of books are loaded up onto one of the building’s many forklift/cherry-picker hybrids and chauffeured into their new position atop one of the many towering shelves inside the BSF. Our books travel in style as the machine they are transported on is carefully designed to assure a smooth ride between the very narrow aisles of the BSF. The floor is laced with a magnetic wire that guides the machine with pin-point accuracy between the shelves to ensure there are no unfortunate accidents á la Rachel Weisz in her ground-breaking role as Evelyn Carnahan in The Mummy. Once our book has arrived safely in its place it is scanned once more to connect it with the barcode number for its specific shelf, then it goes into a cosy hibernation, waiting quietly for a wandering reader to stumble across its SOLO (Search Oxford Libraries Online) record and make a request.
Daring Deliveries
When this occurs, it’s time for our book to spring back to life. Its name will make a list of VIP books for collection, generated 6 times a day. If it makes that list before 10:30 it will likely be delivered the same day, any later and turnaround extends into the next day. Once the list has been picked, the book makes a return journey via cherry picker back to the Processing Floor where it is packaged into a special blue tote (fancy librarian name for a box)
Books in boxes
labelled with the name of the library where our reader wishes to receive it. That tote is then loaded onto a van (which runs this route twice a day) and then starts this mass migration of books from Swindon into Oxford. The van deposits the books at Osney where they are sorted into two further vans with different routes. Regardless of which route they take, our books will arrive at the library in good time for the reader to access them for whatever essay, tutorial or exam they might be taking part in.
Before the reader can access the book however, they need to know it is there – that’s where we librarians come in. At the Radcliffe Camera and the Old Bodleian, we receive deliveries sometimes as often as twice a day, although for most other libraries the frequency is a little slower. When those deliveries arrive, we must safely guide the delivery van into place, then carry all the boxes back and forth (being careful not to mix books returning with books arriving). The totes are carefully packaged so as not to be too heavy to carry but many are still hefty, clocking in at roughly 10-15kg each when full. Once the delivery is unpackaged, we gently scan each book and check it is correctly tagged for its reader to find with a Self-Collect slip, and then shelve it accordingly.
Once its reading period is over, the librarians will remove it from the shelves and begin the whole migration process in reverse. Upon their arrival back at the BSF, the books are sorted according to their barcode numbers, packaged back into the correct boxes, and returned to hibernation to await their next adventure.
Scrutable Scanning
A BookEye scanner
Another important aspect of the BSF book life cycle is scanning. For books that cannot undertake the twice daily migration another option is available, as the BSF has been offering a ‘Scan and Deliver’ service (clearly named for all the Adam and the Ants fans out there) since 2012. Once again, our book will be placed on a special list, picked from the shelves according to the barcodes listed for its location and taken to a special room inside the BSF designed entirely to accommodate the massive amounts of scanning that takes place. The BSF is the most efficient of all the libraries’ locations in terms of scanning, and they are proud to note that they average around 45,000 pages scanned a month. It’s no doubt then that the staff in charge of scanning at the BSF are highly skilled at handling these books.
When scanning commences, each item is carefully lifted from its place on the scanning shelf and laid to rest in a special BookEye scanner. These scanners are specially designed to work with the book’s physiology and allow it to be scanned without damaging its spine or any other vital organs such as pages or binding. The book is then pressed gently underneath a sheet of glass and a bright light runs across it, logging every curve and line of the text within. The pages of the book are delicately turned, and the process repeated for every required page. A skilled scanner can complete an entire chapter without distressing the book at all. Once all the requisite information is recorded the book is lovingly returned to its nest in the bowels of the BSF.
Dastardly Dangers
So far you can see that the books within the BSF are incredibly well cared for and face little in the way of existential threats. In fact, many of the natural predators of the book are managed by the BSF in such a way that they pose little to no threat at all.
