Engaging with special collections material often requires specialist skills, and the best way to acquire these is practical experience. Hands-on teaching is therefore central to undergraduates’ learning experience, building their confidence and preparing them for independent research. To pre-empt requests from tutors, Amy spent her traineeship planning displays carefully tailored to Prelims and Final Honours Scheme (FHS) syllabi.
The Starry Messenger, William Lilly, Wellcome Collection, CC PDM 1.0.
Christ Church Library caters to many disciplines but is particularly well-placed to support humanities subjects. Amy began by identifying modules across four subjects (History, English, Music, and Geography) where special collections formed a component of undergraduate studies. For each selected module, she created a longlist of potentially relevant works, selected ones that were suitable for teaching, and wrote up new captions where needed (88 in total!). In the process, she unearthed various treasures, including The Wonderful Discoverie of the Witchcrafts of Margaret and Phillip and The Starry Messenger (pictured).
After surveying the selected items, she was able to finalise plans for thirteen displays. Each corresponded to a module, such as ‘The Scientific Movement in the 17th Century’ (BA History FHS Special Subject), ‘The Renaissance Madrigal’ (BA Music FHS), or ‘Historical Geography’ (BA Geography Prelims and FHS). These featured include items on faculty reading lists, works by named authors, and other potentially relevant items. For example, for ‘Gender and Protestant Cultures in England, 1558-1659’, Amy selected a mid-16th century manuscript copy of Katherine Parr’s Prayers or Meditations. This is the first work ever published by an English woman under her own name!
Amy’s hard work has produced a valuable set of resources that serve as a blueprint for future work (should any future trainees want to pick up where she left off). The displays will hopefully inspire both tutors and undergraduates to explore Christ Church’s overlooked collections.
Meinen lieben Eltern!: Cataloguing 155 Doctoral Theses (in German, French, Spanish, and Dutch)
Gemma, Law Library
Written by Amy Fry
Gemma’s project involved creating and updating catalogue records for a collection of antique legal theses in the Law Library. There are 14450 foreign theses at the library dating from the 1850s to the 1930s and mostly in French and German, which can currently be browsed by going onto their website and using the ‘Search foreign dissertations’ page. These items are taking up a lot of space, but before they are sent to the Collections Storage Facility (CSF) for off-site housing, they need to be properly catalogued. Gemma identified that there were over 100 records that had insufficient data to allow for CSF processing.
A blank example of the Alma record that Gemma was creating.
Thus, her task was to locate all of the missing data, by examining the items herself, and then to add it to the catalogue entry on Alma, our Library Management System.
However, the task was not without its challenges. These dissertations are not in English, so Gemma had to stretch herself to work in languages in which she was not fluent. Further, she had to assign the theses subject areas, a very important aspect of cataloguing that allows for a better browsing experience, but, as many cataloguers would tell you, a surprisingly tricky one. In total, she catalogued 155, and succeeded in refining the catalogue by eliminating duplicate entries and existing errors in the entry fields.
Gemma showed us some highlights that she had found when assessing the theses. These involved touching dedications to parents and siblings, some of which show their era with marks of respect to those who died in the First World War.
In memory of my dear brother Emile le Corre, law student, Sergeant in the 91st Infantry regiment, killed in action on 20th October 1917, awarded the Croix de Guerre with palm, mentioned in dispatches by the Sixth Army in the following terms: “On 7th October 1916, he bravely captured a German machine gun battery, turned it around and used it to our advantage. He left the lines carrying this machine gun under fire and brought it back to the rear.”
To my dear parents
Another fascinating discovery was seeing evidence of students who had travelled far to make their studies possible: students from Greece to Germany, from Japan to France.
Submitted to the Georg August University of Göttingen by Agis P. Tambacopoulos from Athens
Looking to the future, there is scope to develop what this project started, by cataloguing the non-dissertations and creating more records, before the move to the CSF.
Gemma’s project was really interesting for a variety of reasons. Firstly, from a nerdier library perspective, it demonstrated the importance of proper cataloguing in order to make items both searchable, and to enable them to be more effectively housed offsite. However, it also reminded us of the human side of libraries and the items that they hold, with the moving familial dedications and the evidence of life behind academia.
The Many Books of the Bennigsen Donation and How to Process Them
Summer, Social Science Library
Written by Summer Mainstone-Cotton
I had the dubious honour of being the only trainee this year who didn’t present at the showcase, the consequence of leaving the trainee programme at the end of May for permanent employment with the Bodleian. As such, I thought I’d take the opportunity to detail my trainee project here instead:
Back in the spring of 2025, a donor got in touch with the Bodleian regarding his late wife’s book collection. His wife, Marie Bennigsen-Broxup, was an expert on the Caucasus and Central Asia, particularly on Muslim resistance within the former Soviet Union. Her collection consequently contained a wealth of rare and potentially invaluable material for the Bodleian’s collections. There was, however, one small problem: the collection contained more than 70 shelves of books and journals, with plenty of material that was not relevant to the Bodleian. Rather than transporting around 1,700 books to the Social Science Library (SSL) and sorting through them there, the subject librarian for Slavonic and East European Studies travelled to the donor’s house and photographed the shelves. This meant that the collection could be assessed digitally before deciding which books were worth bringing back to the library. However, the process of sorting through hundreds of images of books (264 photos were taken) and transcribing all legible bibliographic data is a long and arduous task, and so the images were left to collect digital dust until someone had too much time on their hands.
Jump forward to November 2025, where I was firmly settled into my trainee role at the SSL and needed a project, the perfect opportunity for this project to land on my desk. Luckily, I only had to work on the texts that were written in Latin script, as my Cyrillic is non-existent. Over the course of about three months (minus time for Christmas), I carefully trawled through the photographs, noting down any information on the title, author, publisher, place of publication, date of publication, ISBN, and any notable physical descriptions of the texts. While this task was mostly straightforward, it did involve some investigative elements – quite a few of the spines were only partially legible due to lighting, wear and tear. For example, I may have had only the author’s surname and a publisher to go on when trying to identify a text. Once I had enough information to determine the text, I would then check to see if it was listed on SOLO and already part of the Bodleian’s collections.
An example of the photos I was working from
While I know little about this subject area, some of the texts chosen seem obviously relevant just from their titles, such as Muslim Eurasia: Conflicting Legacies and The Soviet Empire: A Study in Discrimination. Notably, we did not take Delia’s Complete Cookery Course or Slow Cooker Favourites from the offered collection, but don’t worry, I have checked and both of these titles are already in the Bodleian Libraries’ collection.
…and with that, we’re done!
Unfortunately this is our last post as trainees before we scatter to new roles, within Oxford and beyond. Thank you to everyone who’s supported us as we found our feet within libraries, and especially thank you to anyone still reading; it’s nice to think we’re not posting into the void! Huge congratulations to the new trainees who’ll be starting soon – we hope this won’t be the last you see of us, but in case it is, good luck and we hope you have a fantastic year.
Somewhere the library has every book ever written, that will ever be written, and, notably, every book that it is possible to write. These are not on the public shelves lest untrained browsing cause the collapse of everything that is possible to imagine.
Working With Livres d’Artiste: a Tale of Creative Outreach and Organising
Jules, Taylor Institution Library
Written by Heidi Cruft
Jules introducing local poets and artists to special collections on the ‘Myths, Beasts, Artist’s Books’ creative outreach day
Jules’ project involved organising a creative workshop and exhibition for the Strachan Collection, a selection of livres d’artiste currently housed in the Art, Archaeology and Ancient World Library. Throughout their presentation, Jules’ enthusiasm for both creative outreach and special collections really shone through, and I will try my best to do their attitude justice here!
Although Jules organised several events related to the collection, including a staff taster session and a show-and-tell for French and History of Art students, the centre of their project for me was the workshop: Myths, Beasts, Artist’s Books. Bringing local poets and artists together with the Strachan Collection, the day was divided between an introduction to the special items and a collaborative creation session. By the end of the day, the group had created five artist’s books inspired by the collection, and some participants went on to attend a letterpress workshop to produce colophons for their finished books.
Poets and artists creating their responses during ‘Myths, Beasts, Artist’s Books’
What impressed me most was just how much behind-the-scenes organisation and collaboration with colleagues from different departments had gone into making the workshop a success. Everything from setting up the space to figuring out how to reach potential attendees had to be arranged beforehand, not to mention the design of an evaluation survey to understand participant experiences. This survey was invaluable for proving the positive impact of the workshop, with 78% of respondents rating the event as “above expectations” and 100% saying that this was their first time attending an event like this.
Part of the display in the Voltaire Room
To showcase participant efforts, the project did not end with the workshop. Instead, the five collaborative artist’s books were first displayed at the Bodleian Bibliographical Press during Oxfordshire Artweeks, before being exhibited alongside selected items from the Strachan Collection for two weeks in the Voltaire Room of the Taylorian. Displaying the collection required extensive planning, including preventative conservation measures to ensure that the light-sensitive materials could be displayed safely.
Alongside the public-facing aspects, the project also had a positive impact on how the Strachan Collection is organised and housed. Jules’ review of the collection, which included reuniting missing parts of 37 items, gathering information to catalogue 60 previously-uncatalogued items, and improving the labelling and retrieval process, has helped make these artist’s books more accessible for future researchers and outreach projects alike.
Overall, I really enjoyed hearing about Jules’ project. It demonstrated their ability to organise complicated events and bring people together around a shared interest, which are skills that will serve them well as they move beyond the traineeship. I also believe the project highlights the potential of creative outreach within the Oxford community and has enormous potential to inspire similar projects in the future. Already there are plans to hold another show-and-tell session next year, and potentially another creative outreach event, making me excited to see the project continue to grow!
“Pieces of Wisdom” in the Pierre Wack Memorial Library
Heidi, Sainsbury Library
Written byLeah Duffin
Heidi’s project centred around cataloguing the fascinating collection of the Pierre Wack Memorial Library. The collection consists of the professional archive of the Shell executive and scenario planning pioneer Pierre Wack (1922–1997). Heidi opened her presentation with a brief overview of how the collection came to Oxford, detailing its journey from the Global Business Network offices in The Hague to its donation to Green Templeton College in 2005. Today it forms part of the Oxford Futures Library and is held at the CSF.
This project was well planned and meticulous executed. Along with her colleagues at the Sainsbury Library, Heidi has spent the last few months sifting through this vast collection, discovering intriguing documents, and cataloguing the items for ease of navigation. Heidi outlined her task of standardising and expanding the existing catalogue as well as identifying missing items and those in need of conservation intervention—a vital part of collection management.
