The Library October/November/December 2013
Library poster: Lucy Lambe
Contents October/November/December 2013
The Library, Goldsmiths
Lucy
Lesley Ruthven
New Cross (New) : from the Archive
Sally Houston
CPD25 Visit to the British Museum libraries and archives
Nicola Stephenson
ALF: Alumni Library Forum 11th December 2013
Kevin Wilson
BoB V3 taster session London South Bank University 4th December 2013
New Cross (New) : from the Archive New Cross today—even this phrase is now inaccurate for I write of two years ago and now the district has lost its chief glory and 'buses purr like cats where before trams ground, hissed, whistled, creaked and swayed their way past the Marquis and on towards Deptford or Lewisham. They defied comparison, were now like some long-forgotten pre-historic monsters, now medieval siege engines advancing on a beleaguered city, now the forerunners of the first tanks, now gigantic grubs or beetles lacking only a pair of huge antennae to complete the illusion, always moving with a swaying, soaring, effortless progress," land-gondolas", as H. G. Wells called them. Upstairs in the bow or stern one could not escape the impression of a captain's bridge, in fact coming home late in the evenings, they were often steered safely through the traffic by the less inhibited among us. As a whole, the College took to the trams and their numbers made them universal transporters—to College, from College, school visits, school prac., evenings in Town when funds were more tight than usual; there was even the occasion when a tram was hired to bring a large party home from an N.U.S. Ball at the Lyceum, returning home through empty, lamp-lit streets from the Strand until the last parties left for Bowles and Pentland at Lee Green. Taking the Refectory as the most likely place to meet one's friends and drink a cup of tea and borrow a cigarette, the next most frequented place was the Express Dairy where there could always be
found a certain number of tables annexed for student use and talk at any hour of the day—from early morning breakfast on till closing time there was usually as good an attendance as at any lecture in College or even the College library. Later in the day and especially during College dances we appropriated the "Rosemary Branch" for our own use and it was an inevitable rendezvous after Union meetings or evening activities of any kind, however diverse! What of the people of Deptford, those prim, high-stepping shop girls, those men in nondescript suitings carrying the sporting papers, those loafers in the Broadway at Deptford, the frequenters of cafes and the gangs of youths with their bright ties and oiled hair ? They came from behind the facade, from the brick and mortar cul-de-sacs, from the first floor flats, from the shipping on the river, and looked on us with an easy toleration but with an unmistakable superiority such as the natives of a seaside town bestow on those butterflies of their existence, the summer visitors. You are only here for a short while, they seem to say, but we were born here and in good time might die here too like our parents and grandparents before us. But this is fancy and we must come back to New Cross at its most typical—-When? At the end of the week after payday, and of course Saturday Nights were the best. Then the Jellied Eel shops, winkle stalls; coffee and hot-potato stands that barely moved shutters during the week seemed miraculously to double their frontage, put out more counters, swing down their blinds, light their flares and do business. Round them people passed and re-passed, to and from the pubs, the cinemas and New Cross Empire; watching the eels go under the knife and eating them cold in jelly or hot with dumps of mashed potatoes and parsley sauce.
Victorian?—of course, habits don't change overnight and this is perhaps with slight differences what we conjure Victorian low life to be like—Fanny by Gaslight, without the Shades, without champagne and oysters but still vivacious and vicious. Still the swaying voices from the bars; the tunes have changed but little and "Nelly Dean" is still a chucking-out song. Still the pale wide-eyed children waiting at doors, perambulators half hidden in alleys and courts, discarded fish-and-chips in the gutter smelling of beer and then the unsteady walk home. With luck there might be a fight, not just a half-hearted, face saving scuffle but a proper honey with real fists and real blows and perhaps even a bottle or a knife. R. W. Collins.
Collins, R.W. (1952) 'New Cross (New)' in Year Book of the Old Students' Association, 195152. London: Goldsmiths College, p. 11-13.
(Lesley Ruthven)
If you think that we have nooks and crannies to hide books (and staff) in, you should see their layout! Open a cupboard door in a corridor of offices and there would be some books (in sequence of course). In one library they had to have netting across the upper floors in case books (or staff) fell down on to the unsuspecting people below, and in another they had to make use of a cupboard the size of a bread bin. All very ingenious, and we weren’t surprised to hear that in most of the libraries, staff had to collect the books for users. Prints and Drawings This library contains the national collection of Western prints and drawings, in the same way as the National Gallery and Tate hold the national collection of paintings.
