Training sessions

by Catherine Birch

The Maison Française d’Oxford (MFO) is a bit of a hidden gem – you might walk right past without knowing it’s there. It’s only twenty minutes’ walk from the city centre, and a short distance away from various university buildings, but most people aren’t aware it exists. I certainly wasn’t, until our trainee cohort got in contact with the librarian, who was kind enough to offer us all a tour.

We met Janet (the librarian) in the lobby, where she began our tour by giving us a brief overview of the MFO’s history and purpose. The Maison Française is a residential research institute at the heart of the university’s inclusive culture. It hosts an ever-changing cohort of international students and external academics, whose stays might last anything from six months to three years. It’s also open as a public library, and it frequently hosts exhibitions, conferences, and other events. It’s governed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in collaboration with the Universities of Paris and Oxford, making it a unique space among the rest of the university’s facilities. Notably, the Maison Française is not a Bodleian library, and it’s not associated with any particular college; it’s something all its own.

A wide shot of the interior of the library. The shelves are filled with french-language books on a variety of topics. There are sofas and tables for reading on. A portion of the new books table is visible. — *Books, old and new!*

A closer photo of the new books table and the shelves behind it. Books on a variety of topics have been arranged face-up on the table to display the title and cover. A sign says "New books Michaelmas 2025 and Hilary 2026", with the french translation above it. — *Books, old and new!*

Initial plans for a French cultural centre in Oxford date back to the start of the twentieth century, but it was only following WW2 that the project actually became feasible, and the MFO was founded in 1946 to consolidate British-French relations and to promote research collaborations across the Channel. These were humble beginnings: the original building was a tiny house rented from a college, there was only one British resident, and the library only had seventeen books in the collection! The project persisted, though, and a cohort of long-term residents and loyal readers slowly built up. The space slowly took on a unique role as a small French enclave in the middle of England, designed to emulate a Parisian bookshop in its atmosphere and its holdings. The early collections were mostly contemporary French literature, newspapers, and journals, although this began to diversify over time. This modern collection was very carefully curated to avoid overlapping heavily with the Taylor Institution, as the Maison Française wasn’t designed to be a subject library or teaching space, but a cultural hub. After two decades the collection had grown to over 17,000 items and the MFO moved to its current purpose-built location at 2-10 Norham Road.

Even having outgrown its unusual origins, the library is still a small operation, staffed by one librarian part-time. It’s far from the chaos of a college during term! Despite this, the main reading room has a friendly and comfortable vibe, full of quiet chatter. The little ‘open’ sign outside reminded us all of a bookshop, and that energy moves inside with you as you spot the new book display by the entrance and see what’s come in recently. Janet introduced us to the collections, showing us some examples of the original collection and highlighting how the range of material has evolved and shifted over time. While it’s a foreign language library, the collections aren’t limited to language and literary studies, and there’s books on just about every subject under the sun. This includes children’s fiction, and a few trainees were delighted to spot some of the Asterix books in the collection!

Janet then took us to the basement, where some of the lower-use items are kept. These include back issues of journals and newspapers, fragile books, and oversized items. There’s also a small archive collection tucked away in the basement, which mostly consists of institutional records and documents related to the institute’s past, but also some more unconventional objects. As part of its role as a cultural centre, the Maison Française holds a few patrimonial items on permanent loan, helping preserve aspects of Anglo-French culture and heritage. These items aren’t often brought out but can make for some very fun displays when they are – this death mask of Napoleon Bonaparte caught our attention. It’s not every day you come across an old French emperor behind the enquiry desk!

A death mask of Napoleon Bonaparte in a glass cabinet built into the wall. It is facing upwards (as though the person were lying on their back), and has a letter behind it in the case. A black and white architectural photo has been placed above the case as part of the exhibition on brutalism.

As mentioned, the Maison Française operates as a public lending library. It’s open to all readers equally, differentiating it from college and subject libraries, with a threefold user base of university members, external researchers, and the general public. Contending with the different needs of these groups is a careful balance, and the library really makes the most of the space and resources it has to keep readers coming back.

