Trainee Diaries

A regularly updated blog allowing prospective trainees to get a feel for the working week at each of Cambridge's trainee posts.

Details of blog entries for previous years can be found here (2010-2011).

August 10, July 27, July 20, July 12, July 9, July 5, June 8, June 1, May 23, May 17, May 15, May 12, April 17, April 13, April 2, March 26, March 22, March 9, March 8, March 2, February 22, February 17, February 9, February 8, January 28, January 19, January 18, January 5, December 19, December 15, November 28, November 18, October 27, September 7.

August 10

Newnham College

Well, my final few weeks at Newnham are here and I really cannot believe how quickly everything has gone. Rest assured, however, that this is only a good sign of how much I have enjoyed my time here. I will miss this role, this place, but most importantly, the people I work with, hugely.

My last couple of weeks , despite the quietness of the library in itself, still look to be quite busy, however. I am updating my trainee folder to pass on to my successor, hopefully with lots of helpful tips and tricks (I know this folder proved invaluable to me throughout this year) and tidying up computer files/my desk/random bits of paper and notes that seem to appear left right and centre! It is also important to get ready for September, so I have been and will continue editing our library guides, webpages and signs so that all those Freshers have a helping hand in their first Newnham library steps...

As this is my last entry, I just want to say how truly wonderful this year has been and that I could not encourage the library trainee experience enough. I can see how much I have learned and developed this year, often without even realising it, and I know it is because of this role.

Ok, 'enough with the sentimentality!' I hear you cry. I can only say therefore, have a great time next year's lot, and good luck!

Polly Harper

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July 27

St John's College

This week we have been lucky enough to enjoy several days of beautiful sunshine, although the library is still relatively chilly! I finish my traineeship on Tuesday, and it is rather scary to think I've been here a year. My last couple of days will be spent tidying up everything I have been working on recently, and clearing out my messy desk and drawers.

Recently I have been working in a fellow's room, surveying the books he wishes to donate to the library. We now have a list of around 600 books for the Library Project Assistant to work through, searching to find out how many of these books we don't already have. There are more books to come as well, many of them were inaccessible! This has been a lovely break from the noise (and smell) of building work that began back in June here, which is causing a little disruption! The past month has also seen a team of 'taggers' going through every book, DVD and CD in the library and placing an RFID tag inside them. A self-issue machine will arrive in September, ready for the new term, meaning we will be incorporating it into our Freshers' tours in early October. I believe that students will greatly appreciate this addition to the library, allowing out of hours borrowing and hopefully reducing the time they have to wait to be served.

As to where I am going next, I will be spending the next 6 weeks working in both Darwin College Library and the Central Science Library in Cambridge. I am looking forward to finding out more about these two very different libraries. And then from mid-September I will be back here at St John's, covering a colleague's maternity leave. I feel so happy to be coming back, and relieved to be employed for another year! The library is going through so many changes at the moment, and I look forward to being here whilst things begin to happen. I will be starting my Masters in Library and Information Sciences with Aberystywth University (by distance learning) at around the same time I return here, so it is going to be a very busy couple of years.

Rachel Walker

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July 20

Christ's College

Now that term has long since finished, the library team has more time to work on various projects.

Last week, the Library conducted a preservation survey, which involved detailing the condition of a wide sample of items from the Old Library. This provided the opportunity for the Librarian and Assistant Librarian to assess the condition of a broad range of items that form the historical collections, and the Librarian will be writing a report on the findings of the survey over the summer.

I myself have been concentrating on the task of updating the Library's medicine collection. This has involved looking for replacement editions of books that are ten or more years old. These will hopefully be purchased by October so that the collection is fully updated for the start of the new academic year.

Last week, we hosted a group of visiting students from Harvard University, who are studying Charles Darwin on a six week course in Oxford, and visited Christ's to see some of the Darwin-related memorabilia the Library houses and to see where Darwin spent his undergraduate days. Amongst the Library items that the group saw were the 1859 first edition of 'On the Origin of the Species' and some of the personal correspondence between Darwin and his second cousin, William Darwin Fox. Our visitors also had the opportunity to see the room that Darwin lived in whilst he was a student at Christ's, which was restored in 2009. The interior of the 'Darwin Room' (Room G4, First Court) can be viewed here.

We welcomed considerably more visitors during the recent College open days, which provided an opportunity for prospective students and their parents to visit the Library and ask questions about the Library facilities. Over two days we welcomed over a thousand visitors to the Old Library; some just wanted a quick look, others stayed longer and asked questions about the building and the collections. Many people also took the time to look at the current Old Library exhibition, 'Sporting Christ's'.

Tom Guest

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July 12

Pembroke College

A number of Cambridge Colleges have recognised the benefit of using the long vacation to host summer school programmes. Pembroke in fact hosts two such schemes, which provide overseas students the opportunity to study a range of subjects in a historic university town. Courses are pitched at undergraduate level, and can count towards degrees in the home universities from which the students come. Courses vary in length from four to eight weeks; and while the responsibility for hosting some of the courses is shared with King's College, others are run entirely from Pembroke.

From the perspective of the library, the upshot of all this is that there are approximately three hundred overseas students which can now use the library (but not all are resident in College). Monday was the day that was set aside for library inductions for the majority; and, as anticipated, very little was achieved on that day besides the provision of inductions. Three of us (that is, myself, the Librarian and an additional library helper) gave fifteen minute inductions in continuous rotation for the entire afternoon. After spending most of the day lecturing to groups of up to twenty, I felt more like a teacher than a librarian.

The days that followed have been more peaceful. This is partly because some of the summer school students have been on organised excursions round the UK; and partly because the majority of the course materials for one programme is housed at King's. Nevertheless, there has been a slow increase in students in the library. Most are polite to the point of excess (which, unfortunately, cannot always be said of Pembroke College students), and many have expressed their delight with the prospect of being able to work in the library. The upper reading room in particular has been described as one of the most attractive work spaces ever seen, which is always nice to hear.

Joe Sandham

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July 9

Classical Faculty

Stock-check week has just begun in the Classical Faculty Library, so I've got a few days of peering at lists and wandering up and down the bookcases to look forward to. It is not, by all accounts, the most thrilling of jobs, but it has to be done. But let me take you back, dear reader, to a distant time, a time when things were good and 'stock checking' was but the faintest of worries, something far distant from my carefree mind. A time known as 'two or three weeks ago'. This was when it was at last my turn to take the other trainees round my library.

