APML: Disaster management

Before I started working in library world I had no idea how many related organisations there are out there. Of course, I'd heard of CILIP (in those days the Library Association) and I'd vaguely heard of the Cathedral Libraries & Archives Association (CLAA) through volunteering at a cathedral library, but I hadn't heard of any others. In those days I'd only just acquired my first email address and email bulletins were unheard of so it was quite hard to find out about organisations, especially as the smaller ones didn't seem to have websites. Of course, we're in a whole new world now, it is so much easier to find out about relevant organisations, and there are so many of them out there, often providing ways of networking with librarians working in a similar field, or inexpensive training opportunities. One of those groups is the Association of Pall Mall Libraries (APML). I went to a talk they organised before one of their meetings, on the subject of disaster management.

The speaker was Sarah Hamlyn, Lead Preventive Conservator at the British Library, who gave us an overview of disaster management issues and ideas of what to do in our own libraries both before a disaster and in the aftermath. I'll just pull out her main points to write about here.

She emphasised the importance of planning in advance what to do if an emergency occurs and practising. With the growth in social networking and the ease of taking photographs any incident is likely to be in public view very rapidly and you need to know how to deal with it. If you have one, use your press or PR department's expertise to prepare a statement.

Potential risks

The part to send shivers down any librarian's spine is the list of potential risks. These include both problems that would affect just one library or institution, or much wider emergencies that affect an entire city or area. These include: theft, violent incidents, power failure, pandemics, transport infrastructure failure, extreme weather, loss of IT systems, fire, flood, environmental problems, mould outbreaks, pest infestations, physical damage (e.g. buildings being brought down by the force of flood water). Obviously these affect collection items, but it's important not to forget about your staff. What are you going to do if your staff can't get to work, or get home again at the end of the day?

Sources of information

Relevant standards to follow are ISO 31000 2009, Risk management: Principles and guidelines, available here as a free download and ISO 22301, Business continuity management.

Many disaster plans and templates are available online, but make sure you update them to reflect your library's individual circumstances.

The British Library Preservation Advisory Service (BLPAC) has an e-resource about disaster and emergency planning. This has much more detail about what to do and links to other sources of information.

Sarah emphasised the points to consider:

Prevention and preparedness

• Try and avoid a disaster happening in the first place by eliminating as many risks as possible and identifying key staff and functions.

Emergency plan

• Keep your emergency plan updated, including emergency contact numbers for staff and a priority list of items. For instance, you need to be very specific about groups of items to help the fire brigade know what to rescue in an emergency - you may not be allowed in the building yourself. Be aware that both personal phone numbers and the location of valuable items are sensitive data and treat them accordingly.

• Test the plan. This is the only way you'll find out what doesn't work, before you have to "test" it in a genuine emergency. Practising also helps your staff in a real emergency as they already know what to do.

• Be clear about who has what role in an incident, including substitutes in case of illness or holiday. 

• If the site is compromised you need to know whether you can work normally and who makes the decision to close. You also need to know the minimum number of staff you need to be able to open. Be aware that in a big incident, you will also need to update your library users about the emergency situation, as well as staff.

• The plan should be easy to carry around and use. Many institutions use a small checklist that can be carried in a wallet or handbag. Check that staff know what they need with them if they're called to an out of hours emergency - things like money and keys. Large institutions, such as the British Library, have pre-loaded mobile phones with relevant numbers in and a paid staff out-of-hours rota for the staff who carry these.

•  Make salvage and the disaster plan part of induction training, and revisit the training frequently.

CILIP in London: Women's Library

On 4th July 2012 I went to a CILIP in London talk by Dianne Shepherd, the Information Librarian at the Women's Library. The talk was about a mixture of professional issues, what the library does and what her job is like, and a bit about the current situation over the future of the Women's Library.

I hadn't been to any CILIP branch events before, despite finishing my chartership over three years ago. In previous areas where I've lived (East Midlands and Thames Valley) they were hard to get to as there was quite a lot of travel involved, but it turned out CILIP in London's talks are only 15 minutes walk from where I work, and timed to make it easy to go to them after work.

Dianne described the history and background of the Women's Library collections. The collection is Designated and documents every aspect of women's lives, mainly in this country, although there is some material from overseas. It was originally founded in 1926 by the suffragist, Millicent Fawcett, with the name Library of the London Society for Women's Service. By 1953 it was known as the Fawcett Library, and it moved to City Polytechnic, (which was later known as London Guildhall University, and which is now part of London Metropolitan University). A Heritage Lottery Fund grant meant the library could move to purpose-built accommodation in 2002. I visited there last year, with the CILIP Library & Information History Group, before the threat of closure was announced.