The MFO does have a collections development budget, and pretty much all the books they buy are ones that readers have specifically asked for (the list of requests gets longer every year!). In addition to this, a lot of their new material is also donated by academics, benefactors, or members of the public, which has really diversified the collection from its original focus on contemporary news and fiction. On average the library currently receives somewhere between 300-500 acquisitions a year – an impressive amount to process for such a small institute.

Janet also took us through some of their ongoing projects. Alongside the regular events, exhibitions, and seminars run by the wider MFO, the library is working to build links with schools and organisations around Oxford, to encourage language learning for children. The library has a wealth of children’s books and DVDs available to borrow, and they’re enthusiastic to share these resources more widely with the community. There’s also a long-term reclassification process happening, designed to rationalise at least six outdated in-house shelfmarks into one cohesive system (Dewey decimal, for anyone curious). This is a tricky process as there’s a lot of books to get through, and some items need their catalogue records amended during the process. The perils of accepting those large donations…

Speaking of donations, there’s good and bad news. The bad news is… some donated items never make it to the open shelves. In a small library like this one space is a constant issue, so weeding and careful stock intake is really important, because it ensures the open shelves are kept accessible and stocked with books readers actually use. While librarians would love to keep everything given to them, a lot of the time it’s just not feasible, and donated items might not enter the collection. (This applies to pretty much every academic library, not just the Maison Française.) The good news is… they’re free to a good home! The library has put together a free book table stocked with all the books removed from the collection, so that these items can find a new life somewhere else. According to Janet, it’s a very popular feature of the library, and even the most niche books end up being claimed.

With our tour finished and our libraries calling us back to work, the only thing left for the trainees to do was thank Janet for showing us around, register as readers ourselves, and pick out some books to borrow. Reading in French can be a bit of a challenge, but with a dictionary, a translate app, and a lot of determination, we’ll make it work.

The MFO’s collections are searchable on SOLO (although if you want to borrow anything, you’ll have to register specially), and they’re always ready to welcome new readers. For more information about the library and the institute in general, you can have a look at the Maison Française d’Oxford website, or head to Norham Road and take a look for yourself.

A photo of the outside of the MFO. It is a small grey brick building in a brutalist style, with a small front garden. The French flag and the EU flag are being flown from flagpoles on the roof.

A close-up shot of the front of the building where the words "Maison Française" are fixed to the brick.

P.S.

We’re aware that trainee interviews are coming up next week, and some of you might be last-minute prepping by looking through the blog. We hope this post gives you a good idea of the sort of opportunities you can arrange for yourself as a graduate trainee in Oxford! For more insight into the training, shadowing, and tours you have access to through a library traineeship, have a look at our ‘Training Sessions’ page. If you want to know more about what you’ll be doing day-to-day as a trainee, look at our archive of ‘Day in the Life’ posts from over the years. Finally, if you want some guidance on how the interview might go, look at this post on Library Interview Tips and Techniques from a few years ago. Good luck!

Adventures in Rare Books and Conservation

by Jules McGee-Russell

A highlight of being a trainee is the access to… well, training! Every Wednesday we have a different session, on topics such as cataloguing, supporting disabled readers, or using the Bodleian databases and software. This week, we were shown around the Conservation and Special Collections areas in the Weston Library, a.k.a where all the rare books magic happens!

The Weston Library holds the majority of all the special collections items within the Bodleian libraries, although much is also held at the Swindon Offsite Storage Facility (CSF). After dropping off our belongings in the lockers (no liquid or even pens allowed in the areas with rare books), we made our way to the conservation area for our introduction to conservation and collection care.

The workspace the conservation team use was bright and peaceful, with long desks lit by many big windows that overlook the city. Each workspace was full of mysterious implements: bone folders, brushes, Japanese paper, display shelves of crushed pigments. Dozens of grey archival boxes were stacked in piles, full of rare books and oddities.

An image of the conservator workspace. There are many windows, and tables covered with implements, boxes, and books.

