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Radcliffe Science Library

‘Our British Aesculapius’: John Radcliffe and Oxford

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by Catherine Birch

Hello again! Sorry that the blog has gone a bit quiet in recent months – training took a pause while we supported all our busy readers through their exams and the end-of-year rush. We’ve all been working hard on the final stages of our projects, and we’ll soon have a couple of posts about our trainee showcase to share with you all! In the meantime, here’s a little local history lesson from the drafts to tide you over.

Since I moved to Oxford last year, it feels like I haven’t been able to escape the name Radcliffe. I work in the Radcliffe Camera, I get the bus to the John Radcliffe Hospital, I transfer books to the Radcliffe Science Library, and I walk past the Radcliffe Observatory Quarter on my lunch break strolls. It certainly seems like Radcliffe made the single greatest impact on Oxford since the city sprang up – but most people I ask just don’t know much about him. So, in true library fashion, I decided to start researching. Who exactly was Dr John Radcliffe, and why is half of Oxford dedicated to him?  

John Radcliffe was born c. 1650 in Wakefield, West Yorkshire. His origins weren’t humble: his father was an attorney, his mother’s family possessed “a considerable fortune”, and he had the benefit of being distantly related to the Earls of Derwentwater. However, it was Radcliffe’s brain that set him apart as a child. Local scholars, gentry, and clergy took note of his intelligence from a young age, advising his father to formally educate him rather than employing him in a trade or having him manage the estate. Radcliffe matriculated into University College in 1665, likely as a scholarship student, and immediately began making a name for himself.1 Records of his age vary, but it’s possible he started at Oxford when he was only 12!

Surrounded by other future scholars, reformers, and intellectual giants (think John Locke, Robert Boyle, and Christopher Wren), and with something to prove, he was all set to take Oxford by storm. He gained a series of degrees: a BA in 1669, an MA in 1672, an MB in 1675, and finally his MD in 1682. He was senior scholar at University College while attending and became a fellow at Lincoln College in 1670, lecturing in logic before he received license to practise medicine in 1675.   

The entrance to the Radcliffe Quad at University College, with a mounted statue of John Radcliffe above the doorway. The surrounding buildings are roughly 3-4 floors high, and are built out of light brown stone in an typical simple eighteenth-century style.
‘Radcliffe Quadrangle’ at University College, Oxford. A statue of Radcliffe overlooks the square.2

Despite lending his name to two current Oxford libraries, Radcliffe himself was not well-read. Preferring to learn through practical medicine and anatomisation, he rejected classical ideas he considered outdated and had little patience for theory. This reached the point that his peers accused him of illiteracy, and his tutors were genuinely surprised by how little he read. When Dr Bathurst (an academic at Trinity College) visited Radcliffe’s chambers, he reportedly stood in shock and had to ask Radcliffe where his study actually was. Never one to be outdone, Radcliffe pointed to a skeleton, a herbal, and some vials, and said “Sir, this is Radcliffe’s library”. Thankfully he changed his stance on books later in life, and our current Radcliffe libraries are a little better stocked.  

The Infirmary is wide and U-shaped, built out of light brown Oxford stone, and has quite a plain front, roughly 4 floors high with several large windows. In front of the infirmary is a large curved driveway containing an ornamental fountain of a kneeling man.
The former Radcliffe Infirmary, in the Radcliffe Observatory Quarter.3

Radcliffe gained much of his early notoriety in Oxford through his revolutionary approach to convalescence and healing. He shunned conventional practices like purging and resisted the use of invasive medicine where possible, encouraging patients to heal on their own. In 1675 Oxford was experiencing a devastating smallpox epidemic, and Radcliffe is credited with saving the lives of several patients who were viewed as beyond help. His unconventional methods also helped him attain his first patron, Lady Spencer of Yarnton, who was a well-connected society woman suffering from chronic pain. Several doctors had tried and failed to treat her, and she was losing any hope of recovery before her son-in-law recommended that she consult Radcliffe. Within weeks her treatment proved a resounding success – Spencer had not been able to walk in years, but with Radcliffe’s aid she was able to stand and move again. She was incredibly grateful for his help and repaid him by recommending him to anyone she could, starting him on the road to fame.  

