“Say hello to your local eco-warriors!”
As I’m sure you’re all aware, environmental issues are very much a pressing matter in the world at the moment and (as any institution should) Sussex is pushing for better practices from its staff and students to help reduce its green footprint. With that in mind the Library Green Group has been formed to us here at the library do our bit.
I recently went to CILIP HQ to attend UKeiG 2018 Members’ Day to find out what is going on in the world of Geographic Information Systems, Smart Campuses and Intelligent Libraries, CILIP’s Privacy Project and how libraries and Wikimedia can work together. As it was my first library conference, I was interested to see what was going on in the information world and who exactly was in it. In attendance were information professionals from the NHS and the Home Office through to publishers and local libraries. The day offered up a feast of new ideas and I left feeling enthused about potential future projects. Below you will find information about some of the topics and ideas discussed on the day, as well as some useful links for anyone interested in finding out more.
No, I didn’t know what mastic was either. And on looking it up, I’m not sure I trust a spice that can also be used in varnishing. But apparently it’s a classic flavour in Eastern Mediterranean cooking. Cooking tips and librarianship – this blog series really has it all.
Anyway, in this last post (aww…), we’ll be looking at description and discovery of resources, as well as at some of the more unusual resources themselves, as held in archives and special collections.
Introduction
Our dual themes for National Libraries Week here at Sussex are wellbeing and community. This guest blogpost, from School of Psychology reader John Drury and PhD student Selin Tekin Guven, touches on both, discussing the way in which communities come together in the wake of a disaster not only for support but to campaign for justice and social change.
Check out the other special events happening in the Library this week, including mindfulness sessions and a board games café, and have a go at our Book Face Competition on Twitter or Instagram.
Katy Stoddard
Those of you who enjoyed my last post on sandwiches but felt like you wanted it to be longer and even more niche (lol) then read on, this one is for you! It’s an article originally titled Subject Indexing in an Institutional Repository that I had accepted for publication by Catalogue and Index – periodical of the Cataloguing and Indexing Group, a Special Interest Group of CILIP.
I’ve been a cataloguer for some years but have only just started training to become an indexer with the Society of Indexers. I can now see that there are many parallels between cataloguing and indexing and I am often expanding my knowledge of one activity through the other. The clearest example of a task in which the two areas are intertwined is when I classify theses in our institutional repository. Our current repository platform is EPrints using the Dublin Core Metadata Element Set. This allows us to assign subjects to research outputs so that they are indexed and available to users through access points in our discovery layer (Primo). I’m going to avoid discussion about the systems involved here and their interaction with each other and am going to focus on the details of this task and try to understand some of the benefits and flaws of the current workflow.
I visited San Francisco in August 2015. This post is about that trip and exploring the city. I’ll also talk about a visit to University of San Francisco’s Gleeson Library.
There were many highlights to my time in San Francisco.
The locals had lots of friendly open conversations with us.
It was good to walk around the neighbourhoods, wandering and exploring. It led to finding interesting buildings and independent cafes and shops.
The city felt modern but with many nods to the past, such as the traditional architecture. There were also plenty of tourist areas and modern shops.
A vivid memory of the trip was the intense heat- often most intense whilst walking up the steep streets. Luckily Brighton is steep in most directions so it wasn’t too much of a shock! Being there felt (despite the heat) like a breath of fresh air.
So, today we’ll be exploring how libraries worldwide attempt to engage with their academic staff, and how they try to support them in their research. We’ll also have a look at ways in which librarians might go about conducting their own research, in assessing how effective services are, and which new services might be required. A slightly tenuous connection, you say? Well, it’s all broadly about research, in a loose sense, and I couldn’t find anywhere else to shoehorn in the information on surveys, so deal with it. You’re getting plenty of blog post bang for your Erasmus buck here, so I’d appreciate fewer smart comments, thank you very much.
Continue reading
My school, Dorothy Stringer, gives a chance for every student in year 10 to get some work experience. It can be a very nervous thing to do, but where I went I felt extremely welcome. I chose to work at the University of Sussex Library initially because my Mum worked there, but as the days went by, I really came to enjoy working there.
The reason why I am sharing my experience at the Library is because I felt so welcome when I entered the building. I also want to express how kind and caring all the members of staff really are. From sorting out and planning my day, to taking me to tea breaks, buying me lunch and all round being very positive. It seems to me that it could be quite a stressful job, especially for the Frontline team, however it doesn’t seem to stop them from having a good time and saying the odd joke here and there.
I enjoyed every single day I was there. I was taught about reading lists, fines, shelving, the process of overdue books and really how everything operates in the Library. It may sound like your typical boring library where you have to be silent and you feel like you can’t do anything. The Sussex Library is the complete opposite of that. Obviously there are some areas of the building where you have to be silent and of course there are rules. However this library is a lot more complex and advanced.
I am pretty sure there are around 800,000 books in the Library, plus another 50,000 online books and journals. That is a lot of books when you think about it and it requires loads of time and effort to keep them all organised. It seemed like they had that area covered.
Obviously there is a definite age gap since I am only 14, but personally I believe that I got on very well with the members of staff there and I really did feel welcome.