As part of the tour, I'd laid on a veritable feast of learning and lovely-old-book-ness (if I do say so myself) in the form of a display of some of the library's collections. The theme was a subject that has fascinated me for years - 'Ancient Exploration' - and I was able to find quite a range of interesting books and maps to illustrate the topic. I actually wrote my Masters thesis on Aristeas of Proconnesus (an ancient poet/shaman/explorer/liar mentioned by Herodotus), so it was great to have the chance to put something together on him and all the other obscure people who may (or may not) have visited some weird and wonderful places thousands of years ago. We don't have a dedicated exhibition space, so all I could do was put everything out on a table in our palaeography room. Because of this it was all a little hidden from view, and I had to remove it all after a few days.

It's not dead, however! I've spent a bit of time getting to grips with Prezi, a means whereby you can put together some pretty slick-looking Powerpoint-style presentations with a minimum of effort. Using my newly-gained mad Prezi skills, I've cobbled together something capturing the spirit of my display. Trying to put something like this online really forces you to learn how copyright works - although all the really interesting old books are well out of copyright, I've had to drop a few pictures and scans of the more recent books featured. Hopefully there's nothing glaringly illegal remaining! There's a link to my efforts from the library website, or look at it here if you so wish.

Philip Keates

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July 5

Newnham College

Well, times have changed quite a bit at Newnham now. To celebrate the end of term we had numerous summer garden parties in the beautiful grounds here, in addition to the June Event which was very good fun. The students have nearly all left and many whom I would see daily grappling with their final essays and dissertations graduated at the weekend. It is wonderful to know that all their hard work which we witnessed has paid off.

With a very quiet library in our midst, it has been stock checking time! This is done annually and involves 2 extra staff, Lise and Sarah, to scan all our stock. The *beep* of the scanner has become such a natural musical accompaniment to my day. I feel a part of me will miss it..! We have then processed all the scanned barcodes to see if any books are in the wrong places, have the wrong status, or, unfortunately, are missing. This involves various mini missions to search for books/ interpret the results of the data, which in its own, understated way feels pretty satisfying.

With the end of my traineeship not too far off at all I need to make sure everything is in order for my lovely successor, such as the trainee manual and the files on my computer. It provides a welcome opportunity to reflect on how much I have learnt this year and how I have grown so much more confident in this role.

I think it may be our final group trainee visit in a couple of weeks to the Cambridge University Press. This sounds like it may be something a little different and I am looking forward to it hugely. For now, however, I will get back to the dulcet tones of that beloved stock check scanner...

Polly Harper

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June 8

St John's College

The library is beginning to quieten down as students began to finish exams although my time is very busy finishing off the last bits and pieces before my exhibition goes up towards the end of this week. Like Tom, I have spent the last few days getting together all the images I wish to use, which involves using photography and scanners to make copies of the many portraits and photographs of the featured Johnians. The general rule is that anything pre-1830 must be photographed rather than scanned, and this is often easier anyway as it does not require the item to be flattened. It is relatively simple to take photographs in the Old Library, as we have a digital camera set up on a stand with bright lighting and various pieces of sponge to help hold the item in position. Scanning also has its benefits however, especially when taking copies of photographs on shiny paper where light can reflect off when using lighting or a flash. Other things for me to consider whilst setting up my exhibition include the positioning of the boards and cases to hold my exhibition text and items. Over the next few days I will be testing out how to lay out everything I have, and attempting to fit everyone I have onto the timeline, a complicated task when you have lots of people in one decade, and then nobody for a century!

Rachel Walker

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June 1

Christ's College

As the launch of the 'Sporting Christ's' exhibition draws ever nearer, I have been hard at work gathering photographic and other materials that I will be displaying. Visiting the College Picture Store has been central to the plans for the exhibition, and has granted me access to a huge range of portraits and photographs that illuminate the College's history in ways that written accounts never could.

I have also recently visited the College Boat House, and was kindly lent a piece of College history to incorporate into the exhibition: a framed rowing cap and hat band dating from the nineteenth century. These items belonged to A.T. Atchison when he was First Boat Captain in 1869-70, and were donated to the Boat Club by his son, G.T. Atchison, himself First Boat Captain thirty years later. Both men feature in the exhibition owing to the obvious dedication they showed to rowing and the contribution they made to College sport. Amongst the other items that will be featured is an Olympic Gold medal won at the 1920 Olympic Games in Antwerp, as well as profiles of several College members who competed on the International stage in their chosen sport.

A visit by the Chancellor and Vice-Chancellor of the University to the Library this week gave the Library Team an opportunity to showcase the Old Library along with a number of its treasures. One such treasure was the 'Aurora Australis', which was published at the winter quarters of the British Antarctic Expedition during the months of April, May, June and July 1908. It was printed by the Shackleton expedition, the members of which wrote the contents of the book. One of the most interesting aspects of the book is that it is bound in an old food packing case. The Antarctic expedition ended in 1913, and the book was later donated to the College by one of the members of the expedition, Raymond Priestly.

The visit went as planned, and was an interesting experience to have been a part of.

Tom Guest

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May 23

Classical Faculty

Well, it's exam time. For some of our students they start this week, and the library is fairly buzzing with panic. Even the most usually scrupulous of undergraduates seem to be haemorrhaging money in fines, as the pressure makes them forget how the library system works. I wouldn't be too surprised if soon I get students coming up to the issue desk in tears, crying that they can't remember how to open a book, or that they've forgotten what words are. I feel for them, having been there before myself, but the only thing we can really do to help is to make sure the library is as calm a place to revise as possible (we don't have a sweets budget like some of the colleges!).

Regular readers of this column will probably be expecting something on classification from me, but although I've been doing a fair amount to reorganise our archaeology section, I think Joe's covered the topic fairly comprehensively for the moment! Instead, I've thought of two other things I've been up to that I can witter on about. Firstly, non-book cataloguing. I've just had to catalogue a DVD for the first time - and it's a tricky business. Even big-budget movies seem to be complicated beasts to catalogue, when you have to consider factors like region and running time, which obviously aren't considerations when you're looking at a book. You also have to grapple with outdated terminology like 'videodisc' in the endless quest to balance following the rules with creating a record that users will actually find if they search for it. But I found myself having to sit down and skim through this independently produced filming of a masked Greek tragedy just to find out what language they were using! Still, I eventually cobbled something together that I'm reasonably happy with, and now our collection of DVDs has been expanded. To six DVDs. I know we usually don't buy them, but come on people, where are the donations? Surely the Cambridge Classical Faculty Library shouldn't be without Spartacus or 300? Where's the love?