After Radcliffe was denied further leave from his studies to practice medicine, he left Oxford for London and began attending to the rich and famous of the capital. Some of his more illustrious patients included Samuel Pepys, Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, and Isaac Newton! His reputation as a physician preceded him, although it was not an entirely positive one. Radcliffe was recognised as a talented doctor and an intelligent conversationalist, but equally as a plain-spoken and opinionated man whose bedside manner left something to be desired. One account claims that a bootmaker’s wife visited Radcliffe with a vial of her husband’s urine, hoping that the doctor could diagnose an illness from it (as was commonly done at the time). Radcliffe responded by emptying the container, filling it with his own urine, and demanding that the patient make him a pair of boots based on that.  

 In further evidence of both his genius and tactlessness, Radcliffe was appointed physician-in-Ordinary to King William III and to Princess Anne of Denmark but managed (on two separate occasions) to insult both royals so badly they forever rejected his help. When treating the king for gout, Radcliffe assessed the situation by declaring “I would not have your majesty’s two legs for your three kingdoms”, and he dismissed Queen Anne as hysterical because he didn’t want to leave the pub to attend to her. It’s testament to his skill as a doctor that even after these incidents the royals’ attendants and friends continued to consult him on their behalf, and he was privately involved with the family up until the queen’s death in 1714. Radcliffe himself would die only a few months later.  

The Radcliffe camera is a round building made out of light brown oxford stone, two floors high with a high domed roof. It is surrounded by a small lawn and railings.
The Radcliffe Camera, built using Radcliffe’s donations to the university.3

With his death came Radcliffe’s true impact on Oxford, as his estate made provision for a great deal of investment in the university. His gifts included: 

  • £40,000 for the establishment of a library in his name (unsurprisingly, the Radcliffe Camera), and a further £150 a year for the librarian’s salary. 
  • £5000 to University College, for “the completion of college buildings”.
  • £600 a year to provide improved care and diets for the Radcliffe Infirmary
  • And a further £600 a year to fund two travelling fellowships for medical students at the university.  

Today, Radcliffe’s legacy stands firm in Oxford, with his marks visible across the city. Some people remember his life and work, but most simply know his name and not much more. Memory has certainly smoothed over some of his flaws – he isn’t best remembered for his royal blunders, after all – but it has also removed some of his best qualities.  

While Radcliffe himself may not have made much use of Oxford’s libraries in his day, I think the RadCam and the RSL are fitting tributes to the man. Radcliffe believed in research, practical knowledge, and independent learning – which is exactly what the Bodleian Libraries facilitate. More than a vanity project, his donations have enabled countless students to access information on their terms, direct their own studies, and learn in the ways which work for them. In a constantly changing world, a library is a powerful resource to have at your disposal – whether it’s full of books and journals or potions and skeletons.  

So next time you walk through the Observatory Quarter, or pay a visit to University College, or need a book from the History Faculty Library, think about John Radcliffe (and maybe be grateful he’s not in charge of treating you). 

A white stone statue of John Radcliffe in an awning above the entrance to the Upper Camera reading room. He is wearing a suit and a robe, carrying a scroll. A plaque above him reads 'Johannes Radcliffe MD, Huius Bibliotheca Fundator' (translation: John Radcliffe MD, Founder of this Library).
A statue of John Radcliffe overlooking the Upper Camera.3
A black-and-white drawing of John Radcliffe. He is seated at a desk but facing away from it, looking at the viewer. He wears a decorated suit-coat, a cravat, and a long curly wig, and appears to be middle-aged.
An engraving of Radcliffe in the National Portrait Gallery.4
  1. Note: While there isn’t concrete proof he was a scholarship student, his comparatively limited financial means and his dedication to funding fellowships make it highly plausible. ↩︎
  2. Wikipedia user ‘Camboxer’, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0. See more details. ↩︎
  3. Photographed by the post author. ↩︎
  4. John Radcliffe by George Vertue, after Sir Godfrey Kneller, Bt. Line engraving, published 1757 (1710).
    NPG D31226 © National Portrait Gallery, London, CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 ↩︎

Graduate trainee training continued: the end of Hilary Term and the start of Trinity Term

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Our training afternoons are scheduled in line with the eight-week terms of Oxford, the names of which can bemuse newcomers to the university, though now, at the end of Trinity Term, I think that I have assimilated it. Since the last update in February, there have been many more training courses, including lots of library visits—everyone likes a library visit.