Pipes for the sprinkler system
One of the most prescient threats to the lives of our books is the risk of fire. Thankfully the BSF has ensured our books are safe from harm in that respect, they’re kept safe by massive 4-hour fire walls (and 2-hour fire doors) to minimise the risk of fire spreading from one book settlement to the next. There’s also an incredibly sensitive air sampling system connected to the building’s sprinklers and two massive tanks of water ready to extinguish any flame the moment it sputters to life. Despite its sensitivity, the sprinkler system has only ever had one false alarm in 12 years. The poor books caught in the ensuing deluge were diligently dried out by an outside firm and then returned happily to their respective nests in the store (although a few items still have visible watermarks from the incident).
Another potential danger to our books is pests. Many a librarian has known the horror of leafing through the pages of a book, only to find they have been nibbled on by a parasitic visitor. However, thankfully, conditions at the BSF are such that they discourage other forms of life from outstaying their welcome. The rooms are temperature controlled to a perfect 18°C and the lack of moisture and other food sources mean that any adventurous animals that might find their way in, such as woodlice or flies, often die off fairly quickly in an environment that is perfectly suited for nourishing books but hostile to pretty much everything else. This being said, pest control still makes a visit to the BSF every 5 weeks or so just to ensure no intrepid insects have braved the harsh conditions to gorge on the juicy pulp of book paper.
Thanks to these careful measures, the life expectancy for books at the BSF is long and it’s rare for books to die of unnatural causes under their care, so we can rest easy in the knowledge that the books under that big warehouse roof will have a long and happy life.
Back in June, the trainees were given the exciting opportunity to explore four libraries in London: the Reuben Library at the British Film Institute, the Natural History Museum Library and Archives, the Guardian Library and Archives, and the London Library. A huge thanks goes out to all of the library staff for guiding us round, answering our many questions, and giving us an insight into the wider librarianship sector. Continue reading to find out who we met, what we learned, and to see some pretty pictures we took along the way!
Reuben Library, British Film Institute
Josie Fairley Keast, Bodleian Law Library
The British Film Institute (BFI) can be quite tricky to find, tucked away in the side of the Southbank Centre. However, we all made it there eventually, and were met in the Reuben Library’s reading room by Sarah Currant (Senior Librarian for Reader and Mediatheque Services), who chatted to us about the library and how it works alongside other areas of the BFI. The library can currently be accessed for free, with no need for any sort of membership card – we were really impressed by this, as well as the decision to make the space less intimidating by installing a large window in place of the foyer wall. Working in Oxford, we tend to encounter a fair amount of ‘threshold fear’, so it’s always nice to see somewhere acknowledging this in their accessibility measures.
Sarah demonstrated the BFI database to us, which allows users to search the name of a film and be presented with a page summarising all the related items held by the library. This includes details of books and articles in the collection, as well digitisations of relevant ephemera. Historically the BFI maintained collections of press cuttings, usually based around specific films; many of these have now been digitised, along with copies of programme notes from every time a film is shown in one of the BFI theatres. The copyright procedures around this sounded similar to the Bodleian’s electronic legal deposit situation – although the BFI does not hold the copyright to everything it cares for, these materials can be accessed through the reading room computers (as opposed to being freely available outside of the library).
The BFI National Archive is one of the largest film collections in the world, covering both 120 years of British film history and the wider world of international cinema. Although the library itself is not directly involved in conservation work, Sarah told us a bit about some of the challenges of this particular area – for example, cellulose nitrate film, which was commonly used until the early 1950s, is both highly flammable and difficult to extinguish, as the nitrate part essentially provides the fire with its own oxygen supply. Individual reels were commonly stored separately, to prevent one fire from destroying the entire sequence! Official HSE advice for dealing with cellulose nitrate film recommends contacting a film archive such as the BFI, as this will be better equipped to deal with such specialised materials. With this in mind, it is unsurprising that the BFI frequently becomes the custodian of film collections on behalf of other institutions.
