A pleasure having you

On Wednesday afternoon, a group of seven-or-so members of staff from Cambridge University Medical Library came on a visit, led by yours truly, to see St John's College Library. This all came about after I met Isla, Reader Services Librarian at the Medical Library, at the CILIP future conversation held in Cambridge in June. She mentioned that she'd never been to St John's, I said I'd never been to the Medical Library, and a library visit swap was born. 

If you're interested in what we've got St John's, and what the visitors thought of it, then I highly recommend that you read Emma's, Anna's and Sheila's posts.  It's certainly been very intersting for me to read their impressions of the visit.  A library tour of this kind, in contrast to the tours I help to deliver to undergraduates in October, has no set goals.  I'm not trying impress anything in particular upon the audience - whether that's borrowing limits, fine rates, the friendliness of library staff, the usefulness of Newton, or the range of online resources available (although some of these might still interest the librarian visitor!) - but rather just to show what's here, and, hopefully to invite comments and reactions that can inform the way I introduce people to the library in the future, and also inform what we actually do as a library service.  It's something of an education to see which elements of the tour i must have been emphasising, and which stick with people enough to be repeated later.  It's not something one usually gets to find out, and is one of the features of Web 2.0 that is often commented upon: beware, reviews are instant and everywhere!

Anna's comment that I said little about e-resources was definitely fair.  I'm not sure that I mentioned them at all, in fact!  This stemmed from two things: 1) I  little to do with user education or enquiries answering in my current role, and 2) I suppose that I didn't want to show up my own ignorance in front of a group which I imagine makes much greater use of e-resources than we do here.  I shall definitely use the return visit to find out what the Medical Library is doing with e-stuff, and shall try in future not to let a fear of showing myself up stand in the way of a good learning opportunity.

Victorian staircase in St John's College Old Library by Wumpus on Flickr

It's hard to argue with the general agreement that St John's is a beautiful library, although it isn't without its little idiosyncracies. It's lovely to hear other people say that, and although I haven't been working here for very long, I do feel proud when people are impressed.  And it's good to be reminded, now and again, of what a remarkable building it is, and what a range of services we provide: on cold February (or even chilly July) afternoons it's all too easy just to curse the deficiencies in the heating and wish I was somewhere else.

So, medical librarians, thanks for coming. It was a pleasure having you!

Day in the Life: broad-brush approach

My 'Day in the Life' posts so far have been all about specifics.  Today I'll take the broader view and tell you a little about what a Hoyle Project Associate is, and why she does what she does.

Fred Hoyle's telescope

Sir Fred Hoyle (1915-2001) was an astrophysicist, science fiction writer, Munro-bagger, frequent correspondent with The Times, Plumian Professor of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy, radio star, and controversialist.  He invented the phrase 'Big Bang' although he didn't believe in the theory, wrote the soon-to-be-republished novel The Black Cloud (and much more including co-writing the BBC TV sci-fi series A for Andromeda), and suggested that life on earth might have been seeded from space.

He was a Fellow of St John's College, Cambridge, and after his death, his family donated his collection of personal papers, books, and some artefacts to the existing special collections of the College Library, which include medieval manuscripts, early printed books, collections of personal papers and a range of artefacts.  The Hoyle Collection is immense, the largest in the library, and covers all aspects of Hoyle's life and work.

Any collection (be it books, papers, objects, images, webpages or anything else) is no good to anyone unless 1) someone knows what's in it, and 2) people can access it.  These, to my mind, are the fundamental principals of librarianship: catalogue (i.e. work out what you've got) and make available (i.e. let people at it!).

So the basic aim of the Hoyle Project is to catalogue the Hoyle Collection.  Eventually the catalogue will be made publically available on Janus (the Cambridge University archives catalogue), and through nationwide tools such as the Archives Hub and the National Register of Archives.  In the mean time, there's a summary listing on the Library website.

But cataloguing is just the start.  The Hoyle Project aims to make the Hoyle Collection, and the Library collections more widely, known to as many people as possible, and to increase knowledge of Hoyle, astronomy, the history of science, and the Library.

Cambridge Science Festival visitors in St John's College Library (photo by wumpus on Flickr)

This means opening the Library door as often as we can manage:

• to school groups (both primary and secondary);
• special interest groups (Cambridge tour guides, the University of the Third Age, the British Astronomical Association);
• media companies (the Library and items from the Hoyle Collection were featured in the fifth episode of the recent Channel 4 series Genius of Britain);
• the general public (via the University festivals of Science and Humanities, and National Heritage Open Days);
• and virtually and digitally via an online exhibition and hands-on build-your-own-astrolabe kit.

My daily work is therefore a mixture of cataloguing, events planning, resource building, photography, web editing, exhibition curating, caption writing and enquiry answering.  Thrown in is some everyday special collections work staffing the reading room where researchers consult books and papers, which involves fetching items from the shelves and storage areas, supervising researchers to make sure they treat everything with respect, answering queries about the collections, and providing information about reproduction rights.

The work is definitely challenging, but also immensely rewarding.  There's nothing like the thrill of bringing to science or history to life by using some of the wonderful documents and books that I'm lucky enough to work with.

The Hoyle Project is funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund, St John's College, and the Friends of the Center for the History of Physics, American Institute of Physics.