Talking of searching for records, I recently attended a course on Library of Congress Subject Headings, or LCSH, an extremely useful tool with which all cataloguers should be familiar. To put it simply, these subject headings are a description of what a book is about. They are useful to librarians for a number of reasons, but they are particularly useful to the users of our library because they help with keyword searching of the catalogue. Let me give an example. Imagine, if you will, that you were looking for a book on the phenomenon of celebrity gossip magazines in Classical Athens. Imagine that the go-to book on the topic was called something like "From 'Ok Pericles' to 'Which Demagogue?': the glossies in old Attica". Frankly I'd question the quality of the scholarship in a book with such a title, but seeing as I just made it up I suppose it can be excused. Anyway, if you didn't know the name of this book, you'd probably have difficulty finding it on the catalogue - you'd probably be keyword searching along the lines of 'Athens celebrity gossip' or 'Athens celebrity magazine' or similar, and none of those terms appear in the title or, let's assume, the rest of the record for this (terrible/fictional) book. With LCSH, you could add a field to the record of the book like (to give a hopefully spurious example) 'Celebrity gossip magazines, Athens - 5th Century', making the book much easier to search for. These subject headings were first developed by the Library of Congress (hence the name), and are still maintained and updated there, but are now used across the world. The basic principle is that if everyone uses subject headings as authorised by the Library of Congress, this consistency means that people will always be able to find the books they're looking for. There are problems with the system, and it's of course impossible to avoid subjectivity when a cataloguer has to decide which subject headings to apply to a particular book, but overall I see it as something very worthwhile. So there you go!

Philip Keates

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May 17

Pembroke College

Classification is essential to the business of libraries so it will be no surprise to learn that classification has a significant bearing on my current role. One of the main ongoing projects in Pembroke College Library is the reclassification of the English section. The subject is particularly difficult to classify since it contains different types of work. On the one hand it contains plays, poems and prose (which can be taken as different genres); on the other it contains secondary literature, including criticisms and commentaries on the former. Works could be separated to reflect these distinctions (as they would be in Dewey), but this would mean that works relating to a single author would be split. A user would have to go to one location to find the prose of a particular author, to another to find his poetry, and finally to a third to find commentaries on his works. Should materials be divided according to these distinctions, or should they be divided according to something else?

As with most of subjects, the section has its own in-house classification scheme in Pembroke. Prior to reclassification, the section was roughly organised into major sections that corresponded to time periods in the development of English literature. However, the divisions were often highly specific and were not easy to comprehend. Poetry and prose for a given century could be in one major section, drama in another. Furthermore the works had been assigned classmarks in the order in which they had been acquired within each section, and on no other basis. Thus, individual works by Dickens could be found alongside works by Eliot and Hardy in one heterogeneous mix that represented the nineteenth century, while Hardy's poems would be in another section altogether. Furthermore, all secondary literature was separated from the authors in question, and was further split into sections that had little relevance to users (or librarians).

Under the new scheme major divisions are revised so that they correspond to courses in the Tripos structure (which is something that could not have been achieved if we had been tied to Dewey). In addition to this, within a given section, all works relating to a particular author are grouped together for ease of browsing, including plays, prose, poetry and commentaries. Major divisions are indicated by numbers, (312 indicates nineteenth century (British) English literature; 315 indicates American literature); authors are indicated by letters (ELIO indicates George Eliot; HAR indicates Thomas Hardy); individual items are then given a number, with parts being given a further number after a decimal point. Thus the first part of a work by George Eliot may have the classmark 312,ELIO 2.1; the second part may have the classmark 312,ELIO 2.2. A work by Henry James may have the classmark 315, JAM 3. General criticisms and commentaries will be placed at the end of the sequence (317 onward) and divided according to genre (prose, poetry, drama and film).

Alongside the allocation of new class marks and the physical re-labelling of books, the main task is one of cataloguing or re-cataloguing. Many of the books in the collection are donations and date from pre-1900; catalogue records are often stubs. As a standard procedure, I am looking at each bibliographic record on Voyager for each book that is reclassified. Ninety percent of the stock requires me to import and edit new records to supplant the old ones, and the section as a whole could easily be twenty per cent of the total shelf stock in the library. As the main cataloguer for the project, much depends on my cataloguing turnover- and I have no grounds for complaining that I do not get enough practice!

Joe Sandham

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May 15

Newnham College

As in everyone's libraries, I am sure, busy-ness levels (and equally, student stress levels) are rapidly rising at this time of the year. I definitely enjoy it most when it is so busy though as I feel like I am really helping students when they most need it... which is why I do this job! The sweets we have put out for them seem to be bring a momentary relief too in their busy studying schedules.(Although I keep thinking people are wanting help, only to find they are approaching the desk seeking toffees!)

As I mentioned in my last post in March, I was involved in Cambridge Wordfest, presenting our virginia Woolf collection to the public. Yesterday the Guild of Friends of Newnham College visited so I was again able to share our exhibition with them. Debbie, the librarian and Anne, the archivist also brought out some wonderful items from our rarebooks collection and archives for all to see. I think I was as wide-eyed as the visitors. I particularly enjoyed seeing the Newnham tennis dress from the 1880s- a heavy, long, wooly green dress, complete with bustle and ruching which I cannot imagine ever functioning as suitable tennis attire ironically ... Although I sometimes get a little nervous before these events, as soon as I do them and get speaking, I really love it and hope it is something I would be able to carry on with in other library jobs in the future.

We have recently been working on setting up a trial-blog for the library which has been very interesting. I have written various posts on different collections we hold here or specific interesting items, complete with photographs (which is what people really want to look at, I know!). It has been a great way for me to find out more about the gems held here at the library, but also to practise my writing, and feel like I am really using skills and knowledge from my degree too.

A couple of weeks ago I was fortunate to spend an afternoon working at the English Faculty library, shadowing the staff there to find out a little more about how a faculty library can differ from that of a college, and also one which covers the subject area I am most interested in. I really loved it! I did various tasks, including helping with a new exhibition, learning the complications of their classification scheme and trying to juggle a rota as an assistant librarian would. I truly am very lucky to have the opportunity to do things like this.

A trip to the British Library next week which is very exciting and I believe (although correct me if I am wrong) makes us the first group of Cambridge trainees to have done this visit. How very pioneering we are...

Polly Harper

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May 12

St John's College

As term has started again the library has been steadily filling up each day with students beginning to revise for exams and finish off coursework. One of the most joyful tasks of this time is clearing desks, as requested by the College JCR to cope with the number of students 'desk hogging'. Equipped with blue plastic bags and slips politely informing the student we have removed their items, we arrive early in the morning to do a sweep of the whole library. Not my favourite job, but if it makes it easier for people to find space to work then it is definitely beneficial to everybody.

