RBSCG conference 2018: The library as classroom

At the beginning of September I attended the first day of the CILIP Rare Books and Special Collections Group conference, at the beautiful Downing College in Cambridge. The theme of the conference was around teaching using Special Collections, a really good fit with my job where we already do quite a bit of teaching using our collections. I was hoping to pick up some tips and tricks for how other libraries with special collections used those collections in teaching, as well as make the most of the networking opportunities afforded by the well thought out conference space.

First up was Jessica Gardner, the Cambridge University Librarian and Director of Library Services with an inspirational keynote Memories of wonder and discovery which really emphasised the career changing moments brought about by encounters with special collections.

"Fundamental turning points in a learner's journey"

Hers had been with a medieval manuscript in the Brotherton Library at Leeds University. She talked about embedding content in undergraduate learning, first through the Adam and Eve projects at Exeter University back in 2002 - 2005, to the video poem earlier this year by Imtiaz Dharkar showing the digitisation journey from shelf to screen at Cambridge University Library.



and leading on to breaking down barriers between developers and scholars with a medieval manuscripts hackathon - creating webapps using manuscripts from the University Library's collections.



The next speaker was Tabitha Tuckett, rare books librarian at University College London, with particular responsibility for academic support and events across their Special Collections.

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/library/special-collections. She talked about how the Connected Curriculum was implemented across the university - this was a research based curriculum which enabled students to actively engage with research and enquiry.

Strong collection management is the key to learning and teaching

Object-based learning is something that Special Collections have been engaged in for years, so the Connected Curriculum represented a brilliant opportunity to broaden the reach of this. The Connected Curriculum means students have to meet and work with other professional staff, connecting to workplace learning eg getting involved in producing exhibitions and having their assessment based on a presentation about this. Students are trained as 'professional researchers' so receive handling training so they can access the books in Special Collections. It also involved setting their own research agenda, so coming up with problems experienced by Special Collections and then using other depts., such as Maths or Medical Physics to solve them. One project used a tool normally used to look at images of the back of people's eyes to investigate how hard woodcut images in early printed books were pressed into the paper.

Concrete physicality stimulates imagination in research

After Tabitha, Sarah Mahurter, Manager of Archives and Special Collections at the University of the Arts London, spoke on Archival pedagogics: exploring the significance of teaching as a creative endeavour using Archives and Special Collections. They had created a vision in their library research strategy that all students should have the opportunity to experience Special Collections, and have established a community of practice within the university to help make this happen. They created several workshops:

• researching skilfully cutting across subject divides, which included skills in handling, examining and curating, whilst introducing students to a range of collections.
• researching with archives giving practical skills in searching and finding archives and what to expect when using them
• escape room session was offered as part of their annual Library Services staff conference and as a staff development opportunity.

The second part of the day was given over to academics providing their perspective on teaching using Special Collections. Simon Eliot, Professor Emeritus of the History of the Book, spoke on teaching book history at MA level and the need to provide vivid material examples (likening the experience as a relic to a pilgrim), for example comparing the actual Geneva and King James Bibles provided both comparison of their physicality as well as their content. However, this was hard to timetable and teach because of needing access to the books themselves. He had eventually assembled a collection of battered books solely for use in teaching, which then instilled confidence into the students when handling them. The module on the book in the ancient world had proven particularly difficult to teach with physical examples due to the rare and fragile nature of the survivals from this period. They had got round this by displaying fragments but couldn't allow handling. And a course on modern first editions had shown the need for the actual book to be studied, as it was impossible to distinguish between editions, impressions etc from digitised versions alone.

Teaching shows the need to look at the book itself rather than pictures of it

Finally, Jason Scott-Warren (Reader in Early Modern Literature and Culture at Cambridge University) and Andrew Zurcher (Fellow and Director of Studies in English at Queens' College, Cambridge) did a double act on teaching the early modern material text. They likened undergraduate students' engagement with texts in a nice tidy modern edition as being as far removed from the creation of the book as the image of a stork bringing a baby is from an actual birth! Engaging undergraduates with the process of making the book is what helps those students to stand out from the crowd, but then also creates a pressure to work with original texts. The students are still encouraged to learn quasi-facsimile transcription as it helps to develop a systematic understanding of the printing of a title-page, and the same with collational formula

πA⁶(πA1+1 πA5+1.2) A-2B6 2C2 a-g6 χ2g8 h-v6 x4 “gg3.4”(± “gg3”) ¶-2¶6 3¶1  2a-2f6 2g2 “Gg6” 2h6 2k-3b6 (collational formula of Shakespeare's First Folio)

This loosens disciplinary identity for the students and allows the teacher to develop intimacy with the collections, as well as changing teaching methods, such as writing blog posts about their subjects.

Organised classes and events are what gets students into Special Collections

Questions at the end of the day included, "Where does cataloguing sit with this?". The answer was that academics should feedback that they need to have things catalogued in order to use them and to encourage libraries to prioritise cataloguing.

