Library Newsletter Easter 2019

St John’s College Library Newsletter L

EASTER 2019

VOLUME 2, ISSUE 3

After a quarter century, the Library gets a new Issue Desk Agreement on a final design emerged following discussions between the College Librarian and Academic Services Librarian, the architect and the College Maintenance Department. First thoughts on a new design were that it should be semi-circular in shape, lower and less boxy than the original, and have a low split section in the middle for ease of communication.

The old Issue Desk was dismantled over the Easter holidays

If you’ve visited the Library in the past few weeks, you will have noticed a new, curvaceous Issue Desk. The former desk was dismantled, and its shapely replacement installed, over the Easter holidays, 2019. Why the need for a new desk? The old desk was thought to be too big, too high, and not user friendly. It was also showing signs of wear and tear, since it had been installed in 1994, at the time of Library opening.

Designing a new Issue Desk presented a creative challenge. We were conscious that the desk is the first point of contact for users as they enter, and it is a key hub for the whole Library.

The new Issue Desk with a welcoming counter

Michael Vanoli of AMA Chartered Architects was appointed to develop a revised design. The primary challenge of the brief was to ensure that the design sat comfortably within the original surroundings of the library and offered accessibility to all. The

design needed to encourage a natural flow or movement from the entrance door through the Library space, and therefore careful thought was given to its three-dimensional form, with the chosen design being dynamic in plan with soft curves providing a welcoming reception. The material palette was deliberately limited to harmonise with existing finishes within the Library, especially the type and shade of wood to be used, and the colour of the desktop finish. One particular limitation that had to be factored in was the coordination of the new desk shape and length with the existing service entry points (power, data and communications points and wiring) in the floor. However, in Mr Vanoli’s words, ‘The design is entirely unique – to the best of my knowledge – and was an original response to the design brief. I suppose the plan does smack slightly of the “swoosh” logo of Nike, but that was accidental!’

The jig to bend the wood

Once the drawings were agreed, they were delivered to the College Maintenance workshop, where carpenter Richard Cousins began construction. I asked Richard whether converting the drawings into reality,

The refurbishment project was funded by St John’s College Annual Fund

Upcoming exhibition 17 June – 30 September 2019

especially capturing the Nike ‘swoosh’ shape, presented a major challenge. His reply: ‘Not really a challenge. I got the drawing and made a hard board template, used it as a reference point and worked on it. The time -consuming part is to build a jig to bend the wood.’

Curious to know more, I enquired how he managed to get the wood to bend so much: ‘We used three layers of bending medium density fibre board. You bend the wood round the jig, then glue the second and third layers.’ Full of admiration for his skills, I continued my questioning. What type of wood was used?

Apparently it is oak, which is traditionally used by College. How long did it take to build? About six weeks. How much of the desk was erected in the workshop, as opposed to being erected on site in the Library? Most parts of the desk were erected in the workshop, then transferred to the Library for assembly.

Now that the new desk is fully functional we are very appreciative of the skills that have gone in to its making. In my opinion, and I believe those of colleagues, it is extremely functional in meeting its purposes. While a new section of carpet distinguishes the desk area, the whole creation blends in sympathetically with the existing surroundings, and has made the ground floor look more spacious. The addition of plants adds a pleasant greenery to the aesthetics.

Janet Chow Academic Services Librarian

Cambridge has played a key role in the development of botany as a scientific field of study in its own right. This exhibition chronicles key points in the history of botanical learning and teaching at Cambridge, from herbals which occupied medieval scholars to the striking prints illustrating theories of plant classification during the Enlightenment.

The exhibition will showcase the works of eminent Cambridge botanists such as John and Thomas Martyn, as well as those who influenced them, including John Gerard and Carl Linnaeus. The lasting legacy of Johnian botanists will be highlighted along the way, including John Stevens Henslow, friend and mentor of Charles Darwin, who campaigned for the creation of a new Botanic Garden, as well as Erasmus Darwin, whose The Botanic Garden; a Poem in Two Parts controversially captured the public’s attention with its celebration of the joys of botany. th

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The exhibition runs from 17 June to 30 September in the Library Exhibition Area and will be open Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm excluding bank holidays.

Rowan Rush-Morgan Graduate Trainee

Online access to Times Higher Education (THE) Full online access to Times Higher Education is now available to all current Cambridge University staff and students. Access includes the current edition of THE and editions dating back to 2013, as well as the rankings supplements. Simply create a personal account by visiting the Times Higher Education homepage: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/.

For more information on how to register an account, visit https://www.libraries.cam.ac.uk/eresources/newspapers/british-newspapers/timeshigher-education.

Lean Library – access full text anywhere Lean Library offers a simple way to access online articles regardless of where you search online (e.g.

