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Trainee Showcase 2026: Part 3

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Using Special Collections for Teaching

Amy, Christ Church Library

Written by Rebecca 

Engaging with special collections material often requires specialist skills, and the best way to acquire these is practical experience. Hands-on teaching is therefore central to undergraduates’ learning experience, building their confidence and preparing them for independent research. To pre-empt requests from tutors, Amy spent her traineeship planning displays carefully tailored to Prelims and Final Honours Scheme (FHS) syllabi. 

 

The title page of 'The Starry Messenger', a seventeenth-century tract written to interpret a recent astronomical phenomenon.
The Starry Messenger, William Lilly, Wellcome Collection, CC PDM 1.0. 

Christ Church Library caters to many disciplines but is particularly well-placed to support humanities subjects. Amy began by identifying modules across four subjects (History, English, Music, and Geography) where special collections formed a component of undergraduate studies. For each selected module, she created a longlist of potentially relevant works, selected ones that were suitable for teaching, and wrote up new captions where needed (88 in total!). In the process, she unearthed various treasures, including The Wonderful Discoverie of the Witchcrafts of Margaret and Phillip and The Starry Messenger (pictured). 

After surveying the selected items, she was able to finalise plans for thirteen displays. Each corresponded to a module, such as ‘The Scientific Movement in the 17th Century’ (BA History FHS Special Subject), ‘The Renaissance Madrigal’ (BA Music FHS), or ‘Historical Geography’ (BA Geography Prelims and FHS). These featured include items on faculty reading lists, works by named authors, and other potentially relevant items. For example, for ‘Gender and Protestant Cultures in England, 1558-1659’, Amy selected a mid-16th century manuscript copy of Katherine Parr’s Prayers or Meditations. This is the first work ever published by an English woman under her own name! 

Amy’s hard work has produced a valuable set of resources that serve as a blueprint for future work (should any future trainees want to pick up where she left off). The displays will hopefully inspire both tutors and undergraduates to explore Christ Church’s overlooked collections. 

Meinen lieben Eltern!: Cataloguing 155 Doctoral Theses (in German, French, Spanish, and Dutch)

Gemma, Law Library

Written by Amy Fry

Gemma’s project involved creating and updating catalogue records for a collection of antique legal theses in the Law Library. There are 14450 foreign theses at the library dating from the 1850s to the 1930s and mostly in French and German, which can currently be browsed by going onto their website and using the ‘Search foreign dissertations’ page. These items are taking up a lot of space, but before they are sent to the Collections Storage Facility (CSF) for off-site housing, they need to be properly catalogued. Gemma identified that there were over 100 records that had insufficient data to allow for CSF processing. 

A photo of a catalogue record for these theses with generic sample text filled in.
A blank example of the Alma record that Gemma was creating.

Thus, her task was to locate all of the missing data, by examining the items herself, and then to add it to the catalogue entry on Alma, our Library Management System. 

However, the task was not without its challenges. These dissertations are not in English, so Gemma had to stretch herself to work in languages in which she was not fluent. Further, she had to assign the theses subject areas, a very important aspect of cataloguing that allows for a better browsing experience, but, as many cataloguers would tell you, a surprisingly tricky one. In total, she catalogued 155, and succeeded in refining the catalogue by eliminating duplicate entries and existing errors in the entry fields.

Gemma showed us some highlights that she had found when assessing the theses. These involved touching dedications to parents and siblings, some of which show their era with marks of respect to those who died in the First World War.

Page saying, in French, "In memory of my dear brother Emile le Corre, law student, Sergeant in the 91st Infantry regiment, killed in action on 20th October 1917, awarded the Croix de Guerre with palm, mentioned in dispatches by the Sixth Army in the following terms: “On 7th October 1916, he bravely captured a German machine gun battery, turned it around and used it to our advantage. He left the lines carrying this machine gun under fire and brought it back to the rear.” 
In memory of my dear brother Emile le Corre, law student, Sergeant in the 91st Infantry regiment, killed in action on 20th October 1917, awarded the Croix de Guerre with palm, mentioned in dispatches by the Sixth Army in the following terms: “On 7th October 1916, he bravely captured a German machine gun battery, turned it around and used it to our advantage. He left the lines carrying this machine gun under fire and brought it back to the rear.” 
Photograph of the title: MEINEN LIEBEN ELTERN! Translated to English To my dear parents.
To my dear parents 

Another fascinating discovery was seeing evidence of students who had travelled far to make their studies possible: students from Greece to Germany, from Japan to France.

Photograph of the title "Dr Georg-August-Universität zu Göttingen vorgelegt von Agis P. Tambacopoulos aus Athen." Translated to English: Submitted to the Georg August University of Göttingen by Agis P. Tambacopoulos from Athens.
Submitted to the Georg August University of Göttingen by Agis P. Tambacopoulos from Athens

Looking to the future, there is scope to develop what this project started, by cataloguing the non-dissertations and creating more records, before the move to the CSF.  