First, though, there were several talks by people working elsewhere in the Bodleian and even in other sectors, such as the session on the book trade, where we heard from people who work at Blackwell’s and the antiquarian dealer Quaritch. This was an interesting look into a different, though related, area of work. Talks by those who worked at Osney in the Collections and Resource Description department, which is a central Bodleian Libraries department, were also very interesting. This covered areas such as the processes of acquisitions (ordering, processing, and all the many and diverse tasks attached, on behalf of the main Bodleian and several smaller libraries), electronic resources (the only element of the Bodleian that is completely centralised), legal deposit operations (including developments in electronic legal deposit), resource description and open access. Much of the information here was on things that I already knew about tangentially through my work at the Law Library, or explanations of mysterious processes that I know of but didn’t know the background of. It made me feel part of the community, however, being able to nod wisely at the mention of Swets’ demise or the fact that legal deposit books beginning with ‘M’ are catalogued at Osney as part of the Shared Cataloguing Programme run by the British library.

Photo credit: <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/27195496@N00/4507753567/">FlickrDelusions</a> Flickr via <a href="http://compfight.com">Compfight</a> <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/">cc</a>
Blackwell’s bookshop, where much of my trainee wages have been spent this year.

In Trinity Term we have also had talks from subject librarians on the role of subject consultant, and talks by the Head of Assessment and the Head of Heritage Science for the Bodleian Libraries. We learnt that a liaison librarian, a reference librarian and a research support librarian may be a similar job to a subject consultant, but that by the same token, a subject librarian’s role is very particular to their institution and their department. The various responsibilities were covered, from those to do with the subject collection and library management duties, to reader services, library projects and outreach and conferences. We then had an exercise on handling budgets, which saw my team – in charge of the slightly larger budget for science – overspend by £14,000. Before any future employers bury their heads in their hands, I’d like to point out that the game was rigged! It was pre-ordained that science’s budget would be the one greatest hit by expensive e-journal packages and VAT increases, no matter how conservative we were with our money initially. We definitely kept our readers happy with lots of resources though, even though the central finance department probably wouldn’t be best pleased. In the later set of talks, Frankie Wilson, Head of Assessment, told us all about how to gain meaningful feedback on library services, while David Howell showed us round his bespoke lab in the Weston Library in order to tell us a bit about the role of science in uncovering library treasures, a unique aid to research and one that hit the headlines when David’s hyperspectrometry revealed an ancient Mexican codex palimpsest.

Then there were the library visits. First, to the digital archives and then to All Souls’ Codrington Library, which was a striking contrast between the old and the new: the latest in digital archiving systems at the Bodleian Electronic Archives and Manuscripts department and the long tradition in All Souls’ Codrington Library, founded in the fifteenth century. At BEAM, we learnt that a hard drive has roughly half the lifetime of a cassette tape, and digital archiving seeks to preserve many types of slowly obsolescing technologies. The challenge of collecting and storing data from diverse electronic mediums, including floppy disks, CDs and flash drives, is considerable, and we learnt about the various strategies that are in place for each of them. There is also the task of archiving the web, and the Bodleian has several areas of interest that are regularly crawled and archived, a process that is also not without its challenges. By contrast, at the Codrington, the weight of centuries lingers in the air. The beautiful hall and the wonderful librarians’ office (with its spiral staircase and wall-to-wall books, it’s every bookworm’s dream) have a history all of their own, and we had a talk from the librarian, Gaye, on both the library and some of its collections. We heard about our fellow trainee and her role in the small library team, and had the chance to ask some questions.

Photo credit: <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/10287726@N02/7988424697/">simononly</a> Flickr via <a href="http://compfight.com">Compfight</a> <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/">cc</a>
The main hall of Codrington Library.

Next there was the Alexander Library of Ornithology, the Sherardian Library and the Radcliffe Science Library, which were fascinating, despite not having a single science degree among us. In the Sherardian, we heard about the Herbarium, where pressed plants that act as authority records for plant types, and are accompanied by the print collections which are used alongside the library of plants in order to support current and historical research in botany. We saw a first edition of Charles Darwin’s ‘Origin of Species’, and William Dampier’s account of his circumnavigations of the globe which brought a wealth of knowledge back to Britain (as well as being the inspiration for books such as R.L. Stevenson’s ‘Treasure Island’), and we also learnt about figures such as Sherard, Druce, and Fielding, important for the Oxford collections. At the RSL, after a quick tour, the pièce de résistance was clearly the 3-D printer. Having been sceptical about when I first saw it on the itinerary, I went away understanding how such technology services fit into the RSL’s ethos and enthusiastic about what we’d be shown. By offering access to such technology early on, as they did with e-book readers and will be doing with virtual reality hardware, the RSL is able to grant students and researchers access to technology that would be hard to find elsewhere, and facilitate learning through their services—in other words, exactly what a library is there for.