Aside from that the usual biographical work has been ongoing, currently I am working my way through past Johnians updating name titles for those with PhDs or professorships. My article about Lady Margaret Beaufort mentioned in my previous post when down very well, and I feel a very interesting topic to have researched. Preparations for my exhibition to go up mid-June are well under way, as I am trying to visualise what it will look like and how to construct a timeline across over 5 metres of boards in the exhibition area! I have managed to split up my key scientists in 5 areas, for which there will be a case each:

1. 16th Century Science

• John Dee (admitted to the College 1542)
• William Gilbert (1558)

1. 19th Century Astronomy

• John Herschel (1808)
• John Couch Adams (1839)

1. 19th Century Electromagnetism

• Joseph Larmor (1876)
• John Ambrose Fleming (1877)

1. 20th Century Digital Computers

• Maxwell Newman (1915)
• Maurice Wilkes (1926)

1. 20th Century Quantum Mechanics

• Paul Dirac (1923)
• Muhammad Abdus Salam (1946)

More details will be available about this at a later date, but I am hoping that I can bring physics to a level that most will find understandable! Even if the title '20th Century Quantum Mechanics' sounds rather terrifying...

Over the next couple of months before I leave St John's I have various training sessions and visiting going on. I will also be going to the Judge Business School for an afternoon as part of the Penumbra Shadowing Scheme. I am really looking forward to visiting a completely different library, where I believe technology plays a much bigger part than it does here! I am beginning the hunt for a job from August at the moment, hoping to find something to build on from everything I have learnt whilst a trainee.

Rachel Walker

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April 17

St John's College

During the last couple of weeks the volume of students in the library has been relatively high, however the numbers of books being borrowed has remained quite low as minds turn to revision. My time has been spent working on various projects within all areas of the Library.

Especially recently I have been working quite hard on my writing skills, which are obviously limited thanks to only writing one essay during my time at Durham! Firstly I have been beginning to write up captions for all of the Johnians I wish to include in my 'Johnian Physicists' exhibition to be displayed in June and July. The ODNB (The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography) has been invaluable for this task, along with the very interesting book 'St John's College: Excellence and Diversity'. I have also been discussing with Kathryn McKee, the Special Collections Librarian here, how I will set up my exhibition. I plan to have a large timeline with as many people as possible along it, with a greater focus on particularly important Johnians. This is a large project, with almost 100 physical scientists I would like to include! I think the hardest part will be deciding who to cut out when there simply isn't enough space!

I have also been doing a lot of research into Lady Margaret Beaufort, the foundress of St John's College. A St John's College in Australia has shown a great interest in our College and has used an image from Lady Margaret's Book of Hours in a stained glass window within their college buildings. Hence it has been asked of me to write a short article about the foundation of our College, Lady Margaret and her Book of Hours. This has been a challenging task, as I knew next to nothing about this important woman, however over the last week or so I have done a great deal of reading and written a draft of what I hope is an interesting article on a particularly fascinating topic.

Yesterday I did a short tour of our Working and Old Library for the other Graduate Trainees. This required a little preparation, it was very important to make sure our tea break had sufficient supplies to keep us going as we continued to Trinity College afterwards! I hope the other trainees enjoyed our tours, I look forward to visiting Emmanuel and Christ's on Wednesday afternoon.

Rachel Walker

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April 13

Christ's College

A film crew recently visited the Old Library at Christ's to film a short sequence that will form part of a documentary presented by an alumni of the College, Dr. Michael Scott. I was given responsibility for greeting the crew and Dr. Scott and helped supervise the proceedings to ensure everything ran smoothly for our visitors.

Once all the equipment had been moved into the Library, it was a case of being present to answer any questions the director or members of the crew had about issues such as where they could set up their equipment and what lighting they required. As the Old Library does not have a readily accessible power supply, a priority was to find a suitable point from which to connect to the mains, which involved installing a lead that ran from the Old Library office to where the crew were filming.

I have also been continuing my research for the upcoming exhibition, 'Sporting Christ's'. This has involved contacting various College sports clubs, as well as searching through the College Magazines. I have also received useful information from the Development Office regarding College members who went on to compete in the Olympics. The Boat Club seems to have a particularly rich history: The Captain of the Club from 1836 to 1837, R.N. Philipps, is an interesting figure, believed to have been responsible for the 'light blue' that Cambridge have rowed in since 1836.

Tom Guest

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April 02

Classical Faculty

It's been said that the trainee scheme helps to give libraries a new perspective on their collections by bringing in a fresh pair of eyes every year. This is extremely useful in the library world, as not only are new works constantly being written, but the ways in which knowledge is grouped and understood are always changing as well. Yes, even in the study of civilisations more than fifteen hundred years old, you might be surprised to hear. Take Classical Reception, for example. A hundred years ago, when our classification scheme was first put together, there was no such thing, meaning that we have no section dedicated to works on the subject. As reception works have arrived in the library we've been forced to bend the definitions of other loosely related sections such as 'Classical Scholarship' so that we can fit them in. This has become more and more of a problem, as this almost entirely new discipline seems to have become the next big thing in Classics. I (perhaps foolishly) pointed this out, it was agreed that something had to be done, and now I have to sort out the whole thing.

So what exactly IS this Classical Reception business, you ask? Well, that's part of the problem. I've not been finding it particularly easy to define. It's all to do with how Classical themes and concepts have been used by later writers, scholars and, in fact, people in general. All very interesting, but also all very multidisciplinary, which makes it a nightmare to classify. Essentially, it'll require a whole new section, subdivided chronologically. We also thought that it was important to make a distinction, in our scheme, between works on academic scholarship and, well, other topics, even though both seem to be covered by the definition. When you have an academic biography of Richard Bentley next to the making of the film '300' you have to question the logic behind your classification scheme (ok, it never got quite that bad on our shelves, but you get the idea). As for how 'Classical Reception' relates to 'the Classical Tradition'...well, hopefully I'll have worked that out soon. So basically the next few days are going to involve a fair amount of reclassification and relabelling, although at the end there'll be the satisfaction of knowing that the library is now tooled up to deal with modern Classical scholarship. At least until the next big craze comes along - ancient hat studies or something, perhaps. Critical studies of those pointy Phrygian smurf caps, or those funny hats that Roman priests wore. Actually, that sounds quite interesting - maybe I'm on to something here...