I am going to be completely honest and say that I thought it was going to be very boring at the Library, just compared to all the interesting things my friends were doing. But I really showed an interest in what some of the things people were working on. One thing I particularly enjoyed was inputting reading lists. It is where you check if you have a certain book that a tutor has asked for, and you create a list online for students to see what books are essential for their class. It may not sound like the most interesting thing in the world, but I found it very satisfying and enjoyed doing it.
If anybody is looking for some work experience I recommend the University of Sussex Library because without a doubt I promise you, you will have an excellent time and meet lovely people along your way. I don’t really like reading or writing but for once I think I came to enjoy it and so will you.
Today’s tasty topic is broadly on the usage of the library space itself, with just a pinch of info from the coalface of library services (but not a pinch of coal. You probably shouldn’t put coal in your food. Just like you probably shouldn’t mix metaphors).
Phoebe Leung of Lingnan University mentioned a couple of ways in which they make their frontline services more engaging. They offer easy communication with staff through their WhatsApp a Librarian service. They also make their librarian orientations more exciting by including a QR code treasure hunt, with prizes for the winners.
The largest part of the Legacy Collection will be the 20237 documents we have accumulated since the opening of the University.
Official Publications used to have its own dedicated area in the University Library, with a counter service to help users retrieve and discover new items and dedicated staff to develop and manage the collections.
The Documents Librarian, who had a responsibility for the Social Sciences and Parliamentary materials was keen to fill the shelves with pamphlets, reports, ephemora and papers relating to current issues at the time as well as reflecting the research interests of the new University. The building had no space limits and a healthy budget for acquisitions, so many donations were accepted, standing orders established and staff would even travel around collecting new materials.
“I wanted our Library collections to reflect the mood of the times, and this directed me to the ephemeral publications of the interest groups and pressure groups that were active in those decades. We aimed to collect together the output of such organisations, that represented the current social and political views of the decades. Some publications were standing orders from “regular” sources, political parties, research organisations, etc. Many of the pamphlets we collected were the result of scanning the press and being alert to media reports. Those four little words, “a report out today” were sufficient to raise an order for that report. We also went on regular foraging trips to “known” venues in London, such as 9 Poland Street, where pressure group publications were available for sale.”
David Kennelly, former Assistant Librarian.
There was a focus on events such as general elections, strikes, changes to infrastructure and following political and social movements locally and across the UK.
The Documents collection was a strong feature of the Library at the time. Monthly acquisition lists would be sent out to academics and researchers to ensure that all parts of the University used the collections. The then Librarian Adrian Peasgood recalls an external examiner commenting very favourably on the quality and quantity of the material to which candidates had clearly been exposed.
As the section had its own area and was shelved away from the other collections, much of it was uncatalogued, as staff knew the contents very well and could help students directly, often using lists and indexes rather than a card catalogue.
The Collection Development Librarians and the Special Collections Archivist are now working through the extensive spreadsheet that our teams have produced, detailing all of these items of which 40% are uncatalogued.
We have identified the following themes running through the collection and have been examining each item to give it a category:
Gender Studies and Feminism
Popular and Counter Cultures
Post WW2 World Order
Political Movements and Parties
Trade Unions
Social Movements
Social Welfare
War
We hope that this will help with discoverability, as one or more themes will be added to the MARC record when it is recatalogued. Researchers using the collections should be able to easily identify items of interest to them and this will help us with promotion and use in teaching if we can easily identify items by topic.
As the cataloguing will be an extensive part of the project, having smaller collections within collections can help us to break it down into manageable chunks.
We have just completed the review of all items and can reveal that the sections will look like this
| Political Parties and Movements | 10658 |
| To be decided | 2677 |
| Social Movements | 1887 |
| Social Welfare | 1717 |
| Trade Unions | 1342 |
| War | 943 |
| Popular and Counter Cultures | 402 |
| Post WW2 Order | 393 |
| Gender Studies and Feminism | 218 |
Here are some examples of our documents:
This is an example from the War category. It is a pamphlet called The War Resisters’ International in War-Time
This is an example from the Trade Unions category. It is a booklet by the National Union of Teachers called Race, Education, Intelligence.
This is an example from the Social Movements category. It is a pamphlet called British-Soviet Friendship
This is an example from the Post World War 2 World Order category. It is a pamphlet called Co-operation in industry, the next ten years by Herbert Dove
This is an example from the Popular and Counter Culture category. It is two pages of a leaflet called Black Flame
This is an example from the Political movements and parties category. It is an example of the Magazine of International Labour
An example from the Gender Studies and Feminism category. This is a journal called Women and Education
This task has had tricky moments as we grapple with crossover publications covering Socialism in wartime or areas such as airport expansion and the market economy which we struggled to fit into our categories. We now feel the next step is to add Infrastructure and Trade to our list to cover these gaps satisfactorily.
We are almost ready to start cataloguing and the War section is looking good to start with, as the items in there are without any doubt in their right place.
Please do drop us a line if you would like to know more or be involved in the creation of Legacy:
Library.collectiondevelopment@sussex.ac.uk