Join the conversation with Twitter – an RSL event

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

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

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

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

HootSuite for @thelawbod

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

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

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

BIALL, CLSIG and SLA Europe Open Day 2013 part 2

Hello, Francesca here, Academic Services trainee at the Bodleian Law Library. Following on from Kat’s post, here’s a little of what I took away from the BIALL, CLSIG, and SLA Europe Open Day (acronyms helpfully explained by Kat below!) which we were lucky enough to attend at the CILIP head offices in London on Wednesday.

After a nice rush hour battle with the tube, I soon settled in to the talk by the first of the day’s nine speakers, each of whom gave a fascinating insight into their career paths to date. What I learnt immediately from Jacky Berry’s presentation was that there are a lot more sectors into which a professional qualification in Librarianship and Information can lead that I had imagined! Jacky’s experiences and suggestions for sectors to look in included Building and Architecture, MI5 and charities. The number of different job titles associated with the information profession is also never-ending, and it was interesting to learn of Jacky’s management of the recent redevelopment of the British Medical Association Library. It was an excellent eye-opener to the types of roles to look out for.

IALS Library. Image from Twitter.

I had however, gone into the day hoping to learn more about the Legal sector, whether as a law librarian in an academic institutiton, or as a researcher for a law firm. Working for the Bodleian Law Library has certainly inspired me to consider specialising withing the legal sector when I finish my traineeship, and gain my professional qualification.  Six of the day’s nine speakers either work or have worked as a law librarian or for a law firm, and we were given an insightful tour of the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies Library. Needless to say, I wasn’t disappointed with the amount of information given. (A little overwhelmed maybe, but now is the time to go away and process it!)

Two of the speakers were recent graduates, both recipients of the SLA Early Career Conference Award. Both now work as Information Officers for London law firms. It was interesting to hear from people not long ago in my position on how they got to where they are, and allowed me to see that it is something realistic for me to pursue, given my experience in the Bodleian Law Library, and my enrollment on the MScEcon Information and Library Studies at Aberystwyth University. Their talks gave extremely useful tips on how to make yourself stand out. Indeed, I am a little behind the times, and yet to open a Twitter account or a LinkedIn account. Marie Cannon’s talk reminded and persuaded me of the importance of these tools (when used sensibly!) in keeping up to date with developments in the sector, keeping in touch and making new connections with professionals, and in job hunting in all areas of librarianship. I shall be going home to create these this weekend! Sam Wiggins highlighted the usefulness of joining professional bodies, particularly for those in corporate sectors such as law, and trying your luck at applying for awards and bursaries such as the ECCA . ‘If you don’t ask (apply), you don’t get’!

There were also two talks from established Librarians, one from Emily Allbon, Law Librarian at City University Library, and one from Sandra Smythe, Senior Information Officer at a London law firm. It was extremely interesting (and again a little overwhelming!) to learn of the huge variety of tasks that Emily undertakes as City’s Law Librarian, from teaching and managing budgets to her work on creating Lawbore, a fanatastic directory for students of links to law resources on the web. I am still very much drawn towards attempting to stay working in an academic environment, as I thoroughly enjoy the interaction with students. However, like Kat, the idea of undertaking legal research is an inviting (if daunting!) challenge. Sandra discussed her past and current roles working for London law firms. The process of research has always been something I thoroughly enjoy, and whilst in an academic situation the students research for themselves, a role at a law firm would be a great opportunity to continue researching myself (albeit under quite demanding and time-pressured circumstances!)

As you can see, then, the open day has given me a lot of food for thought! I too would like to thank everyone involved, particularly those who spoke – the talks were thought-provoking and extremely useful at this point in my deciding what opportunities to seek, whether they end up being in the legal sector, or somewhere else. I also learnt that planning a path in the Information sector doesn’t always work, so we shall see! As mentioned by Kat, the presentations can be found on the CLSIG event pages.

BIALL, CLSIG, SLA Europe Open Day 2013 part 1

Kat Steiner here again, one of the graduate trainees at the Bodleian Law Library. On Wednesday, Frankie Marsden and I headed down to London for the BIALL, CLSIG, SLA Europe Open Day, a day of presentations and tours based at the CILIP headquarters near Russell Square. We thought we’d give you a few of our thoughts on the day, especially on what we individually will take away from it.

