2024 Trainee Showcase: Part 2

Posted on 16 August 2024 by minoguee — No Comments ↓

The second part of the 2023/24 Trainee Showcase comprised of presentations by Leah Brown (English Faculty Library), Sorrel Fenelon (St John’s College Library), and Erin Minogue (Bodleian Art, Archaeology and Ancient World Library). The projects ranged from a deep-dive into the offprints owned by a renowned professor, work to widen access to special collections, and an investigation into how social media and digital outreach can work to highlight collections and engage audiences.

Leah Brown: A Sérprent Saga: Professor Turville-Petre and his Literary Network

By Clara Oxley

A set of four grey filing boxes. Each box has a white label with a woodprint bookplate which denotes it as part of the Turville-Petre collection. — Offprints from Turville-Petre’s collection in archive folders.

Leah’s trainee project was a fascinating deep dive into the offprints of Professor Turville-Petre, a prominent Oxford scholar in Old Norse-Icelandic Studies who, as a student at Christ Church, was tutored by none other than J. R. R. Tolkien himself. When Turville-Petre died in 1978, he donated his entire library to the English Faculty Library. This, along with the rest of the EFL, will be moved to the Schwartzman Building in 2025 (a fact which motivated this project to begin with).

For anyone unsure of what an offprint was, Leah began by helpfully describing it as a ‘printing of a single piece of work that is part of a larger body,’ such as an article from a periodical. On top of exploring his offprints, another aim of the project was to create a handlist of them and store the items carefully to ensure that they were protected and conserved. This was because the off-prints were originally stored in magazine files, something which might have sent any conservationist into a frenzy.

To reduce damage to the items and make the collection more accessible, Leah created a spreadsheet detailing each Turville-Petre offprint. These details included, but were not limited to, author details, publication information, as well as language. Leah also paid close attention to the contents and notes that he made in the margins of the off-prints, which gave a unique insight into the way his relationships with colleagues changed over the years; something Leah went on to explore in more depth. Once the helpful handlist was completed, Leah moved the offprints to conservation boxes, and a quiet sigh of relief was heard from the conservation community across the country.

Next, Leah’s deep-dive into the contents and contexts of the offprints proved to be effective in bringing Turville-Petre to life, letting us catch a glimpse of his personality and work style. By exploring the historical context, as well as his academic engagements, correspondences and notes, Leah painted an image of a man who was clearly very academically driven, yet also dedicated to and supportive of his colleagues. These colleagues included the first woman to be Professor of Old Norse at the University of Oslo, Professor Anne Holtsmark, with whom he remained in correspondence for over 30 years. Furthermore, Leah’s inclusion of items in which he conveyed personality beyond the academic rigour of his work really helped humanise this great scholar. We particularly liked his artistic endeavours, such as the doodle of a Viking in his lecture notes. It’s always reassuring to learn that even the brightest can lose focus from time to time!

From Leah’s presentation, we learnt about a truly fascinating man who dedicated his life to Norse studies. So much so, that the Prime Minister of Iceland award him with the Grand Knight’s Cross of the Order of the Falcon.

A touching addition to the presentation was the inclusion of correspondences Leah had had with those who remembered Turville-Petre with fondness and respect. This included a former pupil of his, who recalled how, ‘Gabriel was, in his own way, as much of a teacher as a scholar and researcher, and a devoted teacher at that.’

Before completing her traineeship, Leah informed us that she will be creating box level records for the new offprint boxes, making the items accessible for all and ensuring that Turville-Petre and his legacy is kept alive for future scholarly endeavours.

Sorrel Fenelon: Widening Access to Special Collections at St John’s College

By Connie Hubbard

You might think that St John’s College, who have a special collection of manuscripts, would be overly protective of their collection. Sorrel, however, made increasing access and interest in early manuscripts her goal. Not an easy task.

To prepare, Sorrel shadowed school tours run by the Public Engagement team at the Weston Library, learning and magpieing tour-guiding techniques. She then began planning a tour for sixth form students visiting St John’s College as part of the Inspire programme. This initiative is a free, two year course for pupils from non-selective state schools, which includes a research presentation day onsite at St John’s. As part of this day, Sorrel planned a special collections visit, complete with a tour of the old library, and a session getting up close to an array of rare works. Sorrel had a brainwave while planning the event and, before the students arrived, she asked each what interested them and created the exhibition based on their answers. Talk about customer service!

On the big day, eighteen eager pupils got to see and interact with six items, including: a letter written by Jane Austen; Peter Apianus’ Astronomicum Caesareum* illustrated with a beautiful dragon, and an 18th-century autograph book which also housed a tapeworm – gross, but when entertaining teenagers, disgust is usually a safe bet. The chosen items highlighted the breadth of St John’s Special Collections with works from a range of time periods and in a range of languages, with different quirks.

This image shows a powerpoint presentation opened on a screen. The text of the presentation reads Widening Access to Special Collections at St John's College. On the left of the screen there is an a image of some bookshelves with early printed books, with brown covers. On the far left of the image, a woman can be seen standing behind a lecturn presenting. — Sorrel presenting her trainee project on Widening Access to Special Collections at St John’s College.

As with any ambitious project, Sorrel experienced complications. The most notable being that a condition check of the items revealed the Astronicum Caesureum would have been too fragile to move across college to the room booked for the event. Luckily Sorrel had been unreasonably organised and had a backup; a stunningly illustrated atlas. Crisis averted!

During Sorrel’s showcase presentation, she shared with us, not only her positive feedback from the College Access team and the students themselves, but suggested improvements, for example: to include more STEM subject manuscripts (though she noted the Astronomicum, gone AWOL, would have remedied this somewhat).

If that weren’t enough, Sorrel has also been working on a database of the John Rose letters, picking up where a previous trainee left off.

*an instrument for predicting the occurrence of solar and lunar eclipses.

Erin Minogue: Developing a social media presence for the Art, Archaeology and Ancient World Library

By Xanthe Malcolm

Wrapping up the morning session, Erin told us all about the process of establishing an X (formerly known as Twitter) account for the Art, Archaeology and Ancient World Library.

Erin began her presentation with a discussion of how she had chosen her project – which translated neatly into some tips for those trainees from next year’s cohort who were in the audience. For example, she knew from the start that she wanted something with a tangible outcome, which would be useful to the library, and have potential for continuity in the future. Marrying all that with her personal interest in outreach and increasing access to the library’s collections led her to the decision to develop a social media account.

Walking us through the timeline of her project, Erin started with her research into existing library social media accounts. This helped her to develop her initial thoughts on the aims of creating this account: who the target audience would be; what sort of content would meet the needs of the diverse groups within that target audience – from current readers to prospective students, and the local community to a broader audience who might have an interest in the library’s collections; and which platform to choose.

