The Next Few Posts

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.

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! 

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.

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.

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.