Gemma’s project was really interesting for a variety of reasons. Firstly, from a nerdier library perspective, it demonstrated the importance of proper cataloguing in order to make items both searchable, and to enable them to be more effectively housed offsite. However, it also reminded us of the human side of libraries and the items that they hold, with the moving familial dedications and the evidence of life behind academia. 

The Many Books of the Bennigsen Donation and How to Process Them 

Summer, Social Science Library 

Written by Summer Mainstone-Cotton

I had the dubious honour of being the only trainee this year who didn’t present at the showcase, the consequence of leaving the trainee programme at the end of May for permanent employment with the Bodleian. As such, I thought I’d take the opportunity to detail my trainee project here instead: 

Back in the spring of 2025, a donor got in touch with the Bodleian regarding his late wife’s book collection. His wife, Marie Bennigsen-Broxup, was an expert on the Caucasus and Central Asia, particularly on Muslim resistance within the former Soviet Union. Her collection consequently contained a wealth of rare and potentially invaluable material for the Bodleian’s collections. There was, however, one small problem: the collection contained more than 70 shelves of books and journals, with plenty of material that was not relevant to the Bodleian. Rather than transporting around 1,700 books to the Social Science Library (SSL) and sorting through them there, the subject librarian for Slavonic and East European Studies travelled to the donor’s house and photographed the shelves. This meant that the collection could be assessed digitally before deciding which books were worth bringing back to the library. However, the process of sorting through hundreds of images of books (264 photos were taken) and transcribing all legible bibliographic data is a long and arduous task, and so the images were left to collect digital dust until someone had too much time on their hands.

Jump forward to November 2025, where I was firmly settled into my trainee role at the SSL and needed a project, the perfect opportunity for this project to land on my desk. Luckily, I only had to work on the texts that were written in Latin script, as my Cyrillic is non-existent. Over the course of about three months (minus time for Christmas), I carefully trawled through the photographs, noting down any information on the title, author, publisher, place of publication, date of publication, ISBN, and any notable physical descriptions of the texts. While this task was mostly straightforward, it did involve some investigative elements – quite a few of the spines were only partially legible due to lighting, wear and tear. For example, I may have had only the author’s surname and a publisher to go on when trying to identify a text. Once I had enough information to determine the text, I would then check to see if it was listed on SOLO and already part of the Bodleian’s collections.

A shelf full of potential donations which needed sorting.
An example of the photos I was working from

While I know little about this subject area, some of the texts chosen seem obviously relevant just from their titles, such as Muslim Eurasia: Conflicting Legacies and The Soviet Empire: A Study in Discrimination. Notably, we did not take Delia’s Complete Cookery Course or Slow Cooker Favourites from the offered collection, but don’t worry, I have checked and both of these titles are already in the Bodleian Libraries’ collection. 

…and with that, we’re done!

Unfortunately this is our last post as trainees before we scatter to new roles, within Oxford and beyond. Thank you to everyone who’s supported us as we found our feet within libraries, and especially thank you to anyone still reading; it’s nice to think we’re not posting into the void! Huge congratulations to the new trainees who’ll be starting soon – we hope this won’t be the last you see of us, but in case it is, good luck and we hope you have a fantastic year.

Somewhere the library has every book ever written, that will ever be written, and, notably, every book that it is possible to write. These are not on the public shelves lest untrained browsing cause the collapse of everything that is possible to imagine.

Terry Pratchett, Going Postal
The 2025/26 trainees, in the Divinity School.
Goodbye!

Trainee Showcase 2026: Part 2

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Working With Livres d’Artiste: a Tale of Creative Outreach and Organising

Jules, Taylor Institution Library

Written by Heidi Cruft

Jules presents to a group of poets and artists, at the Weston Library. Special collection items from the Strachan Collection and the Weston's collections are laid out on the table.
Jules introducing local poets and artists to special collections on the ‘Myths, Beasts, Artist’s Books’ creative outreach day

Jules’ project involved organising a creative workshop and exhibition for the Strachan Collection, a selection of livres d’artiste currently housed in the Art, Archaeology and Ancient World Library. Throughout their presentation, Jules’ enthusiasm for both creative outreach and special collections really shone through, and I will try my best to do their attitude justice here! 

Although Jules organised several events related to the collection, including a staff taster session and a show-and-tell for French and History of Art students, the centre of their project for me was the workshop: Myths, Beasts, Artist’s Books. Bringing local poets and artists together with the Strachan Collection, the day was divided between an introduction to the special items and a collaborative creation session. By the end of the day, the group had created five artist’s books inspired by the collection, and some participants went on to attend a letterpress workshop to produce colophons for their finished books. 

three groups of poets and artists work together on their creative pieces. They are all painting, talking, drawing, or writing, on a busy table cluttered with creative detritis.
Poets and artists creating their responses during ‘Myths, Beasts, Artist’s Books’

What impressed me most was just how much behind-the-scenes organisation and collaboration with colleagues from different departments had gone into making the workshop a success. Everything from setting up the space to figuring out how to reach potential attendees had to be arranged beforehand, not to mention the design of an evaluation survey to understand participant experiences. This survey was invaluable for proving the positive impact of the workshop, with 78% of respondents rating the event as “above expectations” and 100% saying that this was their first time attending an event like this. 