Various other collections were acquired, including the Cavendish Bentinck Library (in 1931) and the Josephine Butler Society Library. Donations are still accepted now (donations information is here). The library has become a very well-used collection, starting out with only 5 readers a day in 2002 and increasing to over 4,000 visits in total in 2011, and over 14,000 enquiries. This is testament both to the excellent reader facilities they now have there, reader development schemes and also a lot of work that has been done on cataloguing the collections to make them accessible (catalogues of the library, as well as archive and museum are available here).

The staff are divided into the Collections team (librarians, library assistants and an archivist) who create documentation, catalogue and conserve the collections, run the reading room and look after acquisitions (their Collection Development Policy is here) and Events staff (a learning co-ordinator and events co-ordinator) who organise study days and children's activities. Volunteers are used to undertake tasks which professional staff don't have time for and are always professionally managed and supervised.

And as for the future? Well, London Metropolitan University announced in March that the Women's Library would need to find a new custodian. Support would be provided until Christmas 2012, after which the service would be cut to one day a week opening. The current situation (July 2012) is that formal bids have been tendered and an announcement will be made by the end of September over where the library will go and what will happen to it. The list of bidders is here. You can keep up to date with the campaign to save the Women's Library on this blog.

I took away a lot of ideas from this talk. It was useful to pick up hints and tips on managing a large cataloguing backlog, as well as promoting your collections, dealing with donations and increasing the number of readers. I was also very pleased to learn that there have been a number of bidders interested in taking on the collections, as it would be awful if such a well-used and vital collection were to be split up or become less accessible.

A nice surprise right at the end was that food is provided at CILIP in London talks too! A good way to chat and network with other professionals. I'll definitely be looking out for more of these events in the future.

Latin & rare books librarians

A while ago I was asked about resources to help with learning Latin, as a rare books librarian. And it got me thinking.

Do you actually need to know Latin to be a rare books librarian? 

My initial reaction was "Yes, but...", because surely it depends on your collection. If you look after a modern special collection, for instance, Latin is going to be much less useful than other skills. But over the course of a career, knowing Latin surely has to be a good thing as most pre-1800 rare-book collections are going to include a proportion of books in Latin?

The CILIP RBSCG has a document on skills for rare books librarians on their Careers page, which mentions the need to have language skills to help you manage and research your collection, and that increasingly users themselves may not know Latin so will need your help.

If your collection doesn't have any books in Latin, or very few of them, other skills are going to be more useful. Some rare books job adverts will make knowing Latin an essential or at least desirable element, but others won't. For instance, my current job had knowledge of Latin or a European language as desirable, but not essential. So, not having Latin won't necessarily stop you getting a job as a rare books librarian, but it might count against you if you're competing against other candidates who have Latin, and it might limit the jobs for which you can apply. And even if you're not looking for a job, it can make a massive difference to your everyday work too.

How does Latin help?

I have an A Level in Latin, and I have found it very useful in my career so far. You can "get by" in cataloguing without knowing Latin, and there are resources that can help, such as the Historic Libraries Forum guide.  Rare Books in Scotland have run workshops in the past on Latin for rare books librarians, and have a guide published here (link goes to pdf), which includes links to other resources, including information about place names and a word list.With many (most) collections, you're going to end up cataloguing a book in a language you don't know at some point, even if you do know Latin.

But, especially if you work with a collection that has many books in Latin and other European languages, knowing Latin is an enormous help. You don't just match a record on COPAC, hoping for the best, you can catalogue the book yourself. You can also interpret the book more easily, which helps with adding subject headings or assisting a reader who doesn't know the language. Even if the book you're looking at is in another European language you don't know, knowing Latin may give you a clue. You'll also miss out on the fun of cataloguing, and getting to know the book if you can't understand the language it's written in.

How do I learn Latin?

I was lucky. I went to a girls' state school which didn't teach Latin, but the boys' school up the road did, so I got to do my GCSE there. I did my A Level on my own, with a few hours support from a private tutor every week. That was really tough, as there is no one else there to bounce ideas and questions off when you're stuck with a particularly knotty bit of translation.

If you're at school now and it teaches Latin, take advantage of the opportunity! Unfortunately most state schools no longer teach it, and if you're reading this, you're most likely way past school-age anyway, so how else can you learn it?

I have heard the view expressed that making Latin a requirement in a job description is discriminatory, as it excludes people who didn't go to a private school. But I don't think this is true.  You don't need to learn Latin in school, for a start.

Learning for fun
If you just want to learn it for fun, or to add to your skills in a job you're already doing, then probably the cheapest way is to go it alone with a book and study guide. I used the Cambridge Latin Course for GCSE. I learnt Ancient Greek on a summer school which used Reading Greek, and there is a companion volume called Reading Latin, which is aimed at a student and adult audience. Learning on your own requires commitment though and it can be hard with no one to answer questions. The Cambridge Latin Course has a scheme for distance learners. You could also ask around or advertise for a tutor to help you (although expect to pay upwards of £15-20 an hour for a tutor). Maybe you could arrange a skills swap with someone who could help you in return for something you can do for them, such as babysitting?