CPD25 visit to British Museum’s libraries and archives (21st November, 2013). This was a fantastic visit and we could have spent a whole week there, rather than the four hours allotted to us. The staff we met were so friendly and they delighted in showing us la crēme de la crēme of their collections; it was a steep but very enjoyable learning curve. It was an ambitious idea to visit five libraries in a morning and I hope we did them all justice. I can’t describe them all in great detail, so I’ve put in links to their web pages for you to look at in your own time.
It contains about 50,000 drawings and over two million prints dating from the beginning of the fifteenth century up to the present day. It was quiet and deferential in here, as if housing Raphaels, Michelangelos and Dürers was too much of a responsibility for frivolous behaviour. No Dewey or Bliss here; the classification scheme seemed to be “add it to the next available free space and mark it by location” and was known only
by the staff, and so they operate an ondemand collection. Africa, Oceania and the Americas, including the Anthropology Library & Research Centre. This looked more like the academic library that I’m used to; good lighting, spacious tables to work on and rows of bookshelves arranged by Bliss. Our postgraduate students already use this library, according to the staff here, which is reassuring. They had some fantastic books, illustrated exploration transcripts, diaries, and original works by Sir John Soane – just for starters. Middle East I loved this library (housed in The Arched Room) for its atmosphere, architecture, and glamour. This was where we met the research librarian /archaeologist planning to go off to Iraq to do field work, and where the netting over the atrium was. This was a lovely place to study in and we saw researchers peering through microscopes at the actual clay tablets from Ashurbanipal’s time. It brought Research and its purposes to life in a real and spooky way! In the left-hand picture, you can see the ‘see-through’ platforms and in the right, you can just see an intrepid librarian shelving – before the days of netting!
Archives Tucked away in the bowels of the earth, (you can hear the tube trains rumbling past, so I’m not exaggerating) this was a wonderful collection – including architects’ plans for the original construction. It’s reassuring to know that even their architects needed several goes before the final plan was accepted. Their archives included letters requesting reader cards from e.g. TS Eliot and Virginia Woolf. One archivist had inexplicably removed several years’ worth of Trustees Correspondence and no-one could work out what he had to hide! Prehistory and Europe How can you do justice to this time span? The librarian was enthusiastic and full of good ideas for developing this collection, in spite of the space restrictions. Here, the users could find the books for themselves and much of the collection was of periodicals. It was the last library we visited and so probably rushed through it as we were running late, so apologies to the librarian. It was a very enjoyable visit thanks to the enthusiasm and kindliness of the staff and we were reminded that there’s another world buzzing away behind the scenes there. Sally Houston
ALF – Alumni Library Forum 11th December 2013 Cass Business School I heard about the Alumni Library Forum through LIS-LINK@JISCMAIL.AC.UK. The ALF is run by Rachel Daniels, Cranfield University and Suzanne Griffiths from Cass Business School. Their twitter account is @alum_lib_forum. ALF arranged this event to give library staff an opportunity to meet relevant vendors - Proquest, EBSCO, Emerald, Eduserv, Content Online, JSTOR – and for libraries who have a strong relationship with their alumni to make presentations. The vendors funded the refreshments including the afternoon cupcakes. Many of the librarians attending were not sure what this was all about and whether they were the right member of staff to attend. A core group of librarians had very strong policies for Alumni and were advocating policies such as giving alumni borrowing rights for life. The vendors were all offering packages of resources at a discount rate for limited alumni access. The major issue for libraries is giving alumni authentication to access the electronic resources. Most libraries have their access to electronic resources authenticated in their Active Directory – as we do with Shibboleth. Once students have graduated they are no longer live in the university Active directory. Is the answer to this problem to buy independent authentication with Open Athens? Open Athens can be controlled by the library, which is an advantage, but it is yet another username and password to be remembered. The most frequent question on the alumni pages at Cranfield is ‘I have forgotten my password’.
Here are 7 Suggestions that don’t cost the earth from Rachel Daniels:1. Make alumni feel special – don’t label them as external. 2. Offer free web resources 3. Create awareness of the service – create buzz on social media and make it clear that this is a lifelong partnership 4. Get library staff on board 5. Find out who else can help you – Alumni Office, have a Graduation stand, Students Union, IT, academics who are still in contact, use surveys, Careers Office 6. Be brave in negotiations with service providers – ask for trials 7. Make your Alumni policy official – part of library strategy A further suggestion came from the JSTOR stall. There are quite few resources which are free anyway – anyone can have a JSTOR account – there might only be limited access to contents pages etc but at least it is free. There are quite a few free resources available to the general public. It is well worth the effort to collate these for your alumni on a specific page on your library website. Other speakers were extolling the advantages of caring for your alumni – they can be future donors to the university, mentors and inspiration for current students and future students of your university. Universities which offer business orientated degrees have a strong motivation to keep in touch with alumni as many will become entrepreneurs who might bring funding, donations and employment or internships. When Kings College participated in the JSTOR Alumni access pilot project and advertised access to JSTOR on their front
page, they received 700 hits in one day. There were 14,000 accesses in the first year of the project of which the majority were in the history subject area. At the Manchester Business School every student is a member of the Alumni community from day one of their course. They have 70% of their alumni community overseas. The Alumni online access they offer is funded partly by their Alumni Office. By the end of the event, it was clear that there were choices we could make to serve alumni and what would motivate us to make those choices. There is a great deal we can do for our Alumni, for virtually no cost.