One thing we didn’t manage to see on the day was the BFI Mediatheque, a space which allows visitors to watch various films from the archive. The material on offer ranges from modern and classic films and television to the ‘Britain on Film’ historical collection and, incredibly, digitised versions of early cinema from the 1890s. It’s certainly a uniquely impressive collection, and it was fascinating to hear how the library – whose actual holdings aren’t so different to the books, journals, and digitised materials we encounter in our own libraries – works with the rest of the organisation on events and exhibitions to help make these materials accessible to a modern audience.
Natural History Museum Library and Archives
Juliet Brown, Old Bodleian Library
The Natural History Museum (NHM) is an iconic London tourist attraction, with visitors flocking to view the beautiful architecture, amazing animals and even a dinosaur skeleton if you’re lucky (see Dippy’s return). However, few are aware of the extensive library collection within, supporting the work of the museum scientists, postgraduate students and external researchers alike.
Arriving at the staff door, we made it past security and were greeted by Hellen Pethers, Researcher Services Librarian, who took us through the entrance and directly into a beautiful room marked ‘Library.’ This was previously one of five onsite reading rooms within the NHM, back when each room was dedicated to a specialist subject. Now, following the creation of a singular public reading room upstairs (for user convenience), this room is used solely by staff and for the storage of collections.
Hellen proceeded to tell us a little about the history of the Museum, from the initial collection work of Hans Sloane, through to the petition for a conglomerated collection by Sir Richard Owen. The latter’s work resulted in the construction and opening of the NHM in 1881, a beautiful building designed by Alfred Waterhouse and often referred to as a “cathedral to nature”, with its detailed engravings and terracotta designs paying homage to the natural world. The NHM has continued to expand, with new buildings and spaces created to further the study of natural history – emphasising the importance of the NHM building and its collections as a centre for research.
This is where the librarians come in, developing library collections to ensure that scientists and researchers have access to the relevant material and resources to support their research. This is a role that librarians have officially played within the Museum since the introduction of the first librarian, Bernard Woodward, in 1903. Woodward was given a huge remit, with a budget to collect all relevant materials, and he even introduced a classification system that is still used for specific collections today.
With the collection policy that no material should be removed from the library — so that scholars can track the progression of thought in a particular field – collections have expanded rapidly, now totalling over 1 million items. This includes a wide range of modern collections, e-journals, e-books, databases, rare books, manuscripts, art, and maps. Books are borrowable by staff, as well as the over 400 scientists associated with the museum, but the collections are also consulted by external members, who can access the reading room by appointment in specified opening hours.
Speaking of the public reading room, this was the next stop on our tour and an opportunity to see the public face of the NHM library. As readers request material in advance, many of the tables are pre-prepared with required resources and equipment, with the material ready to collect behind the enquiry desk. At the NHM, all library staff are scheduled to complete shifts on the enquiry desk, which Hellen explained is a great way to interact with readers and become familiar with the collections.
“To make the pasta to feed the nightingales”
The final stage of our tour took us through the bookstacks and up into the Special Collections and Archives room, where we met Rosie Jones (Special Collections Librarian) and Emma Harrold (Museum Archivist) – the latter being a previous Bodleian trainee!
After discussing both of their routes into libraries/archives, Rosie treated us to a tour of a variety of material from the NHM special collections. This included:
A copy of Pliny’s Natural History Manuscript (Historia Naturalis) – the NHM’s oldest book!
A book with a recipe describing how to make pasta for nightingales (pictured).
A book of beautiful animal drawings (pictured).
A box of detailed wooden stamps (pictured).
The mighty Rock Python.
Drawings created on Charles Darwin’s voyage around the world (pictured). These were quick sketches, with the intent to be finished and coloured at a later date. Unfortunately the original artist died on the journey, but other artists were able to complete his work, and engravings were created so the illustrations could be reproduced.
Following this, Emma took over to speak about the role of the NHM Archives, particularly the relation between preservation efforts and advertisement.