Google, PubMed, JSTOR, iDiscover…). So you don’t have to look for the login button on publisher websites or scroll through dropdown menus looking for your institution’s name. If the University has not got subscription access, Lean Library will even deliver an Open Access version as an alternative if one is available. Simply follow this link to install Lean Library: https://www.libraries.cam.ac.uk/eresources/access-full-text-anywhere Janet Chow Academic Services Librarian

New TV box sets The eagle-eyed amongst you may have noticed that a new category has sprung up in the AV Room – thanks to a large donation of TV box sets, we have been able to create a category specifically for TV shows. There are over 30 different shows to choose from, covering a variety of genres, languages, and tastes.

Some existing material has been moved to this section, such as Blackadder and Game of Thrones, in the hope that this will make the whole DVD collection easier to browse. New titles in the box set section include Better Call Saul, Lilyhammer, The Returned, and from the popular Scandi noir genre The Killing, The Bridge and Borgen.

So whether you want to refresh your memory before the release of the Downton Abbey movie in September, experience the Highland scenery (and a few murders…) in Shetland, or be transported to the coast of Florida in pursuit of gold in Black Sails, there is something to keep you entertained.

And the best things about box sets… the episodes are often the perfect length for a study break!

Catherine Ascough Library Assistant

Jail Journal: Or, Five Years in British Prisons (1854) John Mitchel

A couple of months ago, I spent a week in a cottage in South Armagh between Crossmaglen and Newry. It’s a strongly republican area, which, at the height of the Troubles, was too dangerous for the British Army to drive through so they brought everything in and out by helicopter. The Brexit debates were in full spate at Westminster, and where I was – only a few miles from the Irish Republic – the implications of ‘the Irish backstop’ were only too apparent in the visibility of posters protesting against any reintroduction of a hard border.

It was the ideal place and time in which to read that classic of Irish republicanism, John Mitchel’s Jail Journal (1854). Mitchel was brought up in Newry, where he is commemorated with a handsome statue. He came from a Presbyterian background, and he is prominent in the annals of republicanism not least because he shows that Irish nationalism was once embraced by Ulster protestants. He is also celebrated, however, because his trial for treason in 1848 was taken by radicals to show, with its ‘packed’ jury and unsparing judge, that British rule was corrupt and cruel. For Mitchel, and others in the Young Ireland movement, the trial, sentencing and transportation to Van Diemen’s land of patriots brought home what had been proved by the Famine (1845-49), that when the commercial and political interests of Britain were different from those of Ireland the former would prevail. This, from one point of view, is what the reimposition of a hard border would still be about.

In lively, vigorous prose, Mitchel describes his voyage in a prison ship to Bermuda, and on to Cape Town and Tasmania. There are vivid snapshots of captivity, with cockroaches on cabin walls, bread and water to live on, and escaped convicts being lashed, along with incisive critiques of such luminaries as Bacon, Macaulay and Carlyle. The accounts of storms and southern landscapes are both sublime and attentive.

Throughout Mitchel is alert to the way the British empire was extending and entrenching itself. His obsession with its power is such that, in the end, the Irish nation – the incipient republic – is defined in contradistinction to empire, with scant attention given to the varieties of humankind that lay outside this dynamic.

The very intensity of his focus on empire v. nation prevents Mitchel’s taking his place in the pantheon of anti-colonial struggle.

The indigenous peoples of South Africa and Australia are barely and slightingly mentioned in the Jail Journal, despite the resemblances that strike a modern reader between the nearextermination of the Aboriginal Tasmanians (Palawa) in the 1840s and what Mitchel regards as the genocide of the native Irish in the Famine. And his writing about African slaves shows sympathy for the Irish peasantry starved during the Great Hunger working perversely in favour of a vile institution: ‘These slaves in Brazil are fat and merry, obviously not overworked nor underfed, and it is a pleasure to see the lazy rogues lolling in their boats, sucking a piece of green sugar-cane, and grinning and jabbering together’.

This is unfortunately not a one-off. After escaping from British custody, Mitchel went to the United States, where he became an apologist for slavery and propagandist for the Confederacy during the Civil War. There are consistencies as well as blind spots in the road that he travelled between Irish rebel and hard-line Confederate journalist, and they owe a lot, I dare say, to tensions in the legacy of classical Republicanism. Yet the zigzags of history cannot excuse him entirely, nor his patchy brilliance as a writer. If ‘Rhodes must fall’, the statue of Mitchel should probably come down in Newry. Do read his remarkable book though.

Professor John Kerrigan Fellow in English

For comments on this issue, and contributions to future issues, please contact Janet Chow. Email: jc614@cam.ac.uk; Tel: (3)38662.