Nicola Stephenson The Library October/November/December 2013 Edited by Nicola Stephenson n.stephenson@gold.ac.uk n.stephenson@gold.ac.uk
BoB v3 Taster Session – London South Bank University, 4th December 2013 The BUFVC arranged a taster session for all libraries that subscribe to Box of Broadcasts (BoB), to demonstrate the changes that they’ve been working on, to make BoB not only more user friendly, but also to improve it as an academic resource. The morning comprised of an overview of the BUFVC, which is an organization promoting the use of moving image, sound and other media and education. It liaises with rights holders and the ERA to provide
educational access to multimedia materials. Its resources include TRILT (providing listings of everything on British television since 2001), Moving Image Gateway (providing links to numerous multimedia-related resources), Shakespeare (listings of all film, television and theatrical productions of his work), Chronicle (news coverage by BBC Northern Ireland in the 1960s/1970s) and an off-air recording service that allows us to order DVD copies of television programmes. Bob began as collaboration between JISC, the BUFVC and the BBC, and we were given a run through of what we’ll expect to see in BoB v3. These are amongst its new or improved features: • BoB will have a new ‘player’, with a larger screen/window. To the right of the window will be transcripts that match up with the programme as it plays. If you’re watching a news broadcast and only want a certain segment, you can cut straight to it by using the transcript, which can be searched by subject, person, etc. • It has a better recording feature, including a new calendar – BoB also lets you know if a programme has already been recorded, so it’s not duplicated. • Searching the archive has also improved – there are filters to refine a search, which replaces the advanced search. You can record from the search function, including the 30 day buffer. It finds programmes and clips. • Subtitling has also improved. The transcript works properly if using a full screen, not when windowed. Subtitles can also be turned off through the player itself. • Multi-part clips can be created, e.g. several parts of the same programme. Clips will be saved into
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MyBoB. Clips must be in the order of how they’re showed in the programme for licensing reasons (otherwise it would be re-editing). You can create single clips and change the order they’re in a playlist. MyBoB is better designed and separated into clips, programmes and playlists. Drag and drop features make it easier for tablet users. You can’t change the name of clips, but you can create playlists of one clip each or add comments to give context. Clips can only be played on mobile devices and not created. Sharing and embedding can be done by just copying and pasting the URL of the programme, playlist or clip. Playlists can’t be embedded themselves but their URLs can. You can also share a link to programmes on Twitter. There are tabs below the player to generate a citation according to the BUFVC AV citation guidelines. These can be copied and pasted directly into documents. More foreign language channels available on FreeSat have been added to BoB, although listings can be erratic. Programmes will display in different colours on the calendar depending on what the status of the programme is, e.g. recording, in the buffer, broadcasting, etc. Old programmes from the BBC archive, e.g. from 2007, can be requested from the buffer, although only a maximum of five can be requested per day. Thumbnails can show you the progress of each programme and can be shown in varying intervals, e.g. 5/10 seconds, even 1 minute. These are displayed under the
player of each programme. Clicking on the thumbnail image takes you to this part of the programme. The timeline for the changes for BoB will be: • 12-23 December – BoB closed for upgrade work • 24 December – BoB reopens • 6 January – BoB v3 launched to subscribing institutions • January-March – webinars taking place for BoB v3 • Early February – official launch of BoB v3 The afternoon session gave us the opportunity to explore BoB v3 and try out these new features. We were given a series of exercises to work through, e.g. finding certain programmes, making clips, to demonstrate how these improvements would work from the point of view of students. After an hour so of this, we were asked for our feedback. We were then split into groups and asked to discuss issues surrounding the use of multimedia resources in education, e.g. whether they’re much used by academic staff, what holds users back from using them, etc – this feedback was collated by the BUFVC. Once BoB v3 is launched next year, we’ll need to heavily (re)promote it to students and staff – even those reluctant to use it before will admit it has increased academic purpose after its upgrade. Kevin Wilson