Welcome to A Day in the Life of the Graduate Trainee at St John’s College, Oxford…
8.50-9.20 | Settling in Every morning the first thing I do is put the kettle on before sitting at my laptop to sift through my emails. All members of the library staff (all 4 of us!) receive emails that are automatically forwarded from the general library email account, and whoever responds to enquiries copies in to their reply the other staff members. This not only limits the chances of any enquiries being missed, but also ensures that everyone is kept in touch with what is going on and which visiting readers we can expect to see during the week. All members of the college have access to the library during opening hours (we do not have 24 hour opening); anyone from elsewhere within the university who is having trouble locating a book that they require is welcome to approach us if we have a copy and consult the book within the library. Similarly, any researcher (from Oxford or further afield) who wishes to view anything from our special collections is able to make an appointment to do so.
9.20-10.10 | Shelving It is my responsibility to shelve the arts subjects books in the Laudian Library, which is located upstairs. Downstairs I arrange the books on a trolley in order of classmark and load them into the lift. Upstairs I am defeated by two pesky steps into the Laudian Library which mean that I have to transfer all of the books, a few at a time, onto another trolley which is on the right level! A reader has informed us that a book she returned is still on loan to her account. This happens occasionally when a book has not, for one reason or another, been scanned on return. Before I begin shelving, I locate the book and ask the Library Administrator to return it on ALEPH, our library management system.
10.10-11.00 | Classifying I am regularly given a pile of new accessions to classify. We have a unique classifying system which is fairly straightforward, although occasionally I find that the categories are not quite specific enough, which can cause difficulties in choosing where to place something. I also begin to process the book by giving it a barcode and writing the classmark in pencil on the inside of the front cover. I then input this information into ALEPH. Either I or another member of staff will complete the processing by stamping each book, giving it a bookplate and covering all new paperbacks. As we do not have self-issue facilities and readers are not allowed to bring bags into the library, there is no need for electronic tagging, which is part of the job for many of the other trainees.
11.00-11.45 | Environmental monitoring In all of the places in which we store our manuscripts, early printed books and special collections, we monitor the temperature and humidity in order to keep conditions as ideal for conservation as possible . This is done by humbug dataloggers (not too sure why ‘humbug’!) which take readings at set intervals; we then download the data each month and the humbug datalogger software adds it to a graph. This means that it’s easy to see how stable the temperature and humidity have been, and if and when any fluctuations have taken place. Once the data has been downloaded, we email it to the Oxford Conservation Consortium to glance over. (The Oxford Conservation Consortium was formed by a group of Oxford colleges in 1990 to facilitate the care and preservation of their special collections.) This task actually carries a fair amount of responsibility, since it is important to return each humbug to the correct location, and to ensure that all of the stores are secure. It also takes a surprising amount of concentration to remember which set of keys out of the six that you have with you is for which lock!
11.45-12.00 | Tea break A bit later than usual today, as I wanted to deal with the environmental monitoring first. I spend a little while reading the other trainee blog posts for ‘Day in the Life’.
12.00-13.00 | Issue desk I spend an hour on the issue desk most days, usually when the Library Administrator is at lunch. It’s fairly quiet today, with just a handful of loans and returns. We have some postcards and guide books for sale, and someone buys 8 postcards of the Old Library. Often I will do some book processing or covering when I’m on the issue desk.
13.00-14.00 | Lunch
14.00-14.15 | Classifying The Librarian has purchased a couple of books that have been requested. As there are people waiting for them, I classify them so that they can be processed as quickly as possible.
14.15-15.15 | Copy-editing of digital scans made of medieval manuscript catalogue About ten years ago, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Medieval Manuscripts of St John’s College Oxford, the work of Ralph Hanna, was published. Unfortunately, we do not have it in electronic format. One of my ongoing projects is to copy and paste into a Word document the text from digital scans that have been made of the hard copy, and to edit it. Quite often the computer software has misread ‘1’ for ‘I’ or ‘y’ for ‘ij’, for example! The Librarian has talked me through some of the jargon that is used in the catalogue to describe manuscripts, and the task is much more interesting now that I understand a little more of what it means!
15.15-15.35 | Daily trip to the college’s Law Library Most days I make a trip to the college’s Law Library, which is located on the other side of the college. The Law Library is accessible to law students only, and all of the books are confined to the library. My main task whilst I’m there is to shelve new accessions, and re-shelve any books that readers have been using.
15.35-15.50 | Facebook page At the start of my traineeship, I set up a Facebook page for the library. We currently have on display in the library reception some of the books shortlisted for the 2012 Costa Book Awards, and I have been sharing links to related content on our Facebook page, hoping to generate some interest. Today I post a link to an article in The Telegraph on the two graphic novels that were shortlisted for the awards.
15.50-16.05 |Tea break
16:05-17.00 | Exhibition research As part of the graduate traineeship at St John’s, the trainee researches and displays an exhibition of their choice in Trinity term, drawing on the College’s special collections. I am not going to reveal my chosen topic just yet, but I will explain a little about the research I have carried out so far. Firstly, since working as the Graduate Trainee at St John’s means an involvement in the handling and displaying of the special collections, I was able to draw ideas from what I already knew was housed in the library. I also searched on SOLO (Search Oxford Libraries Online) for early printed books relating to my chosen topic. Next, I located any books that promised to be useful and had a look through them to see what might prove interesting to people as part of an exhibition. I am now in the process of carrying out some wider research into my chosen topic, so that I can construct a coherent narrative around the items I am going to display.
17.00 | Home-time The library is open until midnight this term but after 17.00 it is staffed by postgraduate library invigilators. And so we leave the library in their capable hands and head home for the evening.