A few acronym explanations before we start. BIALL is the British and Irish Association of Law Librarians, CILIP is the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals, CLSIG is a special interest group within CILIP standing for Commercial, Legal and Scientific Information Group, and SLA Europe is the European and UK division of the Special Libraries Association. Still with me? Just the names alone were a lot to take in!

The Wellcome Library

Over the day, we heard 9 speakers, whose places of work included London law firms, the Law library of City University, the Wellcome Library, the British Medical Association, the Inner Temple, Linex (a company offering current awareness tools and aggregation for subscribers), and the British Library. It was fascinating to hear the stories of how they had reached their current jobs (often by a combination of luck, enthusiasm and perseverance), and their varied positions. It particularly stood out to me how many people mentioned TFPL, a recruitment agency, as being invaluable in helping them find jobs. I hadn’t heard of them, but I will definitely be looking into them now!

There was also the opportunity to go on a tour of either the Wiener Library, a collection for the study of the holocaust & genocide, the library of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, or the library of the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies. As Law Bod trainees, Frankie and I both chose the IALS, and enjoyed a detailed tour and talk by David Gee, the Deputy Librarian. As the library takes three graduate trainees every year, he had a lot of insight and suggestions for what to do afterwards if you are thinking of going into law librarianship.

Several speakers were also from law firm libraries, or law librarians in other institutions, and it was very interesting to hear about their jobs in detail. I hadn’t personally thought much about specialising, or moving away from academic librarianship (I’m hoping to stay at the Bodleian while I do my library school masters), but there definitely seemed to be a lot to recommend ‘special libraries’. The chance to do real legal research was very attractive to me as an academic challenge (at the Law Bod, students are expected to do their own research, although there are lots of classes to help them learn how to do it). However, I’m not sure I could cope with the increased pressure, longer hours and difficult deadlines that come along with it. The rather better pay might sweeten the pill, though.

The Inner Temple Library

The talk that really stood out for me was from Simon Barron, a Project Analyst at the British Library. He focused on the concept of  ’digital librarians’, and the way that technology is transforming the information profession and will continue to do so. In the days of ‘big data‘ (a current buzzword that I’m still not hugely clear on – in my understanding, it can mean data sets so large that they allow statistical programs to crunch through them and draw remarkably accurate conclusions without any attempt at explaining how the causation between the conclusions and the data works), librarians who can code, use technology, and be willing to learn new technological skills will be more and more in demand. He described his current project with the British Library and the Qatar Foundation to create a digital National Library of Qatar. This is an ambitious project, involving huge numbers of documents to be digitised, including 14th- and 15th-century Arabic manuscripts. Simon’s job seemed to involve a lot of technological problem-solving, for example ‘how do we get this data out of this piece of software and into this other piece of software without losing it, or having to do it by hand’. He explained that his coding knowledge was entirely self-taught through Codecademy and that, although he didn’t consider it his crowning achievement, his colleagues were still very impressed when he made a spreadsheet where the boxes change colour depending on the data you enter.

Simon’s talk made a big impression on me, and really confirmed my feeling that the MSc in Information Science is for me. I have some basic experience with coding good practice (a 10-week internship at a software company, writing code in Perl), and the main thing I took away is that it’s really not that hard or scary, it just requires logic, perseverance (read: stubbornness even when it doesn’t work), and the willingness to have a go even if you’re not sure what you’re doing. I believe anyone who really wants to can learn to use technology, but they may not see the point. Simon emphasised the use of technology to automate what would be fairly simple human processes. This is a great point – if you can automate a simple action on a computer (for example, removing formatting from a text file, or averaging each row in a spreadsheet), you not only save time, you make the process scaleable to much larger sets of data, which would take humans far too long to deal with, and you reduce the possibility of human error, as long as your code actually works!