A screenshot of the Bodleian Art Library’s new X profile.

Having established the purpose of the account, Erin then made formal proposals to her own library and the central Communications team for the Bodleian. She also began work on branding for the account. We heard about how she had decided on a colour scheme that would be cohesive with the central Bodleian X account and her library’s blog, as well as the importance of finding high resolution images and the difficulties of fitting the words “Art, Archaeology and Ancient World Library” into a profile picture!

All Erin’s hard work paid off on launch day. With some carefully crafted initial posts and a takeover of the central Bodleian X account to harness the power of their huge pool of followers, she was able to surpass her target of 100 followers by the end of the first day.

Since then, the account has gone from strength to strength. Erin gave examples of how she ensures she continues to meet the account’s aims of highlighting the collections, providing reader service updates, improving the accessibility of the building and engaging with readers and visitors (for example, by linking posts to exhibitions at the Ashmolean). She also talked us through how she has planned to ensure the continuity of the account after the end of the year.

Erin rounded off her presentation by talking us through some of her personal highlights from the year – a fantastic reminder of the wide range of opportunities open to trainees who are keen to get involved.

And if you haven’t done so yet, go and follow @BodArtLib on X!

How we set up Oxford Libraries Trainees Twitter

Posted on 11 May 2022 by dawsone — No Comments ↓

Every year, the new trainees take over this blog from the previous cohort. Many of us have used the blog to research the Traineeship, the Bodleian Libraries, and the college libraries whilst applying and before our interviews. However, a lot of the Trainees first heard about library opportunities through Twitter. Following a social media training session in late October, we realised we were in a key position to expand our reach and engage with a wider audience by setting up a Trainee Twitter account. This post tells the story of how we went about planning, pitching and launching a brand new Oxford Libraries Trainees Twitter account @OxLibTrainees.

Our motivation: a Twitter account would have the advantage of being more inclusive for the trainees to make short-format posts, it would be more responsive to upcoming events, and would allow us to introduce the traineeship to a wider audience who may not necessarily come across the blog.

Pitching the Account

Two of us pitched our idea to Emma Sullivan, the Staff Development Librarian. She was positive about it, but we needed to have the approval of the Bodleian Social Media Team. The Bodleian Social Media Team needed to sign off on the decisions for a number of reasons, which included confirming our commitment to actively running the account.

There are 100+ existing social media accounts representing the Bodleian Libraries – many more than an institution of its size usually should have. Many of these are neglected or abandoned. To keep the Bodleian’s external presence professional, valuable and easy to navigate for external audiences, it was important that we could answer:

was there a genuine need for the account?
does it reach a specific audience?
can we build this audience from scratch?
do we have the resources to consistently post and keep followers engaged?
do we have a strong measure for success?

This all seemed a bit daunting, and we had a very detailed proposal form to complete. However, this proved beneficial as it made us fully consider the account’s purpose, how prepared we had to be to maintain it, and allowed us to fully comprehend the Bodleian’s strategic aims. Thankfully, we gained approval to begin, with the caveat that the account will be reviewed after six months (to ensure it was meeting the agreed-upon goals).

Twitter Team Assemble!

With this initial go ahead, our next task was to create a Trainee Twitter Team. We put out feelers to the rest of the trainees and — luckily — other trainees were interested! With so much to discuss and so many decisions to make, we realised that a weekly teams meeting would be required to get the account running. We decided on a Monday morning slot and got to work.

Deciding on our aims

We knew that our target audience would be potential trainees and young people interested in, or considering, librarianship and archives. From here, we focussed on what would make our account unique, and came up with 3 key aims:

A key symbol of our aim to open doors – The Great Gate, Old Bodleian Library. Credit: Bodleian Libraries

‘Opening doors’ — through placing an emphasis on sharing knowledge, we hope to unlock information for potential library trainees and other interested individuals. We recognise that libraries are meant to be the tool for which we achieve wider engagement with society, which we believe a Twitter account will ensure, as it allows for discussion and is more accessible for our target audience. We hope the stress on openness will drive up engagement, create an encouraging and supportive environment online and make librarianship more approachable as a career.
Reaching a unique audience — As the trainees work at a variety of Bodleian and college libraries, the Twitter account would allow us to bridge the gap between different Oxford libraries and allow external interested parties an insight into the internal workings of an academic library, particularly at an entry-level position. This stress on beginner roles within the library sector is something unique to our account, which would allow us to reach our target audience and fill a specific need as an account.
Promoting diversity in librarianship — A huge aim for our Twitter account is to promote diversity within librarianship through making library collections, traineeship knowledge and our experiences “more readily visible”. To encourage diversity and “attract new and underrepresented audiences”, we believe you need to diversify access to information, which can be done by expanding our web presence and creating a platform that is more discoverable and approachable to potential applicants and interested parties. As a bonus, being able to advertise the trainee posts on Twitter will increase our reach and potentially attract a more diverse range of candidates – something we consider extremely important.

Deciding on our name, handle, and bio

After a long discussion, supported by the use of a shared document to develop our ideas, we settled on the name, handle, and bio for the new account.

We wanted our name, handle, and bio to reflect our aims, and make our account’s purpose clear to users. The name Oxford Libraries Trainees was chosen because it works across the Bodleian Libraries but is also inclusive of the college libraries (who are not part of the Bodleian Libraries) and leaves scope to include Library Apprentices and potentially the Digital Archives Trainees too.

For the bio, we wanted to include the ‘opening doors’ phrase, as it emphasised our aims of supporting outreach, diversifying audiences, and breaking down barriers.

stylised open Bodleian Great Gate in blue and gold — Oxford Libraries Trainee Twitter logo. Credit: Izzie Salter

Deciding on graphics and branding

For the branding, it was important to have a logo that reflected our aims and what our account will offer, whilst also following the Bodleian Libraries’ branding and style. We were drawn to the visceral imagery of ‘opening doors’ as a way to emphasise our goals, and it seemed perfect to use an image of the Bodleian Library’s Great Gate to remain on the theme. We opted for a line drawing, similar to the Bodleian Libraries image, to promote unity. The font was influenced by the Bodleian style guide, though we were keen to stick to modern fonts for inclusivity purposes. After making the first version, we sent it across to the Bodleian design team who helped to refine the design and approved the final format.

They also helped us to create a ‘header’ for the Twitter page. Here, we felt it was important to explicitly state our core purpose: ‘opening doors for a new generation of librarians’.