It was a great conference, and, although I could only be there for one day of it, I learnt a lot. My main take away points are:

• the importance of cataloguing when needing to use collections, whether that is for teaching or displays.
• ideas around developing workshops for researching skills rather than on a strictly subject basis.
• ideas around problem solving using other subjects.
• to have a look at A Connected Curriculum for Higher Education by Dilly Fung (available as a free download at that link)

Many thanks to the committee of the RBSCG for all their hard work organising the conference. You will find tweets from the conference using the hashtag #rbscg18 and there is a Wakelet bringing together all the tweets in one place.

RBSCG conference 2015: Hidden collections: revealed

In the first week of September I attended one day of the CILIP RBSCG's conference, Hidden Collections: Revealed. The conference was split between Friends' House Library, Lambeth Palace Library and the Friday was at the British Library's conference centre.

Where they have possibly the comfiest conference seats I have ever sat on.

It can be a bit strange arriving towards the end of a conference, when it feels like everyone else has already been networking for a couple of days, but I think the different venues for each day made this a bit easier? The conference had been divided up into six sessions, and I was there for the final two.

Session five was uncovering your collections - promotion
The first speaker was Adrian Edwards, Head of Printed Heritage Collections at the British Library, who spoke about the work they had done with the BL's comic collections to bring them to a much wider audience. The initial problem was having a large collection of comics, but not all of them catalogued, many of them poorly catalogued (wrong end dates, missing issues, hardly anything before the 1930s referenced) and stored in three different locations, all of which made it very hard for all but the most determined researcher to use them.  When the library at Colindale closed and two comics experts approached the library wanting to celebrate British comics, the decision was taken to put on an exhibition. Now, any exhibition is a huge amount of work, and this one was no exception, as the objectives included getting all that cataloguing done and supporting a wider range of researchers in using the collection. The eventual exhibition, Comics unmasked: art and anarchy in British Comics was successful, containing 217 unique exhibits and attracting a lot of new users into the building. Achievements included:

• Many comics catalogued for the first time
• All comics available on one site for the first time
• The material is now used more, including two doctoral students working on it.
• Staff expertise in the subject has increased enormously
• Selected rare material has been moved to a higher level of secure storage

Adrian concluded by saying that the exhibition had been a good way of highlighting hidden collections, and a good way of getting management support to get the essential cataloguing and collection moves completed. It is important to seize opportunities such as this.

Lara Haggerty from Innerpeffray Library then spoke about the difficulties in dealing with people's perception that it's just a load of old books. Her library is physically difficult to access, being five miles from the nearest town with only one bus a week. It is highly significant though, as it is the first public lending library in Scotland. The library had effectively become a museum but was doing very little promotion before she was appointed as a result of a business based forward plan. The key to success has been concentrating on the visitor experience and making it unique. They are too small to attract big tour groups on their own, but by working with other local organisations, have been able to increase the numbers.

Katie Sambrook, Head of Special Collections at King's College London then spoke about the Foreign and Commonwealth Office library, which was transferred to KCL after two years of negotiations. The collection had been rather hidden at the FCO as their primary remit wasn't to run a library. The transfer to an academic institution meant it would be more accessible, but the initial problem was how to reveal and promote this collection? Initially there was no catalogue in a useable form, so the first task was to catalogue the books (this took eight years with 2 or 3 project cataloguers working at a time. About 30% of the collection is now catalogued) as having the items on the catalogue is the most important form of promotion you can do. The cataloguers became expert in the subject matter so were able to assist readers and answer enquiries, whilst student assistants were employed to do basic collection processing and download catalogue records for non-special collections material. The collections were then promoted via real and virtual exhibitions, and visitors have come from all over the world. Promotional activities have included:

• Have a poster on the library gates, as many visitors spot it when walking past
• Produce leaflets and guides on certain aspects/themes of collections
• Bear in mind that many exhibition visitors will never make the transition to reader but will help to spread the word.
• Foster teaching and research for academic users by developing teaching seminars using special collections material and introducing students to the material. Getting use of collections incorporated into teaching assessments is key.

Katie also stated that she had found it easier to engage English academics with Special Collections, than History academics, which certainly echoes my own experience.

Session six covered Beyond the library and first to speak was Katharine Hogg, Librarian at the Foundling Museum. This is a research library of c.10,000 items, and the first priority when the collection first arrived there was to create an online catalogue. Paintings and prints have been catalogued and digitized, and making sure items appear on external websites has been key for promotion, such as Your Paintings, Concert programmes database and the English Short Title catalogue.  Collaboration has worked well for conservation projects with West Dean College and Camberwell College of Arts.