A photo of half of one of the display cases used for the exhibition in the Voltaire Room. It shows a zine bestiary, half unfolded. Below, are photos of the making process, an image of a livre d'artiste that inspired them, and the group's letterpress colophon.
Part of the display in the Voltaire Room

To showcase participant efforts, the project did not end with the workshop. Instead, the five collaborative artist’s books were first displayed at the Bodleian Bibliographical Press during Oxfordshire Artweeks, before being exhibited alongside selected items from the Strachan Collection for two weeks in the Voltaire Room of the Taylorian. Displaying the collection required extensive planning, including preventative conservation measures to ensure that the light-sensitive materials could be displayed safely. 

Alongside the public-facing aspects, the project also had a positive impact on how the Strachan Collection is organised and housed. Jules’ review of the collection, which included reuniting missing parts of 37 items, gathering information to catalogue 60 previously-uncatalogued items, and improving the labelling and retrieval process, has helped make these artist’s books more accessible for future researchers and outreach projects alike. 

Overall, I really enjoyed hearing about Jules’ project. It demonstrated their ability to organise complicated events and bring people together around a shared interest, which are skills that will serve them well as they move beyond the traineeship. I also believe the project highlights the potential of creative outreach within the Oxford community and has enormous potential to inspire similar projects in the future. Already there are plans to hold another show-and-tell session next year, and potentially another creative outreach event, making me excited to see the project continue to grow! 

An artist making a sketch from some of the livres d'artiste on display
three artists working together on their creative response, in the Bibliographical Press

“Pieces of Wisdom” in the Pierre Wack Memorial Library

Heidi, Sainsbury Library

Written by Leah Duffin

Heidi’s project centred around cataloguing the fascinating collection of the Pierre Wack Memorial Library. The collection consists of the professional archive of the Shell executive and scenario planning pioneer Pierre Wack (1922–1997). Heidi opened her presentation with a brief overview of how the collection came to Oxford, detailing its journey from the Global Business Network offices in The Hague to its donation to Green Templeton College in 2005. Today it forms part of the Oxford Futures Library and is held at the CSF.  

This project was well planned and meticulous executed. Along with her colleagues at the Sainsbury Library, Heidi has spent the last few months sifting through this vast collection, discovering intriguing documents, and cataloguing the items for ease of navigation. Heidi outlined her task of standardising and expanding the existing catalogue as well as identifying missing items and those in need of conservation intervention—a vital part of collection management.  

In her presentation, Heidi explained the scope of the 2,000 item collection through an accessible chart, revealing that the portion of catalogued items was made up of reports (27%), journals (19%), magazines (11%), and correspondence (6%), with the rest of the collection given over to conference notes, presentations, graphs, newsletters, drafts, and books.

Heidi spoke about the Pierre Wack Memorial Library with such enthusiasm and took us on a journey of the collection highlights. These included an article from The Financial Times detailing the establishment of the business schools in Oxford and Cambridge.

In addition, the newspaper and magazine holdings revealed advertisements that defined 20th century consumer culture, including graphics centred around domestic family ideals and a rather humorous diamond advert. Such materials are essential to understanding how diamond companies like De Beers have developed their advertising strategies over time, embracing stereotypes as well as challenging them. 

Heidi was inspired by Pierre Wack’s commitment to his work and variety of the collection. This is reflected in her choice of title: ‘Pieces of Wisdom’. Wack’s handwritten notes detail the finer points of scenario planning, cognition, and business strategy as well as some motivational quotes . . .  Heidi’s diligence over the year has been invaluable, with the cataloguing project about 70% complete—a great result for both Heidi and the team at the Sainsbury library.

The materials in the Pierre Wack Memorial Library will become increasingly more accessible for students and researchers interested in scenario planning, economic and social history, and the legacy of the remarkable Pierre Wack. 

Suggested Further Reading: 

Kleiner, Art, “The Man Who Saw The Future.” Strategy Business, February 12, 2003, https://www.strategy-business.com/article/8220 

Oxford Futures Library. “Pierre Wack Memorial Library.” Accessed July 29, 2026. https://oxfordfutures.sbs.ox.ac.uk/ 

Haverfield Hijinks: Auditing an Overflowing Collection 

Olly, Art, Archaeology and Ancient World Library 

Written by Gemma Hammond

Olly’s presentation focused on his attempts to solve the various problems posed by the Haverfield Room in the Art Library. The Haverfield Room, located just off the main Ground Floor reading room and named after Francis Haverfield (Camden Professor of Ancient History at Oxford in the early 20th century), contains an open shelf collection that includes books on numismatics (the study of coins), coin catalogues, museum bulletins, auction catalogues, and periodicals from most of the library’s subject areas.