Twitter header with the name of account and tagline using Bodleian font . Oxford blue background and white and gold writing — Oxford Libraries Trainees Twitter header with our tagline

Deciding on content and #hashtags

With our aims and general ‘look’ established, we next needed to decide what content we would be posting. Like our branding, we wanted our content to be unique and provide insight into early career librarianship. With this, we outlined key types of tweets that we wanted to produce (often with corresponding hashtags):

#LibraryOpportunities: highlighting job opportunities and vacancies which are suitable for those interested in early-career librarianship
#LibraryFinds: interesting things that pop up across individual libraries. The trainee cohort is unique in that it spans a range of Bodleian and College Libraries. Having a shared online platform means we can highlight these different quirks across each of our home libraries.
#MyDayInLibraries: Mini ‘A Day In the Life’ content, or an update on interesting things that have happened to us during our day at work, that go beyond a unique find.
#LibraryJargonBusting: explaining library terminology. Entering a new career can be intimidating, especially when it feels like everyone is speaking in a secret language you have not yet learned. We wanted to create a regular series which breaks down these terms and makes library language more accessible.
Libraries as inclusive spaces: aiming to highlight areas of our libraries – and librarianship in general – which celebrate diversity. We felt that ‘opening doors’ includes giving space to more marginalised voices, and we hope to work on this through our Twitter content.
Training session updates: giving insight into our weekly sessions as a cohort. A unique part of being a trainee is – you guessed it – the training itself! We have been lucky enough to experience a wide variety of training sessions, from ‘An Introduction to Early Printing’, to visiting the Weston Library, to exploring the Bodleian’s Offsite Storage Facility. Library career paths can be incredibly varied and we wanted to showcase this!
Blog links: sharing our blog content more widely. We may be a little biased, but our blog holds a lot of valuable content about library life in Oxford. However, the internet is a big place and, if you do not know how to find it, our blog can be a little tricky to find. We noticed our blog’s views accelerated when the Bodleian Libraries Twitter began sharing links, and we wanted to take this further.
Photos: images of our different libraries. Oxford is certainly not without beautiful reading rooms and library buildings, and we are fortunate enough to be placed across them with opportunities for brilliant snaps.

a llama in front of the Old Bodleian — Sometimes, #MyDayInLibraries involves acting as “alpaca bouncers” for the Bodleian Library (with some llamas too)

The inclusion of hashtags was important to us for two principal reasons:

It organises our regular and key tweets as a series (e.g., #LibraryJargonBusting)
It makes important tweets more findable. For example, #LibraryOpportunities can be useful for those not familiar with our account to find library jobs.

Once we had agreed on some ideas for content, we then discussed a realistic and maintainable number of tweets that we could consistently put out (bearing in mind that all of us are busy with full-time jobs). We decided to aim for two or three original tweets a week, as well as sharing blog posts and career opportunities as and when they appear.

Deciding on an editorial approach

With a clear idea of the type of content we would like to produce, the next decision meant answering the following two questions: how should our content be communicated? Who is responsible for editing and publishing tweets?

Here, we agreed on some editorial policies:

Tweets must be anonymised — as we will be posting to the public about our places of work, it is important to protect trainees’ identities. So, no use of names, personal information or personal photos.
‘We’ should be used where possible — this was decided to create a cohesive voice, though it is flexible to allow for content about individual libraries (done through tagging referenced libraries).
Tweets must be accessible — it is important for us that the account can be useful for everyone. We will do this with alt text, capitalised hashtags, measured use of emojis, etc. This means that our content will be readable on different devices, or with adaptive software

In order to ensure a consistency of approach, we decided to create the following documents:

A content guide – this would help to maintain the required tone and content type, as we would be getting ideas and proposals submitted from across the trainee cohort.
A rotating schedule for Lead Editor – this would spread the workload between the Twitter team, to allow for a consistent tone each week and to organise the workload around our jobs.

Deciding on measurable metrics and realistic engagement levels

As part of the feedback from our initial proposal, we were advised to think about how we would measure our success. It is important that the account is active and demonstrates that it is fulfilling the specific need we had discussed. We decided to measure our success through targets for follower numbers and the overall engagement rate.

Based on our research of similar accounts, we decided that an expected target would be to reach 100 followers for the first few months. We felt confident in making this target, as we had planned a schedule filled with original content, started to contact relevant individuals we had met through training sessions and within our own libraries to promote our account, and devised a plan to follow library-themed accounts for wider sector engagement. The list of accounts we had created to follow within the first week included accounts within the Bodleian Libraries, the college Libraries, wider library organisations (including other Higher Education libraries), and librarianship-centric accounts (like CILIP). This would boost our numbers initially, to give us a good platform to launch content, before we could start to grow followers organically.

In terms of engagement, we would use internal metric measurements to aim for a standard rate of 3%, which we would consult regularly to ensure that the content we produced was relevant to our aims and shaped to aid discussion.

Deciding to review the account

We decided that we would do reviews after 1 month, 3 months and 6 months (which would, sadly, be at the end of our traineeship).

1 month: launch period

We would use this time to grow and develop a base following, establish a steady content plan, and settle into the management of the account.

3 months: the mid-way point

A review after 3 months will allow us to judge organic growth and make tweaks to ensure we were achieving our aims and maintaining a consistently good level of engagement.

6 months: the final review

After 6 months, we would collate important data to see if we had reached our targets and met our aims, and so the account can be passed to the next trainee cohort, so they could make informed decisions in the next academic year.

Presenting Our Plans to the Bodleian Social Media Team

Having discussed, planned, and designed the future Twitter account, it was now time to present our plans to Rob on the Bodleian Social Media Team. We needed to demonstrate our commitment to the project and a comprehensive plan for the account. We created a detailed presentation based on the information discussed previously, taking turns to present on different areas of interest. This was followed by a brief Q&A session, where certain points were examined in more detail. Thankfully, Emma and Rob were impressed with our presentation and gave us the go-ahead for launch! Woo-hoo!

The Launch! Follow us @OxlibTrainees!

We know that our growth in followers and engagement will be boosted when the Bodleian Graduate Library Trainee Programme applications are open (from November to January), as that is when people will be actively seeking information. However some of the college trainee places are advertised later, and interviews were taking place in March and April, so we thought that the sooner we launched, the better. In addition, at the end of Hillary term, the trainee sessions would end for the vacation, making original content harder to source.

We launched the account on 1 March 2022. We started with a ‘soft opening’ to start building our followers before the content launch on the following Monday.

You can see our launch post, announcing who we are and what we will offer to our followers. This was posted simultaneously with an announcement on the Trainee blog to push blog viewers to follow the Twitter account.

Bodleian Great Gate with welcome message and a key — Our launch post

As we started following other accounts and we sent off our emails to our contact list, our followers grew. A bonus announcement from Richard Ovenden in the Bodleian newsletter meant that it was not long before we had smashed our goal of 100 followers!

We re-evaluated our goals in our 1-month review, and continue to make small changes to ensure that we are on track to meet our aims and achieve consistent engagement. We think it is going really well so far!