Documents concerning the formation of the NHM, personal papers of significant individuals associated with the building, and various other collections are kept by the NHM Archives in an effort to preserve the history of the museum – a vital part of Emma’s role in maintaining relevant and extensive records for researchers and NHM staff alike.
Wooden stamps
These collections span from Alfred Waterhouse’s original designs for the terracotta animals, through to photographs of Pole expeditions and photography competition winners from the 1980s. In recent years, certain pieces from the NHM archives have been used for advertisement of the NHM, with historic images and previous promotional posters reused for their latest campaign. This allowed the Museum to broadcast the range of collections whilst highlighting the vast history of the NHM – an incredibly effective campaign.
For more information about the NHM’s vast collection, you can check out their website and twitter below:
The Guardian Library isn’t what many would consider a traditional library, certainly not when compared to the historic academic libraries of Oxford. Situated within the Guardian headquarters in central London, this library primarily consists of the personal wealth of knowledge and significant research skills of the two librarians working in the building. For our tour we were met by Richard Nelsson, one such librarian, who led us through the bustling office space to a large meeting room, where he spoke to us about his role as Information Manager.
The Library
Although the current library team is extremely small, Richard was keen to show how libraries have played a significant role throughout the history of the Guardian. Before the internet, up-to-date information was still necessary to produce informative and accurate stories, but how were journalists meant to know everything published on a particular topic? This is where the librarians came in – a team responsible for sorting through all the papers published that day, cutting out individual articles and filing them in folders differentiated by topic. For example, a single article on the miners’ strikes may go into folders on trade unions, conservative party policy, and civil protest. This collection, informally titled a clippings library, would then allow journalists to access published information on a particular topic by locating the relevant folders.
With the growth of the internet, these folders have become less heavily relied on, and the role of librarians has adapted to suit the changing needs of the organisation. Richard emphasised that librarians are still vitally important to the research needs of journalists, as they manage various information sources (including online databases, e-subscriptions, and e-books) and perhaps most significantly, provide a tailored research service. This includes finding quotes, locating relevant people, providing background information, and checking facts and statistics. Richard stated that it can sometimes be challenging to narrow down a vague enquiry, but that the variety of information and requests make it a very exciting role – if occasionally high-pressured, as journalists tend to work to tight deadlines.
The Archive
Following this talk we were introduced to Emma Aitken, one of the Guardian archivists, who spoke about her role within the organisation. This principally includes:
Research: Although the archives team functions under the umbrella of the Guardian Foundation, they work closely with the Guardian research team to provide images, films, audio recordings, and various other materials for the newspaper.
Enquiry work: particularly relating to photographs/images in the collection, though she also receives those concerning the social history (where ephemera might be used) and for fact checking purposes.
Collections management: managing the online catalogue, as well as the material kept in the two onsite stores (the first for paper, objects, and materials; the second exclusively for photographs).
Technical tasks: transcribing material, completing digital preservation projects, as well as taking responsibility for binding and storing previous volumes of the newspaper (for preservation and conservation purposes).
Engagement: Managing the movement, display and loaning of material for exhibitions, as well as giving talks and presentations for interested parties (including school groups … and us!).
The Tour
Following these presentations, we were first shown to the Archives workroom, where we saw a curated collection of material kept by the Guardian Archives. This included old copies of the Cross Street Journal, preserved video advertisements, old editions of the Guardian and Observer newspapers, correspondence from WP Crozier’s personal archive collection (Guardian editor 1932-44) and even pieces of the Edward Snowdon hard drive! The Guardian Archives collections can be accessed on their website or via their twitter.
Richard then proceeded to give us a tour of the office space, where we could see different departments hard at work. One trainee was particularly excited to view the audio department, where a podcast that she listens to was being recorded! Overall this was a brilliant opportunity to gain insight into an area of librarianship none of us had previously explored, and a lovely way to spend an afternoon.