In her presentation, Heidi explained the scope of the 2,000 item collection through an accessible chart, revealing that the portion of catalogued items was made up of reports (27%), journals (19%), magazines (11%), and correspondence (6%), with the rest of the collection given over to conference notes, presentations, graphs, newsletters, drafts, and books.
Heidi spoke about the Pierre Wack Memorial Library with such enthusiasm and took us on a journey of the collection highlights. These included an article from The Financial Times detailing the establishment of the business schools in Oxford and Cambridge.
In addition, the newspaper and magazine holdings revealed advertisements that defined 20th century consumer culture, including graphics centred around domestic family ideals and a rather humorous diamond advert. Such materials are essential to understanding how diamond companies like De Beers have developed their advertising strategies over time, embracing stereotypes as well as challenging them.
Heidi was inspired by Pierre Wack’s commitment to his work and variety of the collection. This is reflected in her choice of title: ‘Pieces of Wisdom’. Wack’s handwritten notes detail the finer points of scenario planning, cognition, and business strategy as well as some motivational quotes . . . Heidi’s diligence over the year has been invaluable, with the cataloguing project about 70% complete—a great result for both Heidi and the team at the Sainsbury library.
The materials in the Pierre Wack Memorial Library will become increasingly more accessible for students and researchers interested in scenario planning, economic and social history, and the legacy of the remarkable Pierre Wack.
Haverfield Hijinks: Auditing an Overflowing Collection
Olly, Art, Archaeology and Ancient World Library
Written by Gemma Hammond
Olly’s presentation focused on his attempts to solve the various problems posed by the Haverfield Room in the Art Library. The Haverfield Room, located just off the main Ground Floor reading room and named after Francis Haverfield (Camden Professor of Ancient History at Oxford in the early 20th century), contains an open shelf collection that includes books on numismatics (the study of coins), coin catalogues, museum bulletins, auction catalogues, and periodicals from most of the library’s subject areas.
However, there’s also other books stored in the room which have not been looked at for a while and a lot of overflow, with periodicals or bulletins now continuing their sequence on trolleys or stacked on top of each other on the shelves – and the room itself is not getting any bigger! The library has done its best to keep everything organised but it’s been a (growing) problem for a number of years.
Olly’s plan was to get a better grasp of the situation by identifying what the problems were and the scale of them, and then to look at potential solutions. He undertook an audit of some little-used folios at the very back of the room, where he found that 103 of them belonged to the Art Library but 142 actually belonged to the Oxfordshire Architectural and Historical Society which had stored them there some time ago. Olly said he’d been fascinated by the variety of topics covered by these folios, particularly the coins, but also ceremonial coats of arms, maps, and architectural drawings.
The overflowing journals posed the biggest problem because many runs had not been fully itemised and before they could go to the Bodleian Offsite Storage Facility to create some much-needed space they would need to be barcoded and have an item record on the system.
Olly used a lot of spreadsheets to narrow down which journal runs should be prioritised for this treatment and as a next step he created instructions and a spreadsheet for library staff to physically check the shelves and collect data on which journal runs are currently taking up the most space. He then made use of an itemisation entry form designed for staff to input data about a journal item. The data can then be fed into OLIS to create a record on the system, hugely simplifying the process of itemising. However, Olly also pointed out problems that might come up during this process, such as journals changing their names or having previously been recorded in the system under different names.
The plan is that library staff will continue with the tasks of measuring shelf space and then itemising the journals, meaning that a lot of material can then be sent offsite but still be easily findable, while the Haverfield Room will be a lot more user-friendly.
I really enjoyed Olly’s presentation and admire him for getting stuck into such a huge task and making progress on taming the chaos of the Haverfield Room! The journal itemising in particular clearly took a lot of work and it’s impressive that he’s come up with detailed and methodical long-term solutions that will hopefully be continued and built on in the future.
If you’ve read previous blog posts, you might have seen us mentioning our trainee projects at various points. As an Oxford trainee you have the chance to take on a personal project outside your regular duties to help you explore different parts of library work and leave your mark on the Bodleian. This all leads to the Graduate Trainee Showcase at the end of the year, where you get to present your work and explain what you’ve been doing to a captive audience of librarians and colleagues.
The showcase this year was held at Christ Church College and organised by fellow trainees Heidi, Rebecca, Jules, and Amy – huge thanks to them for their planning and effort (and for some last minute tech fixes). Over the next month we’ll be posting short summaries of our projects and presentations for anyone who couldn’t make it. Writing about our own work is too easy though, so we’ve each picked someone else’s project to talk about. Now to get us started, here’s some Royal Regalia, medical paraphernalia, and a whole lot of library data. Enjoy!
Promoting Special Collections at New College Library & Archives
Leah, New College Library
Written by Catherine Birch
Leah’s project involved designing an exhibition to promote New College Library’s incredible special collections. Having had the chance to see her exhibition in-person, I thought it looked incredible, but I’d had no idea just how much work had gone into it over the year!
Leah started by giving us some background on New College’s special collections, which house an astounding 384 historic manuscripts and over 30,000 rare books. Having specialised in medieval royalty and diplomacy during her MA, she wanted to highlight the wealth of royal history in the collection and work to improve public engagement with them. Identifying materials for display involved endless SOLO searching, trawling through various handlists, and consulting various colleagues, as well as every librarian’s secret weapon… a huge spreadsheet. Deciding which items to use in an exhibition is a very involved process, as Leah explained – you have to consider display space, transport logistics, and item condition before you even get into issues like audience interest and the exhibition theme. Having narrowed down which items she could practically include and which were most relevant to the topic, she picked her final items based on one key rule: are they fabulous?
From there she wrote item captions and labels, proofread them, proofread them again (those pesky oxford commas…), and got to work producing promotional material. Some of this material included posters, banners, booklets, and postcards, which looked great and were very nice to keep as souvenirs. Leah also promoted the exhibition through social media, university mailing lists, local news pages, and word of mouth, trying to reach library staff, students, and the public in equal measure. Her hard work definitely paid off, as they had over 150 visitors, making it the most successful exhibition of the year! Leah herself was on hand to answer any questions and talk to visitors, which was a nice touch that really improved engagement and interest (as did the free refreshments next door).
Even though the exhibition has finished, Leah is far from done getting people interested in New College Library’s special collections. She’s already planned an article about representations of King David in medieval manuscripts for an upcoming issue of New College Notes (the college’s scholarly journal), and she’s supporting a Curator’s Choice video highlighting a book published in 1687 to mark the coronation of James II. It was really interesting getting to see the full process of putting together an exhibition, and her display shone a spotlight on the sort of books and manuscripts that most librarians relish working with.
Catherine’s project revolved around a collection of grey literature from the History of Medicine Library, picking up the baton and expanding on the work done by previous HFL trainee Xanthe.
Catherine first explained to us the complicated past of the HML, occupying a site on Banbury Road but being under the stewardship of the Radcliffe Camera, with most of the material having now moved to the Humanities Library at the Schwarzman Centre and some of it being stored in our offsite storage facility. This is fairly standard for a lot of collections in the Bodleian- everything has been moved between many libraries and has had many different names.
The “grey literature” in question is far more interesting than the name suggest- it’s a mix of material produced by various medical institutions, but not controlled by a traditional commercial publisher like a book or journal article is. The HML collection includes a lot of organisational reports, speeches, statistics, training guides, public health pamphlets and other miscellaneous material important to understanding the history of healthcare and the work of significant institutions and professionals in the field.
The bulk of Catherine’s project involved going through 41 boxes of the material and creating handlists for them- a list describing each item in a box – to make the contents identifiable and discoverable to researchers.
The grey literature Catherine has been working with is now housed offsite and involved many requests for it all to be called up, looking through the contents and picking out important information such as institutions, authors, date ranges, topics, formats and other useful information for locating the right resource. This was frequently made difficult by material being in foreign languages, being in odd formats, using antiquated language or being catalogued poorly. By doing thorough research into the items, using templates for how to describe the items, and like any seasoned librarian – expecting and accepting a certain amount of chaos – Catherine developed a good system for listing the boxes consistently. All together there were approximately 450 items to describe and list, which is an amazing amount to achieve over the year!
The contents of the boxes will ultimately be published in a LibGuide that Catherine has been making to promote their use, make the collection navigable and link to boxes on SOLO for people to call them up from CSF. I was really impressed by the skills Catherine got to develop during her project and her methodical approach, and I thought that the collection sounds fascinating. Work like this is really important for ensuring library collections are accessible and available to use, and the efforts Catherine went through will benefit readers and library staff alike.
Managing & Adapting to Change
Rebecca, Bodleian Library (Reader Services)
Written by Jules McGee-Russell
Rebecca’s presentation focused on her research into different changes happening in the Old Bod and wider changes across the library service. This included the new Extended Lending rules at the Bodleian, the digital shift towards eBooks and AI usage, and how these things connect to the Climate Emergency.
Rebecca demonstrated her points using journalistic headlines over time, data from Freedom of Information Requests, and statistical forecasting she did herself using Python. The messages I took away were that there is a year-on-year decline in borrowing requests from readers in the Bodleian. Even though the lending rules have changed to allow some items to be loanable from the Old Bod, the number of annual requests to borrow physical books is decreasing. In contrast, the demand for eBooks is huge and ever-growing, as are the profits publishers are making from eBooks sales. 1/3 of students surveyed are, concerningly, reaching for AI over primary sources.
ChatGPT has been shown to amplify global inequalities by making assumptions about geographical locations that are not supported by data. AI “makes mistakes and tells people what they want to hear” according to research at the Oxford Internet Institute, influencing search strategies and resource discovery. Using these search strategies can reduce the “serendipity” of discovery, and can also dramatically change how users are interacting with libraries.
Rebecca questioned the transparency of publishers’ connections with fossil fuel companies, and how skyrocketing profits from eBook sales could be funding carbon emissions. There have been walkouts from journal editors protesting unethical fees for these eResources, and there is growing concern regarding the use of AI within publishing. Purchased goods and services made up 42% of Gardens, Libraries, and Museums (GLAM) emissions in 24/25, which may not even fully capture the scope of emissions related to library purchasing of eBooks and eResources. The effectiveness and integrity of climate pledges across publishing are also questionable – who is holding them to account, and who is measuring their success?
I was incredibly impressed with Rebecca’s research, and so were several others in the room. She was asked to share her slides with senior members of staff, and will be repeating the presentation to wider university staff groups. A great success, and it really shows how interesting and relevant her work was. These are concerns and developments that affect us all, and I truly admired the effort she put into excavating and illustrating them.
