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!

Conference: National Trust libraries, mobility and exchange in great house collections

As with my previous post, I've been taking full advantage of not working on Fridays to go to conferences that interest me, but aren't directly relevant to my job. Or so I thought. I was very pleasantly surprised by how many ideas I took away with me from this conference. Organised by the Centre for Material Texts, it was held in the beautiful surroundings of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge.

I'd initially signed up out of interest as I spent several years cataloguing rare books for the National Trust and wanted to find out more about how much had come out of this work. After many years work from a lot of cataloguers, detailed catalogue records are now available on COPAC. The aim of the conference was to bring together interested parties, librarians, curators, conservators and academics, to discuss potential areas for future research. Jason Scott-Warren has already blogged about the day, so I won't go into too much detail.

Papers ranged from the problem of accessing some books, as not all country houses are in public ownership, as well as research that has been done on how books were used in the houses, where people did their reading and who owned them. For example, the Earl of Carlisle, at Castle Howard, tended to store books in the more private parts of the house where it was more convenient for him to use them. Great pains have been taken in the cataloguing to record as much copy-specific detail as possible, as this is what makes these books unique and especially valuable for research.

It was clear that there is much research still to be done, in particular with nineteenth century libraries, which haven't attracted as much attention as earlier ones. There was also discussion of the practicalities of more research taking place, and the same practicalities that affect special collections librarians in other institutions.

• How to cope with rising demand for access to material.
• How to raise public awareness and get across to a non-academic audience why these collections are so important.
• How to balance the tension between sightseeing and exploring research in these libraries, especially as people with an academic interest in rare books are just one of many special interest groups who visit National Trust properties.

There was much discussion over lunch, and a round table discussion at the end, both of which I found very useful. It was also good to catch up with some former colleagues.  A highly enjoyable day and my thanks go to the organisers.

Provenance masterclass

Back in January I was fortunate enough to get a place on a provenance masterclass, Discovering provenance in book history at Cambridge University Library, taught by David Pearson, Director of Culture, Heritage & Libraries at the City of London Corporation.

CUL with the remains of a very large snowman outside.

This was a great overview of provenance evidence. Although I've been recording provenance in library catalogue records for over nine years now, it was good to be able to take a step back from the catalogue records and look at the whole provenance picture.

To me, it seems obvious that the history of what happened to a book is interesting and worth recording and studying, but this hasn't always been the case. Recording provenance evidence means we can see how books were used, read and circulated around society, who owned them and how they fitted in with other books they owned.

Provenance isn't about association copies - book owned by famous people. It is a lot lot more than that, as it's about all the marks of ownership that occur both in the books (bookplates, armorial bindings, inscriptions, annotations, marginalia) and externally (sale and library catalogues).

Pearson took us through different styles of inscriptions (names, mottoes), the development of bookplates from the late 15th century onwards as well as some definitions of bookplates, book labels and stamps. He then discussed provenance found on the outside of books, such as armorials stamped onto bindings. A brilliant new(ish) reference resource for this is the British Armorial Bindings Database, which has plenty of illustrations to help in identifying armorial bindings.

He also discussed the problems of provenance research, where no markings have been left, or they are incomplete, illegible or partly removed. Ways of dealing with provenance evidence included taking the time to practice, for instance inscriptions can become much easier to decipher with a knowledge of palaeography and lots of practice. The National Archives has an online palaeography tutorial. A bibliography of provenance related reading and suggested sources of help for different types of provenance was one of the workshop handouts. CERL is another good source of provenance information.

Finally, we were shown examples of different types of provenance and their associated difficulties, using incunabula from the Cambridge University Library collections. As we were a small group we were able to handle the books and examine the evidence for ourselves.

I really enjoyed having the chance to spend an afternoon taking a step back to think about provenance, as well as the opportunity to see such rich provenance evidence provided by the incunabula. It provided much food for thought for how to record this information in catalogue records and in a way that is useful to researchers. My thanks to David Pearson and all in the CUL Rare Books department for organising the masterclass.