Anyway, you can see that this made quite an impression. Another thing I will take away is how many things are worth joining to get more involved in the information profession. You can join CILIP for £38 a year if you’re a student or graduate trainee, definitely worth doing! You can join SLA (of which SLA Europe is a chapter) for $40 a year if you’re a student (even part-time, but I’m not sure about graduate trainees). You can join BIALL for £17 a year if you are a full-time student. You might want to consider registering with TFPL. SLA Europe offers an Early Career Conference Award, which three of the speakers had won, allowing them to go to amazing conferences in San Diego, Chicago and Philadelphia. BIALL also offers an award for the best library school dissertation on a legal topic. And, finally, Information Architect is a job title it might be worth looking out for.

That’s pretty much all I have to say for this post (I’ve waffled for more than long enough). Frankie will be talking about the aspects of the day that she really liked, and I’m sure they will be very different! I just want to thank everyone who helped organise the conference – it gave me loads to think about, allowed me to meet plenty of other graduate trainees, and generally have a great time. For anyone who wants a more general idea of the day – the slides from the presentations that everyone gave can be found on the CLSIG website.

Reflections on the Oxford-Cambridge College Libraries’ Conference

On Monday, some of the trainees had the opportunity to step in to the alternate universe that is Cambridge. The structural similarity of Oxford and Cambridge means that a lot of useful comparison and discussion can occur amongst the universities’ college libraries. Even within a group of ostensibly similar institutions, the conference really highlighted how different each college library is, in terms of number of staff, scope of the collection, integration in to wider college life, service to external readership—hearing the excellent papers and speaking with library staff throughout the day demonstrated the enormous energy and passion with which all the college libraries meet, exceed, and expand expectations on a daily basis.

Below are reflections on some of the many fascinating aspects of the day!

Katherine Steiner (Law Library):

One of the talks was by Amelie Roper, Charlotte Byrne and Steven Archer on ‘Unlocking the Old Library at Christ’s College, Cambridge’. They told the story of challenging their college’s expectations about the Old Library, built in the 19th-century and housing many unique and precious items in a 25,000-strong collection dating from the 11th-century onwards, a few of which were donated by the College’s re-founder Lady Margaret de Beaufort. Amelie, Charlotte and Steven explained that the Old Library was previously accessible only upon request, but now they have opened it to the public three afternoons a week, and are holding exhibitions and outreach events there on a regular basis. As well as the obvious benefits of increased numbers of people seeing the treasures of Christ’s (their statistics record the considerable footfall), they have really helped to integrate the Old Library’s history

into the life of the college again, so that now guest lectures and college events are planning receptions held in the Old Library. This in turn makes it more likely that the college will respect the uniqueness of the collection, and perhaps find some money for further exploration of it (much of it is in Arab

ic and other non-Latin scripts). I was very interested to hear about the interweaving of college and library, as well as the exciting ideas for exhibitions (including non-book items), the team at Christ’s’ foray into social media (they have a blog specifically about the Old Library, and a twitter and facebook page), and their great online guide to the Old Library.

Later in the day, I was lucky enough to be taken on a tour of the library itself, which did not disappoint. The Working library (built in 1974 and home to undergraduate texts, reading room space, computers etc) holds about 80,000 volumes on 3 floors, as well as a real skeleton. Among some of the items on display in the Old Library were notebooks by alumnus William Paley (known for his version of the design argument for the existence of God), a beautiful 15th-century illuminated copy of Euclid’s Elements in Latin, and some of Charles Darwin’s correspondence. Seeing some of these books and papers made me even more appreciative of the staff’s efforts in opening the place to the public – it is definitely worth a visit!

Olivia Cross (Oxford Union):

Being the trainee at the Oxford Union Library, it was fascinating to be given a tour of the Cambridge Union. The Librarian showed me and my two colleagues around the building and we soon noticed similarities and differences to our own beloved Union! The Cambridge Union similarly functions as a private members club, it houses many student debates and invites famous speakers to give talks to its members. Like the Oxford Union, it is an organization that is headed by students. Many of the rooms in the Union are very similar to ours, including the bar, snooker room and the debating chamber. One difference is that the Cambridge Union is in fact a registered charity. The best part of the tour (apart from the hot mug of coffee in their comfortable café bar!), was definitely being able to see the Keynes Library. Although it is a lot smaller than our Library, it is a lovely working space and provides many useful texts for its members. We were told that the South Wing of the Library was severely damaged by a bomb during the Second World War. You could even see holes in some of the books where pieces of shrapnel had pierced the spines and the covers! This tour was a brilliant experience and made the Oxford-Cambridge College Librarians Conference extra special.