An Introduction to Preventive Conservation

Our first talk was with Catherine, who works in Preventive Conservation, focusing on environmental pest control. There are many things in the environment that can damage a book, whether that is damp, mould, or as we saw – insects! For example, silverfish are very destructive and can do quite drastic damage to paper. They chew through natural fibres, leaving a distinctive lacy pattern behind.

Furniture beetles (otherwise known as carpet beetles or book worms) are also a problem, as they chew straight through furniture like bookcases… and any books that are on them. Not a pleasant guest to have in your library! They bore through bookcases so thoroughly that you can line up the damage to determine which books were placed next to each other on a historical bookshelf. Luckily, this critter needs over 65% relative humidity to thrive, so it won’t visit our modern humidity-controlled collections.

Silverfish damage on a piece of paper. The item has been eaten away at the edges, leaving a 'lacy pattern' behind. Much of the text is also obscured as the surface of the paper has been eaten. — *Some calling cards of Silverfish…*

Furniture beetle damage on a piece of paper. There are thin but distinct lines through the paper where it has been bored into, and large chunks of the left side are missing. — …*and Furniture beetles*

Fun fact: If you look at the ‘frass’ left behind by a Furniture beetle under a microscope, it looks a bit like rice crispies!

A Genizah Conservation Project

We were then introduced to two conservators working on a long-term rebinding project. This three-year conservation project is focused on preserving items from a Genizah in Cairo for future study. A Genizah is a place in a Jewish synagogue where documents are stored before being ritually buried, as it is forbidden to throw away writing containing the name of God. Typically, items are only stored for 7 years, but the Cairo Genizah contains additions from over 1000 years! There is a huge collection of religious and secular works in around 10 languages (mostly Hebrew and Arabic).

The conservation work in process. A guardbook is help open by book weights on a stand, with several tools and materials laid out next to it. — *A guardbook being worked on*

Many of these valuable paper fragments were bound together into volumes called ‘guardbooks’. The interesting thing is, guardbooks can house texts next to each other which have no intellectual connection, or shared language. The same text could continue in different places within the same guardbook, or across several different guardbooks entirely. These might even be held in different institution’s collections. The University of Cambridge, for example, currently has the largest single unified collection – around 200,000 items from the same Genizah our conservators are working on.

A fascicule. A large A1 book is open - the left page is blank, and the right page contains a mounted piece of old paper and a shelfmark. — *A fascicule containing material from the Genizah*

As part of this project, the conservators are working on rehousing these items – disbanding them and putting them into more permanent guardbooks. Some are also put into ‘fascicules’, which are like large A1 pamphlets, where the historic paper is mounted and then attached to the pages flexibly. This means that the pages can be opened flat and examined without damage, whereas the previous bindings could only be opened carefully to a V.

But if the conservators are rebinding the fragments anyway, why don’t they reunite the parts of a text that have been bound in separate guardbooks? Surprisingly, it’s not simply because the papers are fragile. The conservators explained that they need to preserve the historic arrangement of texts in each guardbook, and the shelfmark they were originally classified under. This is so that all the previous research which references those shelfmarks will still make sense. Helpfully, many of the guardbooks have historic marginalia notes which mention where to look to find the rest of the text.

This is a huge project: there are around 12,500 leaves in this collection, and around 217 physical bindings to rehouse. The collection is heavily used and historically important. Many of the items are digitised, but readers and researchers still need to be able to access the originals. It was very interesting to learn more about this long-term conservation project!

Book Conservation – When to Repair?

We also were also shown three examples of individual books being conserved by the Assistant Book Conservator, Alice Evans. One of these examples was Tolkien’s copy of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Tolkien thoroughly annotated it and repaired it with tape – something we hope no reader will do to our books! In this case, despite the tape degrading over time and staining the book, the tape will not be removed or replaced with acid-free archive-safe tape. That’s because the value of this object for researchers comes from Tolkien’s interaction with it and the signs of use – including all the tape fragments. Who knows, someone might end up doing a PhD on his use of tape someday!