London Library
Jemima Bennett, New College Library
The entrance to the library
Given the smart location of the London Library in St James’s Square, at least one of us was feeling slightly overwhelmed and underdressed for a tour of such a beautiful building. We’d been somewhat misinformed that it resembled a Victorian gentleman’s club, but how happily wrong we were!
Founded in 1841, the London Library (the largest lending library in Europe) is notable for its motivation to preserve the history of the library while simultaneously remaining contemporary, with a refreshing focus on diversifying its membership and collections. The library collects in a range of areas but mainly caters to writers. Collections tend to focus on the arts (the library’s website (londonlibrary.co.uk) lists these as History, Cultural Expression, and Thought & Life), with an emphasis on books you might not easily find in a high street bookshop. It has an impressive list of former members – we climbed a staircase whose walls were star-studded with portraits of great cultural figures, from Virginia Woolf, to Edward Burne-Jones, to Bram Stoker, all previously members of the library.
Other highlights include:
The view through the floors to the basement
a bookcase of miniature books. This collection consisted of around 350 books printed between the sixteenth and twentieth centuries, all under five inches tall – some were under three!
An unexpected thrill of library-scale adrenaline in the back stacks. Nineteenth-century ventilation and lighting technology meant that, for all seven floors of the stacks, the floors are grated – you can look through them all the way down to the basement…
The classification system. Librarians always love a classification system, but this one was particularly fun. Created at the end of the nineteenth century by the London Library’s librarian, Sir Charles Theodore Hagberg Wright, this classification system was designed to fit the range of books that the library owned at the time, and has changed very little since. As a result, alongside the more usual headings of ‘Literature’ or ‘History’, you can also find ‘Science and Miscellaneous’. And further, within each category, subject headings are ordered only alphabetically. This is particularly joyous in Science and Miscellaneous, where books on crystallography sit in happy incongruity next to books on cycling.
The Reading Room. Even by Oxford standards, this was beautiful – a lovely, quiet, peaceful, book-lined space.
Entering the London Library is like entering The Archetypal Library, with over 17 miles of brightly coloured books on shelves, including some printed in the eighteenth century, labyrinthine bookstacks, and hidden nooks and crannies all over the building. In keeping with the whole feel of the library, the building retains many fascinating historical features: we saw some World War II reminders to ‘Turn Off The Lights’ stencilled onto the walls. The atmosphere is almost other-worldly. We all came away from the visit with a sense of having had a thoroughly enjoyable and enlightening afternoon, thanks in no small part to our wonderful tour guide Yvette Dickerson, one of the Member Services team.
Reproduction 17th-century printing press. This press uses leather ink balls to transfer ink to the form
Here’s a fun fact you might not know – since 1949, the Bodleian Library has maintained a range of presses for the purposes of teaching practical printing. On 23rd February, we were given a much-anticipated peek behind the Schola Musicae door in the Old Schools Quad, home of the Bodleian’s letterpress workshop. As library trainees, the focus of our session was early book printing, giving us an insight into the various processes that would have gone into producing the early printed books that some of us are lucky enough to work with as part of our libraries’ special collections. For purposes of numbers, we were split into two groups; one taking a morning session with Alex Franklin and the other an afternoon session with Richard Lawrence.
Over the three-hour session, we were introduced to three types of printing (letterpress, intaglio and planographic).
Letterpress Printing
The star of the show was the letterpress printing and we got the opportunity to create our own prints. Firstly, we had an overview of the principles of printing and how letterpress printing works, then we got to have a go ourselves!
Arranging the Type
Each set, or ‘font,’ of type is kept in a specially-compartmentalised trays (upper and lower cases), with a layout designed to make it easier to reach for the most commonly-used letters. Having divided up our chosen text, we were each stationed at a font and given a small composing stick to set our type in. Piecing a sentence together from reversed letters takes some getting used to — it’s easy to miss a spelling error or upside-down letter until the proofs have been printed. We worked from left-to-right, using the handy nicks in each piece of type to make sure every piece was pointing the right way.