Philip Keates

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March 26

St John's College

We receive many donations from current and past Johnians and the last few weeks I have been attempting to catalogue my fair share of them. In the Chapel basement we have a dedicated area for the 'Johnian Collection' which consists of items written by, or with some connection to, a member of the College. We use the Library of Congress classification scheme generally for the academic collections, however for certain collections we use our own in house system. It is very basic for the Johnian Collection - J followed by (usually) the first three letters of the Johnian's surname. This does allow many books to have the same classification (eg. J DIR for all books about or written by Paul Dirac) however we can use some way to differentiate books of the different people with the same surname (eg. J ADA and J ADAMS for John Couch Adams and Douglas Adams respectively). Other collections within the library include:

• Kenneth Maxwell Collection (a collection of books covering colonial Latin America, Atlantic history and the history of Portugal),
• Lady Margaret Boat Club Collection,
• Fred Hoyle Collection (containing books belonging to this well-known astronomer),
• Cambridge Collection,
• Boys Smith Collection (Master of St John's College, 1959-1969);

and these each have their own way of being classified.

Aside from improving my cataloguing I have been working on a small project for the Biographical Office, checking lists of Johnians who have Dining Privileges and highlighting any mistakes using the Biographical database. I am also continuing with my research for my exhibition on Johnian Physicists; spending some time measuring up the display cabinets and boards available, and looking through more boxes of papers and books. Over the next few weeks the library should be relatively quiet, until the students start arriving back to revise for exams. I have a visit to the libraries of the Fitzwilliam Museum with the Cambridge Library Group to look forward to one afternoon next week, which should be particularly interesting.

Rachel Walker

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March 22

Newnham College

Term officially ended last week, so things should be quietening down a little, although the library seems to still be fairly busy. Lots of shelving away of all the books students returned before leaving for vacation and generally tidying up a bit.

Another thing which ended last week, however, was the Newnham College Library survey which had been running for the last 3 weeks. I am now in the process of reading the results of the survey, which has proved very interesting and eye opening. It is always great to get feedback from the students as in many cases, it is only from directly hearing from them, that we learn how we can improve, as well as what is successful! I am currently working on creating and displaying some colourful charts and graphs with the results and looking at book recommendations which we need to purchase.

I have also been for quite some time now working with our rare books catalogue. Although all the books in our rare books room have been catalogued for some time, they have not been available for people to search via the university's online catalogues. I have therefore been making them so over the last couple of months and am pleased to say they are now all available. It feels good to have really made a difference to the library in this sense.

Last week felt particularly productive in that I was involved in producing a guide to referencing which we didn't have at the library, hopefully proving useful for students. Learning how to add this guide to our website, in pdf format, was also a new skill. I also wrote one for ARTStor- a fascinating image database on which I attended a talk and some training. One of the best things about this job is I feel like I am always learning.

As part of the Cambridge WordFest in April, a group will be visiting Newnham and the library as part of a Virginia Woolf related tour. I will be showing this group around our exhibition of our Virginia Woolf Collection (a group of first editions and related materials bequeathed to the library). As I am off on holiday next week, I have been getting prepared early, doing some research on this so I will have something to say (importantly!) and have enjoyed writing up a handout/ potential blog post for our website.

The trainees also all went to London also this week to visit Lambeth Palace Library and the Chartered Institute of Accountants 'Information Centre'. It was a really great day giving a huge insight into two strongly contrasting libraries. I'd never been to libraries quite like either of them before, but I'm sure more will appear about this in our 'events' section soon...

Phew. Anyway, Enough from me I think! It seems an awful lot is going on, but it does make every day interesting and different.

Polly Harper

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March 9

St John's College

This week has been more peaceful than late and I have had the chance to learn a little about The Raiser's Edge, a piece of database software that the Development Office here uses to keep track of all Johnians (mostly for fundraising purposes). This is used alongside our biographical database that I use with the Biographical Office on a daily basis, and their interests are a little different to ours. From my time here I have found that the aim of the Biographical Librarian is to get as much biographical information about past, current (and future) members of the College, and to pass this information on to enquirers. To us, knowing the exact address where someone lives is not the most important piece information whereas to the Development Office it is vital. We love to have a complete career history for a Johnian on our database, with details of their qualifications and awards, and family details such as children, spouses and parental details. This is what enquirers want to know about, especially those looking into their family history.

To the Biographical Office, access to The Raiser's Edge database can be immensely useful. We update our addresses from there, and it can help us find out details about current jobs and up-to-date family details. The Development Office can be the first place people tell if, for example, a family member who came to the College has passed away and this is important for us to know. We like to have an obituary for each Johnian, and I spend a proportion of my time searching for these online.

I have found The Raiser's Edge is a little harder to get my head around in comparison to our database, which is accessed using Microsoft Access. From playing around with it I can see distinct advantages to it; there are more separate fields for data to be entered in to whereas the biographical database lumps together all the appointments (memberships, position on a committee, visiting research positions) for example. However both databases cater to the needs of the department using them, and used together can be immensely useful to both of us.

Rachel Walker

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March 8

Pembroke College

As noted in a previous blog, March 2012 is the 500th anniversary of the birth of the Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator (1512-1594). Mercator is chiefly remembered for the Mercator projection of the world, which represents the spherical surface of the earth on a flat plane. In the five hundred years since his birth, Mercator's projection has proven to be indispensible to the enterprises of navigators, explorers and empire builders. Many today still unknowingly conceptualize the world as the Mercator projection, in spite of the fact that it grossly expands land masses in the polar regions at the expense of those that lie near the equator. (Whether we like it or not, what we take to be reality is invariably determined by what is currently useful for practical ends, and often has less to do with the way the world is.)

A different display is arranged each month by the Librarian to exhibit some of the overlooked items held in the College Library. This is my first attempt at mounting such a display: thus, aside from the usual library work, much of this week has been spent preparing and arranging the materials for my explication of cartography in two showcases in the Library. At the beginning I thought that I would struggle to find relevant materials, but I have been pleasantly surprised by the items that I have been able to unearth (as have many others in the College). Indeed, as my research has progressed, I have come to realise that my narrative of cartography from the middle ages through to the early modern era could expand ad infinitum. In the end, the scope of the exhibition has been limited only by the space in the showcases. The display can now be seen by undergraduates, graduates, fellows and staff at the College, and I have greatly enjoyed chatting to those who have already been drawn to it.

The above photograph shows one of Mercator's works in the display that depicts north-west France and the English Channel. It is one of a series of maps of Europe that Mercator produced in answer to Ptolemy's Geographia. The picture to the right shows a number of other works in the display. Two are by the Cambridge mathematician Edward Wright, who first explained the mathematics needed to use the Mercator projection for practical navigation. Wright developed his explanation after accompanying a state-endorsed raid on Spanish galleons in the Azores in 1589. The demand for maps greatly increased in Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries due to the promise of the wealth that could be gained from plunder and exploration.