The presentation closed by recommending the university’s internal Carbon Literacy training module, which anyone can attend. There are certainly more steps to be taken both as individuals and as an institution to investigate and mitigate these impacts. This presentation is one that really stuck with me, and increased my awareness about how all these issues connect.
1 Kerche, F. W., Zook, M., & Graham, M. (2026).The Silicon gaze: A typology of biases and inequality in LLMs through the lens of place. Platforms & Society, 3. https://doi.org/10.1177/29768624251408919 (Original work published 2026)
Further reading for anyone who wants to learn more:
Shimray, S.R. et al. (2025) Digital transformation in academic libraries: e-resources, OPACs and Al in information discovery. Reference Services Review, 53(2), 238-255.
McCay-Peet, L. & Toms, E. (2011) Measuring the dimensions of serendipity in digital environments. Information Research, 16(3). [Accessed: 2 June 2026].
Pu, Z. & Ruppel, E. (2025) Surprise Me: Serendipitous News Discovery and News Consumption. Communication Research.
Jaillant, L. & Rees, A. (2023) Applying Al to digital archives: trust, collaboration and shared professional ethics. Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, 38(2), 571-585.
This is the second of a four-part series of presentation summaries for the 2025 Trainee showcase. If you missed the previous post, you can find it directly below this one!
Gareth Smith – Uniomachia: a new Digital Edition in TEI XML
Written by Zac Draysey
The title page of Uniomachia
Gareth’s presentation was an engaging deep-dive into Uniomachia, a forgotten gem of comic classical parody unearthed during his traineeship at the Oxford Union Library. Drawing on his strong background in Classics and Ancient History, Gareth recounted his excitement upon discovering this obscure 1833 satirical poem written in a mix of Ancient Greek, Latin, and English. The poem, penned by Oxford students Thomas Jackson and William Sinclair, parodies Homeric epic to dramatize a real political schism within the Oxford Union, transforming an internal dispute into a mock-epic battle between ‘heroes.’ Gareth walked us through how the text not only imitates Homeric style but also includes absurd scholarly commentary in Latin, designed to mock academic pretensions.
Gareth’s project focused on producing a digital edition which aimed to make this otherwise inaccessible work available to a modern audience. His work involved producing a facsimile, transcription, English translation, and detailed commentary, all encoded for Taylor Editions. He illustrated the complexity of the task through a textual analysis of a passage from the poem that showed how deeply layered the satire is, touching on everything from Classical allusions to real Oxford figures like A.C. Tait, a future Archbishop of Canterbury. The audience got a glimpse of the wit embedded in the text and the scholarly humour behind the pseudo-critical notes. Gareth’s blend of insight and humour made for a fascinating presentation, and he ended with a playful farewell, echoing the spirit of the original text.
Kate Hanson – Adventures in digitization
Notes by Gia Simmons, written by Yasmeen Khan
As the graduate trainee based at Christ Church College, it was almost inevitable that Kate would end up interacting with the legacy of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (better known as Lewis Carroll). It was perhaps a little unexpected, however, when she was handed several hundred of his personal letters and asked to digitise them.
Those who know a little about Carroll will likely know that alongside being an author, mathematician, and photographer, he was also a prolific letter-writer – so prolific, in fact, that his logs show him sending and receiving 98,721 letters in the last 35 years of his life. Christ Church was fortunate enough to get their hands on some of these letters through an incredibly generous donation by Jon A. Lindseth, and they quickly realised that they needed to increase global access to these items whilst reducing the number of people physically handling them. Thus, it was decided that the best course of action would be to digitise as many of them as possible.
Kate’s photography set-up
In an act that mirrored one of Carroll’s own 19th century photography set-ups, Kate was equipped with an ad-hoc digitisation studio and banished to the attics of Christ Church to photograph each and every item in crisp detail. Her patient and detail-oriented work bore fruit, and Kate ended the project having successfully digitised 232 out of the original 235 items; unfortunately, the wear and tear of time meant that the remaining three items were too fragile for digitisation. In total, Kate took over 600 images of the books, photographs, letters, envelopes, slips, and pictures that make up the Jon A. Lindseth Collection. The project rounded out with a 24 GB file size, allowing viewers to examine the items in minute detail – Kate pointed out, for example, that it is possible to make out the grain of the paper in some photographs.
But these impressive results naturally came with a few difficulties. Kate had to quickly get to grips with the subtle art of digitisation while grappling with the reality of the material as she found it. Not only were many of the items completely different sizes (forcing her to deal with the havoc of adjusting the lighting and focus), but many had been attached to or tucked inside other items and had to be recorded as such in the photographic record.
Overall, Kate’s trainee project was a fascinating meeting-point between the 19th century and modern day. Although her prior lack of Carroll knowledge meant that she had to quickly come to terms with both his triumphs and controversies, she found that reading his personal letters humanised him immensely. Kate’s brilliant project will not only allow people to encounter the legendary Lewis Carroll, but to interact with the sometimes-overlooked Charles Dodgson. Her work over the course of this year will not only have a lasting impact on Christ Church, but the greater field of Carroll Studies as a whole.
Millie Krantz – Some men in Oxford: queer life at All Souls
Written by Jake Banyard
Millie’s valuable project explored a history of queer experience at All Souls College and the wider university that has often lacked visibility and attention.
The project culminated in the curation of an exhibition of Millie’s findings, and her presentation began with an examination of the role of exhibitions in a college environment. Exhibitions can provide useful opportunities for college libraries to encourage reader engagement and promote their collections, as well as providing justification for Librarians to carry out interesting research and get to know their collections better. Millie raised the interesting question of who exhibitions should be aimed at: academics, students, readers, or the public? In the context of All Souls, Millie also considered the wide range of library users in the college, from fellows using the significant early printed book collection, to law undergraduates and naval history researchers. Who of these would be interested in the exhibition? For Millie this project also served as a way to begin to answer that question.
Part of Millie’s exhibition
The focal point of the exhibition was the life and papers of John Sparrow. Made a fellow of All Souls in 1929, he remained so until his death in 1992 and served as the College’s Warden from 1952-1977. Sparrow lived through a time of great change in the lives of queer people in the UK and by using his papers (which were left to All Souls in his will) Millie’s exhibition presented an insight into Sparrow’s personal experience of the 20th century, and the experiences of those he knew and corresponded with.
Due to the nature of the materials exhibited, Millie’s project involved a certain amount of ‘crossing the floor’ from the realm of Library collections and delving into the College archive. Archival practice within Oxford colleges has historically often been haphazard and informal, which means that catalogues can be incomplete or that past sensitivity reviews (if they have been carried out at all) have led to overzealous access restrictions or a lack of any access restrictions whatsoever. These were problems Millie soon ran into: one box of the Sparrow material was restricted simply because, despite Sparrow’s sexuality being publicly known, it “concern[ed] homosexuality”. Fortunately, upon consultation with the College’s current archivists, the restrictions were altered, and Millie was able to access the material.
Perhaps therein lies a concrete example of the value of Millie’s work. Instead of remaining uncatalogued or behind restricted access, queer experience and history has been made more visible, and awareness of the existence of these kinds of collections has been promoted. Millie’s ideas for the future of the exhibition involve potentially creating a permanent digital version, a longer-running physical exhibition, or using the material for outreach purposes in the library – so watch this space!
Yasmeen Khan – The Rhodes less taken: approaches to ethical cataloguing in the former Rhodes House Library material
Written by Charlotte Edwards
Based in Resource Description, Yasmeen had the opportunity to navigate a unique and highly sensitive project. Years before her arrival, the department had received a collection of resources from the Rhodes House Library, mostly pertaining to 20th and 21st century African and Commonwealth Studies. As many of these items were completely uncatalogued, Yasmeen took on the task of getting as many of them onto the system through ethical cataloguing practice as she could.
Some of the Rhodes material
Due to the nature, content, and physical location of the material, Yasmeen had many things to consider when starting her project, such as:
A duty of care to readers – there are pictures, language, and references in these resources that can be distressing.
Library ethics – the material is not held in an ideal location at Osney, is not accessible to researchers, and has lots of confusing metadata that makes it difficult to catalogue.
The first step of Yasmeen’s project was learning to catalogue – not an easy feat! She then started experimenting with serials and monographs (both would be needed for the vast array of material she would encounter in this collection) and began researching ethical cataloguing, eventually pulling together a ‘Bodleian Cataloguing Code of Ethics’ based on her research.
Yasmeen’s real-life approach to cataloguing was not priority-based, as she proceeded in the order of what item was next on the pile. The records were full-level, the descriptive fields were left intact, and she altered subject headings if it was both necessary and possible. In a few cases, she also restricted access to items with graphic images – due to their nature, it was felt that these items should only be viewed in private areas in the reading rooms. An attendee asked Yasmeen at the end of her presentation how she herself dealt with the material she was seeing. Indeed, we often consider how a reader would react to the material, but not the staff encountering it. Yasmeen’s approach was to take time to be mentally prepared for what she might see, especially after being taken by surprise at the beginning. It was also beneficial that she would only work on this collection for a couple of hours per week and so could restrict her overall exposure.
There are limitations when cataloguing, especially when cataloguing a collection like this, and Yasmeen touched on her ‘Dream Approaches’ regarding ethical cataloguing. Ideally, rather than relying solely on individual cataloguers, ethical cataloguing would occur on multiple levels, such as having institutional cataloguing policies that are regularly reviewed to ensure alignment with ethical principles.
Due to the collection’s vastness, the comparatively low priority of the collection, and the lack of departmental guidelines on ethical cataloguing, the collection could not be fully catalogued by the end of Yasmeen’s traineeship. To combat this open-endedness, Yasmeen is proceeding to write a report for any future cataloguers who want to continue this well-thought out and important work.
Yasmeen’s presentation was a fascinating insight into the decisions that are made when cataloguing sensitive material, and as an audience member I found her presentation highly enlightening and engaging.
As long-time readers of the blog will know, every graduate trainee in the Bodleian has the opportunity to undertake a project over the course of their traineeship. This is not mandatory – rather, it is an opportunity for trainees to try their hand at tasks outside of their everyday job scope and leave a lasting mark on the libraries they worked at. The culmination of all this hard work comes in the form of the Graduate Trainee Showcase: a day-long event where every trainee is given the opportunity to talk about their project in front of a bustling audience of librarians, fellow trainees, and interested colleagues.
This year’s showcase featured sixteen presentations and was held at the Social Science Library. Over the next two weeks, we will be posting short summaries of these presentations in hopes that those of you who couldn’t make it on the day can experience a snippet of what it was like.