The Future of the Account

In conclusion, we hope to pass on a successful and exciting account to the new trainees next academic year. We have made this blog post to help the future Trainee Twitter teams, so they can read about our process and our aims when setting up the account – and so they can follow on from what we started. However, we also hope this post will prove useful for anyone who wants to set up a social media account for their own organisation, with some insight into the processes required to turn this idea into a reality!

— Courtesy of the 2021/22 Trainee Twitter Team

A Day in the Life (Sackler Library)

Posted on 28 March 2022 by salteri — No Comments ↓

The Sackler Library is a five-floor tall hub for multiple humanities subjects: archaeology and the ancient world, art and architectural history. It is also known as one of the principal research libraries within the Bodleian family. In other words, if you work here, there is always something to do!

Trainee life is incredibly varied – I attend weekly training sessions with my cohort, swap libraries with my fellow Taylorian counterpart, or work on my project with the library’s former Art & Architecture Librarian. However, for this ‘Day in the Life’, I will be documenting a more typical day at the library and the important tasks that keep it functioning.

8:45 – Arrival

I arrive at the Sackler Library after – very thankfully – a walk through Oxford in the sunshine! On my way in, I’ll check our book display table and make sure everything is neat and presentable. Once I’ve settled down at my desk, I will sign in on teams and check any emails which have come through. Generally, I will set some rough objectives for the day, and plan how to fit these in alongside my duties. Sometimes I’ll check in with my colleagues, which is the best way to start the day.

9:00 – Book processing and classifying

I first decide to look over some “problem books” set aside by my colleagues during processing. This normally means there is an issue with their ALEPH record (ALEPH is the library’s current cataloguing system: it contains information about the book’s contents and how it might be stored in a library). For example, occasionally these books will be missing a shelfmark, be allocated to an incorrect floor, or the physical book will be labelled differently to its online record.

At the Sackler, we have a range of shelfmarks; there are several in-house systems, as well as the more common Library of Congress Classification which marks most of our Art & Architecture books. Given this mix, it’s very important to double check books when they arrive here. Today I was looking at books with incorrect shelfmarks.

**A taster of some of the current shelfmarks held in the Sackler Library (March 2022)**

One fun thing about being the Sackler trainee is that I also get to work once a week at the Nizami Ganjavi Library (NGL), just down the road from the Sackler. Here, we’ve been working on a big reclassification project. My supervisor there has been kind enough to teach me how to either find, or manually work out, Library of Congress shelfmarks. This is something which – after six months of library work – brings me a lot of satisfaction and joy. It’s a bit like learning a new language or understanding a code. This means I can identify LCC shelfmarks, and add them to our Sackler books when they are missing!

Once I had updated the records on ALEPH to have the correct shelfmark, I then print new labels and write the new code inside. Some of the books are reader requests, so I’ll get in touch and let them know that they are ready for their consultation. The others are placed on a shelf, ready to go on our New Book Display every Monday. Here, readers can explore new titles in the Library, which they may not otherwise think of consulting.

**Our New Book Display for Art and Architecture books**

9:30 – Lapse list

Next, I move on to the lapse list. These are BSF (offsite book storage facility) books with expired loans, so they need scanning through ALEPH (which also, handily, is our circulation system) and packed up in crates. The Sackler Library gets a lot of books from the BSF, probably because of the library’s size and how central it is. Often I’ll listen to a podcast whilst I work through this.

10:00 – Morning break

Break time! This morning I pop to the staff room and make a coffee. For me, its really important to take a break from my desk to give my mind space to focus on something different.

10:20 – Post

**Donations sent through the post, with a donations flag at the top**

One of my trainee duties is looking at the library’s post. We get a range of things sent to us, from journals to donated books. Today I look at my favourite part, our donations: for example, books sent to us from Art Galleries which might be added to our collections.

Once I have unboxed them, I check if books are held at either the Sackler or Bodleian library, or we have a legal deposit copy. This can take some time as I often need to translate titles to get more information – and it’s easy to get engrossed looking at some of the art books’ beautiful images! Once I’ve looked at whether there are other copies of the book, I fill out a ‘donations flag’. These books then need to go to the relevant subject librarian, who will decide what to do with them next.

11:15 – Long office

Once I have filled out all the donation information, I take the post upstairs to the Sackler’s ‘long office’. This is where the subject librarian shelves are held. With the help of our little ladder (indeed, working in libraries is a fast cure for any fear of heights you might have), I place the books accordingly, and then pick up more post on my way down to look at over the next few days.

11:30 – Problem-solving

Once I have returned to my office desk, I meet with our senior library assistant to discuss what to do with donations which are less relevant to the Sackler’s subject areas. I email relevant libraries which the books may be of interest to, and write out a rough plan for the rest of the afternoon.

12:00 – Lunch

For lunch, I always go outside to stretch my legs. The Sackler is in the centre of Oxford, so I am never without beautiful walks and things to see. Sometimes, I’ll meet my friends for coffee – Saint Michael’s Street down the road is home to some of the best cafés, which is a bonus of the Sackler’s location!

13:00 – Journals

Whilst I wait for the afternoon’s delivery, I process new journals. As I mentioned, the Sackler holds a variety of subjects. This means we hold a lot of journals, which each need checking when they arrive. Like the books, I check ALEPH records , label those which are confined, and write the shelfmark on our special journal stickers.

Delivery crates from the Book Storage Facility (BSF)

13:30- BSF Delivery

The delivery arrives, stacked five crates high. This contains books from the Bodleian’s offsite storage facility, which readers can order to consult within the Sackler Library. Each book needs to be scanned through, and given a flag with the conditions of the loan on them. Given the size of the day’s delivery (a few inches shorter than your average library assistant), this takes some time. I pop on another podcast to have on in the background, and get to work. Once the books are scanned in, they go on our ‘self collect shelves’ for readers to find.

After this, I tidy up the workroom arrange new books to be processed for the following day.

14:40 – Afternoon break

Coffee time again before my desk shift for the rest of the day.

15:00 – Desk duty

At the Sackler Library issue desk, we circulate books and answer reader enquiries. Sometimes readers struggle to find books, have questions about their hold requests, or need their Bod card registering. For the first, I am always happy to help; the Sackler reading rooms are circular, which makes it trickier to navigate if you don’t know the library well. It definitely took me several weeks to get used to the set-up!

The Issue Desk is quieter at present, given that many readers have left Oxford for Easter break. I use my time to research books for future displays, create graphics for the Trainee twitter account, or process more journals. I like working on desk as it mixes tasks with reader interaction, providing a steady flow of library work for remaining afternoon.

**The current Ukraine display at the Sackler Library which I have been working on**

5:00 – End of the day

Home time! I hand over the desk to the evening team and head out. Springtime is upon us, and walking through Oxford in the setting sun is the best way to unwind from work.