Joe Sandham

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March 2

St John's College

This week has been a madly busy one, with so much on and the library still as busy as ever. I began the week working with Allen again as mentioned in my blog of January 18th, this time removing all the rare books we had found in December and January. This was tiring work, and required a lot of time making sure each item we took was correctly labelled so we could identify it again from the huge list of volumes we had made in previous visits. This project is now complete in our eyes, and the next step is to determine where all the other unwanted volumes will go! I have also been finishing off the Overseas Visiting Scholars project, and tidying up people I had missed out at the first attempt. I am now an expert at typing up Council Minutes!

On Tuesday all the trainees went to Anglia Ruskin for a tour of the library by their trainees (Rachel Drouot and Marco Aurelio) along with some general discussion afterwards about how different our libraries are and our plans for the future. It was interesting to see how they focus so much more on 'customer service' than we do, and how their days are timetabled, in contrast to mine where the workload just piles up and I organise when I will do everything.

Today I am also attending a course entitled Word 2007/2010: Mastering Advanced Features, aimed at members of staff and covering topics such as Styles, Templates, Table of Contents & Indexes, Cross Referencing and Document revision control. I hope it will be interesting to attend as I am relatively inexperienced using Office 2010 and since our computers have recently been upgraded to this package it should be a useful course.

Rachel Walker

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February 22

Christ's College

Alongside my regular duties in the Library, I have recently had a couple of projects to concentrate on. One of these has involved moving a collection of secondary literature on Darwin, donated to the College by David Stanbury, from the Library Annex onto the open shelves. It was thought that the books in this collection would be of interest to readers, in terms of their relevance to a prominent Christ's alumni and their wider contribution to the Natural History collection in the Library. The collection includes an eighteen-volume set of Darwin's correspondence, a number of biographical works and books on evolutionary theory. The difficult part was reorganising the existing books to accommodate the hundred or so extra items on the shelves.

The plans for the new Library at Christ's continue to gather speed, with a student focus group held this week, the intention of which was to gain an insight into current students' views on how the new Library should serve its users, and what features they would like to see accommodated into the plans. The meeting was well attended, and the thoughts of the Library team were confirmed, with the students placing an emphasis on the availability of reader spaces and a comfortable, studious environment.

In the past few weeks I have begun to generate ideas for my upcoming exhibition. This will focus on the sporting history of Christ's, covering a variety of sports teams and individuals, and will almost certainly include the highly successful rowing team of the 1890s who have stood out in the research I have already done. Last week I visited William Steen, Keeper of the Portraits, to have a look at the fascinating collection of sporting photographs within the picture archive. These include team photographs from past decades, complete with the names of team members, which will prove invaluable as I continue my research. The exhibition is due to open in June.

Tom Guest

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February 17

Classical Faculty

So far this term has been much like the last, although it's a little easier for us library staff now that the first year undergraduates have settled in a bit - there is noticeably less panic on the faces around the library! My job is particularly interesting because we have to fulfil two (at least) quite different academic library roles - we provide the more obscure, specialist materials needed by our research students on a quite individual basis, but we also have to provide the books on lecturers' and supervisors' reading lists to large numbers of undergraduates, often seemingly all at the same time! As I've mentioned before, one way in which we do this is to try to get all the important articles online, but for physical copies we put all the really popular books behind the issue desk on short loan, meaning students can only read them for two hours and can't hog all that Classical knowledge for too long.

As you might imagine, our most popular books can get rather tatty after years of this treatment, and we try to keep them moving through our field hospital (shelf), patching them up with book tape and glue before we send them back out into the fray. If a book seems too far gone, we usually try to send it for rebinding rather than give up on it. It's quite heartening to see then return to battle in shiny new armour...ok, that's enough of the slightly bizarre personification and libraries-as-battlefields metaphors, but you get the idea.

My fancy new classification scheme for Prehellenic Archaeology is (hopefully) approaching completion. It's a much simpler affair than my first attempt; a complex, comprehensive monster with analytico-synthetic elements (I know - pretty sweet) which would have been brilliant if it had been for a collection of, say, 50,000 books, rather than the 500 or so that actually need it. I've been trying to convince people that a classification scheme is like a work of art, but with little success. More on this when it's been approved by the appropriate people and I actually have to put the thing into practice.

In other news, like Polly I got to sit in on a faculty library committee meeting, which made me feel very (slightly) important. Under discussion were complicated periodical purchasing issues - I had no idea before starting this job that periodicals required so much work - and borrowing rights for members of other faculties. It's been decided that all current members of the university can now borrow from us, so good news for any, say, History undergrads who need their Classical fix!

Finally, us trainees visited the Scott Polar Research Institute library on Tuesday. A more detailed account is soon to follow, I'm sure, but for now I'll settle with saying that it was a real privilege to visit a library that is quite literally the most important on its subject in the entire world. Also I liked the little model boats.

Philip Keates

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February 9

St John's College

This week I have been continuing with the Overseas Visiting Scholars project started late last year, going through the Biographical database to pick out anyone who does not have a source listed for their position and finding a council minute that confirms it. Progress has been slow but today the end is finally in sight! The key information to find has been whether a sponsor is listed for these positions; as if these academics want to be contacted in the future it will make it a lot simpler to track them down. As well as this all my day to day tasks for the Biographical Office have continued in an attempt to keep up with the ever exciting lives of our Johnians. Enquiries are ongoing as always, and in the past week have included looking through many Matriculation photographs to locate members of interest to our researchers.

Yesterday we had interviews for the graduate to replace me at the beginning of August, which involved doing tours for each of the candidates. This was a great way of warming up in the cold weather! It is terrifying to think it is a year since I first visited John's, and that I am now over half way through my 12 months here.

Last night I attended a Cambridge Library Group visit to the Archive and Conservation Laboratory at the Sedgwick Museum. It was particularly interesting to see a small selection of the rocks that Darwin collected on the voyage of HMS Beagle in the 1830s, and the extensive archives contain a wealth of fascinating information about the museum and the items within it.

Rachel Walker

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February 8

Newnham College

Life is pretty busy here at Newnham currently, so I am being kept quite occupied with all the day-to-day activities of keeping the library running smoothly(just call me Miss Printer-jam-clearer from now on...although perhaps preferably not!) but luckily I have found time to get along with a few smaller projects.

I have been working on the annual library survey which has so far involved learning how to use the survey software(it is pretty clever stuff!) preparing the questionnaire. I was fortunate to attend the Library Committee Meeting last week, with Debbie, the librarian, and we were able to gain opinions on the questions that should be asked. It was also a great opportunity to attend a formal, professional meeting and see how these things work! Once the survey closes it should be interesting seeing the results, producing graphs and charts to display the results and generally seeing what changes we can make to improve the service here.

