Archives Hub contributors' workshop

The same week as the digitisation workshop at the Wellcome, I was also able to go on a contributors' workshop organised by Archives Hub, and held at Tate Britain.

I found the day really useful. We covered everything from an introduction to archival cataloguing using the Hub to future developments. Although I've been using the Hub at work for cataloguing our collections (you'll find them listed here) for most of this year, I'd picked up most of it as I went along, so it was great to have an overview, and also the chance to ask questions about areas I hadn't been sure about before.

Tips I picked up included:

• Making descriptions work effectively online (bearing in mind the person reading them could be anywhere in the world), as well as within the context of your institution.
• Creating multi-level descriptions (which is going to be SO useful). 
• Adding digital content.
• Using Hub descriptions to contribute to subject-based portals. 

The top tips for cataloguing are very useful, and I was also really excited about a future development of micro-sites, which would allow us to have our own local interface to host our own descriptions. 

I also enjoyed the networking opportunities, the chance to chat about the issues with people in a similar boat over coffee and lunch, and also to meet Bethan Ruddock and Jane Ronson for the first time. I liked the way the day was structured, which gave plenty of time to ask questions and have a go for ourselves. The day gave me plenty of ideas for future developments.

Thank you to Archives Hub, and particularly Bethan and Jane, for such a great and helpful day.

Digitisation workshop

I spent a morning last week at a digitisation workshop hosted by the Wellcome Trust, as part of their Wellcome Digital work. It was in the rather smart new building on Euston Road...

... and consisted of three presentations by Christy Henshaw, Dave Thompson and Matthew Brack. Christy's presentation is also available online, as is Dave's [opens a pdf], and Matthew's, followed by a trip upstairs to see the digitisation studios and equipment.

The Wellcome has just finished the first phase of 2 x 3 year phases of a digitisation programme. This has been a lot of work on a project named Codebreakers, about the history of genetics. Most of the work has been carried out on site, some using contractors and with up to eight full and part-time staff supporting the project, alongside three full-time photographers, using a variety of different camera and scanner set ups.

The presentations took us through the process of the digitisation project, image processing, metadata (including copyright and access levels, as well as granular access and creating a structure to help navigate within an item).

They discussed the software used: SDB (Safety Deposit Box, which acts as a gateway to securely stored content, and which automatically creates administrative metadata about the images as they are ingested into the repository), Player (a custom-built way of displaying digitised content, due to be released as open source by the end of 2013), Goobi (open source software for managing workflows in digitisation projects)

And metadata: administrative metadata (created automatically by SDB, above), descriptive metadata (ISAD(g) for archives, MARC for bibliographic, converted to XML, which then becomes MODS (Metadata Object Description Schema) once it's in the METS (Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard) file. Still with me? There are lots of helpful explanations in Dave's presentation, above...

And formats:
JPEG2000, because it can be compressed as there simply wasn't enough room to store everything as a TIFF. JPEGs are created on the fly, as they are needed. They also use PDF, MPEG2 and MP3.

The particularly useful points I came away with were:

• Metadata metadata metadata. There's no point digitising unless you've already catalogued it. Without metadata digital objects might as well not exist, as you can't search for them. 50% of Wellcome digitisation project time is spent on cataloguing and metadata. Digitisation is an end to end process bringing together objects and metadata, it isn't just about putting books under cameras.
• Plan! Have a Data Management Plan. What will happen if it all goes wrong? (There was a great egg/custard analogy at this point).
• Include QA - how do you know that everything has been done to the right standard otherwise?
• Document your processes and decisions so that other people know what you've done, and you also know when you come back to it for a future project.
• Share what you've learnt so that others can learn from your mistakes.
• The actual physical imaging is a very tiny and final part of the programme.
• Bear conservation in mind - most damage to items happens through handling, and digitisation tends to cause different handling stresses to normal  use. Many items will need conservation work before they can be digitised, so factor it into the workflow.
• Copyright - do a rights risk assessment.

We were allowed to take photos in the Wellcome's studios. This is a copy stand set up  for digitising books - the glass plate raises and lowers once the book is underneath. It is from ICAM.

This is a similar copy stand, but used for digitising flat objects, such as archives.

This is a copy stand suitable for use with books that can't be opened sufficiently for the other one to be used. It allows the book to be supported at different angles so that images can be taken.

I had a fantastic morning and learnt a lot. It was also good to have a chance to chat with the other attendees about their digitisation plans (whilst enjoying some rather tasty cookies). My thanks to Christy, Matthew and Dave (and the people upstairs in the studios) for such an informative morning.

