UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD, BODLEIAN LIBRARIES, RARE BOOKS DEPARTMENT Constanta Burlacu, Merton College, DPhil Medieval and Modern Languages, A mixture of in person and remote working Work Projects During my internship at the Rare Books Department, I have been working with both rare books (printed material from the 15th to the 19th century) and artists' books. One of my projects has been to work on an old Slavonic chapbook (Arch. B b.4), the only surviving copy of a 17th century liturgical calendar printed in Kiev. Besides conducing bibliographical research on the book, I have also analysed its iconography and provenance. When it comes to artists' books, I have been involved in identifying the material which is already part of Bodleian's collection and needs some cataloguing improvement on SOLO for better identification. I have often had the chance to see these books and to think in which way their record on SOLO can explain more explicitly what they are. For example, the Bodleian recently acquired a concrete poem composed by Stephen Emmerson, 'Endless Sleep', the leaves of which are made from a wasp nest. In front of such an object, it is often not easy to describe in words something which ultimately has a highly visual impact. Besides working on these two long-term projects, I have been involved in shorter research, cataloguing, shelving jobs, which gave me a better understanding of the wide variety of activities the Rare Books librarians are involved in. Daily Life Before starting my placement at the Bodleian, we decided with Francesca Galligan, the librarian coordinating the internship, that it will have a mixed format - some days would be in-person and others remote working, and these would be decided on a weekly basis. For my days at home, I focused mainly on my artists' books project, which meant working my way through a catalogue of early 1960s to 1980s artists' books and see which of these
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