Before we begin, however, a massive thank-you goes out from all of the trainees to those who supported us in our projects, came to the showcase, or guided us as line managers or training facilitators over the year. We also particularly thank our fellow trainees Elena Brearley, Gia Simmons, Charlotte Edwards, and Hannah Richmond for their hard work organising the showcase – without you, this wouldn’t have been possible.
Now, without further ado, on with the showcase!
Charlotte Edwards – Student wellbeing at Sainsbury Library
Written by Yasmeen Khan
Charlotte’s fascinating trainee project focussed on the creation of a wellbeing collection for the Sainsbury Library.
Drawing on her experience as a student and on various conversations with friends, Charlotte identified a need for wellbeing provisions that targeted business students. The idea that this was both necessary and desirable was furthered by the coincidental creation of a wellbeing module for the Saïd Business School’s MBA. This proved not only that academic interest in the subject existed, but that a core group of students with an interest in wellbeing was already present at the Sainsbury Library.
Although some wellbeing provisions already existed in the library, student feedback informed Charlotte that there were several areas that could be improved upon. Drawing on this, she then implemented a few meaningful changes to the library’s wellbeing provisions, such as creating a wellbeing book recommendation box and moving the library’s pre-existing puzzle collection from a busy public space to a more secluded area in the annexe room.
However, as there was only so much that could be done with the library’s current wellbeing provisions, Charlotte knew that a large portion of her time would have to be put towards identifying, collating, and expanding the library’s wellbeing resources and book collections. After using a series of webinars to scope out how other libraries were approaching wellbeing, Charlotte began her search for the material that would make up the body of her new collection. While the Sainsbury Library already had some relevant books on the topic, Charlotte’s in-depth research meant that she was successful in her endeavour to have some new books purchased for the collection as well.
A selection of the Wellbeing Book Purchases
Once she had gathered the relevant materials, it was simply a matter of turning this gathering of resources into an actual collection. As the books were drawn from a wide variety of topics (and physical locations in the library), it became clear that creating a physical collection on the shelves would create more issues than solutions. As such, Charlotte came up with the idea of creating this collection digitally by labelling each of the wellbeing collection’s items with a public note on SOLO.
The culmination of all this hard work was the creation of a beautiful promotional book display in the Sainsbury Library. Not only did this attract public attention to the new collection, but it briefly allowed for a physical version of the Wellbeing Collection to exist in the library.
With the completion of this project, Charlotte has not only demonstrated an impressive range of skills, but has left an important and positive mark on the Sainsbury Library’s wellbeing provisions.
Elena Brearley – Zines and wellbeing in the Bodleian Old Library
Written by Lilly Wilcox
One of the fearless leaders of the graduate trainee showcase, Elena Brearley, presented on her project to incorporate zines into the Bodleian Old Library Wellbeing collection.
Elena helped us by trying to define what a zine is—a notoriously tricky medium to pin down. A zine is typically an independent, self-published, and self-distributed DIY magazine. It can be physical or digital, made by an individual or a group, include a variety of forms of creative expression (like writing and visual arts), and cover pretty much any topic the zine maker wants. Essentially, a zine is a zine if the zine (maker) says so!
Just a handful of the new zines
Based on her experience as a zine maker and reader, Elena thought zines would be a perfect addition to the Old Bod wellbeing collection created by last year’s trainee, as the medium is engaging and zines often discuss themes relating to wellbeing and community. Elena looked to other zine libraries in Oxford—like the Balliol College Library wellbeing collection—and beyond—like the Glasgow and Salford Zine Libraries. From conversations with and research into other zine libraries, Elena identified a few challenges that come with adding zines into library collections. For example, they can be difficult to catalogue as they often have multiple collaborators, unclear publishers and publication dates, and more. Additionally, other ethical questions surround the inclusion of zines in libraries, such as whether they are meant to be ephemeral. Ultimately, she decided that zines that were already published by creators in online libraries and zines submitted by makers who opted in to preservation of their work at the Bodleian would be appropriate for the collection.
In addition to identifying, printing, and assembling zines from online zine libraries, Elena also organized a zine donation drive to expand the collection. She started by sharing a call for zine donations around Oxford including at the Bodleian Zine Fair and through the staff newsletter. From this, the Bodleian communications team picked up on the project and were able to share it through social media where it completely took off! Elena received over 130 zine donations from six countries in multiple languages covering a variety of topics. This huge influx of donations meant that Elena had to appraise the donations for zines that fit the wellbeing theme of the collection. After appraisal, the zines could be catalogued as part of the Old Bod wellbeing collection and classified along with zines that already exist in the permanent collection and zines from the free digital zine libraries.
Included in the Old Bod wellbeing collection is a zine created by us graduate trainees at a workshop organized by Elena and instructed by the artist Alice Hackney at the Bodleian Bibliographic Press. Kudos to Elena for organizing such a great activity for us and for all her hard work on the Old Bod wellbeing collection!
Harry Whattoff – Displaying History: Research-Led Exhibitions in the English Faculty Library
Written by Lindsey Evans
In his presentation, Harry talked us through the displays that he has prepared over the course of his year at the English Faculty Library. A dominant focus for the EFL team this year has been to prepare for the library’s relocation to the new Schwarzman Centre. However, alongside contributing to this overarching project, Harry had opportunities to put together regular new book selections and to develop a number of themed displays.
The brief for the first of Harry’s themed displays was to curate a ‘seasonal’ selection of books in the lead-up to the December vacation. This gave a lot of freedom of interpretation, though with a slight sense of pressure to create an Oxford-worthy end result! Harry wanted the seasonal angle to be enjoyable and relevant to library users (some of whom might feel excluded by an overt Christmas theme, for example, if they don’t celebrate it). With two display cases available, Harry decided to present eight texts where snow plays a significant role, for example within the plot or as a metaphor. Drawing on his own reading and further research (Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous was a starting point), Harry brought together a diverse range of works. He prepared explanatory blurbs analysing the depiction of snow in each of the featured texts, which he hoped would prove thought-provoking and increase students’ appreciation of the importance of small details in literary works.
A few months later, in February of this year, Harry went on to develop “TO BE DESTROYED”: The Legal History of Book Censorship in the UK, a display that charted the events and landmark publications leading to the creation of the 1959 Obscene Publications Act. In terms of the research required, this was more demanding and time-consuming than his earlier display work, especially as it involved going back as far as the late 1400s to the introduction of the printing press in England. Among the six titles exhibited was the uncensored 1960 first edition of Lady Chatterley’s Lover that became a test case for a revised legal definition of obscenity. To add visual appeal and convey a ‘timeline’ idea at a glance with limited resources, Harry employed an ingenious use of book tape to connect each book/event to the next in a chronological chain within the display cases. For readers interested in a deeper engagement with the exhibition, he also added news clippings alongside each item that illustrated the historical context. This exhibition was especially topical as it coincided with Pride Month; Harry wrote a piece for the EFL blog to accompany the exhibition and to highlight in particular the relationship between the 1959 act and the suppression of queer literature, such as Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness.
One half of the “TO BE DESTROYED” Display
The EFL’s move to the Schwarzman building provided the impetus for a final Trinity Term display on the past, present and future of the library itself. This display was interdisciplinary in scope and allowed Harry to work with items from the archives, such as the diaries of notable figures from the EFL’s history, which meant engaging with copyright considerations around their inclusion. The display looked back to the library’s beginnings and evolution, as well as looking ahead to its future as it joins a new Centre for the Humanities. Again, Harry worked on a blog post to complement the exhibition and present the research behind it.
Something that Harry has really appreciated in his work with book displays and exhibitions this year is being able to integrate his own interests, knowledge of literature, and research skills into their planning. Although it can be hard to measure the impact of library displays, they are an important way for libraries to connect with their readership. By curating displays that are thoughtfully researched and visually interesting, Harry has engaged with the English Faculty Library community and cultivated interest in EFL collections.
Phoebe Lawson – The Red Cross Collection, or; me, Henry Dunant and a great many books
Written by Emma Brand
As much of this content has already been covered in an informative and entertaining blog by Phoebe, this is a short summary of Phoebe’s presentation. This means I get to toot the horn about how great this project was and why – a summary of which you can see in the image below.
TLDR on why Phoebe’s project worked so well
To quote Phoebe (as I laugh every time), “at some point between the invention of writing and the modern day, the Law Library received a donation.” This donation was from the Henry Dunant Institute, a research institute for the Red Cross based in Geneva.
There are three critical things to know about this project:
It was LARGE (1000+ books!!)
The collection was diverse, spanning 13 different languages
It took up SPACE (for some years), occupying 25 shelves at the Law library.
Phoebe had an interest in cataloguing which brought about this project – and luckily for Phoebe, cataloguing is done on site at the Law Library. This made receiving valuable MARC record training from the beloved Tanya very easy. It also meant that any strange and wonderful cataloguing queries could be answered quickly so Phoebe could power through the many, many records she was creating.
This training set her up to start making minimum level records so that she could send books to the CSF from the start of December. By the end of January, she had blitzed through the English texts and was onto the other languages, which she finished by the end of March.
As someone who has spent time working at the Taylor library this year and handling material in other languages, I need to point out how impressive this timeline is. Yes, Phoebe does have a background in languages, having learnt Ancient Greek and German, however to catalogue in another language (especially 13 different ones) is very noteworthy. To state the obvious – some were in languages that Phoebe does not speak or read. Additionally, not all countries print cataloguing information in the same way, or in as much detail, making it yet again more challenging to process. Speaking of, over the four months processing these records Phoebe worked through a whopping 624 records. It is without doubt that Phoebe learnt loads about cataloguing and the many variations of it during this project.
To help learn more about the Red Cross collection, Phoebe kept two spreadsheets on the books that were catalogued: one for the acquisitions team at the Law library and one for data collecting interests. From this, Phoebe was able to pull out interesting books within the collection, some of which she highlighted during her presentation (and blog post). A fun fact Phoebe came across in Red Cross travels was that numerous North Korean propaganda texts were printed in English, French and Spanish as a way of disseminating information in other countries. My favourite part of the spreadsheets was not the spreadsheets themselves, but the map created from them (what can I say, I am a sucker for visual data). This stellar map shows all of the places that the books in the collection were published.
I thoroughly enjoyed listening to Phoebe talk about her project. The presentation highlighted not only the amount of work she was able to do, but also demonstrated the enthusiasm she has for a solid spreadsheet, clearing shelves, finding quirky books, and cataloguing. I am positive that the Law Library is thrilled that the shelves are clear, and that they have been processed in such a thorough manner.