Dave's presentation linked to above includes suggested further reading. Christy has also got another presentation online, on digitisation workflows.

Special Collections feedback

I've been looking into getting feedback from users of Special Collections, so last week I asked on lis-rarebooks and Twitter about what feedback other special collections libraries ask for and how they use it. I received many responses, as well as many requests to share what I had found, so I thought I'd blog about what I found out.

As I'm sure I've already said on this blog, librarians are the most incredibly lovely helpful people out there. I received a lot of attachments with examples of feedback forms, so the list below summarises questions asked.

Some collected category of user (e.g. undergraduate, postgraduate, academic), usually combined with whether they were from that institution or a different one.

Some had age range and gender tick boxes.

Tick boxes about enjoyment/whether staff were friendly and helpful/whether the visit was informative, rated between 1 and 5 (this was from an organisation that did tours of the library area), plus space for comments on what was particularly enjoyed and whether any improvements could be recommended.

Many institutions had very simple suggestion slips or cards (about postcard size) which any comments could be written on, with a postbox provided. Sometimes these were handed to users, sometimes they were left out on reading room tables to be picked up.

Exhibitions often had a comments book at the end for visitors to leave feedback.

Other ideas

In conjunction with Love Your Libraries Day (14th Feb) one institution (not solely Special Collections) asked for freetext feedback on heart shaped post-it notes from students, who received mini packs of Love Hearts in return.

Timing

Some institutions gave a survey form to every visitor. Others either did an annual survey or tied in feedback with a national survey and only surveyed visitors during a certain time period.

The PSQG (Public Services Quality Group for archives and local studies) survey was one of these, with past survey results available.

Common questions

What is your area of research?

How did you find these items were in Special Collections or in xx institution?

Which collection did you use (often combined with tick boxes if there weren’t many collections to choose from)?

What would you like to see displayed (from an institution running quarterly exhibitions to highlight their materials)?

Did you expect to be permitted to see items in xx library?

Could you have seen the items anywhere else?

Would you have been able to use a digitized copy of the items for your research? Would you have preferred this?

How did you find Special Collections supported your research?

Tell us about what you enjoyed (this was aimed at tour visitors)?

Do you intend to tell others about our collections as a result of your visit?

Have you used collections from other institutions to support your research? If so, please give details.

Do you have any suggestions or comments to help improve the xx Special Collections?

Online feedback

Several respondents reported that a lot more feedback was received from online exhibitions and/or blogs, where it is easy to leave comments, “like” a post or tweet a link.

Twitter and Facebook were both often used as a means of getting feedback.

Virtual Users Groups were mentioned by a couple of respondents as a way of getting feedback and asking for comments.

Website hits were also counted, and it is usually possible to find out which country most hits are from, plus referring sites and commonly used search terms.

Some websites also had a feedback link, although this tended to be used for issues about the website.

How feedback is used

For many institutions collecting feedback seemed to be a relatively new phenomenon and/or not enough responses had been received yet for anything to be implemented. Several institutions mentioned not having had enough time yet to analyse results!

There were various comments about how it was hoped to use the information:

• Track usage of collections
• Useful evidence for the university’s research output
• Improve user experience
• Where contact details are left to respond directly to any specific questions from users
• Online feedback was used to tailor blog posts and exhibitions (for example, by seeing which search terms were used most often, and what was popular).

More ideas

The Special Collections handbook (2011) has a section on feedback and complaints, as well as social media and feedback, and researching user needs.

The Customer Service Excellence Standard was mentioned as a practical tool with self-assessment of customer service.

I like to illustrate my posts, but I couldn't think of a way to illustrate "feedback", until I remembered my old cat, Sooty, was excellent at providing extremely vocal feedback about anything and everything. And, yes, he did only have three legs.

Visit: Bromley House Library, cataloguing projects, volunteers and fundraising

Last week I went on an Historic Libraries Forum workshop covering retrospective cataloguing projects, working with volunteers and fundraising. I found it really useful, with lots of great networking opportunities, as well as a chance to see a lovely library and get some new ideas to try. The photos on this post were taken by me, with permission from Bromley House, but I didn't use flash so they aren't the best photos I've ever taken!