Vol. 01[1], t.4: Fraxinus Ornus
A page from the Flora Graeca at the Sherardian Library, digitally available.
More recently, in Trinity Term, we have branched out from academia and visited Summertown Public Library and the Cairns Library at John Radcliffe Hospital. Both gave us insights into these areas of librarianship, public and medical, which bring different daily tasks, rewards, and challenges. In particular, I was impressed by Summertown library’s collaboration with the local council, where council workers and careers advisors came to meet people in drop-in sessions to get involved in two-way training with library staff, meaning that access to computers and internet – needed for everything from job applications to housing and benefit forms – could be coupled with some of the necessary context from professionals. It just goes to show how essential libraries can be. Meanwhile, at the Cairns library, a particular added feature of medical librarianship that I enjoyed hearing about was the literature searches conducted by the librarians—yes, for free—on behalf of the doctors.

Finally, there were a few extra courses that I went on, Advanced Searching: overview of Google and alternative search tools, Annual Review Training for Reviewees, and Practical Skills: minute taking. These were all relevant for my work in the Law Library, and in particular the course on advanced searching with Google, run by Karen Blakeman, was very interesting and has affected the way that I search online. The final run of training in Trinity Term will mark the end of our afternoon sessions, and it will culminate in the Trainee Showcase, where we give presentations on the projects that we have undertaken throughout the year.

The Edible Book Festival 2017

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Our prize winning cake! Photo by Chantal van den Berg.

On Thursday 2nd March, the 2nd Annual Edible Book Festival took place at the RSL to mark World Book Day. To take part in the festival, participants enter “bookish” art pieces that need to be mostly edible. These pieces can therefore represent a book title, a book cover, a character, a plot element or theme. As this competition combined books and cake, several trainees were naturally eager to take part, and, over the course of several days, we came up first with an idea for a cake and then brought it to life!

To begin with, we decided to meet up in the aptly inspiring café in Blackwell Hall to discuss potential ideas. After much debate, we eventually decided on our book: The Maltese Falcon by Daniel Hammett. Published in 1929, this detective novel describes a series of murders connected with the Maltese Falcon – a valuable statue made by the 16th century Knights of Malta as a gift to the King of Spain. We therefore felt that this statue would be the perfect centrepiece for a cake. As the book is set in Malta, we decided that Maltesers would naturally be an excellent edible decoration for our book, and, as chocolate cake is always popular, we quickly had a sketched bake-off style design to work from. Now all we had to do was actually create our culinary masterpiece!

Law trainee Fiona watches as Chantal, Will and David decorate the cake with Maltesers. Olivia works on the falcon, the star of the cake, made entirely out of sugar paste. Photo by Jessica Woodward.

It became clear that the perfect venue for our big baking session would be the Trainee House in Iffley (a.k.a. the shared home of trainees from the Law Library, SSL and University Archives, plus Will, who recently morphed from Taylorian trainee into PTFL trainee). At our final preparation at the Blackwell Hall meeting, we allocated responsibility for the ingredients, agreeing who would purchase what, and who would brave the intricate task of sculpting the falcon in advance of the main baking session.  Luckily, we had Olivia – art-school graduate, former Downton Abbey costume-maker, and Sackler trainee – on the team.  She offered to build a feathery head and body, which would be complemented by delicious chocolate wings baked by David the SSL trainee.

Our delicious cake is slowly taking shape. We used a recipe from Nigella Lawson, called Devil’s food cake. Sinfully delicious indeed! Photo by Jessica Woodward.