A PhD student, Hannah Manktelow, then spoke about discovering provincial Shakespeare with the British Library playbill collection. This collection had never been used for research as many of the playbills had been closed to public access. The key here was a digitization project which also captured a lot of metadata, including dates, keywords from bills and an indication of what would attract audiences. It was a really exciting project to work on as there is very little work on provincial theatre of this period, and the collection includes c. 75000 playbills. Her PhD has focussed in on case studies based on five provincial towns, although a major obstacle is that playbills of many performances won't have made it into collections.

Finally, a rare books collector, Mark  Byford, talked about his collection focussed on Tudor and Jacobean books. He has c. 1000 books, and has no catalogue whatsoever, but welcomes people to come and see his collection, or takes them out himself to events. He also loans books to academics.

I had a really interesting time at the conference. Not only did I find that others' experience echoed my own (for instance, that it is much easier to engage English depts. in Special Collections than History depts.), but it also emphasised the importance of cataloguing first and foremost in promoting collections. Repeatedly it was made clear that you can't choose what items to put on display without them being catalogued first. You can't plan outreach activities if you don't know what you have. No one will be able to find the item for their research, or do their PhD on your collection if it isn't catalogued.

My thanks to the RBSCG for an interesting and enjoyable conference.

CILIP Conference 2015

At the beginning of July I spent a couple of days in Liverpool at CILIP Conference 2015, having been lucky enough to win a bursary from the ARLG London & South East region. I was keen to attend the conference, having worked in the area of Special Collections for well over ten years, so my conference attendance had tended to be restricted to those events that were closely connected to my specialist area. 

Concert Hall, where the keynotes took place

Keynotes

Perhaps what I most enjoyed about the conference were the keynote speakers. They included R. David Lankes, Erwin James, Cory Doctorow and Shami Chakrabarti. At previous conferences I’ve attended the keynotes have all been very connected to the specialist conference theme, and invariably given by someone from the library or archive world, so I had been interested to see in advance that this wasn’t so much the case with CILIP conference keynotes. It was great to see how engaged all the speakers were with the world of libraries and information, and brought an interesting perspective from the outside. Indeed, Erwin James’ account of the difference a prison library had made to his life after his conviction, what it had meant to his rehabilitation and then to his release had me almost in tears. R. David Lankes on ‘World domination through librarianship’ (you can’t beat a title like that!) was more controversial from a Special Collections perspective, as he talked about how collections are the demon, and how you may not have one to be a librarian, as often now they are leased or rented. But I could agree with him that librarians are educators, even if I am educating users about our special collections!

Erwin James

Session speakers 

The sessions I attended were mostly in the ‘demonstrating value’ stream, and I found many of the workshops particularly useful. I found that it was helpful to have to think of real life examples, and we were encouraged to share our ideas and processes with someone sitting near us, which also helped break the ice. I enjoyed the practical elements of these workshops, which provided a nice contrast to the keynotes. I also took some time out from ‘demonstrating value’ to go to the ‘digital futures’ stream and a session on MOOCs and small-scale CPD for library and information professionals. I found this interesting, having participated in one MOOC so far, and working towards my second year of revalidation, always being on the lookout for different ways to do CPD.

Exhibition

As I very rarely buy anything other than preservation supplies, I hadn’t been expecting to get much out of the exhibition, but, spurred on by a sheet to fill in with a sticker from each exhibitor, and the possibility of winning an iPad if this was completed, I spent some time on both days visiting each stand. I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed meeting all the exhibitors and finding out about their products. Most of them also appeared to be interested to meet me, and I think it was a good way of finding out about new products and services, which I can always tell colleagues about, even if they aren’t so relevant to my own role. 

Rather amazing surroundings for the exhibition

Networking

Taking part in networking between sessions was one of my main reasons for wanting to attend the conference. It proved to be very different to networking at the smaller conference I have been used to attending, as with 600 people there and no delegate list in advance, it was hard to work out who I would like to meet with once there. I found that manning the ARLG stall during one of the breaks helped, as people then came up to talk to me and found out about ARLG, and I did manage to arrange to meet up with a few people by using social media in advance of the conference. I think this was something of a missed opportunity though, as with a delegate list in advance and people’s Twitter details, for instance, it would have been a lot easier to arrange a meet up. It was possible to register as an event attendee on the conference app in advance, which I did, but very few people did this.

ARLG stand

What now?

So, what next? The conference was an intense couple of days, but I came away feeling like I’d got a better grasp of the ‘bigger picture’ in librarianship, as well as picking up some useful tips for demonstrating value. I’m hoping I’ll be able to put some of those into practice in my job over the next few months. I’ve provided feedback to CILIP on ways in which I think the conference was beneficial, as well as how it could be improved – particularly the venue, which really wasn’t very accessible with huge numbers of steps everywhere, but there were also issues with timekeeping and sessions running over. My thanks go to the ARLG London & South East for sponsoring my place.

The speakers' presentations are now available on the conference website.

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!