The visit was hosted by Bromley House Library, a subscription library in the centre of Nottingham, which has existed for nearly 200 years and been in its current building since 1821. The library is home to about 40,000 books, (about 200 of which could be described as "rare" and about 100 manuscripts), and the staff have spent the last couple of years getting them catalogued using the Heritage LMS from ISOxford; the OPAC will be available shortly online. The visit was centred around this process, but commenced with a tour of the building and its garden, which really helped to set the context for the project.

Children's book section - there are some lovely classics I remember from my childhood here!

The building is tall, with rooms leading off each other, and the in-house classification system had become split between rooms making it hard for people to find items using the card catalogue. The collections have been gathered together over the years, and although sections such as modern fiction are weeded, anything published pre-1970 isn't. Whilst environmental control is difficult in a building like this, an enthusiastic conservation group meets each week, trained by a conservator to take basic book conservation measures, such as cleaning, making boxes and tying tape. Other issues are the beautiful gallery room, with books shelved to quite a high level (although it now takes 2-3 people together to get books from the highest shelves) and a vertiginous spiral staircase on which only one person at a time is allowed!

 Background and staff
 A series of talks gave the background to the cataloguing project, which was funded by a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund. Before the application, research had been done into how other libraries had coped with using volunteers to catalogue books, and it was clear that a system of training and supervision would need to be set up. This entailed recruiting a part-time project leader, plus several part-time professional cataloguers, who would then each oversee a team of volunteers, covering the whole week between them. Volunteers were mostly drawn from the library's own members, and to ensure consistency, each were asked to commit to at least one half day session each week. Adverts were placed for the professional staff, and copies of the job descriptions for these and the project leader were available for us to see.

Cataloguing process
The new professional staff put together a cataloguing procedure for their newly acquired LMS, together with the compact agreed with volunteers and handlining guidelines for the books. The cataloguing procedure was revised and updated as they went along and learnt from their experiences, particularly as the volunteers had varying levels of IT ability. Help sheets were developed for difficult groups of items. Although Heritage doesn't use MARC, records could be downloaded from the British Library and the cataloguing procedure used AACR2 and DCRM(B) (where appropriate). They aimed for a greater level of detail than in most of the downloaded records. Quality control was achieved by sampling and checking work, creating lists of commons errors to watch out for and conducting a stock check near the end using the accessions register to make sure nothing had been missed.

Rare books
Work on this area was done by two people who already had experience in cataloguing rare books. These books again were catalogued to a much higher level of detail, using DCRM(B) and with help from the CILIP RBSCG guidelines. Particular attention was paid to recording details of bindings, provenance and marginalia, in a standard form in the Notes field in Heritage. A useful feature of Heritage was the ability to add local notes (not visible in the OPAC) to record condition, meaning that reports can now be run to pick out items for conservation work. Where appropriate, items were submitted to ESTC, contributing to the international world of scholarship.

Fundraising
Money for the project had come from the Heritage Lottery Fund, and a variety of small grants from charitable trusts. Tips shared about fundraising were:

• Consider carefully the goals of each trust you are applying to and make sure your aims are tailored very specifically to their terms.
• Generally you won't get funding for things that should be a normal part of the library operation, e.g. the expense of acquiring a new LMS.
• Local trusts are particularly worth looking out for, although individual grants may be small.
• Be aware of what the rest of your institution is doing, you don't want to be obstructing their fundraising efforts, or vice versa!
• Be aware of reporting and evaluation requirements throughout the project, and try to involve the funders in your work, e.g. by inviting them to volunteers' parties.
• Be aware of outreach potential, often a key part of making a fundraising application. Trusts will often want to see outreach beyond your usual customer base, and maybe a culture change in the organisation so that this is sustained in the long term.

Photocopies are paid for by putting money in the frog

 Lessons learned
I found it really useful to hear what might have been done differently with the benefit of hindsight, as well as what had gone well.

• One good point was that the volunteers were in for 10 sessions a week, which left no time for system maintenance or downtime. 
• There were also useful tips on communication between part-time staff, especially where they don't overlap, and in motivation (apparently sweets are the key, as well as parties!).
• It was clear that both the staff and volunteers had really taken ownership of the project and had gained a lot from it, both in terms of skills acquired (such as IT) and by building networks and adding value to the institution.
• I also found it very useful to see the documentation, ranging from job descriptions to cataloguing manuals.

And finally, a picture of the garden behind the library, a little oasis in the centre of Nottingham, maintained by volunteers and much enjoyed by members.

Thank you to Bromley House for a really interesting day.