[NB the Sackler Library has now been renamed to the Art, Archaeology and Ancient World Library]

A Day in the Life (English Faculty Library)

Posted on 1 March 2022 by lays — No Comments ↓

Monday 21st February 2022

When I first started working in public libraries in the beginning of 2021, a fellow Library Assistant told me that “library work is all about managing constant interruptions”. She was, unsurprisingly, correct. What I didn’t realise upon hearing this, however, is how delightful some of these interruptions would turn out to be. Here’s just one example of a somewhat bitty but utterly delightful day at the English Faculty Library.

8:40AM – Morning Routines

There are a few things that I try to get out of the way first thing in the morning – they’re small jobs, usually a little piecemeal or done in a different order each day for various reasons:

Opening up the library: I’m usually first to arrive, so I start by opening up the library for the day. This means checking that we have enough paper in the printers, opening windows, switching on lights, unlocking the computer room, and making sure that reader PCs are turned on. Usually someone else will arrive and help me out (thank goodness!).
BSF collection: When I sit down at my desk, my first task is to dig out the lapse list from the EFL email account. This list tells me which books I need to pull from the Self Collect shelves in the reading room to return to the BSF. Once I’m done with this, I collect any BSF books that have been self-returned, and then start scanning everything through and packing them into boxes. Usually we’re moving somewhere between 1-3 large blue boxes, so it’s easy for me to take these to the collection area by myself on a trolley.
Daily admin: After this, I’ll quickly flip through my emails and start actioning items into my task list on Outlook by their priority, check my teams messages, and respond to things that can be dealt with quickly. There’s a very little to deal with today, which makes planning my time much easier!
Handle anything left on my desk: There are some jobs around the library that are designated trainee tasks, and these will often be left on my desk or in the visible vicinity. This might be something like post, a missing book form, or a claimed return that needs chasing. Today, it’s in-house periodicals! Most periodical subscriptions are available online, but the EFL still holds a small number of print editions in-house – when these are used by readers, they’re passed to me so that I can track their usage on a spreadsheet before they’re reshelved.

9AM – New Periodicals

One of the tasks left on my desk which takes a little more time is a small stack of newly arrived periodicals. These need to first be registered on our periodicals spreadsheet, then checked in on Aleph, then physically processed with stamps, stickers, and tattle tape. Once complete, I’ll pop anything that I can out onto our New Periodicals Display (and move older editions off the display and onto the general shelves).

9:30AM – New Books

Another designated trainee task is the processing of new books for the EFL. I try to wait until I have a stack of about 6 new books before I start processing them, as they’re easiest to do in batches. Today, lo and behold, I have a perfect 6 awaiting my attention on my trolley! Our Library Assistant in Charge of Collections has already set them up on Aleph and given them barcodes, so I start by physically processing them with stickers, stamps, and book plates. There’s more to be done with them yet – but first, I have some other urgent business to attend to!

10AM – Trainee Twitter Meeting

Yep – you heard it here first, folks! The current trainee cohort is in the process of setting up our very own Oxford Libraries Trainees twitter account! A small trainee twitter team has been having meetings around once a week for a while now to solidify our ideas, plan our content strategies, and prepare for our launch date. It’s a project I’m really excited to be a part of. It’s a brilliant opportunity to participate in shaping what the traineeship will look like in future and to improve outreach to the next generation of librarians.

11AM – Tea Break

The meeting wraps up around 11AM, and I’m in need of a tea break. Once a week I let myself head upstairs to the Missing Bean Café for a proper coffee and a doughnut, but most days I stay in the EFL. We have a good kettle and an abundance of communal snack foods in our break area – today I opt for breakfast tea and a mini chocolate chip muffin. Small delights, eh?

11:20AM – Back to New Books

With most of my morning duties out of the way, I’m free to get back to prepping our new books. Next up they need tattle taping and then covering. Covering can take anywhere between a few minutes and the best part of an hour, depending on what needs doing. Hardbacks need nothing done to them. Hardbacks with paper sleeves need a plastic cover put over the paper sleeve. Paperbacks are the most time-consuming, requiring the application of sticky-black plastic across the entire cover – watch out for bubbles below the surface!

There is a brief caveat of an interruption during my new book processing – at 11:30, I need to do my daily reader count. This is a very high-tech and sophisticated operation, during which I walk around the entire library and try to count the number of readers using the space (arguably, with varying degrees of success). It grants me a few awkward looks from confused readers, but it’s nice to take a stroll around the library and bid a good morning to Mr Tolkien’s bust as I pass.

12 Noon – Lunch

No free lunches for Bodleian staff, sadly, but I have leftovers to keep me going. In the warmer months, I like to take the lengthy (2 minute) stroll to the Holywell Cemetery – a graveyard turned nature reserve with some lovely shady benches that are just perfect for sitting and reading. Sadly, I recorded my day on the 21st of February – when we’re under a yellow weather warning for wind – so I hide in the office and read at my desk instead. Today’s choice is The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon.

1PM – Desk Duty

After lunch, it’s my turn on the enquires desk, where I’m kept company by Bill, our rubber duck. Despite the fact that the EFL is a loaning library, we have no (functional) self-service machines, so all books have to be checked in and out of the library manually. Readers may also come to us with all kinds of queries, but most common are “can you help me find this book?”, “how do I use the printers?” and “can I please use the TP room?” (I’ll explain this later). Interacting with readers is for the most part a delightful experience, and it’s lovely getting to know familiar faces and trying to make a good first impression on the new ones.

It’s very rare that I’m overrun with enquiries, so I can usually spend a little time doing computer-based tasks while on the desk. Today, I’m working on a New Books blog. I write these once a month, selecting 5 books that we’ve acquired in the last month and writing a little bit about each of them. It helps me to keep abreast of our collections and it’s fun picking out the most intriguing titles. Sometimes I’m even able to do them to a theme (like this one for Black History Month!) though this is heavily dependent on the relevance of recently acquired items to current events.

3PM – BSF Delivery

Our daily BSF Delivery is usually made somewhere between 2PM-3PM, so once I’ve been relieved of the enquiries desk, I take the lift down to collect it. Today’s delivery is 2 boxes, made up of a mix of Self-Collect items, new books, returns from ARACU (the Accessible Resources Acquisition and Creation Unit), and reservations for the issue desk (some low-use loanable EFL items are kept at the BSF, and can be ordered for borrowing). I start by sorting everything into piles, then quickly pass the new acquisitions to our Library Assistant in Charge of Collections.

Next I process the BSF books: I check them in on Aleph, add a green slip, and load them onto a trolley in order of their collection code. Once these are all sorted, they can be taken out to the reading room and added to the Self-Collect shelf. I usually give the shelf a little tidy at this point, as it can get quite messy with all the readers who use it. After this, I process the holds on the reservations, return all the ARACU books – and then take a big deep breath and decide it’s time for a tea break.