Niall Sheekey (St. Hilda’s):

I was particularly interested in the presentation on RFID implementation. Having worked on a large-scale project in a University library previously, I was interested to see how a college library would go about this. As the machines are quite noisy when programming and printing tags it can be quite disturbing for students studying, making the timing of the implementation an important issue. In Birmingham we were able to do much of this in the staff area in the basement or a lesser used area of the library. Colleges are perhaps more hamstrung by perhaps having only one or two reading rooms and obviously shorter staffed. The options included to close the library for a period of three weeks in the summer and use a team of student workers to process the entire collection. This was done in two teams of four, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. My own experience tells me that this is a monotonous, laborious task which requires a high level of accuracy and concentration so attempting to do this in 7/8 hour shifts is not recommended.

RFID technology is relatively new and impressive and students were surprised by the ease of use. If looking to move to self-issue, 24 hour access or extended opening hours it is a more preferable option than the traditional magnetic strip, which is going out of date. The RFID tag can combine catalogue information as well as security settings. Some other advantages over this system included the decrease in false alarms that the old desensitising self-issue system caused, making student use easier and saving staff time from investigating these. However, if moving from this system to RFID tags it is important to deactivate old tags as they still might register if brought into other libraries. Stocktaking can also be performed without removing books from the shelf with the aid of a hand-held scanner that can read the tags by being waved across the spines (“Magic,” according to some students). Advanced settings can even tell if the books are in order!

Some other suggestions/considerations included running demos with a mixture of students, academics, IT and other staff to ensure that the machines are user-friendly. If planning RFID implementation it is important to consider the installation and long-term costs, such as annual maintenance. It was noted that the attractiveness of the system and the benefits for students and staff should justify the budget for such a project.

The trip to Gonville and Caius was very pleasant and we had the chance to view the gorgeous Lower Library containing a display of early printed books, manuscripts and oddly a log book of the wagers placed between college members  over the years– Examples, whether there were more than 50 members in college at that time or that England would be at peace within a month (dated December 1914!).  The Upper Library containing the undergraduate collection was just as spectacular, combining beautiful arched double-height ceilings and cathedralesque windows illuminating the long, narrow reading room with the added bonus of sockets at every desk, which beautiful old libraries are unfortunately not always able to provide.

All in all, we returned from “the other place” unscathed and got to interact and network with our fellow trainees and other library staff.

 

Library Trainee Day In the Life — Day 11

Looking back to my last post, I’m amazed that time has passed so quickly, and how pleasantly I have found myself in this mixture of routine and variety. Now that term has ended, the pace at the library has altered: with fewer reader enquiries, we have the opportunity to implement longer-term changes, like reorganising the English Literature section.

It also means I have dug out my ‘Day in the Life’ and am finally (!!) posting it on the blog. I chose to document a term-time Monday when, because the Librarian works four days a week, the Trainee is the sole member of staff. This means I often start my week with a reminder of both how much I’ve learned and how much I’ve yet to learn! As time progresses it’s been more of the former and less of the latter, but Mondays remain a unique challenge in the week.

8.55: Arrive. The run up the stairs is my daily exercise.

9.00:  Check the Periodicals Room.

The Periodicals Room is one of the reading rooms of the Meyricke Library. Its desks are cleared first thing every morning to ensure that readers can always find a place to sit. Elsewhere in the library, students may leave ‘Please Leave’ notes to reserve their desks.

9.10: Check emails. Nothing needs to be dealt with immediately, so I scoot ‘round the return points (one by every entrance to the library and a Book Returns box in the hall) and tidy the desks. I separate the returns according to their respective floors, return and re-shelve those in the Lower Library and the Lower Library Gallery.

9.30: Return to my emails, process a book recall, answer a few reader queries, open post that arrived over the weekend.

Opening post in a library often feels like Christmas, especially since I usually get books for Christmas. Today’s present is five issues of a Welsh journal called Ysgrifau Beirniadol, or ‘Critical Essays.’  To get a sense of what I am dealing with I take out my friends Dictionary and Google Translate. Between them and my term and a half of Welsh lessons, I discover where in the Celtic Library they should live.  I cover, stamp, and bookplate them and update their ‘On order’ status on Aleph.