However, there’s also other books stored in the room which have not been looked at for a while and a lot of overflow, with periodicals or bulletins now continuing their sequence on trolleys or stacked on top of each other on the shelves – and the room itself is not getting any bigger! The library has done its best to keep everything organised but it’s been a (growing) problem for a number of years. 

Olly’s plan was to get a better grasp of the situation by identifying what the problems were and the scale of them, and then to look at potential solutions. He undertook an audit of some little-used folios at the very back of the room, where he found that 103 of them belonged to the Art Library but 142 actually belonged to the Oxfordshire Architectural and Historical Society which had stored them there some time ago. Olly said he’d been fascinated by the variety of topics covered by these folios, particularly the coins, but also ceremonial coats of arms, maps, and architectural drawings.  

The overflowing journals posed the biggest problem because many runs had not been fully itemised and before they could go to the Bodleian Offsite Storage Facility to create some much-needed space they would need to be barcoded and have an item record on the system.

Olly used a lot of spreadsheets to narrow down which journal runs should be prioritised for this treatment and as a next step he created instructions and a spreadsheet for library staff to physically check the shelves and collect data on which journal runs are currently taking up the most space. He then made use of an itemisation entry form designed for staff to input data about a journal item. The data can then be fed into OLIS to create a record on the system, hugely simplifying the process of itemising. However, Olly also pointed out problems that might come up during this process, such as journals changing their names or having previously been recorded in the system under different names.

Screenshot of Olly's itemisation entry form used to enter journal details, including library, location, title, volume, issue, date, range, language, and notes fields.

The plan is that library staff will continue with the tasks of measuring shelf space and then itemising the journals, meaning that a lot of material can then be sent offsite but still be easily findable, while the Haverfield Room will be a lot more user-friendly.

I really enjoyed Olly’s presentation and admire him for getting stuck into such a huge task and making progress on taming the chaos of the Haverfield Room! The journal itemising in particular clearly took a lot of work and it’s impressive that he’s come up with detailed and methodical long-term solutions that will hopefully be continued and built on in the future.

Bones, Bugs, and Books: our foray into museum collections 

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by Catherine Birch

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.

An external view of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. It is a large Victorian building built in brown stone with a small grassy area in the courtyard.

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! 

The Old Library. It is a long dark room with a single large window at the far end and a pointed ceiling. Two rows of display drawers and cabinets go all the way down the room.
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.  

The upstairs shelves in the new library, filled with books and grey archive boxes.
More shelves downstairs in the new library, broadly identical to the upper level.

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… 

A metal, dome-shaped helmet with a brim. The letters OUM are painted on the front. It rests on top of a display cabinet containing a plaster cast of a human face).

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).

An example page of entomological art, featuring a selection of different species of spider in a tree.
A page from 'the History of Four Footed Beasts and Serpents', containing an illustration of a unicorn and explanatory text.
A page from 'Jones Icones', featuring two illustrations of a particular species of butterfly.
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?  

A large model of a dinosaur skeleton from the museum's main display gallery.
Two different dinosaur skeletons in the centre of the museum's main display gallery.

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.  

  1. Gardens/Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums ↩︎

Trainee Showcase 2025: Part 4

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

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

Written by Millie Krantz

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Written by Ash Lammers

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

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

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

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

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

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

Written by Elena Brearley

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

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

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

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

A screenshot of the Bodleian's Archive-It page

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

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

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

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

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

Gia Simmons – Working papers and a small ‘archive’

Written by Lilly Wilcox

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

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

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

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

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

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

And Finally, Our Farewell

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

So long, and thanks for all the fish!

Database Spotlight: Victorian Popular Culture

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The A-Z database list on SOLO can take you to many weird and wonderful places. Each database provides a window into a new personality. Will I be the person who knows an uncanny amount about Early Zoological Literature[1]? Or perhaps seleucid coinage[2]? It seems that even just a little light reading in these databases would get me ahead of the pack – though perhaps Oxford is a city in which that is not reliably the case…

As tempting as these avenues of identity re-invention are, I have a feeling that I would have to somewhat crowbar these topics into conversation. Talking a lot about coins is something that is a little less charming when you’re the one who brought them up… Perhaps, I thought, it might be sensible to choose something a little more mainstream. So, this month I decided not to start a new chapter of my persona, but revisit an old one. The topic I’ve selected for this month indulges a subject I was obsessed with as a child, and the database itself is one that finds the perfect balance between accessible and delightfully specific: the database of Victorian Popular Culture. A sprawling resource with countless entries, this database is still extremely navigable and filled to the brim with treasures.

 

Arriving at the Database

When first opening the database of Victorian Popular Culture, you are greeting by a well laid-out menu. The initial drop down tab is arranged into the sections:

‘Introduction’ to give users a sense of what they can do with the resource

‘Browse documents’ for broad umbrellas of research topics

‘Explore’ for the researcher just dipping their toe into Victorian waters (ideally they’d also be wearing a very fetching Victorian bathing suit to boot)

‘Visual sources’ for photographs, plates, cinema footage – the list goes on

‘Help’ – for a more detialed guide of how to make the most of the database and further information

 

Screen cap of the home page of Victorian Popular Culture, with the drop down menu open
The drop down menu will take you wherever you want to go!