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
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.
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!
Among the many fantastic opportunities afforded to Graduate Trainee Library Assistants based in Bodleian and Oxford College Libraries is the chance to design and undertake a project. Undoubtably one of the highlights of the year, the annual Graduate Trainee Showcase provides the opportunity for each trainee to present their project to an audience from across the Oxford libraries. The 2024 Showcase, superbly organised by Anna, Clara, and Connie, was a resounding success. The huge variety of projects presented reflected both the trainee’s diverse interests and expertise, and the varied aims and priorities of the different libraries in which they have been based.
This blog post is the first in a series dedicated to this year’s Graduate Trainee Showcase. The blog posts contain descriptions of all the different projects, each written by another trainee. We’ll be kicking off here with the morning session of presentations made by Lara (Bodleian Law Library), Elena (All Souls College Library), Nia (Old Bodleian Library), and Jess (New College Library).
Lara Hatwell: ‘O Stranger from England, why stand ye aghast?’: Exploring the Law Library’s Northern Ireland Collection
By Leah Brown
Taking on the task of opening this years’ Trainee Showcase, Lara couldn’t have done a better job!
Lara’s project focused on the Northern Irish collections held at the Law Library. Having observed that there’s often a sense of horror around looking at Northern Ireland’s past, Lara wanted to reframe this. This is reflected in the title of her project; ‘O stranger from England, why stand ye aghast?’ is a line from Ballad to a Traditional Refrain by the Northern Irish writer and historian, Maurice James Waldron Craig (d. 2011).
Lara’s piece on the Law Library blog.
Lara began by working through the Bodleian Law Library LibGuide on Northern Ireland and fleshing it out as she went, including keeping it up-to-date with current political events—something quite unique to the Law Library! After immersing herself in the LibGuide and collating all of this information, which was no mean feat, Lara was also able to write a longform blogpost for the Bodleian Law Library Blog. It covers Northern Ireland’s relationship with British politics, particularly in the decriminalisation of homosexuality in the 1980s and the legalisation of abortion in Northern Ireland in 2018. Both of these laws were passed much earlier in England, Scotland, and Wales in 1967, but Northern Ireland was left out of the legislation. They were forced to bring the matter to the European Court of Human Rights and the UK Supreme Court respectively, while the UK government tried to wash its hands of the whole affair. Lara’s blog is a truly interesting read on the complicated political relationship that Northern Ireland, Europe, and Britain share, so I highly recommend you click through and take a look!
With this under her belt, Lara created promotional material for Northern Irish resources for the Thesis Fair, which then led to the opportunity to help with individual sessions on Northern Ireland with students. As a part of this, Lara created a guide on the resources held by the Bodleian, including highlighting the huge collection of papers that can’t be found anywhere else, many of which are now out of print. She was also able to shine a spotlight on the Conflict and Politics in Northern Ireland (CAIN) Archive, which she discovered was not included on Databases A-Z. It contains a huge amount of information on deaths relating to the Troubles all the way up to 2001 and is very community-focussed, which Lara mentioned is why she particularly likes it as a resource. Lara is currently working on a short bio of the site before Official Papers will make a claim for its addition to Databases A-Z, so watch this space!
So, what’s next? Well, before the traineeship is over Lara aims to write further blog posts particularly focussing on acquisitions based around Northern Ireland. She will also be writing a longform piece on Lady Justice and ‘how justice as a wider concept has been imagined’, so do keep an eye out for those over here.
Elena Trowsdale: The Importance of Cataloguing: A Multi-strand Exploration of Searchable Catalogues as the Backbone of Librarianship
By Nia Everitt
Elena’s project was all about the importance of cataloguing, which many library staff (and shoppers at Argos, probably) can attest to. At All Souls College Library, where Elena is the trainee, cataloguing takes many different forms. Elena researched all of these and suggested some great improvements that could be made!
All Souls Library has got some super interesting digital projects and outreach initiatives coming up, so Elena’s project sought to promote these by taking a look at the role that cataloguing plays/will play, as well as researching historical librarianship (blowing the dust off card catalogues) and looking ahead to future cataloguing projects.
Elena got started with creating a comprehensive list of pamphlets held at All Souls in the GZ classification series, including details about shelfmark and reference information, as well as logging whether it is currently catalogued or not. In doing so, Elena laid the foundations for cataloguers to fully record and describe these items on formal databases, saving them time in the future!
Rather excitingly, All Souls is currently in the midst of re-cataloguing their archive, and so Elena also got to assist with this. Crosschecking the existing archives catalogue, she created a machine-operable spreadsheet, up to professional standards. Again, she’s reduced the timeframe quite a bit for these details to be uploaded to Expexio, the archival database platform, although doing so will still require professional input.
Then Elena conducted a survey to see what library staff actually think about cataloguing. The survey results were very interesting. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the biggest change to cataloguing that staff have noticed is a switch to online systems. Many also noted that, in the wider academic world, cataloguing is not regarded highly enough. This disregard for cataloguing is frustrating because, as staff observed, it is a job that requires a lot of skill. One colleague remarked that ‘having worked for 39 years in Oxford University libraries, I fear I am still an inadequate cataloguer’. Survey respondents also highlighted the political aspect of cataloguing, noting that some subject headings seem inadequate in a rapidly developing society, and that accessibility is becoming more and more prevalent.
Images generated by AI in response to prompts about online and paper catalogues.
Elena also incorporated AI into her survey! Images generated when online catalogues, like SOLO, were mentioned, included a happy cat holding a book, ants climbing a bookshelf, and a rather severe looking octopus. Images generated when paper catalogues were mentioned were a grumpy cat with no book, a rather old clock, and a very idyllic, mountainous landscape. Make of that what you will!
The final aspect of Elena’s cataloguing project was an exhibition about legacy catalogues, investigating past librarianship methods. The All Souls Library catalogues dating to c. 1635–c. 1756 had a very basic style, and seemed optimised for use at the time as they were arranged by the authors’ last names. Elena also charted the cataloguing methods for one item, ‘A Discourse of the Damned Art of Witchcraft’. Her findings were that paper catalogues needed to be physically handled for information, whereas on SOLO, everyone has access to the same information, improving accessibility. The number of catalogue records and amount of information for this one item also suggested scope for interoperability, such as linking between current catalogues, transcriptions, and more!
Elena’s hopes for the future of cataloguing include: more training for all library positions, increased funding, opportunities for technical experimentation, investment in learning, and well-supported digital tools. With advocates like Elena, the future of library cataloguing certainly seems exciting.
Nia Everitt: A Wellbeing Collection for The Bodleian Old Library and Radcliffe Camera
By Fran Allen
Choose Your Own Adventure: Graduate Trainee Library Assistant Project.
You are Nia, a Graduate Trainee Library Assistant at the Bodleian Libraries who is completing a project as part of their trainee year.
To choose the Wellbeing Collection project, turn to section 7. To choose Alien Communication, turn to section 51.
Section 7. Inspired by your own time at university during the Covid-19 pandemic, you choose to create a wellbeing collection for the Old Bodleian. Wellbeing collections and spaces are becoming more common in libraries due to both an increase in the number of students reporting negative mental health experiences, and a recognition of the role academic libraries play in supporting a student’s mental health whilst at university. There are already a number of wellbeing initiatives within the Bodleian Libraries and you have visited nearly all of them for inspiration.
To start with a local needs assessment, turn to section 39. To search the internet for pictures of cats, turn to section 84.
Section 39. You start the process with a local needs assessment to see what services are already provided, and which aren’t appropriate (e.g., medical advice). Through this process you identify two areas of focus for the collection.
To choose wellbeing resources and reading for pleasure, turn to section 19. To choose fashion advice and scone recipes, turn to section 32.
Section 19. The initial stages of the project have successfully identified two main areas for the collection to focus on—wellbeing resources and reading for pleasure. Unfortunately, there is no budget for this pilot project so you will have to be resourceful when sourcing books.
To make all the books yourself in your breaktimes, turn to section 11. To access the enormous resources of the CSF, turn to section 2.
Section 2. Due to the Bodleian Library’s standing as a legal deposit library there is a wealth of non-academic texts available to any Bodleian reader via the CSF. These items are, however, predominantly Library Use Only so can’t be taken out of the library on loan. You choose a selection of shorter texts that can be read quickly or flicked through in order to make the collection more engaging and accessible.
How do you choose to record this information?
To create a series of tables, turn to section 44. To whisper them into a colleague’s ear, turn to section 63.
Section 44. You create a series of tables that contain all the relevant information for the chosen titles. In order to ensure the collection can be easily maintained by colleagues after you have finished your traineeship, you include all the information required to request them from the CSF as well as costs so that if funds are available in the future they can be purchased. You are almost ready to assemble your collection and locate a small bookcase from the Duke Humphrey’s library for the display.
The Old Bodleian wellbeing collection.
Where are you going to place the bookshelf?
To tuck the bookshelf under the arm of Bodley’s statue in the quad, turn to section 43. To place the bookshelf on a bright and accessible stairwell, turn to section 74.
Section 74. You choose a bright and accessible staircase for the physical location for the collection. It is outside of the reading room environment but still within the library.
How will you advertise the collection?
To create a series of bright posters and bookmarks, turn to section 29. To take out small weekly adverts in Oxford Mail, turn to section 9.
Section 29. Using Canva you create a series of colourful, eye-catching posters and bookmarks which introduce the new collection to library users. You also signpost other available support such as the Counselling Service.
Congratulations! Your Wellbeing Collection is in place and is available for all Old Bodleian Library readers to access.
Jessica Hodgkinson: Mythical and Monstrous: Promoting Special Collections at New College Library
By Connie Hubbard
New College Library is home to a large collection of beautiful manuscripts and rare printed books which Jess made it her mission to further promote. She wanted to help provide access to special collections items and encourage people to engage with them, hoping to advance our knowledge about these books and manuscripts along the way.
Jess decided to focus in the main on curating an exhibition. She thought of a very cool theme for this—monsters and mythical creatures. Jess explained that she wanted to pick a topic which lots of people would be interested in.
Jess at the Mythical and Monstrous exhibition.
To find items to include in her exhibition, and to research their origins and significance, Jess scoured SOLO and the shelves, compiling an extensive list of fantastic, and fantastical, books to display. These included, for example, a sixteenth-century atlas illustrated throughout with mythical creatures, such as mermaids with buttocks (!), a fourteenth-century copy of the Book of Revelation full of monstrous miniatures like the horse-locusts of the apocalypse, and a thirteenth-century copy of Homer’s Illiad which has a drawing of the chimera added in the margins.