Type cases of Caslon 12-point type
There is a lot to consider regarding the size of the font and the length of the lines on the pages, the size of the margins… many of the calculations were in fractions of an inch and made our minds boggle! 1/2 inch equals 72 points (the same as font sizes on computers); therefore 1 point equals 1/72 inch. You can see from the image below that our composing sticks had been set to 22 inches, as the 12 point font we were using would fit into it without any gaps remaining — or so we hoped!
Since any wiggle room could allow the type to shift or come loose during printing, we also used metal spacers to fill in the gaps between words and the ends of the lines, using a variety of pieces to keep everything in place as tightly as possible. Alex told us that a group of English MSt students recently visited to set extracts from M. NourbeSe Philip’s Zong in type as a way of considering the text’s interweaving of blank spaces on the page and silenced voices in history. As we learned through setting our own phrases, those empty sections require just as much time and attention as the letters themselves. Richard also discussed the influence of the printer on how a manuscript becomes a printed book. For instance, Mary Shelley’s manuscript of Frankenstein has very little punctuation; this would have been added by the typesetters and printers. What does this mean for interpreting a text?
Composing stick and metal type
Once we had finished composing our lines of type, they were secured within a printing frame (forme) by an assortment of wooden blocks (furniture). Since these also have to be tightly fitted (lest we end up with type all over the floor en route to the press), this included pieces that could be expanded or loosened with a small key (quoins). Finally, our type was all set and ready to be used for printing.
Using the Presses
The workshop had many examples of presses that are used for education and for the study of printing and the history of the book. We had a brief demonstration of early printing on a reproduction sixteenth-century printing press, based upon a drawing by Albrecht Dürer. For our printing, we used a Harrild & Sons Albion Press of 1877, originally from Leonard Baskin’s Gehenna Press.
Inking the type
The first step in using the press was preparing our ink. Thick, tacky, and oil-based, it resembled shoe polish or treacle when first scooped out of the container. Although historical methods would call for round leather ink balls, we used a plastic roller to spread it out in an even layer, ensuring the full surface of the roller had been covered. The reason being that the leather ink balls aren’t very economical with ink when you are only printing up a small amount because much of the ink is absorbed by the leather.
Once the block had been inked and the paper positioned and protected from stray ink by a paper fisket, the whole bed was rolled under the flat weight (platen). A quick pull of the operating handle pressed the paper firmly against the inked block, and then it was time for the moment of truth! Examining our proof copies gave us a chance to catch typos and adjust block placements before setting up the printmaking production line in earnest.
Both groups had submitted some initial ideas for their prints in advance. The morning group presented a motley assortment of flowers, cats, and Vasily Grossman, and the afternoon group opted for some classic Tolkien quotes and imagery. Alex took the morning group’s ideas and used them to produce a risograph image incorporating pictures from the Bodleian’s Fox Talbot collection, which we then printed over with lines from Tom Lovatt-Williams’ poem ‘Oxford,’ while the afternoon group paired one of the quotes with a pre-made block of the Oxford skyline.
Pulling the press
Intaglio Printing
The workshop holds a variety of presses, and some of us also had the chance to try our hand at using a 19th-century star-wheel etching press for some intaglio printing.
While relief printing involves inking the raised parts of the block, intaglio is almost the opposite: the design is engraved into the plate, and, once the plate has been inked and wiped clean, the image is produced by the ink that remains in these lines.
The plate and paper are tucked beneath layers of blankets, which are then pushed through a set of heavy rollers by turning the wheel. That extra weight helps press the fibres of the paper into the texture of the plate, increasing the accuracy of the print. Dampening the paper helps this process. The result is a fine-lined image, perhaps with some shadowing from residual ink on the surface of the plate.
This section raised some questions about the replicable nature of printing – if someone was to make a print from an original etching by a renowned artist such as Rembrandt, would they then have produced a Rembrandt? Our general consensus was no: even the most historically accurate reproduction would still lack the inimitable individual touch applied through processes such as adjusting placements or applying and wiping away ink.