"I read the news today, oh boy"

Lots of library-related news in the UK in the last 24 hours, as the Department for Culture Media and Sport announced a 'Review of arm's length bodies' including proposals to abolish the Museums Libraries and Archive Council, the UK Film Council, the Advisory Council on Libraries and the Legal Deposit Advisory Panel. I would have liked to have made more time today to read all abaht it, but alas it was not so.  I look forward to seeing more from CILIP on the matter in the coming weeks.

Visitors
Today a girls' choir from Greenwich, Connecticut, were visiting the College as part of a day in Cambridge on their tour of England, and I took them up to our Old Library.  Visitors rarely fail to be impressed by the building and its 400-year old oak bookcases, and our largest book, a late fifteenth-century Spanish antiphoner (chant book) was of particular relevance to this group.  Groups of visitors can be shown the Old Library by prior arrangement with the Special Collections Librarian, and we have on average a few every month, both youngsters and adults.

In addition to pre-arranged group visits, members of College ('members' includes both current students and alumni) may bring guests to the Old Library at any time during our working hours, and two separate such parties arrived today within 10 minutes of each other.
other visitors


Cataloguing
I catalogued some more of the papers from yesterday's box.

CPD
I created some icons for use on blogs and websites to link to LISNPN, the L(ibrary and) I(formation) (Science) New Professionals Network, and added one to my sidebar to link to my LISNPN profile.
This evening I'm going to a meeting to discuss the possibility of organising TeachMeet for Cambridge librarians, and I intend to blog about that separately.

Outreach
I chased up contacts regarding a possible book republication event.  Do hope they get back to me - it's a great opportunity for publicity (and book sales) for all involved.
Received confirmation that some mp3s of Hoyle giving lectures in Montreal can be used by the Fred Hoyle website maintained by his family.

Extra curricular
At morning coffee, my colleagues and I enjoyed tucking into some Fitzbillies Chelsea buns kindly given to the Library by a reader.

Tomorrow's to-do list
Prepare for a visit of medical librarians tomorrow afternoon - I'm really looking forward to hearing what they think of our library, and to my return visit to the Medical Library at some point over the summer.
Email a school librarian I met last month about arranging the visit to the Medical Library
Cataloguing
Think about what I need to do next with the paperwork for Chartership.  Just writing 'sort out chartership notes' yesterday wasn't specific enough to get me to do anything useful today.

A day in the life

This my first post as part of the fifth round of Library Day in the Life a project started by Bobbi L. Newman, Librarian by Day. I only heard about Library Day in the Life on Sunday, so I've not followed any of the previous rounds and this is something of a leap in the dark.

I ought really to start with a post explaining my rather cryptic job title ('Hoyle Project Associate') and my place of work (St John's College Library, Cambridge, UK), but I'm going to leap right in with Monday, and will try and fill in the gaps later and/or as I go along.

Readers
I work in the Library's Rare Books Reading Room, a place for readers to consult, under supervision, items from the Library's special collections.  Today saw two phone calls and one email arranging three separate reader visits to see one medieval and two post-medieval manuscripts.  We also had two readers in the room, one looking at a post-med manuscript, and one using the photocopier.  Most photocopier users outside of other Library staff require some assistance with the machine, and interpreting its repertoire of cryptic error beeps, at some point or other.

Correspondence
Emails sent and answered today included:

• receiving the thanks of another College department for supervising the Old Library during a reception on Friday evening;
• Contacting a member of the public who donated sound recordings to the Hoyle Collection to ask about permission to use them on a Hoyle-related website;
• Confirming the details of a medical librarians' visit to the Library on Wednesday;
• Reminding attendees of an informal meeting tomorrow evening to discuss organising TeachMeet in Cambridge.

CPD
I'm currently undertaking the CILIP Chartership process, and am also participating in the 23 Things Cambridge programme. Today I read through the Thing 18 post about Zotero. Noticing that Zotero is a browser-based tool, and looking for something web-based that I can use from home, work, the UL, and all points north, I had a quick look round the Mendeley site, noted the Mendeley Web feature, and that it supports MHRA-style citation.

Cataloguing
The bulk of my workload is cataloguing Fred Hoyle's personal papers.  Today I started a new box (the papers have all been transferred from the filing cabinets they arrived in into archival-quality boxes) which demonstrates the flexibility of the term 'papers' in this context.

These pictures show not only a folder of papers removed from the books in Hoyles' library (also held at St John's and catalogued on Newton as the Hoyle Collection), but also a film reel of Stonehenge, volumes 2 to 5 of a children's encyclopaedia of science (articles within which include 'Phosphorescence' and 'The earthworm'), and a number of issues of the Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Outreach
The other main strand of my work is outreach to schools, special interest groups and the general public.  Forthcoming events include participation in Open Cambridge and the University of Cambridge Festival of Ideas.  Much of this morning was spent designing a flyer to advertise our Festival of Ideas event (an exhibition of literary manuscripts and free expert talk from College fellows).

Tomorrow's to-do list

• Continued cataloguing;
• Chasing up contacts regarding a possible Autumn event to mark the re-publication of a Hoyle science fiction novel;
• Bringing some of my Chartership notes into order;
• Genning up on TeachMeet.