I am also steadily going through our rare books catalogue in order to make them accessible for searching which has unearthed a number of unusual works we own. Furthermore, I have been enjoying working on a display for the bicentenary of Dicken's birthday. I was recently told by a student how much the displays are liked, so it feels good to know that students benefit from them and want something other than their subject books sometimes! Today I also began to help with preparations for an exhibition on Newnham authors, and will start deciding on materials we want to display.

Yesterday I went on a trip to the Judge Business School Library, an intriguing looking building, both from the outside, and in. We received a tour, and understood the strong emphasis on electronic resources within a Business Library, whilst also hearing a talk on their new approaches to running the library. This involved ideas surrounding the library functioning like a 'boutique hotel', treating every student individually and really working on customer service levels. It is an approach which I really like and support, so it was great to see the issue very much part of a current agenda.

There is also a tour of the Archive and Conservation Laboratory this evening, so it seems I have lots to look forward to!

Polly Harper

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January 28

St John's College

This week I have been coming up with ideas for an exhibition through in the Old Library in the summer. Due to my background I am hoping to look at the scientists who started out at St John's College over the past few centuries, such as Sir John Herschel, Sir Joseph Larmor and John Couch Adams and I hope to combine items donated to the college with books, photographs and a bit of science! Next week I will begin looking through some of these items in the Old Library and see what is available, and will provide an interesting display. In the meantime, the small exhibition on the ground floor of the Working Library needs changing from the Man Booker Prize shortlist display I created along with a work experience student back in September.

I have also gained more experience this week of using the camera to photograph material from the Old Library. We have many albums of Johnians and the College, and from time to time researchers and genealogists express an interest in obtaining copies for their personal use. Due to the size of these photos, and the delicate nature of them, the easiest way to make copies is by photography, rather than scanning. With the camera in a large stand, and a couple of spotlights, it is simple to take high quality photographs which can then be cropped to size in Adobe Photoshop.

Rachel Walker

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January 19

Pembroke College

In March it will be the 500th anniversary of the birth of Gerardus Mercator (1512-1594), the 16th century Flemish cartographer, famous for devising what is known as the Mercator projection of the globe (which provides one answer to the problem of representing a spherical surface on a flat plane). Mercator was not the first to attempt such a projection, but his presentation in 1569 became the standard for navigation in the centuries to follow. Aside from cartographer, Mercator was also a maker of mathematical instruments and, more famously, globes. He was at one point imprisoned for heresy for his agreement with Protestantism, but was released and succeeded in dying a rich man.

Why do I tell you about Mercator? The reason is that he has provided me with an excuse to develop a display for the showcases that are in the Library and elsewhere in College. My display will be shown in March, and since this coincides with the anniversary of Mercator's birth, the College Librarian suggested that I should take cartography as the theme. (Cartography is always bound to be good for a display, since maps make for more interesting viewing than text alone.) As a consequence, this week I began searching for suitable materials for the display in the Library archives. It is the first time that I have had the opportunity to search independently through our older collections. I confess that I expected there to be little that related to the topic in question. However I was pleasantly surprised to find that there was quite a lot that could be used in a cartography-themed display. It has given me plenty to think about: but I have a good month before the display has to be put together.

Joe Sandham

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January 18

St John's College

The students are all back now and the library is slowly getting back into the swing of things. Over the past couple of weeks I have been working on various different projects both in and out of the library.

Since before Christmas, four of the staff here at St John's have been working on a large project to go through around 100 boxes of donated items currently being stored in an unheated room in a large business park on the edge of Cambridge! This required 9 days of Allen (the Lower Library Project Cataloguer) going through every item in these boxes and the rest of us taking it in turns - 3 days each - to note basic details of each item (title, author/editor, place of publication and year). Therefore at a later date it can be decided which books the library would like to keep; many of these are rare books (pre 1850) and may be wanted for the Old Library collections.

Over the same period I have also been working for the Biographical Office on finding the details of all the Overseas Visiting Scholars we have had at the College. This information is required for the Development Office who wishes to contact them. I spent a day in early December in the College Archives going through the Council Minutes back to 1970 and photographing the important meetings which mentioned who has been elected, typically around five scholars a year. From there I was able to add them to the database, which took several days to complete as there were a great number of them. Now the work is passed onto the Development Office to see if they can locate them!

Last week most of the trainees attended the libraries@cambridge conference at West Hall Concert Hall in Cambridge, where we displayed a poster about the Graduate Trainee Scheme. The conference consisted of several sessions on subjects ranging from the design of libraries to digitisation and how libraries will need to adapt in the future. I found it a very interesting experience, although I do believe that libraries in Cambridge, particularly our college libraries, are very different to most university and public libraries, and being traditional in some ways is exactly what our students and fellows want! I'm sure we won't be going 'bookless' anytime soon, with technology such as self service only arriving here in summer 2012. I for one am glad of this, as I do feel that books are an essential part of learning and hopefully having self service will increase the circulation of items in our library.

Rachel Walker

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January 5

Christ's College

The start of January is much like the summer in the Library, as the vast majority of students will not be returning until the start of term.

However, the Library team are as busy as ever. We have recently refurbished part of the Reading Room; reorganizing things and creating space to accommodate more PWF computers and reader spaces. Similarly, in the Library Annex, I have helped to organize and maintain some of the books and journals that are stored there. The Annex is an interesting place, situated beneath the Old Library, and provides a different environment and different tasks from those undertaken in the Undergraduate Library. It houses some of the most interesting pieces in the College's collection, including the Fellows' Papers and an extensive Darwin collection. It is often the case that Library staff are busier outside of term time, as we have more time to focus on tasks that don't get completed when the Library is busy. The Issue Desk does not need to be staffed constantly at this time of year, which means our attention can be directed elsewhere. With the start of term fast approaching, I will be helping to catalogue and process the new books we have purchased so they are ready for when the students return.

Tom Guest

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December 19

Classical Faculty

Even though term is long finished, the Classical faculty library is still open for business, and will be right up until the Christmas weekend. I, however, will be going home tomorrow - even though this term has been nothing but enjoyable, moving into a new flat and starting a new job has been tiring, and I'm in serious need of a holiday!

Almost all of our undergrads have now finally left for home, even the super-dedicated ones who've made me feel very guilty about the amount of time I spent in the library when I was studying here, and we're back to the old core group of postgrads, lecturers and guests who seem to live in the library, walled into their book forts. Surprisingly, the amount of shelving hasn't diminished as much as one might expect - these guys are ravenous readers, and can generate a scary number of returns...