 

Having a Browse

While all the headings in the ‘Browse Documents’ section looked tempting, I decided to look into Circuses. Once in the item list, I was met with even more (delightfully organised) drop down boxes. Not unlike SOLO or the Ashmolean Database (our previous database spotlight), here you can select the item type you’re looking for. Perhaps it’s ephemera, or playbills. At this stage you can also filter by the Library/Archive that holds the item. This is a great feature for those that wish to find items they can visit in person.

 

Screen cap of list of items with thumbnails by each entry

 

Deciding not to filter the results at this stage, I began scrolling through the items. With thumbnail images of each item, you get a pretty clear idea of the sort of thing you’ll be looking at when you select an item. As I scrolled, enjoying snapshots of photographs and sheetmusic, my eye was caught by a diving figure of gold foiling on the cover of Acrobats and Mountebanks by Hugues Le Roux (1890)[3].

 

Gold foiling of an acbrobat mid-flip on a dark blue back ground
An eye-catching front cover!

Acrobats and Mountebanks

Clicking into the item took me to the catalogue page with publication information and item type. For example, here I learnt that this text is kept as part of the National Fairground Archive at the University of Sheffield[4]. If I absolutely had to get trapped in an archive overnight, due to what I’m sure would be very legitimate and even likely circumstances, I could do worse than this one. (These are the kinds of scenarios you begin to ponder when you become a library graduate trainee…). If one database just isn’t enough, treat yourself to a browse of the NFCA and find materials on illusions, menageries, pleasure gardens and fairground rides[5].

The text of Acrobats and Mountebanks was digitized and I had the option of browsing the whole text page by page or navigating by chapter. I was struck by the high quality of the images, so entered into the world of the Victorian circus without a particular destination in mind. Weaving through the acts and attractions described in the book I could feel the the ghost of the author’s excitement; gorgeous illustrations throughout the text draw you into a world where horse drawn carriages carry ladies in smart dresses to the fair (p. 38), where ‘everyone is come for amusement and intends to get it’ (p. 39). In the preface it is promised that the reader will be led to ‘the threshold of an unknown world’ (p. vi) and I felt a little like someone about to attend the circus myself.

 

 

Further into the book, in the chapter titled The Private Circus, Le Roux writes of a certain number of people for whom simply attending the Circus was not enough. So allured were they by the world of the trapeze artist and conjurer that they would seek out and enter a very particular tent. It seems that during this period, it was possible for the circus itself to be a place that would not only dazzle spectators with the art of acrobatics, but teach them how to perform it themselves. With a suitably mythical turn of phrase, the transition from circus-goer to circus performer is described by Le Roux as a ‘metamorphosis’ (p. 308).

One such individual who engaged in this act of transfiguration was Lieutenant Viaud. A man of many military and literary achievements[6], he gains another string to his bow with his acrobatic endeavours:

‘One feels that in him exists that spring of elasticity which raises a body from the soil and wrests it from the laws of gravitation’ (p. 309).

Despite finding this text through such an ordered sequence of tabs, drop down menus and chapter links, the quality of the digitized images and the ease of navigation within the database made for an immersive reading experience. I was as drawn into the world of the Victorian circus as Lieutenant Viaud, though my forward roll may yet leave something to be desired.

 

London Low Life

Closing the flap of the circus tent for now, let’s creep a little further into to the back streets of Victorian London with a dictionary of slang[7]. This extensive resource can be found on the ‘London Low Life’ a sister page of the Victorian Popular Culture database. Here is where you can find all things ‘street culture, social reform and the Victorian underworld’. After the bright lights of the circus a little shadiness might do us good.

 

Screen cap showing entries under the letter 'A' in the London slang dictionary
This dictionary can be browsed in alphabetical order and similarly defined phrases are grouped together for ease of navigation!

 

Scanning through the entries, a few favourites jumped out. I particularly enjoyed ‘a pig’s whisper’ (a grunt) ‘a bantling’ (a young child) and ‘knights of the rainbow’ (waiters, footmen, lacqueys). Having topped up my slang vocabulary, I thought I would round off my venture into the world of databases with a hop across to the Oxford English Dictionary, or OED.

 

Oxford English Dictionary Online

Available through SOLO, the OED is an incredible resource: ‘the definitive record of the English language’[8], no less.

The OED serves as a guide to the meaning, history, and pronunciation of 600,000 words— including those that have dropped out of use – from across the English-speaking world.

Every entry has example quotations from across the period the word is/was used in, from literary examples to specialist periodicals, film scripts to cookery books.

 

Screen cap of OED entry for bantling
Entry for ‘bantling’

 

As you can see in the red text on the top right of this page from the OED, this entry has not been fully updated. The entries in the OED undergo constant revisions to stay up to date, each revision ‘subtly adjusting our image of the English language’[9].My deep dive into the word ‘bantling’ shows off some of its uses over time, both literal and figurative.