Planographic Printing
Richard also showed the afternoon group a stone used for lithography, a form of planographic printmaking which uses water- and ink-repelling substances on a flat printing surface to create the final image.
Final Prints
Morning group’s risograph and poem print including Fox Talbot flowers
Afternoon group’s Tolkien and Oxford inspired print
Another version of the morning group’s risograph and poem print including Vasily Grossman
We all really enjoyed the session, and some of us hope to take up Alex and Richard’s offer to return to the workshop at some point in the future.
Recommended Books
We were recommended the following books by our workshop leaders, for those who have been bitten by the printing bug and want to find out more:
On Wednesday 3rd November, the Graduate Trainees were treated to a special tour of the Weston Library, where the Bodleian Libraries maintains their conservation lab and special collections materials.
Conservation Studio
By Lucy Davies
My favourite Wednesday training session so far has been the visit to the Weston Library for a tour of the Conservation Studio and Special Collections. This trip really sparked an interest in book and paper conservation for me so I hope this blog post describing our experiences can do the afternoon justice.
According to the Bodleian Conservation and Collection Care team, their role is “to stabilize bindings, bound manuscripts and early-printed books with minimal interference to their original structures and features”. Part of their role also involves maintaining and caring for the open-shelf references books and lending items in the Bodleian libraries. Their responsibilities are extensive and there are a number of roles in the team, including Book Conservators, Paper Conservators, and Preventive Conservators. The Bodleian’s is the second largest conservation team in the UK!
When we first arrived, head of preventive conservation Alex Walker talked to us about storing library materials correctly. Alex’s job is to train the Bodleian Libraries staff to care for their collections and to oversee preventive conservation projects. Her role includes managing and avoiding pest damage to the Bodleian’s collections, and she discussed with us the kind of damage that silverfish and woodworms can inflict specifically. As former students, we were all too familiar with a silverfish infestation, but had never witnessed the damage they could inflict on paper. Interestingly, silverfish graze along the surface of the paper, whereas bookworms burrow through from cover to cover – the more you know!
She showed us examples of damaged materials and explained how everything from temperature, location, humidity, and the material of a storage box can drastically affect the condition of books and manuscripts. The damage was quite extensive and highlighted for me the importance of preventive conservation and pest control in libraries, not something that had been at the forefront of my mind whilst working at the SSL.
Examples of conservation work performed by the Weston team, as displayed on bookmarks which are available to readers.
Once our skin was crawling at the thought of various insects, it was then over to Julia Bearman to show us the work she has been undertaking on the consolidation of paintings within a Mughal album. She showed us how she takes photographs of the work before beginning and then carefully marks on the photos every change or repair, however miniscule, so that everything done to the object is recorded. It is a slow and careful process that clearly requires patience. Additionally, Julia explained to us that the aim was not to make the book of paintings appear new again, as that could be misleading and unhelpful to those undertaking research. Instead, her aim is to stabilise it and preserve it enough to travel to exhibitions or not need further conservation work in the near future.
What was most interesting to me was that Julia explained she undertakes research for months before even touching a new project, which I thought was incredible, and highlights how much work goes into a conservation project before even picking up any tools. She speaks to other conservators and academics to gain an understanding of the object’s history, the materials it is made of, and what the aim for the conservation project should be.
Examples of conservation work performed by the Weston team, as displayed on bookmarks which are available to readers.
Finally, it was over to Andrew Honey who showed us how his role is to conserve and rebind books. Again, he outlined how the aim is not to make the book look like it was never damaged but to use minimally invasive techniques to stabilise the book. This is because invasive techniques or the use of certain materials can cause further damage down the line. Interestingly, leather is no longer used to repair broken leather book spines, but rather cloth is used, as this is safer for fragile materials.