The culinary evening arrived. With great festivity, we took the bus to Iffley, made a quick trip to the Co-Op, and we were ready.  As an all-knowing David recited each stage of a Nigella chocolate-cake recipe (which was Chantal his fellow SSL trainee’s recommendation), the kitchen filled with the chinks of stirring spoons and the bubbling of melting chocolate.  A dark, spongy mass took shape.  It needed to cook then cool, so we rewarded ourselves with well-earned pizza while we waited.  Finally, we gathered at the table to secure Maltesers in careful circles around the falcon centrepiece.

The final result! Photo by Chantal van den Berg.

The next morning, David and Olivia handed the cake over to the RSL staff, who put it on display alongside its competitors.  At 1pm, the RSL Lounge opened its gates to a gaggle of eager cake fans, including us!  Ideas were admired, photos were taken.  We were fascinated to see the other creations, with Far From the Madding Crowd, The Silver Pigs and The Bees proving particular favourites (if you’d like to see photos of these and more, click here).  We felt excited to observe that the voting sheet for our cake was filling up fast with audience approvals… and when the judges confirmed that we had won the People’s Choice Award, we were thrilled!

A selection of the other entries: In Search of Lost Time, Cider with Rosie, Silence of the Yams (behind the cider bottle), Grapes of Wrath and The Catcher in the Rye. Photo by Chantal van den Berg.

Jessica, Will, David and Chantal looking surpised and pleased. Sadly, Olivia couldn’t be there. Photo by Dawn Young.

The Edible Book Festival was certainly a wonderful experience; and a tasty one, seeing as we got to tuck into all the cakes after the judging was over!  Those of us who are around next year will no doubt be keen to do it again!

After the prizes were awarded, it was time to eat! After only a few moments, our cake was almost entirely gone. Our falcon is looking proud! Photo by Chantal van den Berg.

By William Shire (PTFL), Jessica Woodward (Taylor Institution), Olivia Freuler (Sackler), David Phillips and Chantal van den Berg (both SSL)

Eóin Davies, Radcliffe Science Library

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Image

Hello Everyone. I’m Eóin, the trainee at the Radcliffe Science Library. I graduated from UCL in 2010 with a degree in Theoretical Physics. Since then I have worked in a bookshop and completed an internship at a publishing house.

So far I have mainly been on the issue desk, learning and performing the basics of circulation as well as helping readers out with any printing or scanning issues but I’m also looking forward to spending some time with the subject librarians and collections team in the coming weeks.

When term starts I will be spending a day a week at two smaller libraries, the Sherardian Library of Plant Taxonomy and the Alexander Library of Ornithology. I’ll also have a short stint at the Health Care Libraries around Christmas.

Join the conversation with Twitter – an RSL event

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Hi everyone, Kat from the law library here again. On Wednesday, I attended a lunchtime talk at the Radcliffe Science Library entitled ‘Join the conversation with Twitter’. It featured three speakers talking about the use of twitter by libraries, and I found it really interesting, so much so that I thought I’d share some of the things I took away. You can see a synopsis of the talk on the RSL’s Facebook page.

First, Michael O’Hagan (@OHaganMichael) talked about the research he did for his library school dissertation, which was a study of academic libraries using twitter. He looked at lots of different academic libraries’ twitter analytics, and tried to get a picture of what they used twitter for, how much interaction there was with other people, who those people were, what the interaction was about, and how popular twitter seemed to be as a method of communication. Personally, if you’d asked me to guess the answers to these questions, I might have pessimistically expected a lot of interaction and followers to be other librarians and libraries, and for there not to be much interaction with genuine readers. So I was pleasantly surprised when he explained that, actually, there seemed to be quite a bit of interaction with readers asking questions and giving feedback about library services, which is a promising sign that Twitter is a good method of communication. He also had quite a bit of advice about how to use Twitter more effectively in libraries, based on the most successful institutions he’d looked at. This included:

  • Tweet frequently! Also, given that it’s very easy to miss things on Twitter if you follow lots of people, if there’s something you really want people to notice, try tweeting different phrasings of it several times over the course of a day.
  • Follow other feeds that are part of your institution: Oxford University, the Bodleian, your department or faculty, academics who have professional twitter accounts. Then retweet things you think are interesting or relevant. This starts a conversation with other twitter accounts which may have larger or different followings, which can help to increase your exposure.
  • Keep track of what people are saying about you – if people reply or retweet anything you post then Twitter will let you know anyway, but it’s worth looking for indirect references (for example, if someone just writes ‘law bod’ in a tweet but doesn’t use @thelawbod). You can also search by location to restrict to mentions in Oxford.
  • If readers have specific questions about the library, respond as quickly as possible. Twitter comes with the expectation of immediate response, which can be a problem if you’re not checking it regularly.
  • However, don’t be creepy! If someone refers to your library in a conversation but isn’t asking a question, then maybe don’t jump in – it is going on in a public space, but having an institutional account reply to a twitter conversation between a few readers might be a bit much!
  • Use pictures and links – tweets with these are more likely to be retweeted (unsurprisingly) which increases the number of people reading them.