When repairing an object, one of the most useful tools is Japanese paper. This paper is harvested in a way that keeps the fibres long, and it is activated using only water. It’s non-intrusive and removable, making it perfect for conservation. Conservators want to preserve the signs of use, and the vulnerability of the object itself, repairing as minimally as possible in places with vulnerable edges or tears. You can see some of the long fibres from a torn edge of Japanese paper in this photo.

A piece of Japanese paper, torn at the edge so that its long fibres are visible.

As Alice told us, everything is degrading anyway. Conservators and curators weigh up what we want and need here and now, what is useful to us today. Those are the items they prioritise and conserve.

Introduction to Special Collections

The last part of the afternoon was a tour and talk with Chris Fletcher, Keeper of Special Collections. The tour included the Centre for Digital Scholarship, the Mackerras Reading Room, the rooftop patio, and a chat with one of the archivists, Frankie. Continuing our accidental Tolkien theme of the day, Frankie was working on cataloguing and digitising the Tolkien papers. There were tables full of rare items and historical objects, and yet more archive boxes of mysterious sizes. We saw Tolkien’s leather suitcases, and a box full of a surprisingly large collection of pipes!

An illustration of a large rodent eating a piece of fruit, in a somewhat menacing art style.

3D pop-up art books lined up in a row along a table. Each book contains a single geometric paper sculpture in a variety of colours and styles.

Then we were shown to a reading room where Chris had pulled out a selection of interesting Special Collections books. These included an 18^th Century book of animal and plant illustrations (which had the pictured vaguely horrifying rodent with green toenails), a series of 3D pop up Artist Books by Tamba Auerbach, and a copy of John Clare’s The Village Minstrel that contained a unique handwritten poem.

After that, the items got a little unusual. What makes a book a book? Bibliographic detail, a cover, publication date, author, contents, edition? If that’s what a book is, then Ted Hughes’ ‘Laureate’s Choice’ sherry bottle also fits the bill:

A bottle of 'Laureate's Choice' sherry. The visible portion of the label contains a title, an illustration of a bird and a laurel wreath, and a bottle number.

'Laureate's Choice' from a different angle.

As is traditional for a Poet Laureate, Hughes got his own barrel of sherry. This bottle has one of Hughes’ drawings reproduced on the label.

Then, there was my favourite item – the cheese book! Created by Ben Denzer, 20 Slices is a book where the pages are packaged American style cheese slices, bound with a cover. Denzer’s speciality is poking fun at, and interrogating, ideas of value. What better way do to this than to make the cheapest kind of cheese into a valuable art object and book?

A small square book, bound in yellow cloth, with '20 Slices' printed in on the front in blue lettering.

'20 Slices' open. Individually wrapped slices of American processed cheese bound into a book, with slight white discolouration at the corners.

The book was bought by Bodleian for £200 – £10 per slice of cheese. The copy we have is one of ten copies that exist, including the artist’s own copy. Denzer has refused to allow the Bodleian to replace the cheese with a replica cheese. When the time comes, the cheese pages will need to be replaced with more Kraft singles! Although that might not be for some time – when we saw the book, the cheese was 10 years old and still looked normal, with only a bit of white crumbling at the corners. American cheese is something else!

(If you’re interested, you can listen to an interview Ben did with BOOKNESS about 20 Slices here: S1 Ep2: BOOKNESS with Ben Denzer | University of Oxford Podcasts)

That rounds up our afternoon of rare books adventures! The day was a great introduction to what Archivists and Conservators do, and we saw many weird and wonderful items. The Bodleian’s collections are vast, and there is always something new to discover.

The 2026/27 trainee scheme is now open for applications, so we hope that our blogs will give you some insight into the work you might be doing. Good luck to anyone who will be applying!

The 2025/26 trainee cohort on the rooftop terrace of the Weston Library. — *The 2025/26 trainees!*

Lisez-vous Français?: the library at the Maison Française d’Oxford

P.S.

Insect Damage, Tolkien, and a Book of… Cheese?