11.00-12.00: Issue desk duty in the Upper Library

Jesus Library is entirely self-service, but this term I’ve been in one of the reading rooms for an hour each morning. Having library staff as a visible presence within the library has meant readers can ask for help more quickly and easily, and that I can spot when someone is looking lost or confused. It also has a positive impact on levels of noise and disruption. I do the second half of my shelving at this point.

12.05: Check post.

12.10:Work on ongoing reclassification of Reference Section.

Like many college libraries we have our own in-house classification system that has grown with the collection. Sometimes this means there are inconsistencies and inefficiencies that need to be ironed out. I take the Italian reference material, reclassify it within the existing Italian section, re-label the books and update their Aleph records.

1.00: Lunch.

Roasted winter vegetables, a cheese scone AND garlic bread, apple juice, an orange. The food at Jesus is pretty yummy and as a member of staff I get my lunches for free.

2.00: Check the Fellows’ Library.

The Fellows’ Library is a beautiful room that Fellows have access to, as well as external researchers on application. Checking it means making sure it is tidy and that there is nothing amiss. I usually do this in the morning, but I enjoy seeing it in the light of different times of the day.

2.15: Trainee Project Proposal.

For my trainee project I am creating a bank of display cards for books of particular interest in the Fellows’ Library. Writing a proposal for my supervisor is useful and stimulating— particularly thinking about what the phrase ‘of particular interest’ really means. I brainstorm and think of examples of aspects I might highlight: provenance, bindings or other material elements, value. I have lots of notes so I sit down with a cup of tea and a pen to make sense of them.

3.00: Pre-emptive shelving

I have been at my desk for a while, so I decide to get a head start on the returns that have been coming in throughout the day. Looking around to see what needs to be done is the task of a Trainee any day of the week, but Mondays are a particularly good test of this skill.

3.30: Make a start on reclassifying Theology reference books.

As above with Italian, though I feel some of the books should be reclassified in History. Classifying is among my favourite jobs because it is one of the rare opportunities that you get to see what’s inside a book. It also means you gain a surface understanding of the shapes of unfamiliar disciplines.

4:00: Type up my proposal , flesh out this post.  

4.45: Check the reading rooms.

5.00: Tidy my desk, put on my coat, brave the cold.

Library Trainee Day in the Life – Day 10

Well, better late than never, here is a glimpse of life at St.Hilda’s.

Today the Librarian has taken the 0830 start, so the opening procedures have been undertaken by the time I arrive. In general this involves opening the front door, unlocking any internal doors, closing the Lawyer’s entrance which gives them access outside opening hours, logging-on the OPACs, switching on the printers and photocopier and clearing any mess/items left on desks overnight.

0900 – Check returned books through the library management system. Student invigilators who man the desk after 5pm can accept returns but cannot remove the records from reader accounts.

Separate any books that have been recalled by readers, reserve them and contact them to let them know that they are ready for collection.

0930 – Chat about changes being made to the way we deal with book requests from Graduate students. There is a separate fund for Graduate taught courses and on feedback from the MCR at Library Committee we are attempting to improve and streamline this process.

1000 – Enquire about a book that was returned to us in error. Contact student and set it aside for collection.

Check book repairs that I left to dry overnight. One is satisfactory and ready to find its way home. The other hasn’t quite taken so I try again.

1030 – Student requests: There are a couple of book purchase requests in our recommendation book and e-mail. I check that we don’t already have the books as some students have not checked the catalogue fully before requesting. Check for availability and prices before sending off the request to the subject tutors for approval. Update the spreadsheet where we keep track of what has/hasn’t been approved.

1130 – Arrange the shelving trolleys in shelfmark order, ready for shelving later on.

1200 – Desk duty: My desk is the issue desk so when I am not in the reading rooms I will be issuing/returning books, signing out reserve shelf items, bookstands, giving paper for the printer/photocopier.

Accession some journals: Fill in the index card, add details to accessions spreadsheet, write accession number and shelfmark, stamp with St. Hilda’s logo.

Prepare book to send back to another library.