I hope this mini excursion goes some way to show how different databases, available both through SOLO and online, can work together to provide richer detail for whatever it is you’re researching. In my exploration into the world of Victorian circuses, I dipped into the database of Victorian Popular Culture, the National Fairground Archive and the Oxford English Dictionary. Knowledge breeds knowledge! So many potential rabbit holes showed themselves on this digital journey, and I can’t wait to keep digging – right after I’ve perfected my acrobatic routine.

 

References:

[1] http://www.animalbase.uni-goettingen.de/zooweb/servlet/AnimalBase/list/references?digitzed_only=true%20target=

[2] http://numismatics.org/sco/

[3] Don’t have a SOLO log in? No problem! View the book here instead  https://www.gutenberg.org/files/45587/45587-h/45587-h.htm

[4] https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/nfca

[5] https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/nfca/collections/subject

[6] https://www.britannica.com/biography/Pierre-Loti

[7] https://www.londonlowlife.amdigital.co.uk/research-tools/a-dictionary-of-slang

[8] https://www.oed.com/ In a recent bid for my heart, it seems, the OED published their word for 2022: ‘Goblin mode is our 2022 Word of the Year, recognising our desire, particularly as we emerged from the pandemic, to engage in ‘unapologetically self-indulgent, lazy, slovenly, or greedy’ behaviour that typically ‘rejects social norms or expectations’.’ Powerful stuff.

[9] https://public.oed.com/about/

UKWA Conference 2021

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I was recently able to attend the third annual UK Web Archive (UKWA) Conference, which took place over Zoom on November 18th. I found it really interesting, and since it’s a topic which hasn’t come up too often in day-to-day library work, I thought I’d turn my notes into a blog post. UKWA is a partnership between the six UK Legal Deposit Libraries, which are permitted to take a copy of any UK digitally published resources under the Non-Print Legal Deposit Regulations 2013. This is done through a combination of annual “capturing” of all .uk websites, ongoing “crawls” of certain sites and subjects, and the rapid formation of collections in response to current events. These copies are then preserved in perpetuity and made available on Legal Deposit Library premises. Captured sources range from official publications to social media posts, and sites can be nominated via an online form. However, it is not technically possible to capture everything – for example, Facebook currently cannot be harvested, and Twitter can only be captured through manual intervention. The conference featured presentations about a range of recent collections and projects, offering a broad insight into UKWA’s work over the last couple of years.

The first guest speaker was Joe Marshall, Associate Directions of Collections Management at the National Library of Scotland. He spoke about the Archive of Tomorrow, a new collaborative collection focusing on the impact of Covid-19. The collection aims to tell both the official and unofficial story of the pandemic, featuring government guidance, public dissent, and consequences for communities and industries. An interesting point here was the issue of metadata: as the project intends to avoid retrospectively labelling anything as ‘true’, ‘false’, or similar, there is a small possibility of someone encountering the collection and mistaking old captures for current guidance. However, this neutral attitude towards a huge breadth of content is crucial to the collection’s sense of completeness: to select and record an “official” version of the pandemic would not tell the full story. The Archive of Tomorrow is an ongoing project, and is currently recruiting web archivists across the Legal Deposit Libraries to continue curating and preserving the pandemic.

After a short break, the next two talks focused on specific collections within the UKWA. Nicole Bingham, Lead Curator of Web Archiving at the British Library, spoke about the Covid-19 collection, which can be found as a subsection of the pre-existing ‘Pandemic Outbreaks’ collection. There are obvious challenges in attempting to record global events through UK-centric sources, and so this talk also featured UKWA’s collaborative work with the International Internet Preservation Consortium (IIPC) Content Development Group, a partnership which enables researchers to combine and compare the Covid-19 collections of various national web archives.

Saskia Huc-Hepher and Xiao Ma then spoke about two diaspora collections focusing on French and Chinese speakers in London. Their presentation discussed archives in a more theoretical sense, exploring how the concept of a “community web archive” might be conceptualised differently according to varying connotations of the term “community” within the relevant groups. They also highlighted the importance of including these “microarchives” as a way of broadening UKWA’s scope beyond an Anglophone-centric perspective.

The next presentation was from Teagan Pyke, a PhD researcher currently working on the preservation of New Media Writing Prize (NMWP) entries. The NMWP is a competition for pieces of writing which cannot be expressed through “old media” alone; shortlisted entries from 2020 include several different styles of games and interactive webpages. Like the earlier talk from Joe Marshall, Teagan’s work involves the idea of completeness, focusing on the criteria for attaining a “good capture” of these works. Some of these factors are purely technical, such as attempting to ensure that links follow through correctly, while others are more abstract; Teagan determined that if some element of the work’s narrative, themes, or atmosphere were missing from the capture, it had not been preserved in full.