3:30PM – Tea Break

Another cup of tea! I try to resist taking another snack from the staff room. Sometimes I’m more successful than others…

3:50 – Once More, New Books

I told you this was all about managing interruptions! The final stages are simple, add shelf marks to the spines, put label protectors over them so they don’t fall off, then sensitize the books. Then I can add the books to the EFL’s LibraryThing account. This allows anyone to see a list of what the EFL is acquiring. It’s a helpful addition to SOLO, as it allows you to see all the newer books in one place. We can also customise the listings through tags; if the reader were interested in, say, modernism, they could find a list of over 200 books on the subject.

Last but not least, the books can be marked as ‘New Books Display’ on Aleph/SOLO, then artfully arranged on our New Books Display – handily located right next to our door!

4:15 – TP Room

There is one more interruption in the midst of this new book processing (I did tell you I’d come back to explain this later!). A colleague comes in and says that a reader needs to be taken down to the TP Room.

TP Room stands for Turville-Petre Room (it’s also known as the Icelandic Room). It’s named after Gabriel Turville-Petre, once a Professor of Ancient Icelandic Literature and Antiquities at Oxford, who donated his private library to the English Faculty Library upon his death. The TP Room itself doesn’t house his collection, but instead holds our Icelandic materials, classic sagas, Norse mythologies, and modern periodicals on the same themes. The same name applying to a separate room and collection is, admittedly, sometimes a cause for confusion…

The TP Room is not actually housed within the library itself. To access it, readers have to collect a TP Card from the enquiries desk and head downstairs into the midst of the English Faculty itself. It’s a small space, but utterly delightful. Caged bookcases line every wall, and the room is decorated with photographs of Gabriel Turville-Petre, as well as antique card catalogues and pieces of volcanic rock. It is in almost constant use throughout the week. As staff, our job is simply to head down when requested, unlock the room, and open the cages so that readers can access the books.

4:30 – Reading Room Checks

I have one final task I need to complete for today, and that’s to run a report on the reading room. This is a simple procedure done through Aleph, which produces a list of all the BSF Self-Collect books currently loaned out to our reading room. During term time, this report typically ends up about 10 pages long. I print this out, dig out a clipboard, and head into the reading room to check that everything is where it’s supposed to be. If anything is amiss, I make a note of it on my list.

Usually, a reader is simply using the book at the time I make the check, so I perform secondary and tertiary checks on other days and times. However, it’s not uncommon for readers to muddle up their books and accidentally take home BSF books (which are meant to stay in the library at all times). If this ends up being the case, I send off some emails to the readers and get everything squared away.

5:00 – Homeward Bound

With my work done for the day I wash up my mug, straighten everything on my desk, and dig out my bus pass. My fellow trainee from Teddy Hall was very correct to say that Oxford is a city with so much to do. I’ll often stay to meet a friend for dinner, see a show at the New Theatre or the Playhouse, or meet other trainees for food or drinks – but tonight I’m actually headed out of the city. I have a very important D&D game to get to on Monday nights.

A Day in the Life (New College Library)

Posted on 22 February 2022 by bennettj — No Comments ↓

The day-to-day life of a graduate library trainee can be really varied, especially in college libraries, and my role at New College Library is no exception. I’ve written about a typical day containing all my usual tasks, but, in reality, what my days look like depends so much on whether the students are on vacation, whether we have an exhibition approaching, or what point in the term we’re at. During vacations, I am freer to work on projects that might otherwise be more disruptive for readers, such as stock checking or re-spacing shelves, or might take me away from my desk in the library office to consult a manuscript in our Special Collections Reading Room, or help to film a video for our Curators’ Choice series.

Although New College Library doesn’t have an information desk, our library office is very open and right next to the library entrance hall so it’s easy for readers to come and ask questions. This is the room where I spend most of my time and the first place I go when I arrive in the morning…

09:00 My day starts with a brief look at my emails and email calendar to see if there’s anything happening that day that I should know about. The thing to look out for is whether we have any readers coming in to look at special collections, as this requires a bit of preparation. Then I log on to the college intranet to book my (free!) lunch.

09:15 Then it’s time to retrieve the Click and Collect requests from the library shelves. This was an initiative started in the pandemic when library use was more restricted, but it remains popular, so we’ve decided to keep it going. Every morning I pick up a selection of requested books, and leave them, labelled, on a trolley in the entrance hall for readers to collect.

Some of the special collections stored in the bell tower

10:00 After these initial morning tasks, I have more flexibility to structure my own day. At this point in the morning, I might take a trip to the bell tower in college, to pick up some manuscripts or early printed books. Readers come in to consult items from our special collections at least once or twice a week and one of my jobs is to collect items from the bell tower so that they can temporarily be stored in our Special Collections Reading Room. When this room is being used, there is always a member of library staff present to help with enquiries and keep an eye on the rare books. If I’m doing this, I can do stationary and laptop-based tasks as well, like checking reading lists against our collections, or writing blog posts like this one!

Our current exhibition, displaying items from New College Library’s Mann Collection.

10:30 If there’s no one looking at special collections, I’ll spend the rest of my morning getting on with work in the library office. Being based here means I’m often needed to respond to readers’ questions, but, when I’m not doing that, I work on creating posts for our social media channels (Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter) plan for displays or exhibitions, or write some exhibition captions.

13:00 It’s lunch time! After I’ve eaten there’s often time to go into town to run a few errands, but, once the weather warms up, I’m looking forward to being able to enjoy the sunshine in the gardens at college.

14:00 Sometimes, generally in the afternoons, we host private viewings of the best parts of our special collections, either for societies or as part of a course module. These are really fun to set up as we get an in-depth look at so many great manuscripts all at once, and it’s a highlight of my job to then be able to share them with such enthusiastic readers.

Highlights of the most recent book delivery include a first edition of Evelyn Waugh’s Love Among the Ruins, and texts on a range of subjects, from *The Faerie Queene* to Gandhi.

If we have no out of the ordinary events happening in the afternoon, I can devote my attention to the post and unpacking all the new books, which have usually arrived by this time of day. The size of delivery can hugely vary: the most I’ve dealt with at once has been about 40 books, but normally it’s between five and ten books. The journey of a book from parcel to library shelf (also known as ‘processing’) is one in which I’ve invested many hours, but, in a nutshell, I unpack the books, write an accession card for them, catalogue them (if I can), stamp, tag, label, and cover them, and they’re ready to go!

16:30 Once I’ve finished book processing, there’s usually a bit of time to tidy up any unfinished tasks from the morning and clear any expired Click and Collect requests from the trolley, until it’s time to go home at 17:00.