Receive approval from subject tutor to purchase book. Ring Blackwell’s who don’t have it in stock and as we try to make student requests a priority this book will be ordered from Amazon as it would be quicker than having Blackwell’s order it in from the publisher. Pass on details to the Librarian to order with the credit card.

1300- Lunch: I receive some gentle ribbing about how “orange” my lunch is – roast potatoes, chicken in some unknown sauce, beans and tomato ketchup for luck.

1400-Attempt to check-in a delivery from our suppliers but after much rooting no invoice is to be found. Detective work suggests another box will shortly be arriving.

Shelving journals: Place current subscriptions in their respective Science or Arts/Humanities racks. Shelve the previous issues with the rest of the back issues in the rolling stacks in the basement.

Take this time to give a quick patrol of the library for noise, food and drink, maintenance issues, check the printer cartridge levels and for students leaving unattended items and using up desks. I find a folder with important personal documents, (including a passport!) in a pile of papers next to the recycling bin. Save these and contact the student, who picks them up within 5 minutes. Such is the immediacy of a college library, I will sometimes not even have placed a book on the recall shelf 5 yards away from my chair before the reserver is at the desk to pick it up.

1430 – The subject tutors have all replied and it’s time to order some books. Blackwell’s will send one over the next morning and another will be ordered in and with us early next week. The tutors have asked for extra copies so I order these from our web-based supplier. It takes longer but they come pre-processed.

I create the orders on our library management system and create minimal catalogue records, which will show that these books have been ordered. The Assistant Librarian will make complete catalogue record when they arrive.

1530 – Shelving: As mentioned, no trainee goes without the daily duty. My faithful trolley and I trundle off to put some books to bed.

1615 – Wrapping up: Remove items from the returns trolley so as not to mix them with those to be returned overnight.

Redo some spine labels that have faded or fallen off.

Write this blog post.

1700 – Home time.

 

 

Library Trainee Day in the Life – Day 9

Hullo! My name’s Will, and I’m the graduate trainee at the Codrington Library at All Souls College. I graduated from Merton College, Oxford in 2009 with a degree in English, and then studied for a Masters degree at the same College before starting at All Souls. Since no single day is entirely representative of my experience at work (variety being one of the main attractions of working in a college library), this little diary is a bit of a chimera, with lots of different events from my usual working week unceremoniously lumped together. Still, I hope it will sketch out some of the things you might encounter as a trainee at an Oxford College. Here goes…

8:45am – Arrive at the Codrington. Say hullo to Betty (our library scout). Open office. Switch on lights. Sigh. Put on kettle.

9:00am – Check the Fellows’ borrowing register (latterly an impressive leather-bound tome, currently an orange exercise book, soon to be an impressive leather-bound tome again). I add any new withdrawals to the relevant spread sheet, and update the book with today’s date.

9:25am – A mysterious parcel has arrived overnight. Excitement builds. It contains law textbooks and periodicals. Excitement fades.

9:30am – Open exterior door to Readers. Switch on recess lighting in the Great Library and the law reading room.

The Great Library.

9:40am – I add the new law journals to our Scandex (a sort of squashed filing-cabinet used for keeping track of standing orders/journals), stamp, and then shelve on our ‘New Journals’ display. Eventually these issues will be catalogued online, but serials cataloguing is a scary business that I leave to braver people. For the moment, I notice that some of the series from last year are now complete, so I bundle them up and put them aside ready to be sent to the binders.  I add holdings records for the textbooks on Aleph (the university’s circulation and cataloguing software), create catalogue cards for them (yes, we still do this), stamp and bookplate, then shelve.

9:45am – I continue with my trainee project. This is the part of your traineeship where you’re allowed to undertake a self-contained task that will benefit the library, or conduct a bit of research into the library’s collections and history. I’ve elected to create a database of Codrington Readers up to 1900, based on signatures in the original admissions book. The library began admitting non-Fellows from the wider university in 1867, on the condition they behave nicely and sign the admissions register. Creating the database involves transcribing hundreds of signatures, of varying legibility. In many cases I have to make an educated guess, and cross-reference with the Oxford Historical Register , individual College Registers, and “other sources” (i.e. Google).  My success rate is reasonable, but progress can be painfully slow. I’ve reached the early 1880s.