The final speaker was Tom Storrar, Head of the UK Government Web Archive (UKGWA). The UKGWA comprises captures from over 800 government-related websites and social media accounts, and, unlike much of the rest of the archive, can be accessed outside of the Legal Deposit Libraries. One project which stood out from UKGWA’s work in the last year was the EU Exit Web Archive. As the National Archives are responsible for publishing legislation, a decision was taken to capture all content published on Eur-Lex (the European legislation website) ahead of 11pm on December 31st, 2020. The result is, as described on the archive itself, “a comprehensive and official UK reference point for EU law as it stood at the end of the implementation period.” Future UKGWA plans include continuing to capture the government’s response to Covid-19, the integration of Instagram archives into public services, and generally improving the archive’s functionality as a research resource.

The conference was hosted by Jason Webber, Engagement Manager at UKWA, who also gave two talks during the morning. The first was a basic introduction to UKWA, while the second demonstrated how to access and navigate the available resources. As someone new to web archiving in general, I particularly appreciated this extra context to the various presentation topics, and found the conference as a whole to be a fascinating introduction to the area. As well as the annual conference, the UKWA also runs online training for staff and readers at Legal Deposit Libraries, and I would certainly recommend keeping an eye out for upcoming sessions.

Josie Fairley Keast, Bodleian Law Library

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Further reading & links

Hands on with the Special Collections: a Trainee’s experience

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The aspect of the St John’s Library traineeship I perhaps most looked forward to was getting involved with the manuscripts and early printed books. Here are four of the Special Collections tasks I’ve been working on over my first couple of months, and a look at what’s coming next!

1. “Book first aid”

Before: the loose coverboard of an early printed book; after: the same book’s fore edge, now secured with two cotton tapes

Although many colleges with historic collections work with the Oxford Conservation Consortium to preserve and repair their items, in-house we perform “book first aid” to minimize further damage. I found that the front board of this bound volume of tracts had detached. The aim of the “first aid” tying is to prevent damage to the page block, and keep the parts of the volume together. When tying, it’s important to put the knots on the fore edge side (pages) to avoid them pressing into the spine. Another consideration is choosing a cotton tape of a similar shade to achieve a discreet look. Previously, we only stocked cream tape, so one of my tasks over the students’ Christmas vacation will be to replace individual cream tapes with pairs of tonal tapes on our many taped volumes.

2. Invigilating of readers

The Caxton volume on the foam rest arrangement the Librarian and I settled upon

Invigilating readers feels like a bit of a role reversal for me, as a former history student. When a researcher scheduled a visit to study our 15th century Caxton volumes, I was asked to invigilate for the first time. The Librarian and I allotted an hour to find the material and pre-prepare the best book rest set up to avoid damaging the volumes. Once the reader arrives, there are a couple of forms to fill in. Having now invigilated several times, my initial nerves have vanished, but I am still careful not to let the manuscript or book out of my sight.

3. Finding aids

One of the twelve bays of early printed books I compiled a finding aid for

Since the renovations started on our early modern libraries, the historic collections have been moved into storage in the new building. One of my first ongoing projects was creating a shelf guide for one of the basement stores to act as a finding aid. Excitingly, I was also given license to examine any books which particularly intrigued me. This was to help with task 4, although if I’d stopped to read all of the interesting ones, I’d still be in the basement right now!

4. Creating Twitter content

Left: Dom’s top tweet; right: my top tweet

St John’s Library has a Twitter account dedicated to our Special Collections (go on, give us a follow at @StJohnsOxLib). Whenever I’m down in the store room, I keep my eyes peeled for Tweetable content. Usually, I hunt for intriguing bookplates, marginalia, or images which will make eye-catching photos, and then write up a brief explanation. Creating the most engaged-with content has become a bit of a friendly competition between myself and the Senior Library Assistant (Former trainee, Dom Hewett, English Faculty Library | Oxford Libraries Graduate Trainees). Creating twitter content is fun because it’s hard to predict what will take off. That being said, we are both hoping that by tracking the Twitter analytics more closely, we’ll get better at that part.

5. What’s next?

St John’s Library operates a Special Collections blog, as well as a Twitter. Currently, I am researching for a new blog post, featuring one of the manuscripts and one of the pamphlets from our early modern collection. These items captured my attention because they are two very different forms of autobiographical writing by executed female criminals, so I feel lucky to be able to pursue my interest in them further, whilst hopefully creating content others can enjoy too. If you are interested in finding out more about the Special Collections at St John’s, or are eager to apply for a traineeship here, check out the blog at St John’s College Library, Oxford (stjohnscollegelibraryoxford.org)

Sometimes following up intriguing catalogue entries leads to questions like: “This doesn’t look like real blood to you does it?”

So far, I’ve found working with the Special Collections to be incredibly rewarding. When working with early printed books and manuscripts, taking care is dramatically prioritized over acting quickly. However, working with Special Collections is not just about hiding books in the basement – and it’s fascinating to meet the visiting researchers to hear about how the items they consult will shape their scholarship. In the future, I hope to continue developing my Special Collections skills, particularly in terms of making material available to wider audiences in person, for example through exhibitions and visitor sessions (when the pandemic permits!).