Of course, an exhibition would not be an exhibition without a few goodies to go with it. Jess designed postcards and bookmarks using images of the most remarkable illustrations, featuring dragons, a blemmy (a humanoid creature with its face in its torso), and other fantastical beings. To advertise her exhibition, Jess designed a poster which other trainees very kindly displayed in their libraries, sent out emails, and posted on social media.
Jess’ exhibition, entitled Mythical and Monstrous: Fantastical Creatures at New College Library, was a huge success. It ran on two separate occasions and welcomed over 200 visitors.
In addition to the exhibition, Jess also wrote a piece for New College Notes, the scholarly e-journal of New College, Oxford. The article is about New College, MS 287 which was written for King Henry VIII and presented to him as a gift on New Year’s Day 1515. Jess included this manuscript in her Mythical and Monstrous exhibition because it contains a doodle of Pegasus, the winged horse-god of Greek myth, on the first page. Studying the book closely, Jess also discovered something scratched into the margins of another page which had never been noticed before. John Barrett, technical lead of the Bodleian Libraries’ ARCHiOx (Analysing and Recording Cultural Heritage in Oxford) project, was able to make a recording of the addition, revealing it in even greater detail. Jess and her colleagues now believe that the addition could contain the Henry VIII’s name! If you’d like to read more about this exciting discovery, check out Jess’ piece for New College Notes, which is freely available online to everyone.
Keep an eye out for the final output of Jess’ project, a video about New College, MS 255 for the library’s Curator’s Choice series, in the coming weeks! Jess will be continuing her work with special collections at New College Library as she transitions in to her new role as the Special Collections Curatorial Assistant in September.
As a final goodbye from the Trainees of the year 22-23 we thought we’d share with you a look at some of the trainee projects which were presented at the showcase this year! These descriptions, each written by another trainee who viewed the original presentation, are designed to give you a flavour of what our year with the Bodleian and College libraries have been like.
Jenna Ilett: Creating an interactive map of the Nizami Ganjavi Library
By Alice S
Kicking off our Trainee showcase with a bang, Jenna’s presentation hit all the right buttons. With an amusing title and appropriately themed presentation, Jenna talked us through the ins and outs of coding an interactive map, complete with hoverable shelfmark labels!
The inspiration for this project came from a slew of wayfinding projects that have been taking place across the ‘Section 3’ Libraries (which include the Taylor, The Art Archelogy and Ancient World and the Nizami Ganjavi libraries) as well as Jenna’s own background in tech thanks to a GCSE in Computer Science and a module in Web Design during her undergraduate degree.
Using Inkscape, Jenna made the underlying vector graphic for the map itself, working off a previous design, but keeping the styling consistent with maps currently available at the AAAW Library. She used the feedback she received to refine her design before moving on to the coding itself.
The coding was done on a code editor called CodePen which allowed her to keep track of the HTML, CSS and JavaScript code all in one view. Jenna whizzed us through an impressive array of coding tips including running through how she used tooltips to enable the hoverable shelfmarks to display over the appropriate shelves.
Remaining humble throughout, Jenna also treated us to an inside look at her thought processes in the form of increasingly anxious WhatsApp messages she had sent about her project to friends and colleagues, as well as a demonstration of a particular bug that caused her map to flip itself over when zoomed out, both of which earned a hearty chuckle from the audience. But with the amount of skilled work Jenna has put in already, the audience and I are in no doubt that Jenna will soon have the kinks worked out, and the Nizami Ganjavi Library will have a swanky new interactive map!
The most interesting thing I learnt from Jenna’s presentation would probably have to be the benefits of scalable vector graphics. As someone who has all too often fallen foul of the perils of trying to resize images only to be left with a grainy and illegible mess, it’s great to know that using a vector graphic will allow me to scale an image to any size my heart could desire. Through the magic of mathematical graphing it preserves the shape and position of a line so that it can be viewed at any scale. Thanks to Jenna for a fabulous presentation and enlightening me to the wonders of vector graphics!
Alice Zamboni: Audio-visual archive of former Prime Minister Edward Heath
By Charlie
The second presentation of the day came from Alice Zamboni, one of the two Digital Archivist trainees based for two years with the Special Collections team at the Weston Library. Alice’s project was concerned with adding the audio-visual material donated by former Conservative Prime Minister Edward (Ted) Heath to our catalogue.
Edward Heath outside No.10
As with most of his predecessors and successors in the role of Prime Minister since the Second World War, Ted Heath began his political involvement at Oxford, studying PPE at Balliol College and winning the Presidency of the Oxford Union in 1937. Therefore, it is no surprise that the Bodleian chose to purchase his personal archive in 2011 to add to its collection. Covering mainly the period from the mid-1970s to the early 2000s, Alice related how many of the cassettes and tape reels held information on music and yacht racing connected to the love of European culture which inspired Heath’s drive – and eventual success – to gain admission for the UK in the European Community in 1973.
Most of the material was held in analogue formats so Alice’s first step before cataloguing was to convert them into digital MP3 files. Then, one of the main challenges she faced was that the sheer scale of the material (481 tapes some up to ninety minutes long) meant that not every recording could be listened to in its entirety. An educated assessment on the contents, and how it should be catalogued, had to be made from listening to a portion of each. This allowed some of the material, such as recordings made from radio programmes, to be weeded out of the collection.
Perhaps the most interested thing I learned from Alice’s talk was the broad scope of Heath’s recordings, including some in foreign languages. One interestingly was in Mandarin Chinese, and of a children’s programme on learning languages.
As with most of the trainee projects, there is always more to be done after the showcase and Alice’s next main step is to place the original tapes back into boxes according to how she has catalogued them. An even longer-term plan for ensuring that the archive can be opened to researchers is acquiring the rights for many tapes recorded from musical recitals, for instance, where the copyright is owned by the composer or conductor rather than Heath himself.
Miranda Scarlata: Web archiving and the invasion of Ukraine.
By Jenna
Although the phrase ‘once it’s on the internet, it’s there forever,’ is common, Miranda’s talk highlighted the ephemeral and volatile nature of websites, and the importance of capturing and preserving information from these sites.
Although it would be impossible to capture every single website in existence, there are times when the digital archivists undertake a rapid response project – for example capturing information on Covid-19, or the ongoing war in Ukraine – the latter being the focus of Miranda’s talk.
Soon after the Russian invasion of Ukraine (on the 24th of January 2022), the Digital Archivist team launched a rapid response project to preserve information regarding Ukrainian life and culture, as well as the war itself, which was at risk of being lost. A campaign was launched that asked people to nominate websites that fit certain criteria.
Miranda discussed some of the challenges involved in a project like this. Although 53 sites were nominated, only 21 were deemed viable. Twitter accounts of Ukrainian citizens were also included, and additional news, cultural and war specific sites were crawled, leading to a total of 72 sites. There is a limit on how many sites can be preserved due to the strict data budget, which means that difficult decisions had to be made about what to prioritise. Another added level of complexity was the limited Ukrainian and Russian language skills within the department, which made it difficult to determine types of content and assign metadata tags.
The normal processes when archiving websites involves contacting site owners to obtain permission before beginning the capturing process, but due to the high risk of information loss, site owners were contacted after capturing the sites to gain permission for publication. With the help of a Ukrainian and Russian speaking intern, site owners were contacted, but there was an understandable lack of response given that many of the site owners would have been directly impacted by the war.
Miranda’s talk was a fascinating insight into the world of digital archiving and the challenges within, particularly with the more arduous and intricate rapid response projects, which are hugely important when it comes to capturing important events as they are happening.
The most interesting thing I learnt was that digital archiving involves capturing a functional version of the site that could continue to exist even if the original host site was removed, rather than a static capture, which leads to added complexity when it comes to external links and embedded content.
If you are interested in this project and want to nominate a website for archiving please fil in the nomination form here: BEAM | Nominate for archiving (ox.ac.uk)
Caitlín Kane: Maleficia: Curating a public exhibition at New College Library
By Alice Z
In her talk on the exhibition that she undertook as her trainee project, Caitlín focused on her experience of organising and curating the exhibition of rare books and manuscripts from the collection at New College. A chance encounter with the New College copy of Malleus Maleficarum (The Hammer of Witches), a well-known 15th century treatise about witchcraft, sparked in Caitlin the idea of organising a display of special collections about magic, witchcraft, and astrology.
The Maleficia exhibition at New College
The promotional material devised by Caitlín to advertise the exhibition on social media and in print was what stood out most for its originality and it is clearly something that contributed to making the exhibition a success in terms of visitor numbers. I think the most interesting thing I learned from her talk was how you can create moving graphics using services such as Canva and how these can be used on social media to promote events such as exhibitions.
Caitlín reflected on some of the logistical challenges of organising this kind of collection-focused public engagement event, such as the selection of material and collection interpretation. For one thing, identifying relevant material from New College’s collection of manuscripts was more difficult in the absence of an online catalogue. Without the benefits of a neatly catalogued SOLO record to guide her, she was required to rely on previous staff members’ handlists as well as serendipitous browsing of New College’s rare books shelves.
Another aspect of the exhibition she touched upon was the interpretation of the materials. It was important for the labels accompanying the items on display to strike the right balance between content and context. Providing insights into the objects themselves was key, especially as many were texts written in Latin, but so was giving visitors enough background on the early modern philosophical and theological debates underpinning witchcraft.
Caitlin’s work clearly resulted in a fascinating and well-attended exhibition, and she was able to make great advances in increasing awareness of some of the amazing collections held by her library.
Abby Evans: Professor Napier and the English Faculty Library
By Miranda
Abby’s trainee project concerned a fascinating collection of dissertations and offprints gathered by Professor Arthur Napier, a philologist and Professor at Merton College in 1885. Held by the English faculty library, this collection consists of 92 boxes
The Napier collection at the EFL
containing 1058 items that needed to be reassessed ahead of the library’s move to the new Schwarzman centre for the Humanities in 2025.
Her project showcased the speedy decisions and minute details that must be considered when working at a library as she had only two weeks to determine the content of the collection and assess what material was worthy of making the move to the new building. The process required lots of skimming through documents to understand their content, the deciphering of previous systems from librarians past, and a strong head for organisation!
The collection itself was also able to provide some insight into how the English Faculty used to operate. Many of the materials were annotated with small markings and references to an older organization involving different box numbers and labels.
The collection also surprisingly held works from female authors – a rarity for the time – but their work was clearly well-enough regarded that Professor Napier saw the benefit in collecting and preserving it in his collection.