Still, they don't need the same level of enquiry and issuing help that the undergrads did, so I'm essentially free now to get on with other projects. For one thing, I've been trying to chase down the periodicals missing from our collection, a job that involves sending slightly hurt emails to interesting people across the globe. I've had moderate success so far, but there's more to do, and in fact our whole new periodicals display needs a re-shuffle at some point, so I've got that to look forward to next year. I've also decided upon my library project, which is to be the creation of a new classification system for our Prehellenic Archaeology section. To be honest, our archaeology section is in need of a serious overhaul, but reclassifying the whole thing is far too big a task for one person, so I'm focussing on one smallish section, and I'm worryingly excited about putting into action my half-remembered knowledge from the Aegean Prehistory course I took here three years ago!

Perhaps the most important job I've been doing, however, has been adding to the collection of articles available for students on our Camtools website. Sometimes this is as easy as adding a link to an article on JSTOR, but most of the time it involves spending a lot of time standing next to a scanner turning pages! I'll be honest, it's not the most exciting job in the world, particularly in the tedious but necessary details required to avoid breach of copyright, but it seems to me to be an incredibly useful resource that's well worth the work. I wish I'd had all the articles available online in one place when I was studying, and I hope the students take advantage of it.

It only remains for me to wish anybody reading this a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, and to offer prospective trainees a piece of heartfelt advice: get some volunteering in! Anything that shows that you really care about library work will help you stand out when you're applying for places, even if it's only a bit of time spent shelving as a student, and my lack of library experience was a major disadvantage when I was trying for a traineeship. But for now...enjoy the holidays!

Philip Keates

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December 15

Newnham College

This week has been a somewhat different week to the norm at Newnham, but it is always good to have a change I think!

As the Voyager software we use in many Cambridge libraries is being updated and under maintenance this week, we are unable to do some of our usual activities such as cataloguing and processing new stock. However, this has given us the chance to get out in to the library a bit more, especially now that it is far quieter with the majority of students having gone home for Christmas (although a surprising number are still very working hard). We have been moving books around to create more space and generally tidying up areas that have a tendency to get a bit messy...mentioning no names (ahem...medical textbooks... cough).

I have also had the chance to update our recent purchases display, still continue with the odd reading list and get to grips with a shiny new computer I have kindly been updated with!

A trip for all the trainees to Norwich to see both the Cathedral and Public libraries this week was also a fun change of scene and a real eye opening experience to see libraries so different to our own. The Newnham Christmas lunch for staff tomorrow should also really get the festive spirit going I am sure.

Polly Harper

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November 28

Trinity College

Unfortunately my first week to update this website fell on the last week of full term something I might have fought against had I actually noticed. At Trinity in the last week of full term the library switches from its normal loan rules to holiday borrowing, this means that every book (in theory) is recalled and reissued over two days.

Added to this the reader's desk in the Wren has been almost fully booked. Academics who want to study the rare books are welcomed by the library and during the week a member of staff is always there to supervise readers. This is usually a very peaceful place to work, that is, apart from the odd day or week like this one. When you have one reader asking if there are any other collections of Victorian photographs while another wants to know exactly where the loose fragments of uncial script of the Greek New Testament he was expecting to find in his volumes is kept, it can feel slightly overwhelming. Especially when you know there could be four other readers just waiting to request massive amounts of fetching or hand back an archive box full of letters which need to be individually checked back.

However any multitasking headaches are always more than made up for by the plus sides of working in the Wren. Looking at every page of a collection of essays suddenly becomes extremely interesting when you realise they were handwritten by Sir Francis Bacon. Occasionally there are rare books classes held in the Wren using the special collections and the trainee is allowed to attend/supervise. On Wednesday I watched over the second of two classes given by Dr Tessa Webber, another one of the many past graduate trainees I have met here. These have been extremely interesting and informative, although I have to admit that this time I spent nearly the whole of the two hours happily staring at The Trinity Apocalypse.

Fiona Watson

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November 18

St John's College

As the first graduate of the new year to attempt fiddling with the CATALOG website I write with slightly shaking hands! It is a little scary that one accidental mistake could lead to complete meltdown...

This past week has been similar to any other in most respects. I have been trawling through the lists of awards issued to current students for this year and updating the Biographical Database, which can get a little repetitive! This has been fitted in between answering several enquiries for researchers, including one looking for a chinese gentleman who is stated in a book as coming to the college in the late nineteenth century but who we for some reason cannot find anywhere on our records. Some enquiries are more challenging than others, it is great when you open an archive box and there lies a huge pile of sheets about the Johnian you are researching! However there is a lot of satisfaction to be gained after hours of looking through the archive, and all the other resources available here, and then finally stumbling across exactly what you want.

Alongside all my biographical work the issue desk was surprisingly busy mid-week, a lot of people who can't find books!

Rachel Walker

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October 27

Pembroke College

This wasn't exactly a typical week for a trainee, nor for me; but I feel that it is worth mentioning, nevertheless. The first training event was held today in Pembroke College. The topic of the day was applying for post graduate library studies. (See the events webpage for more details.) As the College Librarian was away I had to play host for the day. The event had been many days in preparation. It took quite some time to contact the five guest speakers and to develop a timetable that suited everyone. Luckily we were able to book a nice room in college for the event. The logistics worked out fairly well: the projector worked, the speakers arrived on time and everyone managed to get tea. The discussion overran by about half an hour, but I took this to be a good sign (there is nothing worse than a seminar in which the discussion simply goes dead- and I have been to a number of seminars like this in my time). The day finished with a tour of Pembroke library, which I also hosted. This gave me an opportunity to show off some of the Library's more interesting materials that are usually hidden away in the archives. I think (I hope) that everyone was reasonably pleased with the day. I, for one, enjoyed hosting it.

Although I was the front man for the day, much of the success of the event was owed to my boss, the College Librarian, who knew how to pull all the strings to get things in order beforehand. If she had not had the foresight to start planning well in advance, it would have been difficult to organise the event.

Joe Sandham

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September 7

Pembroke College

I have only just arrived, so I have barely got a feel for the place. (Lots of introductions and far too many names to remember!) However, term does not begin until October in Cambridge, so the College is pretty quiet at present. The College Librarian is taking advantage of this by using the time to relocate a collection of several hundred works that form part of what is called the Hadley Collection. This contains works dating from the late 18th and early 19th century on the French Revolution and the Napoleonic era. Many of the works are in French. The books, which are extremely dirty, have been stored in the basement of the Seeley Library (History Faculty Library). The College has had a meeting room recently refurbished and has had a set of oak book cases made to house the collection.

The work of shelving the books took several days to complete, largely because each individual book had to be hand dusted (mainly with a vacuum cleaner). My hands were black after a morning's work. Nevertheless it was interesting to glance at the material. The books transformed the previously empty room, which gave a pleasing sense of achievement.

Joe Sandham

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