New Trainees – Advice for an Aspiring Archivist, from an Aspiring Archivist

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Advertisements were placed, interviews held, and now we look forward to the start of a new intake of trainees this coming September.

As the Archives Assistant at the Oxford University Archives I will have the rare pleasure of still being in post to greet and assist my successor in settling in to their new position. In light of this, I have given a good deal of thought to what it might be useful to tell them beyond what they will need to know to do the job. The advice I received from my predecessor was invaluable and, to pass that on, I have compiled a list of tips for aspiring archivists.

The first thing that I would suggest is to subscribe to the JISC mailing list, JISC ARCHIVES-NRA. You can subscribe from their website. I recommend opting for the digest, otherwise you will get a lot of emails in your inbox that might not be relevant! The daily digest email gives you the top discussions going on via JiscMail. Sometimes these include job vacancies and requests for volunteers, as well as news about what is going on at other archives, interesting articles and discussions and advice.

It is also worth asking to be put on the mailing list for the ARA New Professionals Trainees Section. You will get news about meetings and talks designed to support trainees in the Archives sector. Heads of archives postgraduate courses often give talks at these meetings, and it is a great opportunity to meet other trainees and visit different archives. The next meet up is on 20th June 2016 and will be visiting the M&S Archive and ITV. Use the contact details on the New Professionals Trainees webpage to ask to be added to the list and enquire about spaces at the next meeting.
You might also consider following the ARA New Professionals blog, Off the Record, where you can read posts by current professionals who discuss how they got started in Archives and they also include write ups of the trainee meetings which can be very useful if you were not able to attend.

Archives and Manuscripts aArchives Selfiet the Bodleian Library also have a blog, I would particularly advise following this if you are coming to the Bodleian as a trainee but it is also interesting in its own right and other trainees and volunteers might find it interesting.

Archive Trainees UK, part of the ARA New Professionals Trainees section, is a Facebook group that is worth joining if you are on Facebook. Another Facebook group that I highly recommend is the ICA New Professionals (International Council on Archives) group. They put out a lot of thoughtful content and invite debate and discussion.

I’d be interested to hear if anyone else has advice for sources of information for trainees and volunteers who are pre-course but looking to become professional Archivists.

This has been a very wordy post, and I’m afraid I have not had the time to source any relevant pictures to accompany the advice, so here is an archives selfie!

 

 

Elizabeth Back – Archives Assistant (Trainee), Oxford University Archives

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Hello all, I’m Elizabeth. I’m in my first month working with the Oxford University Archives.

=7DGE65:
Tower of the Five Orders

For those who don’t know, OUA hold the administrative records of the University. We are housed in the Tower of the Five Orders in the Old Bodleian, guarded by James I who sits on his stone throne outside the Lower Archive Room. If Wikipedia can be believed, ‘the Tower is so named because it is ornamented, in ascending order, with the columns of each of the five orders of classical architecture: Tuscan, Doric, Ionic, Corinthian and Composite.’ If you look at the capitals on the columns you can see the differences in the five classical styles so, in this instance, I am inclined to believe them! The tower was likely finished between 1615 and 1619, but the tower as we see it today owes much to restoration work in the 1870s.*

View of the Weston from my desk.
View of the Weston from my desk.

We also have stacks in the new Weston library and any external readers who have requested to view something from our collections are invited to do so in the Rare Books and Manuscripts reading room over here. We also assist internal University departments as many of our documents are still relevant and useful to them.

Stairs!
Stairs!

Like other Library and Information Services roles, it’s a job that can require a lot of lifting and handling of sometimes heavy materials but this particular role also involves a lot of stairs. I don’t think I’m going to need a gym membership to keep me fit this year!

I am really enjoying my placement so far. There are some real gems in this collection and I’m looking forward to getting to know it better. My favourite item so far is the Proctorial Cycle (1628) as it is beautifully illuminated with birds and flowers, and bears the signature of King Charles I. It is a calendar organising the order in which the colleges would have the privilege of electing a University proctor from their ranks. The role of Proctor still exists at the University and if you want a less dry introduction to what they do there is an Oxford Student article where the then Proctors were interviewed here.

As you may know, the University does not have an official founding date but the earliest University document held in the University Archives dates back to 1214 (you can see it here). It details privileges conferred by the papal legate following a dispute between town and gown (in which, I understand, a woman was alleged to have been murdered by a scholar and the town sought retribution by hanging two University clerks. They didn’t have Morse back then, so the Pope had to settle it).

Many of our records are much more recent than these and I have enjoyed helping family and local historians trace their ancestors. We often hear from people interested to know if their grandfather or great grandfather came here and I really enjoy it if I can tell them that they did and perhaps give them a few details.

I hope this has been an illuminating insight into what I do. By the end of this year I am sure I will be full of facts about the University’s history. I find it all fascinating so I hope I don’t get carried away with anecdotes that no one wants to hear!

 

* Cole, Catherine, ‘The Building of the Tower of Five Orders in the Schools’ Quadrangle at Oxford’ in Oxoniensia Vol. XXXIII (1968) pp. 92-107