The most interesting insight the Napier collection provided however is perhaps its demonstration of the of the workings of Royal Mail years gone by. The collection contained several items which bore evidence of travelling through the UK postal system, some which were simply folded up with the address written on the back – no envelope required! Additionally, a simple name and general neighbourhood were enough to get the letter to its intended location, postcodes clearly had yet to hit it off!
Overall, Abby’s talk demonstrated the myriad of small and large details that must be considered when continually maintaining library collections. And the efficiency with which she was able to work through the collection is an example to us all!
Morgan Ashby-Crane: Making Collections More Visible: Displays and Data Cleanup
By Caitlín
At the SSL, Morgan embarked on a mission to improve the visibility of collections, both in making items easier to locate within the library system, and in highlighting diverse voices in the collections.
During awareness months throughout the year they curated book displays which allowed them to improve the circulation and physical accessibility of collections such as those for Black and LGBTQ+ History. For Black History Month, they asked subject librarians to recommend a book with an accompanying caption. Morgan then curated the display, and added QR codes linked to e-resources that the subject librarians recommended. They then collated these into a post on the SSL blog to reach those who couldn’t access the display physically.
The SSL Display for Black History Month
For LGBT+ History month, Morgan organised another pop-up display, but this time the focus was on recommendations from readers in previous years. One of the most interesting ideas I gleaned from Morgan’s presentation was their approach in designing new recommendation slips for readers to fill in and recommend their own books to make sure the displays stayed relevant to reader interests. As books were borrowed and recommendation slips filled in, Morgan was able to track the circulation of items and provide evidence of engagement.
Another way in which Morgan improved accessibility to the collections was in cleaning up data on Aleph, our old library system. Over the past few months, the trainees have been busy helping our libraries prepare for the changeover to a new library system, Alma. With thousands of records being transferred across, a lot of data clean-up has been required to make sure records display correctly in the new system.
Some outdated process statuses, such as AM (Apply Staff – Music), can be left attached to records long after they fall out of use. Other books, that are on the shelves to be loaned, can be left marked as BD (At bindery). To single out any irregularities, Morgan made a collection code report to see if any items stood out as unusual. When items appeared under unusual process statuses, Morgan investigated them further to see if their statuses needed changing.
Similarly, some items without shelfmarks had slipped under the radar, and Morgan set about adding them back to the books’ holdings records. They worked backwards from potential Library of Congress classifications to figure out where the books might be on the shelves and, once they’d identified the physical shelfmark, restored it to the item’s holdings record. These data cleanup tasks will make it easier both for readers in locating the items they need and will help the collections transition smoothly from Aleph to Alma.
Ruth Holliday: Investigating the Christ Church Library Donors: Research and rabbit holes
By Abby
For her presentation, Ruth discussed her project to research donors to Christ Church’s ‘New Library’, with a particular focus on their links to slavery. The incongruously named New Library was constructed between 1717 and 1772, and over 300 benefactors contributed to the project! Given the time constraints involved, in this presentation Ruth chose to focus on just three:
The book Ruth used to research the library finances
The first donor Ruth spoke about was Noel Broxholme, a physician and an alumnus of Christ Church, who during his time there was one of the first recipients of the Radcliffe travelling fellowship. This was a grant established by Dr John Radcliffe (a rather omnipresent figure in Oxford) that required medical students to spend years studying medicine in a foreign country. Ruth was able to establish that at one time Doctor Broxholme was paid for his services not in cash, but instead in ‘Mississippi stock’. As one might be able to deduce from the name, this was effectively shares in companies who had strong ties to the slave trade.
The next donor Ruth discussed was George Smallridge, Bishop of Bristol. Again, we have a man whose profession is seemingly at odds with involvement in the trade of human lives. However, as part of his donation for the foundation of the new library he included two lottery tickets. One of the prize options for that lottery was South Sea Stock – more shares with ties to the slave trade. It has proven difficult to determine whether the tickets he donated were, in fact, winning tickets, or whether they were ever cashed in, but once again the foundation of this library has found itself fiscally linked to slavery.
The final donor to feature in Ruth’s presentation was Charles Doulgas, 3rd Duke of Queensbury, whose financial investments included shares in the British Linen Company. Whilst British linen does not ostensibly appear to have clear ties to slavery – being both grown and manufactured domestically by paid labour – there is in fact a significant connection. Whilst cotton was becoming the more popular fabric for textile production in the mid-late eighteenth century, the fabric was seen as too good to be used to clothe the people forced to grow it. As such, linen, in its cheapest and least comfortable format, was exported in droves to be used to clothe the slaves labouring on cotton plantations.
What all these donor case studies in Ruth’s fascinating presentation showed, and probably the most interesting thing I learned, was how enmeshed slavery was in the eighteenth-century economy. Whether in the form of shares received in lieu of payment, shares won as prizes, or as custom to the textile industry it was growing to dominate, Ruth’s project demonstrated that making money in the eighteenth century was almost inextricably tied to slavery.
Rose Zhang: As She Likes It: The Woman who Gatecrashed the Oxford Union
By Morgan
Rose’s project and subsequent presentation touched on a captivating aspect of the history of women at Oxford. As the trainee for the Oxford Union, she undertook some first-hand research on an unusual event in the early history of women’s involvement in the Union’s debates.
A Union Poll sparked by the admission of women to the Society
Rose first gave us a summary of the Union’s history. Set up in 1823 (and therefore currently celebrating their bicentenary), The Oxford Union has been famous (and infamous) for its dedication to free speech over the years. As women were only formally admitted to the University itself in 1920, it is unsurprising that they were also barred from entry to the Union debating society. This restriction against women members continued until well into the latter half of the 20th century, although rules had become laxer by this point, allowing women into the debating hall itself, but only in the upper galleries.
By the 1960s, there was increasing pressure from female students who wished to access the main floor of the debating hall, rather than be confined to the gallery, where they were expected to be silent, and could not get a good view of the proceedings. The pressure built to a point in 1961, when two students achieved national press coverage for their successful gate-crashing of the debating chamber, which they did in disguise as men!
Rose gave us a captivating account of the gatecrashing, using newspaper clippings from the time and information from one of the gatecrashes herself, Jenny Grove (now a published journalist), to really bring this moment of Oxford History to life. One of the most interesting things I learned from Rose’s presentation was how library projects can handle, preserve and communicate data that’s less discrete – which tied in well with our keynote talk from Phillip Roberts, especially focussed on how heritage organisations have a power to preserve and convey stories that otherwise might be suppressed or overlooked.
Thankfully, the actions of Jenny grove and her co-conspirator Rose Dugdale were successful in bringing wider attention to the issue, and within two years successive votes won women the right to be full and contributing union members.
Rose’s presentation on this project was interesting not just for such a fascinating bit of history, told with good humour, but also for how it differed to most trainee projects methodologically in using first-hand oral histories to bring context to her library and its collections.
Grace Exley: Creating online exhibitions
By Ruth
One of the later presentations in the day, Grace kept the energy flowing as she discussed her experience creating online exhibitions. The inspiration for Grace’s project was accessibility. While Jesus College puts on termly exhibitions in the Fellows’ Library, not everyone can make it on the day, and having some kind of record of past exhibitions would be beneficial to many.
A screenshot of one of the pages of Grace’s ‘Botanical Books’ Exhibition
Taking the initiative, Grace sought out training on how to curate and manage online exhibitions. She worked her way through a course which introduced her to the platform Omeka. Using Omeka, visitors can scroll through photos of the exhibition items and read captions for each one, making it both a great way to experience exhibitions that you cannot make it to physically, and a way of preserving physical exhibitions in a digital space.
With this new knowledge at her fingertips, Grace set out to organise her own exhibitions that she would subsequently upload to the Jesus College website using the Omeka platform. The books that featured in these exhibitions were selected by Grace from the Fellows’ Library at Jesus College – a stunning 17th century room that holds 11,500 early printed books.
Grace told us about the botany exhibition she curated in Michaelmas term, which featured a first-time find of an inscription in John Parkinson’s Theatrum Botanicum. One of the most interesting things I learned from Grace’s presentation is that this is one of the very few books in the Fellows’ Library to have had its title page inscribed by a female owner, Elizabeth Burghess. From the style of the handwriting, we can tell that the signature is likely to have been penned near to the time of publication, though we don’t know for sure who Elizabeth Burghess was.
We were in a Jesus College lecture theatre for the showcase, and due to running ahead of our schedule we were able to sneak into the Fellows’ Library and look around. It’s a gorgeous space, and it was great to see where the exhibitions take place when they’re in 3D! If you’re interested, you can view Grace’s Botanical Books exhibition along with some of Jesus College’s other exhibitions on the website the Grace created here: Collections from the Fellows’ Library and Archives, at Jesus College Oxford (omeka.net)
Alice Shepherd: The Making of a Disability History LibGuide
By Rose
A screenshot of the draft Disability History LibGuide
A theme running through many of the trainee projects this year was accessibility, and Alice proved no exception. For her trainee project, she worked on creating a LibGuide on Disability History, to help people find resources relevant to researching that topic.
A LibGuide is an online collection of resources that aims to provide insights into a specific topic of interest. They are created across all Bodleian Libraries and often act as a launch pad for a particular subject to signpost readers to the plethora of resources available. The resources for Alice’s LibGuide were largely collated during a Hackathon event organised by the Bodleian Libraries team, during which 36 volunteers shared their expertise on Disability History and put together a list of over 231 relevant electronic resources on this topic.
Alice started by working through this long list of resources. She spent a considerable amount of time cleaning, screening, and processing the data collected at the Hackathon. Specifically, she removed website links that were no longer active, evaluated the quality of the materials, and carefully selected those that were most appropriate and relevant to the topic of Disability History.
With this newly complied ‘shortlist’ of scholarly resources, Alice then started putting them together on the LibGuide website, adapting the standardised Bodleian LibGuide template to better fit the needs of researchers by including resources grouped by date, topic, and format. With the resources carefully curated and added to the LibGuide, Alice put some finishing touches on the guide by doing her own research to fill in some of the gaps left after the Hackathon.
There will be a soft launch of the LibGuide in the Disability History month this year. Although this LibGuide is mainly created for students and scholars with research interests in Disability History, the LibGuide will be available to the public as a valuable educational resource.
Charlie Ough: Duke Humfrey’s Library Open Shelf Collections
By Grace
As the trainee for the Bodleian Old Library, Charlie gets the tremendous pleasure of working in the Medieval precursor to Oxford’s centralised Bodleian libraries, Duke Humfrey’s Library.