Thing 20: Library roots and routes

I was originally going to write this post as part of CPD23, as I was going to work through the Things by myself, but then I was asked to speak at a careers event at Royal Holloway. What I was talking about was along similar lines, so I'm posting it now, which is why some of the post is  aimed at current undergraduates. I will also be linking it to the Library Routes Project. As well as Thing 20, it also covers Thing 10: Graduate traineeships, Masters degrees, Chartership, Accreditation.

A few months ago I read this post by the Wikiman, about working out where you are as a new library professional and where you want to be in the future and how you get there, as I did something very similar when I was starting out.

First of all, library roots: how and why did I get into the profession in the first place?

Simple - I always wanted to be a librarian! I was the primary school kid who helped in the library at lunchtimes and had a badge that said "Librarian" on it, and the same at secondary school. When I was 15 and the time came to go off to do a fortnight's work experience I went to Lincoln Cathedral Library, and there got my first taste of the world of rare books and special collections. I went back as a volunteer in my school holidays and wrote things on index cards (this is before computers were very, erm, widespread) and loved it.

Lincoln Cathedral, taken from the Castle

I think it was the combination of helping people to find information and organising that information that I particularly enjoyed. I also weighed up whether to qualify as an archivist or a librarian and arranged to do some work experience at Lincolnshire Archives during one school summer holiday to try it out. I really enjoyed it, but decided librarianship was more for me. The archives had a conservation studio and conservator, I also did some work there and decided that I still wanted to be a librarian.

So, there I was, having decided to take A Level Latin because it would be useful for my future career and chosen to read Ancient and Medieval History at Royal Holloway, because I love history. What happened next?

Library routes: the career path you've taken so far.

Being a slightly(?!) geeky teenager I'd already worked out by the time I left school that I was going to do a graduate trainee year after my degree, then an MA in librarianship, then off to launch myself into the wonderful world of libraries. I did do all of that, only not quite according to my original plan!

Alongside my degree I got involved in a lot of other things, all of which stood me in good stead on getting further along into Library World. First of all I worked part-time in the university library, starting out as a shelver for a term and then getting promoted to library assistant (I also spent an entire summer holiday moving every book in the library 12 shelves to the left). All of this was brilliant experience as I got right into the knitty gritty of library work and working with users.

Founders Library at Royal Holloway

 I was also Senior Chapel Warden (College Chapel) for 2 years and Vice President of the Catholic Society (despite being Anglican), both of which gave me experience in event organising and dealing with people. And I became a warranted Guider with a unit of Guides (10-14 year olds) and Rangers (14 years+), which was massive amounts of fun, as well as giving me experience working with children and teenagers, budgeting and planning.

During the final year of my degree, I could have applied to do my MA as I already had the library assistant experience, but instead I decided to go ahead with doing a year as a library graduate trainee, this time at Exeter University Library, as I thought it was preferable to get as much experience as possible before doing the MA. I chose Exeter because it offered a variety of different types of work, including a placement in Special Collections, but also in other library departments, including cataloguing training and some project management type work. Plus living in Devon for a year was wonderful! I carried on with being a Guider in Exeter as well. Graduate trainee posts are advertised via CILIP, the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals.

During my year in Exeter I applied for MA courses at Loughborough and UCL, and chose the MA in Library and Information Studies at UCL because it offered indepth cataloguing training (essential for special collections/rare books work), as well as having a module in historical bibliography (again, an essential grounding). I had intended to do my MA full-time, but a sponsorship opportunity came up, via St Paul’s Cathedral, which meant I joined a lay (i.e. not ordained) religious community of people who lived and worshipped together, studied for postgraduate qualifications part-time paid for by the cathedral, and worked in the cathedral three days a week. My interest in the community coincided with work on the cathedral's inventory, so my job as part of the community was working in the cathedral library as an Inventory Assistant on a retro-conversion project, alongside museum professionals working on the object inventory. Although it wasn't what I originally intended to do, I'm really glad that I did my MA part-time as the experience I gained alongside it was invaluable, both for MA coursework and my future career. The work at St Paul's taught me an enormous amount about bibliography, cataloguing, working on a project and museum standards. When I left St Paul's I was invited to become the Assistant Secretary of the Cathedral Libraries and Archives Association (CLAA), which gave me experience in writing minutes and being on a committee, as well as some great networking opportunities.

When it got to dissertation time, my supervisor put me in touch with the National Trust libraries curator, who arranged for me to catalogue the library at Gunby Hall in Lincolnshire, which is what I based my dissertation on. 