Next, Isabel Holowaty (@iholowaty) gave a presentation with tips and advice about using Twitter from her use of it for the History Faculty Library (@HFLOxford). She also showcased using an iPad to present via a projector, which was very cool! She recommended using a programme/app which allows you to see information about several twitter accounts without constantly signing in and out (which you have to do on the twitter website), and showed us HootSuite, the one she uses. This allows you to link all sorts of different social media accounts: different Twitters, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, even WordPress for blogs, and produces columns showing feeds for each of them. You can pick what appears in each column, for example your sent tweets, mentions, retweets or direct messages, and can search your different accounts, save searches, and tweet from any account. It definitely seemed like an alternative to just using twitter’s website (which is what I currently do), because it saves you from having to sign in and out to change account. I would be a bit worried about accidentally retweeting or following someone from the Law Bod’s account rather than my own, though! HootSuite also allows you to schedule tweets for a later date, which I thought sounded useful as well. At the Law Bod, we’ve just started a Twitter rota (more below), where different staff take a morning or an afternoon and tweet a few things they think are interesting. I’ve found since signing up that quite often I have all these ideas throughout the week and then on Monday afternoons: nothing! It would be great to be able to schedule some that aren’t time-dependent when I think of them to go out on Monday afternoon, and then just check them over on the day. Isabel also advised searching for your library to find indirect references, including all possible misspellings of Bodleian! She also pointed out that if your library has a blog, and new blog posts get tweeted about, it’s worth coming up with a punchy title, otherwise your tweets look a bit boring.

HootSuite for @thelawbod
HootSuite for @thelawbod

Lastly, Penny Schenk (@galoot) talked about my library, the Law Bod, as a case study of an academic library using Twitter. She explained that we’ve recently started a Twitter rota, and that this has massively increased our activity on Twitter, and also the variety of different things we tweet about. We try to follow mostly organisations rather than individuals, to ensure things stay professional. The rota means that we hopefully tweet every working day, which has definitely helped increase our following. She also suggested using the ‘follow friday’ meme (where Twitter users suggest a person they follow who they think writes interesting things) to build conversations with other users.

I found the talk really interesting, and definitely think the Law Bod should take everyone’s suggestions on board. I’ll by trying out HootSuite, and retweeting more things from the Law Faculty, the Bodleian, and Oxford on my Monday afternoon slots! Judging by the History Faculty Library’s almost 2,500 followers, frequent, interesting, varied tweets and retweets with links and pictures seem to be the way forward.

Thanks for reading and, if you like, follow @thelawbod or me, @kastrel (although be prepared for anything from cross stitch to formula one, as I tweet on all sorts of things).

Online guide to reference management

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Logos of RefWorks, EndNote, Mendeley, Zotero and Colwiz

One of the projects I worked on this year at the Radcliffe Science Library was to research and produce an online guide to referencing and reference managers. The guide has been live for a while and has had positive comments from students and library staff.

Reference management software is used to keep track of bibliographic references and to save time when citing references in assignments or publications. Reference managers store and organise references and integrate with word processors to cite references in the required format. Most also have additional features such as sharing references, note taking and storing pdf files. The use of reference managers is popular in the sciences, but the guide is not subject specific and will be useful to anyone considering using a reference manager.

The guide gives an introduction to what reference managers are, types of referencing style and specific information about the reference managers RefWorks, EndNote, EndNote Web, Zotero, Mendeley and Colwiz. It also has a comparison table which compares the pros and cons and the features of these reference managers. This was the most time-consuming part of the guide to produce, but I think the most useful too. You can find the guide at http://libguides.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/reference-management.