A view of Duke Humfrey’s Library
Whilst the setting and atmosphere may be one of academic serenity, after a few months of working there, Charlie identified that something ought to be done to make the organisation of its Open Shelves Collection slightly less chaotic. He had found that books were difficult to locate, some were physically difficult to access, the shelf marks were confusing, and certain volumes from the collection were missing entirely.
With a plan in mind, the first task in addressing this issue was to create a comprehensive list of everything on the shelves. Part way through this venture, Charlie stumbled across a file hidden away in an archived shared folder from 2017 and discovered that a previous trainee had already make a handlist for Duke Humfrey’s. This saved lots of time and allowed him to focus on making improvements to this cache of information by slimming it down, rearranging it according to area, and dividing it into different sections.
During this time Chalrie also designed and conducted a reader survey that was distributed within Duke Humfrey’s to determine who the main users of the library are, and whether they were there to use the Open shelf books specifically, or more because they enjoyed using the space. With the results of that survey to sort through and analyse, Charlie now has a permanent position working at the Bodleian Old Library and intends to continue working with the Duke Humfrey’s Open Shelves Collection. His plans involve new shelf marks, updating the LibGuide, a complete stock check, and barcoding the collection.
The most interesting (and mildly terrifying) thing I learned from Charlie’s talk is that the population of cellar and common house spiders in the Duke Humfrey’s Library ceiling were intentionally introduced at the beginning of this century, to combat an infestation of deathwatch beetle that was burrowing into the wooden beams and panels. In fact, the spiders still thrive there to this day! Not something to think about when you’re peacefully studying in the picturesque Duke Humfrey’s Reading Room…
Hello! Unfortunately, due to testing positive for Covid a few days before the Showcase, I was not able to attend and present my project. I will therefore attempt to re-create it as this blog post. By way of introduction, my name is Katie and I have been the graduate trainee 2.0 for the Social Science Library for 5 months and counting. My experience with the Bodleian began on a boring and drizzly Monday working from home, when I very unexpectedly received a call asking if I was still interested in working as the SSL graduate trainee for 6 months. I said very much so yes please, and a few weeks later packed my bags and moved from Derbyshire to Oxford. A quick disclaimer…I have not managed to undertake a formal project in my 5 months, so will talk about some core (hopefully interesting) mini projects which I have thoroughly enjoyed working on in this time.
First up: promotional campaigns. Every week in term time, we have a ‘promotional campaign’ – this involves creating a blog post, entry gate poster, LCD screen display, entrance display stand, Facebook post and Tweet, all around one central theme. For the third week of Trinity Term, I made a campaign on ‘Wellbeing’. To start, I created an entrance display stand which pointed out spaces to relax in around the SSL. These included the upstairs café, multiple seating areas in the building, the vending machine area, and green areas such as University Parks and the Botanical Gardens – with the help of Google Maps, I included how many minutes it takes to walk there so students could plan their study breaks accordingly. Whilst on my issue desk shifts I saw a total of 3 people stop to read it, which I consider a small but satisfying success! My entrance stand poster pointed out the vending machines upstairs (as they are a bit hidden), whilst also cheekily reinforcing that food or non-KeepCup drinks should not be brought into the library… A problem I encountered with my LCD display, which aimed to show the different counselling services provided by the University, was how to visually represent counselling support – when choosing my background images, for example, I didn’t want to evoke any sort of stereotype or negativity. I could have made it a plain display but this would not be very eye-catching. In the end, I went with a photograph of a tree at the beginning of dawn, as I thought this suitably aesthetic whilst also conveying a sense of hope and positivity.
I had a similar issue with representing the idea of ‘health’ in my second promotional campaign, which was titled ‘Sources of Help for Exam Pressure’. For my LCD display, I created a range of tips for how to keep healthy during exam season, such as not drinking too much coffee (super hypocritical!) and some good brain foods to snack on (outside the library of course…). My problem was that health looks different for everyone, so I didn’t want a picture of someone working out or eating a salad as my title slide. After a lot of digging on Pixabay, I found a picture of a woman happily leaping in the air on a hiking trail, and decided this was an acceptable way to represent ‘healthy’ – having the energy and peace of mind to do things you enjoy.
Whilst researching for this campaign, I discovered that the University Counselling Service has a range of free podcasts tackling issues around exam stress, such as anxiety and pre-exam insomnia. They also run free online and in-person workshops, titled things like ‘ACT-Based Anxiety Group’ and ‘Can’t Work’. For my entrance display stand, I aimed to make passers-by aware that this support exists. I created QR codes to take them directly to the website, in case they wanted more information or to sign up. I also featured these workshops and podcasts in more detail for my blog post on ‘Sources of Help for Exam Stress’. I have included my original presentation slides illustrating the full campaigns below:
I will now move on from this topic to discuss a task I was not expecting – hosting a work experience student for several mornings/afternoons across a week. This was something I was quite nervous about, as to have someone watching and learning from me felt a bit of a responsibility. I also found it quite a challenge to talk engagingly for long periods of time, especially in the morning! However, I think I managed to give them a good overview of my day-to-day tasks, and there was some opportunity for them to get hands-on experience with supervision. To prevent it getting too repetitive for them, I thought it might be nice if they could take the lead on a project – creating a Pride Month Display. They were able to select the titles themselves on SOLO, locate them on the shelves, arrange them in display form, and together we created the display graphics. They could then take photos of what we had made and take this back to school. All in all, it was a great experience (hopefully they thought so too!) and helped me to practice some rather lacking leadership skills…The strangest part was when I was asked to help fill in their work experience journal, which involved answering questions such as ‘how did you get where you are today?’ and ‘what skills do you need for your job?’. I had to scramble for a more helpful answer than ‘I’m not sure really…’, but it also gave me a moment to feel happy and grateful for what I have achieved.
Something I have found quite challenging whilst working as a graduate library trainee is helping test the new library management system ALMA. I first started with the ‘advanced search’ function, trying to use it to generate reports on things like how many books are out on loan, how many patrons owe money to the library etc. In the majority of cases, I was unsuccessful. I found it quite difficult to say whether it was me or the system who was wrong. It was also a challenge figuring out how to write understandable test ‘scripts’ which recorded exactly what steps I took, followed by the outcomes and whether these met my intended goal. I’m not sure my contribution was very helpful, but thankfully I did a bit better with testing user loan periods. I found this much easier, as I simply had to record whether the different user types had been given the correct number of days to return different loan types. The only slight hiccup was that the developers were still working on it at the same time I was testing, so the results sometimes changed day by day. It was certainly eye-opening to see the vast number of different users we have at the Bodleian!
And to conclude, something I have really enjoyed during my traineeship is helping out with the move of the Tylor Library to the SSL. For a number of weeks, we have had long rows of stacked green crates filling the library isles, and lots of empty spaces on our shelves to hold the new books. Initially, my role was to help with the physical re-processing of any Tylor items that were requested whilst still in the crates. This involved digging the book out, covering the old Tylor book plate with an SSL one and adding a spine trigger. If the reader had requested the book via email I could place a hold on it for them, but if they asked for it over the issue desk I would frantically try to remember what they look like and track them down somewhere in the library. The start-to-end process felt very rewarding. Later, I was asked to help the PADS team with processing the thesis collection. I was therefore loading trolleys full of big, musty theses, re-processing and then reshelving them, which really left my arms aching by the end of the day!
Well, we’re into the final month of our trainee year, and our trainee showcase has been and gone. Here are some of the things the organising team did to get everything in place for the big day.
Arranged a guest speaker. Making libraries more inclusive and accessible has been a recurring theme of our year, so we were really excited when Helen Worrell (Archaeology & Anthropology Librarian and Equality, Diversity, and Inclusivity Coordinator) agreed to speak to us about her work leading the EDI project ‘Changing the Narrative: Championing Inclusive Collection Development.’ We were also lucky to have Antony Brewerton (Associate Director for Academic Library Services and Keeper of Collections) speak to us about the traineeship and beyond at the end of the day.
Invited everyone we knew – or at least, everyone the trainees had worked closely with over the course of the year, as well as any former trainees remaining in Oxford. We also had space to offer each trainee an invite for a non-Oxford guest – one brought a friend who was interested in librarianship, and another invited the former colleague who had helped them apply for the scheme. The showcase took place on what was otherwise a normal working day, so we knew we couldn’t expect everyone to join us for the whole day – to help accommodate this, we collected all the trainees’ presentation titles well in advance so we could send out a draft programme along with the initial invitations.
Used RSVPs to plan refreshments. We included a question about dietary requirements in our RSVP, and kept track of this information alongside who was coming and for how much of the day. This meant that we had a clear understanding of what would be needed on the day, and liaised with Craig at the SSL to place an order with the Manor Road Building’s catering team. Unfortunately there were some issues with how this turned out on the day – we’re looking into it, and will come back to this post if we find a way to avoid this in future.
Scoped out the location. We visited the Manor Road Lecture Theatre ahead of the big day in order to have a look at the size and layout of the room, where the refreshments would be located, and to explore the logistics of holding the showcase both in-person and over Teams. This was a really useful thing to do – although we’d advise remembering to communicate what you find out to the rest of the trainees before the entire organising team goes on annual leave for part of July. Sorry, guys.
Designed a programme – with trainee contributions! Since not everyone in the audience had worked with us all, each trainee wrote a short paragraph reflecting on their year to give some introduction to the new faces. We decided to use a panel-type structure for the showcase, with three or four presentations followed by a round of questions and discussion. This allowed us to find some common ground between what was an incredible variety of projects – key themes of the day included institutional memory and the passing-on of information and skills, and various experiences of working with and presenting special collections materials. Encouraging the trainees to have questions planned for each other seemed to help with getting the ball rolling on the discussion segments.
Hosted a hybrid event. This was easier than we expected and proved to be a useful option for colleagues who couldn’t attend in person – we’d recommend taking some time ahead of the day to get to grips with how everything works. We collected everyone’s presentation slides on a USB in advance of the showcase, and one of us was on tech duty during each session, transitioning between presentations and ensuring the Teams call was running smoothly. Another of us introduced each speaker and handled the question sessions, and we tried to also have someone situated at the back of the room, ready to run to the IT office to find out what was going on when things didn’t go to plan (like when the entire building’s internet gave up mid-presentation). Our trainee twitter team also live-tweeted throughout the day, and we even had a guest tweeter from the Bodleian social media team in the morning!
A huge thanks goes out to everyone who helped out in advance or on the day, and to everyone who came to support us. Click the read-more for a roundup of this year’s trainee projects, with links to blog posts by those who were unable to present on the day.
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