Special Collections cataloguing targets

Recently I've been working on implementing cataloguing standards relating to special collections. This has included using the 561 and 563 fields to record provenance and binding. I also needed to have some idea of timescale for various cataloguing projects, but couldn't find any detail anywhere of targets specifically for special collections material.

I've spent quite a few years working as a rare books and special collections cataloguer, so I know the target I was aiming for then, but I wasn't sure how this compared with other libraries. The targets I've had in the past were for 15 books a day, when my work pretty much solely consisted of cataloguing, and six a day when I spent 50% of my time cataloguing. This was mainly for books printed in the 15th - 19th centuries though.

So, last week, I posed the question on lis-rarebooks, asking for other people's experience of special collections cataloguing targets. I had some really helpful responses, as well as requests to share what I'd found out, hence the blog post. I specifically asked about post-1850 special collections cataloguing, as that is the focus of my current projects.

Most Special Collections that set targets (not all do) were also aiming for 15 books a day, and assuming that some other activity would take place at the same time (e.g. reader invigilation) or that some time would be allocated to other tasks (e.g. conservation or enquiries). Targets were revised if extra tasks came up.

There were a range of responses concerning quality v. quantity. Those libraries that set a target of 15 records a day expected records to be downloaded from external sources and tidied up, with name authorities checked and appropriate provenance and binding details added if necessary. Some were cataloguing 19th century books to the same standard as earlier books, others were aiming for AACR2 level 2. The highest target was 30 a day, but that was for a very experienced cataloguer and assumed that the books were in English, had records that could be downloaded from elsewhere and didn't require extensive provenance research. Some were not setting cataloguing targets at all, preferring quality over quantity.

Prioritisation was important. I also asked about finding aids, for which it is much harder to set targets as collections vary so much in size and content. Most responses that mentioned finding aids suggested starting out with basic collection-level descriptions covering as many of your collections as possible, and then talked about prioritising list creation by gauging reader interest.

Finally Karen Attar (Head of Special Collections at Senate House Library) told me about an article she has written in JOLIS "Modern special collections cataloguing: a University of London case study", which will be published in March 2013. It is currently available via Sage's "OnlineFirst" system. I found this article very helpful.

I'd be interested to hear from anyone else who sets targets for this sort of cataloguing and what figures they're aiming for.

HLF conference 2012: Part 3 Social media

 Here's the final part of my write up of the HLF conference on 20th November 2012.

3) Social media in libraries 
The main speaker in this section was Alison Cullingford (Special Collections Librarian at Bradford University), who I suspect needs no introduction to any special collections librarian who's dabbled in social media already! The case study was provided by Jill Whitelock (Head of Special Collections, Cambridge University Library).

Some conference attendees were already using social media in their libraries, others were not, and Alison emphasised the importance of using it at the right level for both you and your institution. It is now ubiquitous - all good websites now include things like comment boxes and links to share pages on Twitter, Facebook etc.

• Social media is particularly good for small libraries, as it allows them to punch well above their weight.
• Much of it is intuitive and easy to learn, and there is a lot of help available out there.
• Use responsibly and with common sense. Your institution might perceive there is a risk from social media so be prepared to put together a case.
• You can only use pictures to which you have the rights, so this might limit what you can post online.
• Blogging and other social media are an excellent CPD opportunity for staff.

Where to start?
Blogging is the most comfortable place to start from, as you can use the story of your special collections and go beyond what you can do on a corporate website. Both Alison and Jill are using Wordpress. Put anything ongoing and dynamic on the blog and remember it has a long shelflife so people searching even years later on will still be able to find it.

• Moderate comments to weed out any spam. 
• Remember that the blog will not look after itself, so act like an editor and find and commission content. 
• Have some posts queued so you're never without one handy. 
• Join in with other blogs to do themed posts and make your content go further by using other social media. 
• Ask to be featured on your library's homepage to increase the number of hits. 
• Always ask someone else to read through your posts before they go live.

The 100 objects style format has worked well at various places (100 objects Bradford, 52 weeks of fantastic bindings, 52 weeks of inspiring illustrations) and ends up working like a FAQ about the collections. The  Cambridge Special Collections Blog has a mixture of post styles, some time-specific to mark anniversaries or publicise events. There are also separate project blogs, such as the Incunabula cataloguing project, and the Tower Project. Guest posts are used to demonstrate relevance and that collections are being used (you can see a guest post I wrote for the Cambridge Incunabula Project blog here).