Psychology New Books on LibraryThing

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I’ve recently been working with the psychology librarian, Karine Barker, to develop a LibraryThing account for psychology books at the Radcliffe Science Library.   LibraryThing is a social media site where users create and share a catalogue of their books.  Anyone can view it without the need to create an account.  We’re using this to promote new books and also as a place to bring the psychology books together.  Psychology students and staff are told about it at training sessions,  it is advertised on the Psychology LibGuide and they are sent an email reminder each month.

Screenshot of Developmental psychology collection in covers view
Developmental psychology collection in covers view

The Radcliffe Science Library got a LibraryThing account back in February 2o11 and we had been putting all the new psychology books into a ‘psychology’ collection – collections are what the folders you can create to organise books in LibraryThing are called – but this was getting rather full and we decided at the beginning of this term some more collections would be helpful.  Now each new book is put into a collection for the term it arrived, so far we’ve just got Trinity Term 2012, and also a relevant subject collection such as clinical psychology or history of psychology.  We’re hoping that this will make it easier for readers to find books relevant to what they are interested in.  One of the really useful things about LibraryThing is that that books can be in more than one collection.

Most of the data needed for each record can be easily imported and I just add the shelfmark and tags for each book, and select which subject collections to put it in.  I’m also gradually working my way through all the books that had already been put on LibraryThing and putting them into appropriate subject collections.  We did look for a way to link straight from LibraryThing to the relevant record on SOLO, but we couldn’t find a satisfactory way.  So Karine has added instructions to the New Books page on the Psychology LibGuide suggesting to copy and paste the ISBN of the book from LibraryThing into a SOLO search.

I really like the visual way LibraryThing displays the catalogue, particularly as a way of presenting new books.  There’s a choice of a list view, with various details visible, and a covers view, with just images of the book covers – a virtual new books display.

Screenshot of the health psychology collection in list view
The health psychology collection in list view

Library Day in the Life Round 8: Friday

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This is the fifth of five blog posts written for round 8 of the Library Day in the Life Project  by the graduate trainee at the Radcliffe Science Library.

8.50am: Turn on computer, check emails.

9am: Carry on with summarising door entry statistics (see yesterday’s post)

9.30am: Shelving

10.05am: Door entry statistics

10.45am: Visit to the library in the department of Earth Sciences.  Most of the science departments in Oxford no longer have their own libraries, but when the Earth Sciences Department moved to their new building in 2010, they decided they wanted to keep their library.  I’ve been wanting to visit this library for a while, particularly because my undergraduate degree was in geological sciences.

There is 24-hour access to the library for members of the department and while not very large, the library, and librarian(!), seem to be well used and valued by students.   Although, with the 24-hour access some items do go missing, all items on undergraduate reading lists are kept in a locked cupboard and students must ask the librarian if they need to use them.  The library also holds map collections – geological and topograpgical maps are important to the teaching and research in the department.

12pm: Back in the RSL I write up some notes about the Earth Sciences library.

12.20pm: Door entry statistics.

1pm: Lunch

2pm: Door entry statistics.

2.30pm: Shelving

2.45pm: Scanning a journal the publishers have given us permission to digitize.

3.40pm: Tea break

3.55pm: Working on the LibGuide I am creating on reference management.

The afternoon’s activities were interspersed with dealing with various emails.

5pm: End of the day.

This is my final post for round 8 of the Library Day in the Life project.  I’m very glad I did it and would encourage anyone considering taking part in a future round (or writing a post about their week for this round) to do it. 

Library Day in the Life Round 8: Thursday

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This is the fourth of five blog posts written for round 8 of the Library Day in the Life Project  by the graduate trainee at the Radcliffe Science Library.

8.50am: Arrive at the Radcliffe Science Library (RSL), switch on computer, check emails – I have quite a few this morning.  Go through email inbox, moving emails into folders and deleting ones which are irrelevant to me.  I do this about once a week as it makes old emails so much easier to find.

9.30am: Shelving

10am: Meeting with the serials librarian.  I learn about the process required to get a periodical issue from the post room to the shelves and find out that if someone wants to find out if a pre-1993 issue was received we have to check in a large card catalogue.

10.30am: Onto one of my weekly tasks – adding all the new psychology books to the library’s LibraryThing account.  This involves searching for the book, checking the information is correct, adding tags (Library of Congress cataloging-in-publication data is very useful here) and checking that the link to SOLO (our online catalogue) works.  I also check on SOLO for the shelfmark of the books I added last week, as most of them will have been processed now, and add that.