A Day in the Life (St Edmund ‘Teddy’ Hall Library)

Posted on 14 February 2022 by barrh — No Comments ↓

The stone Norman church of Teddy Hall Library, with snowdrops in the graveyard in front. — Snow drops outside St Edmund Hall Library

As a College Library trainee my days can vary a lot. During term time our Library is always busy, with students coming in and out all day (literally – we are open 24/7) to study, to find and borrow books, and to make use of our other Library services – such as our wide selection of borrowable board games!

As I’m writing this it is fourth week – almost half way through term! This is a pretty typical term time day, though with more chocolate than is normal…

9am – Sorting, Shelving, Socials

I start by scanning my own and the shared Library email inboxes for anything which needs urgent attention. I’m part of a team of three here at Teddy Hall (me – Heather, Emma – Assistant Librarian, and James – Librarian); we all share responsibility for monitoring the Library inbox and responding to queries which come in there. I then process the returns which come in overnight. In the middle of term there are rarely huge piles of books: I’d guess around 20 each morning.

Next I turn to our Click and Collect requests. The Library started offering this during 2020 to support students who were in isolation but needed to access books from the Library. Students submit a request either via email or SOLO (the University’s book-finding-website – literally, Search Oxford Libraries Online), and we find the book and deliver it either to their pigeon hole or directly to their room. Then it’s time for some shelving! I actually find shelving books a nice way to start the day: there is something very grounding about sorting everything into its rightful place. Shelving also gives me a chance to have a walk around the Library and do some general tidying – I’ll also check there is paper in the printer, free period products in the bathroom, pens in the pen pot, and staples in the stapler.

My final morning task is to check the Library social media accounts: Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. I’ll check whether we have any planned content to go out today, or which I need to prepare for later in the week.

10am – Blind Date with a Book

On Monday this week (7 Feb 2022) we launched Blind Date with a Book – Teddy Hall students, staff and Fellows request a book, telling us a little bit about what they like to read, and we set them up with something we think they’ll love. To celebrate Valentine’s Day and LGBTQIA+ History Month, we are selecting books with themes of gender, sexuality, and romance. Blind Date is always extremely popular, and on Monday alone we had 15 requests! This morning Emma, James and I shared ideas for what to give people who had requested books from poetry, to fantasy fiction, to a humorous and fun-to-read non-fiction. This is a really fun part of the day, and I inevitably end up with a list of books I want to read!

We wrap the books, affix a Valentine’s chocolate to the cover, and pop them in pigeon holes to await their dates…

11am – Desk Duty

I enjoy sitting at the Issue Desk, as I can help students with any queries they may have. Sometimes this can feel a bit like detective work! For example, today a student came to the desk with two items on her reading list which she and her classmates were struggling to find. The only information provided was an author name, a date, and a mysterious acronym… After some SOLO-searching, some googling and some guess work I found both articles – one of which we had in a physical book in the library. If you’re interested, the acronyms were the names of the journals in which the articles were published! Students are always really grateful for any help you can give, and so even when I feel stumped, I remember that any progress I can make in searching something out is time saved for them, and that is a good thing.

12.30pm – Lunch

You may have heard it before, but it’s worth reading again: college library jobs mean a free college lunch. These are consistently yummy, and because we all eat together, lunch in college is a really great way to chat to the rest of the Library team and also to other college staff. Today this chat covered the important topics of planetariums, dodgy ideas for fusion food, and Cadbury World.

1.30pm – Books, Books, Books

By lunchtime we’ve usually had some new books delivered, which I’ll collect from Porter’s Lodge and process. As these are often student requests, I will then almost immediately take the books back to the Lodge to put them in student pigeon holes!

Blackwell’s Book Shop – photo: juliasbookcase.com/blog/blackwellsoxford

2pm – Book Shopping (yes, seriously)

One of the best parts of my job is going to Blackwell’s for books. We are so lucky to have Blackwell’s as a resource and it is just a short walk from Teddy Hall, so when we can, we buy our books directly from there. This also means we can turn any requests around as quickly as possible! Today, as well as picking up a student request I am keeping my eyes open for anything which might be a great Blind Date book! I do find a personal favourite lock down read of mine: Mackenzi Lee’s The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue. As it’s a LGBTQIA+ love story, a Teddy Hall Blind Date requester should be expecting this in their pigeon hole soon!

3pm – Ticking off Tasks

This afternoon I’m sat up in my office, working on some ongoing tasks. This week I’ve got three balls which I am juggling. First, I’m preparing a book display and blog post celebrating International Day of Women and Girls in Science by showcasing the work of our own college Fellows.

Second, I am working through a donation of books we received over Christmas vacation – over 2,500 of them! When they arrived, we spread the books out over the thankfully-student-free desks and then organised them roughly into subjects, before putting what we could onto available shelves. The rest were boxed up and are currently living at the very top of the Teddy Hall Library tower…! We have started making lists of the books in the donation, and will decide what we want to keep and what we will offer to other libraries. If it’s a quiet day during term I might spend some time on this, but mostly this will get picked up properly again at Easter.

Third, I am planning my own Trainee project. As part of the Traineeship, we all work on an individual project which we then present about at the end of the year. My project is all about making the Library more sustainable… I’m really looking forward to working on this – so watch this space!

5pm – “Home” Time

One of the best things about living in Oxford is just how much there is to do in the city – and I love to take full advantage of that! From catching up with the other Trainees for a drink, to attending a seminar about medieval culture (I did a Masters in Medieval English Literature!), to meeting friends for dinner, or playing in orchestra (optional seminars and orchestra?! Yes – I am a bit of a nerd), Oxford is a great place to be. And there is loads to do which won’t break the bank! Today, though, it’s straight home for a hot chocolate and to continue reading Ali Smith’s wonderful book ‘Spring’.

A Day in the Life (St John’s Library)

Posted on 25 January 2022 by mooreg — No Comments ↓

Here’s a typical term-time day as the Trainee at St John’s, involving posters, returns, acquisitions, processing, and maintaining the Library’s daily Twitter updates. A day in the life here varies based on whether it’s term-time or the vacation. Over the holidays, we have very few readers, so I work on jobs which involve spending longer away from the desk, such as updating the Special Collections inventories, or minor book moves on the reading room shelves.

Working as part of a small team, the Trainee is based on the library enquiry desk. Rather than moving between shifts on different stations, I work on various tasks from my desk, and answer the occasional reader query as and when they arise!

Without further ado, join me for a day in the life of the St John’s Trainee…

9am: Get settled

It’s a three-part process:

It’s always quiet when I first arrive. I’ll check my email, the Library inbox, and the shared calendar. The contractors are still finishing up the new building, so often we’ll have an electrician or decorator scheduled to sort one specific issue.
Next, I empty the returns box and check items back in using Aleph, the library management system. Books can be borrowed for a whole term/break, so big rushes are fairly infrequent.
Most importantly: make a coffee!