Flickr works well for special collections images, and avoids the need to invest in expensive image management software (Special Collections Bradford Flickr photostream). Some institutions have used students to film special collections work as part of their projects (Tyne & Wear archives, LSE).

Twitter can be controversial as it's easy to say things you shouldn't, but it's a brilliant way of getting conversations started, being interactive and getting feedback quickly. During the day there are a lot of professionals using it, and a good international angle emerges when people in other time zones get to work too. I liked Alison's tip of never using Twitter if you're in a bad mood!

Golden rule: think about what you're doing and why you're doing it

Sources to find out more:
CPD23 provides a good overview of getting started with social media.
Ned Potter (the Wikiman) has guidelines for using social media on his blog.

HLF conference 2012: Part 2 Exhibitions

Continuing my write up of the 2012 Historic Libraries Forum conference: Making the most of your special collections.


2) Exhibitions
The main speaker on exhibitions was Tanya Kirk (Lead Curator of Printed Literary Sources at the British Library), who had recently curated the summer exhibition, Writing Britain: literary wonderlands and wastelands. Case studies were provided by Katie Sambrook (Special Collections Librarian at King's College London) and Emily Dourish (Exhibitions Officer at Cambridge University Library).

Tanya outlined the exhibitions process at the British Library. It is run as a project, with each exhibition usually taking 2-3 years of planning and implementation. I have added comments made by Katie and Emily in their case studies to the outline below.

• Proposal - sell exhibition ideas to colleagues and your marketing department/wider institution. Why do you think your institution is the right place for this exhibition? Does it have a broad or narrow focus, and is this likely to appeal to enough people? This will also depend on whether you are trying to generate revenue, or just raise awareness of your library/institution and promote your collections. An exhibition is an immense amount of work, even if you only have a few display cases, so are you going to be a single curator (and if so, what happens about the rest of your work whilst this is going on?) or curate jointly with someone else? Emily talked about how academics at Cambridge were keen to be involved with an exhibition because it could count as evidence for their impact rating in REF.
• Marketing - does it link with your institution's "brand"? There was a difference here between case studies. Some had marketing departments that liked to link the exhibition to modern times, and avoid having a "dusty image", other institutions were keen to emphasise the historical aspects of what they were displaying.
• Audience test and find out what people would expect to see if they came to your exhibition. Similarly. talk to colleagues to ensure you are remaining on track topic-wise. Know your audience - the BL aims exhibition labels at a reading age of GCSE grade C to make it accessible. Knowing your audience also means you know whether you can use technical terms or not.
• Build a list of collection items considered for exhibition, otherwise you'll forget them. Record information about the copy you want, which opening you want and the book's condition on a spreadsheet, and take photos to remind yourself what the item looks like. Keep in mind the overall look and aim for variety in each display case. You can also use colour pictures to mock up the display case.
• Check whether items are suitable for display, bearing in mind the limitations of your display space, for example, is the environment suitable and is the book happy to open far enough for display purposes?
• Arrange exhibition loans, if necessary. Most institutions want to receive loan requests at least six months before the exhibition. Bear in mind that loans can be expensive.
• When writing labels be rigorous about fact checking and always have someone available to proofread and edit. Avoid writing consecutive labels as people don't read everything and may miss some out. Start with a hook at the beginning of the label to draw people in and use active language and metaphor. Encourage people to look at the object, not just read the label. Always test your labels with non-expert.
• Publicity - encourage people to blog about your exhibition to raise awareness. Make sure your front of house staff know about the exhibition so they can "sell" it too.
• Katie and Emily had different policies about online exhibitions. At King's they publish the online exhibition only after the physical display has been taken down, to encourage people to go and see it whilst it's there. Whereas at Cambridge the online exhibition is published at the same time.

I thought there were some great ideas in this part of the conference, and definitely some I'll be able to use in the future. I also found it helpful to have an overview of the whole exhibition process at the British Library. Obviously, that's a lot bigger than anywhere I've worked, but the same principles apply.