11.10am: Tea break

11.35am: Back to a project I started before christmas.  On Thursdays and Fridays I work with the subject librarians at the RSL, alternating between physical sciences and life sciences spending four weeks with one and then four weeks with the other, though those timings can be flexible.  This week I’m back with life sciences and so back to an ongoing project I started in November.  I am digitzing a journal the publishers have given us permission to digitize and put on our website.  This basically means I have lots of scanning to do.

12.05pm: I am asked to fetch and loan out to ARACU (Accessible Resources Acquisition and Creation Unit) some items requested by them for them to scan for disabled readers.

12.30pm: Back to scanning

1.15pm: Lunch

2.15pm: Meeting with the life sciences and medicine subject libarian to discuss what I will be doing on Thursdays and Fridays for the next couple of weeks.  I am going to be producing some pretty graphs in Excel from our door entry statistics, broken down by subject and user category (undergraduate students, taught postgraduate students, research postgraduate students and staff).  I’m looking forward to this – I enjoy playing with spreadsheets.

2.50pm: Shadowing another member of staff’s SOLO Live Help session as I will be joining the SOLO Live Help team soon (see yesterday’s post).

3.15pm: SOLO Live Help is very quiet so I start work on the door entry statistics.

4.15pm: Tea break

4.30pm: Back to the spreadsheets and I have some very pretty pie charts.

5pm: End of the day and I’m off home.

Library Day in the Life Round 8: Wednesday

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This is the third of five blog posts written for round 8 of the Library Day in the Life Project  by the graduate trainee at the Radcliffe Science Library.

Entrance to the Radcliffe Science Library8.45am: Arrive at the Radcliffe Science Library, switch on my computer and check emails.

9am: I’ll soon be joining the team staffing SOLO Live Help, our instant messaging service for helping users having problems with our SOLO (our online catalogue).  In preparation I start this morning by reading through the SOLO Live Help information pack I’ve been sent and request access to the wiki which has more information for staff.

9.30am: Meeting with the document supply supervisor.  This is one of a series of meetings that it was agreed in my progress meeting a couple of weeks ago I should have to find out about the work done in other sections of the library.  I find out how both incoming and outgoing inter-library loans are processed.  We end up having a long conversation about copyright and I borrow a couple of, thankfully short, books about copyright from her.  I’ve been thinking about copyright quite a lot recently and the more I look into it the more confusing it becomes.

10.25am: My request to access the wiki for SOLO Live Help has been approved, so I take a look at the information on there.

10.35am: Have a quick look through the books on copyright and note down a couple of useful-looking websites.

10.45am: Read through the minutes of a meeting I went to last week.

10.55am: Tea break.

11.20am: For the past couple of weeks I’ve been having problems logging on to computers in an office I sometimes need to use (due to certain software only being installed on those computers).  Someone from IT came last Friday and supposedly fixed the problem, so I go to test that I can log on, taking some reading on copyright with me in case it takes a while.

11.30am: Two error messages later and the computer is still trying to log me on.

11.40am: The computer is still trying to log on, so I decide to go and do something else and come back later to see if it gets there in the end.  I continue working on a LibGuide I am creating about reference management.

12pm: I return to see whether I’m logged on to the computer yet.  I am! But it took rather a long time and I have been logged on with a ‘temporary profile’, whatever that means.  I email the person from IT who I have been in contact with about the problem to report my logging on attempts and ask what the temporary profile means.

12.15pm: Back to working on the LibGuide.

1.30pm: Lunch

1.55pm: Leave to walk over to Osney where I need to be for this afternoon’s training session.

2pm: Most Wednesday afternoons all the graduate trainees in the Oxford libraries have a training session.  Today’s session was on archives and manuscripts and I found it particularly relevant to the work I am doing on the Druce Archive at the Sherardian Library (see Monday’s post).  The afternoon started with an overview of the work of special collections, and in particular Western manuscripts, at the Bodleian Library, including information on the kind of collections held, methods of acquisition and the stages of processing a collection requires.  We were then split in to three groups, and given three short talks on processing and cataloguing an archive, on the Saving Oxford Medicine Project and on digital archives.  I found it particularly interesting to hear about digital archives.  How to go about archiving a website wasn’t something I’d considered before!  Overall, a very interesting and enjoyable training session.