Library at Gunby Hall

This led me into doing paid freelance work for the National Trust, travelling around the East Midlands and beyond cataloguing books in many different houses for several years after completing my MA. The National Trust Libraries catalogue is now on COPAC and you can read a previous blog post of mine about a recent conference on National Trust libraries.

Belton House, Lincolnshire. I catalogued some books in the attics!

Being freelance meant I acquired a lot of skills in budgeting, filling in tax returns and planning my time, but meant I didn't have the CPD opportunities you'd expect in most jobs, so I started working towards my CILIP Chartership qualification at the same time. This was a good way of showing my commitment to the profession, that I wanted to develop my skills and, even though it is still fairly unusual for a special collections job description to ask for a chartered librarian, I think it was a good move. 

Around this time the CILIP Rare Books and Special Collections Group published their Skills of a Rare Books and Special Collections librarian document, which I found helpful for doing a skills audit for my Chartership. As well as cataloguing I had some involvement with readers using National Trust books and also helped with an exhibition at one property, but I decided I needed to gain more experience in these areas to progress my career, so I looked for a job that would give me more of that experience.

I was appointed Deputy College Librarian at Eton College Library. Eton has two libraries; College Library is home to some very extensive rare book collections, you can read more on the College Library blog. This meant lots of experience with some pretty significant rare books, working with readers, working on displays and exhibitions, as well as cataloguing. I also project managed a move from one library management system (Mikromarc) to another (BooksIndex+) which included the slightly horrific experience of writing a conversion script from UKMARC to MARC21 using USEMARCON and MarcEdit. I completed my Chartership whilst at Eton.

When I left my freelancing work I had been invited to join the committee of the Historic Libraries Forum and became Chair of the Forum whilst I was working at Eton. 

Having by now acquired a husband and a house my options for re-locating for my next career move were more limited. I wanted to move up to the next rung of the ladder, and manage a collection, so the job I found was as Rare Books and Special Collections Librarian at the Royal College of Physicians in central London. This is another wonderful collection of rare books, and also involved another move of library management system, this time from Adlib to Soutron. The RCP had excellent CPD opportunities, so I took advantage of training in areas such as public speaking and management skills, which I hadn't had much chance to develop before that. 

My next career move was something of a surprise, as an opportunity presented itself not only to manage a special collection in a university but to set up a lot of it from scratch. This was too good an opportunity to miss, as well as being a lot closer to home, so I moved jobs again to become Special Collections Librarian at Brunel University.

As part of my careers talk at Royal Holloway I was asked to provide some "top tips". Below is what I think really helped me in getting to where I am now:

Languages - an interesting one as not all special collections jobs need particular languages, but many of them do, and it is something that will make you stand out from the crowd of job applicants. I blogged in greater detail earlier on this topic.

Experience - particularly getting as much as possible before completing my MA, and getting in plenty of rare books cataloguing, because it's the best way possible of actually learning about the books and their structure. But not only librarian experience is important. You need to be able to work with whoever comes through the Special Collections door as well as doing outreach to encourage people to use your collections, so getting involved in activities and hobbies outside of work is a good way of demonstrating people skills, as well as giving you the possibility of developing other skills, such as event organising and project management.

Location - yes, I have zinged around the country like a yoyo, and yes, relocating to a new town where you don't know a soul can be a truly grim experience, and yes, quite often I would have loved to have lived somewhere for more than a year at a time. But it meant I got the range of experience I needed. The state of the economy at the moment means that a lot of special collections work is grant-funded, so it's worth taking a fixed contract post and relocating or doing a lenthy commute to get that experience for your CV. You can always settle down at some point in the future! ;-)

Enthusiasm - a difficult one to convey, but you need to demonstrate your massive enthusiasm for this kind of work as well as learning enough about it to know it's truly the career you want. This can be through joining relevant groups (particularly getting involved in committee work). Many of them have reduced rates for students. Groups I'm a member of include:

• CILIP Rare Books and Special Collections

• Historic Libraries Forum

• The Bibliographical Society

• AMARC - Association for Manuscripts and Archives in Research Collections

Also keep up-to-date with what's going on in the world of special collections through reading blogs (many Special Collections have blogs, Brunel's is here, and has links to several others), plus Special Collections Librarianship news, which comes out most weeks. The hashtags #speccolls and #rarebooks on Twitter are also useful. It's worth keeping an eye out for exhibitions to go to or look at online as a source of inspiration and knowledge.

And, finally, good luck!