Other options include doing an evening class via adult education through your local council, university or WEA. That way you'll meet other interested people and have a tutor to mark your work.
Summer schools are also fun, and offer an intensive way of getting to know the language with support available. I've seen some advertised (this isn't a complete list, do post in the comments if you know of more!).
London Summer School in Classics - this is the Greek course I did over 10 years ago. They also teach Latin, Syriac and Coptic.
Latin in a week at Gladstone's Library (you can also do Greek in a week, or Hebrew in a week!). What could be more fun than a week at a residential library? I spent a few nights here researching a theology essay years ago and it was wonderful.
Joint Association of Classical Teachers - list of summer schools.

Another fun option is to get involved with Minimus mouse Latin teaching. Minimus is aimed at primary school children and some schools run lunchtime or after school clubs to teach it.

Gaining a qualification

If you want to be able to put Latin on a job application, you might want to aim for a qualification to show your commitment and attainment. You may be able to access a GCSE or A Level course through a local college, although this may take place in daytime.
Some of the options I've suggested above, particularly distance learning, offer the opportunity to take a qualification at the end of them.
If you're still at university, you can often take a module or two outside the subject you're studying, so why not investigate taking a module in Latin?
The Open University has a module in Reading Classical Latin, and other languages. The Latin course is based around the Reading Latin book I mentioned above.

Good luck! And please leave me a comment if you have any more ideas of Latin learning resources to share.

After all, you never know when Latin is going to come in useful...

[Photo taken by me at Wallsend station on the Metro in Newcastle. This is the stop for Segedunum Roman fort.
The other pictures were taken by me at Chedworth Roman villa, near Cirencester. Well worth a visit. Look out for the snails.]

Exhibition: Royal Devotion

The other week I went to see the exhibition Royal Devotion: Monarchy and the Book of Common Prayer at Lambeth Palace Library.

I enjoyed my visit and thought I'd share it on here in case anyone else wants to go too - it's open until 14th July. It's a cunning way of combining two of this year's anniversaries, the Queen's Jubilee and the BCP, into one exhibition, which gives it a much broader appeal than if it had just been the BCP, for instance. There's something for everyone to enjoy seeing.

Obviously, there's a 1662 Book of Common Prayer on display, but there is much much more. The exhibition starts pre-Reformation, with some lovely medieval manuscripts, including the Chichele Breviary and Richard III's Book of Hours, as well as some incunabula, including the Beaufort Hours. I liked seeing the mixture of official books for the use of the clergy, as well as the smaller and more personal ones. The display cases are low enough down for the smaller books to be easy to see.

Pre- and post-Reformation liturgies are displayed, including early examples of the Protestant communion service, alongside the first edition (1549) of the BCP. And the turmoil of the years following Henry VIII's death is obvious, with a Latin Mass issued under Mary, and the books in English that appeared under Elizabeth.

Queen Elizabeth's Prayer Book. Christian prayers and meditations in English, French, Italian, Spanish, Greeke, and Latine. London: John Day, 1569. Picture courtesy of Lambeth Palace Library.

The exhibition then moves onto prayer books and the Civil War, with not only books on display, but also a medal commemorating the execution of Archbishop Laud and the gloves worn at the execution of Charles I. The special service to mark the 'martyrdom' of the King was shown, incorporated into the BCP. Further examples of prayer books take us to the publication of the BCP in 1662.

I found one of the most interesting sections was the display on the use of the BCP in other countries. This was illustrated with an array of editions in different languages, including Irish Gaelic (1608), French (1616), Dutch (1645), Indian and Chinese. This went right up to the 20th century, including examples where the English version has been revised, including the switch to "you" from "thou" in public prayer.

The jump to the monarchy aspect of the exhibition was through the use of the prayer book for royal services. Exhibits in this section ranged from the manuscript report of the christening of Charles II, to the order of service used by the Archbishop of Canterbury last year for the wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton. The exhibition finishes with the 1662 BCP, but before that there is a case for the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, featuring examples of the coronation service dating back to 1685, and books of private devotion written specifically for the use of the monarch for their coronation.

In advance, I had wondered how the combination of the BCP and the Queen's jubilee would work together in an exhibition, but I thoroughly enjoyed seeing the range of material on display. I would highly recommend visiting if you're in the area.

Manuale ad usum insignis ecclesiae Sarisburiensis. Rothomagi: apud Robertum Valentinum, 1554. This page shows the wedding service in Latin and English. Picture courtesy of Lambeth Palace Library.

Welcome

Welcome to my professional blog.

A few months ago I wrote a guest blog post for the Rare Books Dept. at Cambridge University Library  incunabula blog - it was about the masterclass I'd just attended on medical incunabula. You can read the post here.

I realised then that a blog would be a good way of sharing events I've been to, or answers to questions I've been asked, as well as having more space than Twitter (!) to link to resources. So, here I am.