10am – The team take a break and admire assorted cat pictures: http://www.buzzfeed.com/expresident/best-things-about-cat-bedtime.                Adorable. General agreement.

10:15am – Two new readers arrive (an historian and an archaeologist). I process their applications, make up their library cards, and give them a brief introduction to the library.

10:20am – One of the new readers requests a book from the stack (something on military history). I mooch off to fetch it.

10:25am – New reader no.3 (a geographer).

10:45am – Tea time. Someone’s eaten all the white chocolate wafers.

11:30am – Much excitement. I think I have pinned down one of the more elusive signatures from the admissions register: “R. Caldwell, Tmnevelly”. Much searching turns up a Dr. (later Bishop) Robert Caldwell, an evangelist missionary and linguist who travelled widely in Southern India (“Tmnevelly”, it seems, is the transliterated name of a settlement in the modern Indian state of Tamil Nadu).

12 noon – Lunchtime! Spicy sausage with couscous and chili jam.

12:30pm – The post has arrived. A donation from the Warden (the head of the College) concerning European Merger Law, a few invoices from EBSCO (our main journal supplier), the latest issues of three journals, and a book about Early Gunpowder Artillery. I add the invoices to our accounts spread sheet and add a holdings record for the Artillery book, pausing for a wry chuckle at the author’s picture (think Bill Bailey in a jerkin). I then process the journals (more wrestling with the Scandex), and strategically ignore the donation for the moment.

My desk, looking quite tidy.

1pm – Back to the admissions book. I’m using the 19^th century registers of Lincoln’s Inn and Inner Temple in an attempt to track down a few of the more stubborn signatures.

2pm – Spend a frustrating 10 minutes attempting to locate a book in the stack, only to find it was sat in the office – 6 feet from my desk – the whole time. Grrr. Time for tea.

2:30pm – Another donation, this time from an avant-garde artist in Poznan. The book is beyond my cataloguing skills, so I pass it to my colleague Fiona. Instead, I do the easy physical processing stuff, such as the donor’s bookplate, library stamps, and pressmark. I add the title to our donations spread sheet, and write a brief acknowledgement note (discovering lots of new Polish letter-forms in Microsoft Word in the process). Eventually this note will be signed by the Fellow Librarian, and sent to the donor as a thank you.

3pm  - I carry on with my cataloguing training. I’ve already been taught how to add simple holdings records for single and multipart items in Aleph , but now I’m learning to catalogue books from scratch. This involves mastering the shadowy art of the MARC record. MARC is a sort of rudimentary programming language that allows bibliographical data to be read by machines. It’s not impossibly hard, and I’m getting better with practice, but it can be rather pedantic and fiddly. There are lots of rules and procedures to remember, and it’s a real test of my concentration. Mercifully the person running the course at the Bodleian has a sense of humour, and my practice cataloguing tasks are all for ludicrous made-up books. My favourite so far is “Proceedings of the fourth California Prune Symposium”.

4pm – I have a long chat with the Assistant Librarian about her on-going attempts to construct a database of College Fellows (current and historic). Seems very complicated. More tea required.

4:30pm – More cataloguing exercises. My concentration wavers when an external researcher arrives to view a manuscript and some early printed books. The Codrington has lots of these (about a third of the entire collection of 185,000 items dates from before 1800), and I never miss an opportunity to shamelessly peer over people’s shoulders when something interesting gets called up.

Spiral staircase in the library office (my desk is at the bottom).

5:30pm – Some re-shelving (apparently a task no trainee can avoid), re-filing of catalogue cards (most hated job), and general tidying up.

6:15pm – I lock the Fellows’ door (an entrance reserved for members of the College) and do the washing up.

6:25pm – The Assistant Librarian politely encourages our few remaining readers to begin packing up.

6:30pm – Home time!

Well, I hope that’s given you an idea of an average (ish) day as a library trainee at All Souls. The traineeship for 2013/14 is being advertised now (closing date: April 5), so if you have any questions about the job please do feel free to drop me an email, either at will.beharrell@all-souls.ox.ac.uk, or via the library’s general enquiries address: codrington.library@all-souls.ox.ac.uk. You can also find more information on the library website: http://www.all-souls.ox.ac.uk/content/The_Codrington_Library.