9:30am: Twitter

After emails, my next desk-based check is our Special Collections Twitter. Sometimes there will be a popular hashtag or event, so I like to check our feed for inspiration.

This term, my tweet days are Tuesdays and Thursdays. If I’m working on a Tweet from scratch, I’ll find the shelf mark of the item I need, locate it in the basement store, and then take some photos. Then I’ll come back to my desk to draft the optimum 280 characters.

10:30am: check on the Law Library

It is somewhat a mystery to me why this should be the case, but if a College Library has a separate area for one subject, it’s usually law. The St John’s Law Library is on the nearby Kendrew Quad site, whilst the main Library is on the original site. It’s too small to have it’s own staff, so one of us heads over to take any acquistions or work through any shelving left by the students.

Room for one more? The noticeboard awaiting a new poster

11am: sandwich collection!

One of the perks of working in a College is absolutely the lunch: I can either pick-up a pack-up at 11am, or go for a hot meal when the canteen opens at noon. Walking through the historic quads on the way to the kitchen servery naturally involves nattering with the other hungry Library staff members too.

11:15am: updating the posters

Given the changing Covid-19 regulations in College, I’ll regularly update our signage about mask guidance. There are also endless other posters to make, be it a withdrawn book giveaway, or a reminder about KeepCups next to the new hot drink machine.

12pm: lunchtime

When it isn’t raining, I enjoy eating lunch in the College gardens. Like many of the trainees, I’m conveniently located to pick up groceries or go for a walk at lunchtime.

1pm: re-classification work

Peel, stick, stamp, peel, stick, stamp, moisten, stick…

Like many other Oxford libraries, St John’s has it’s own classification system. This has both positives and negatives! Recently, I noticed that part of the Theology section was in an unclear order, so I proposed to the Librarian that we rearrange this into a chronological order. Although we only reordered or renamed about ten headings within Theology, this meant that around 150 books had to be reassessed, and potentially reclassified. I am working through these about 25 titles at a time, updating the classifications on Aleph, relabelling, and then re-shelving the books.

3pm: collect the post and process acquisitions

St John’s seems to be quite late on the postie’s route, so I usually wait until the afternoon to swing by the Porters’ Lodge and collect the day’s deliveries. At the moment, we tend to receive between 4 and 8 new books a day, which I will process and classify. We are never short of books to process as we are working on a donation given to the Library by a former fellow!

5pm: Homeward bound

If I’ve finished my book, I like to end the day by checking out the recent literary fiction shelf, and choose a new title to borrow for my own reading. I tidy up my desk in order to pass the space over to the Student Library Assistant on duty that evening.

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

Posted on 29 November 2021 by mooreg — No Comments ↓

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 15^th 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!).

Library Provision During a Pandemic: A Day in the Life at Christ Church (Michaelmas 2020)

Posted on 12 January 2021 by lawc — No Comments ↓

8am: Arrive at the library and wash my hands! Since we are a lending library (unlike the Law Library and Old Bodleian), I come in an hour before we open so I can shelve the previous day’s returns and start gathering Click and Collect requests before the students arrive. This is because our bookshelves are in close proximity to the study desks, and it becomes much more difficult to navigate around students for books while maintaining a 2m distance once it starts filling up.

The previous night’s library clerk will hopefully have arranged the books on our returns trolley in sequential order so I just have to run them back in through the self-issue machine. This is the first substantial adjustment we’ve had to introduce because of the virus – instead of returning books themselves, readers must leave their loans with us to be quarantined overnight before I return them the following morning. I then separate the returns according to their location (e.g. East or West Library, Upper Library or the Orangery). At this point, I usually log into the library inbox, open the Aleph report for Click and Collect requests, organise the shelfmarks to my liking and then print them out so that I can collect students’ requests and re-shelve returns simultaneously.

While moving around the library to shelve, I’ll also complete any outstanding tasks as I encounter them, for instance replacing the daily track and trace form, checking that the Upper Library is unlocked and de-alarmed for student arrivals at 9, and removing any student belongings that have been left overnight.

9-10.30: Once I’ve fetched the day’s first batch of Click and Collect requests, I spend the morning at the enquiry desk. Students start filing in from 9 and I answer any questions they may have while issuing out their requests and notifying each reader via email that their loans are ready for collection – a lengthy process, and one that is unique to pandemic times. I also remove any uncollected requests from previous days (we retain books for 24 hours only) and make a note of repeat offenders so I can see if they need another nudge, or extra assistance with getting books – occasionally these have not been collected because the student in question is self-isolating.

Then I’ll work through our inbox and answer emails, making note of quarantine deliveries and chapter scan requests. Our wonderful senior library assistant and the colleague I work with most closely, Georgie, will also check in with me to see what our plan for the day is, and leave book post with me to unwrap and print invoices for the new arrivals.

10.30-11: Coffee break!

11-12: Back on the enquiry desk, I spend this time processing and issuing out new books that have been recommended for purchase by students. We are fortunate to have a generous book budget so there is always a huge pile of books in various stages of processing that need covering, adding to Aleph and so forth.

Students can also request books they need by simply coming to the enquiry desk and asking, so I usually spend some time fetching and loaning out books on demand. This feels more personal than the Click and Collect service and sometimes leads to interesting conversations about students’ research. I believe that I have gotten to know our students more quickly and comprehensively this year than I otherwise would have since I’m now (perhaps to their chagrin) an intermediary figure between them and their reading.

If it is a quiet morning, I also do a little work on our reclassification project. We are moving towards Library of Congress, however a significant amount of our collections are still classified via our Roman numerals in-house system. I’ll grab 20 or so books from the Classics section (currently IX), switch them over to LoC on Aleph, print new shelfmark labels and shift them over to their new home in the PA’s in the West library.

12-1: Lunch! The librarians at colleges get free lunch and I take full advantage of this. We are big fans of the bread rolls.

1-2: More enquiry desk, more processing, more emails.

2-3.15: Georgie takes over the desk, so I am free to complete my tasks outside the library building. Throughout Michaelmas, my afternoons were dedicated to following through on delivering books to self-isolating students – mostly within college grounds, although I have also cycled to an accommodation site in Cowley for a book delivery. I’ll also swing by the lodge for more parcels, boxes and post, and fetch the more obscure books (usually requested by fellows) from our off-site locations.

3.15-4: The second Click and Collect report arrives, so I do another round of fetching and issuing books. Georgie and I might brainstorm a tweet for the library account, I’ll spend several minutes lamenting that we don’t have library cats like St. Hugh’s (the cornerstone of any truly decent social media presence), and finish my work day at 4pm.

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