He also showed us a book from Henry VIII’s personal library, which blew all of our minds to see, I think. It was covered in velvet as apparently even Henry’s books were not safe from his gaudy fashion tastes. It was fascinating to see it right there in front of us and to learn about how the Bodleian is conserving it so it can survive for future generations to learn from.
The tour of the conservation studio could have lasted days and we still wouldn’t have seen everything, but I learnt so much in the couple of hours that we spent there and am very grateful to the staff for taking time out of their day to share their expertise and experiences with us.
Special Collections
By Sophie Lay
After our time in the Conservation Studio, we took a much needed tea/coffee break in the café. From here, we met the Weston’s own Chris Fletcher: Keeper of Special Collections at the Bodleian.
Chris then proceeded to take us on a tour of the Weston Library. We travelled through a series of complexly inter-connected corridors and stairwells which, in retrospect, I cannot piece together at all. The building is a maze, but a delightful one full of treasures – perhaps leave a trail of breadcrumbs if you go exploring! The building weaves together classic and modern architecture, combining oil paintings and sweeping doorways with sleek exhibition spaces and glass viewing platforms.
The tour began with a glance into one of the reading rooms (the Rare Books and Manuscripts Reading Room, to be precise), an architectural delight with exposed stonework, skylights, and a gate-like entrance. From here, we travelled up to the roof terrace. The terrace is not a public space, as it backs onto a reading room so requires quiet, but fret not – we couldn’t possibly miss the opportunity to get a photo or two.
Chris then took us down to the Archive Room. Inside, two archivists were hard at work up to their elbows in material. We only saw glimpses of the pieces down there, but they covered a broad spectrum of subjects from OXFAM to the Conservative Party to Joanna Trollope. Chris assured us that in libraries, a dedicated archiving space of the size available at the Weston is a rare and special thing.
Then came the closed stacks, nestled out of public view and often discussed in whispers and covert glances. Of course, these spaces are highly secretive, so there is very little I’m allowed to tell you in a blog post. I can especially neither confirm nor deny the rumours of underground tunnels connecting the Weston stacks to the Radcliffe Camera and the secret wine cellars of the Sheldonian Theatre, Merton College, and All Souls College.
The next highlight for me was the Centre for Digital Scholarship. What had once started out as a few computers that researchers could use to view their rare books in close detail became rapidly swept up in the wash of digital advancement. The centre now exists as a hub for using cutting-edge and innovative digital tools to support multi-disciplinary academic pursuits as well as engaging with the wider public. They run workshops, seminars, and events – some invitation-only, and some open to the public. You can find out more information about that here, including the Digital Humanities School. What is particularly fascinating to me is how this work applies to librarianship, with digitisation projects already underway and the popularity of electronic resources rising among academics of all levels.
The final destination for our tour was the Bahari Room, where Chris showed us some of the rare items that the Bodleian is currently working on or has recently acquired. The talk was detailed and I could not possibly give away all of Chris’ trade secrets, but here are a few key points of our discussion:
In buying special collections, time is of the essence. Pieces that are up for sale get snapped up incredibly quickly, so you have to act fast. Chris told us that he has received catalogues and picked up the phone to purchase items within minutes of delivery – only to find them already gone.
Some of us took the opportunity to talk to Chris about how institutional collectors navigate cultural heritage and the question of repatriation: who owns an artefact? Where did it come from originally? Through what processes and hands did it end up in the collection? These questions are key in collections work.
Collaboration and mutual respect are important within and between academic institutions. Sometimes multiple bodies team up to purchase certain collections that can be mutually owned. And sometimes, you have to know when another institution has a more vested interest than yours in purchasing a particular item. It pays to back off and let someone else win sometimes (though not always!)
The training session ended as most do, with fond goodbyes and a trip to the pub for the willing. I’ll spare you the details of that, and instead, leave you with a sneak preview of the rare artefacts shown to us by Chris Fletcher…
Rare Collections Material: According to Chris, this was the first bible bound by a woman.
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