St John’s College Library Newsletter L
EASTER 2018
VOLUME 1, ISSUE 3
Hidden treasures in the AV Room With over 1500 DVDs, 700 CDs, and 30 items of language learning material, the AV Room is a ‘must see’ during your time at St John’s. Whether you are studying languages or film, or just looking for something to watch, the AV Room covers a variety of material and subjects. Located on the first floor of the Library (by the turret staircase), the AV Room can be accessed 24/7 by members of the College wishing to check out, watch or listen to Audio-Visual material. Everything in the room is free to borrow for a maximum period of seven days. The room is equipped with a TV, DVD player, CD player and tape player, although you are welcome to use your own devices. Staff can also lend out headphones at the Issue Desk. There is no need to book – you are welcome to access the collection and equipment at any time. The enviable collection of DVDs covers many genres and languages. From one of the oldest animated feature films, The Adventures of Prince Achmed, to classic titles such as Gone with the Wind, Alien, and The Exorcist and new releases such as The Greatest Showman and Beauty and the Beast, the collection is always expanding to keep up with new releases and new additions to reading lists. For those who prefer more factual viewing, we have documentaries including Planet Earth and Spy in the Wild, or if you’d rather get stuck into a series, we have a large collection of
TV box sets, including The West Wing and Downton Abbey. If music is more your thing (perhaps you study music, or you work better with background noise), then the CD collection could be for you. It spans classical, pop, blues, and even poetry. From the Spice Girls to Mozart, and Elvis to St John’s College Choir, you are sure to find something worth listening to in the AV Room. Ever fancied learning a language, but didn’t know where to start? Head to the AV Room! With materials in 18 different languages ranging from French, German and Spanish to Portuguese, Indonesian and Swahili, the choice is yours. We have a range of resources and levels, such as the Michel Thomas method, Berlitz ‘For your trip’, ‘Teach yourself’ and more. Recommendations or suggestions for DVDs, CDs and language materials are always welcome. Priority is given to educational resources, but we consider all suggestions. Just speak to us at the Desk, fill in a recommendation form, or email the library at: library@joh.cam.ac.uk.
Catherine Ascough Library Assistant
New way to search Special Collections What’s the difference between an archive and a library? This is not merely the opener to an unpromising joke. The College is home to a vast collection of unique and historically significant material, spread across the Archive Centre and the Old Library, and researchers are often unsure where to begin. For those interested in the institutional history of St John’s, the Archive should be the first port of call, as this contains records relating to the growth and administration of the College since its foundation in 1511. In contrast, the Old Library looks after (alongside manuscripts and rare books) the personal papers of significant Johnians – many of whom made contributions to knowledge or to public life long after they left St John’s. Historically, the search tools available to researchers have been different depending on whether they wish to search the Institutional Archives or the Personal Papers collections.
Now, thanks to database developments, it is possible to search both collections simultaneously, via a new catalogue interface available online at www.sjcarchives.org.uk. While cataloguing of the Archive collection is ongoing, this online catalogue is a great place to start if you’re looking for something in particular and not sure where to find it. Researchers are of course also welcome to contact the Archivist or the Special Collections Librarian with collections-related enquiries. In addition, the departmental webpages (www.joh.cam.ac.uk/library) offer a wealth of information and images relating to the full range of the College’s Special Collections.
Images: Left: Glyn Daniel’s diaries, from the Library’s Personal Papers collection Right: Seals on the College’s Foundation Charter, from the Archive Rebecca Watts, Library Projects Assistant
Upcoming exhibition
Poster designed by Alice Read, Graduate Trainee
Spider men and other interesting Johnians When people find out we are responsible for the biographical records of members of the College it is likely they will ask us to name some famous Johnians. We can all easily reel off names such as William Wordsworth, William Wilberforce … there is a huge list of well-known alumni (not all of them called William) from many walks of life, including Prime Ministers, Nobel Prizewinners, those from the world of sport, the arts, etc.
opened up opportunities for him to get involved with the Musical Society, where The Eagle records him performing Ciro Pinsuti’s I Fear No Foe at one particular concert, and the Debating Society, where The Eagle tells us on 28 October 1899 he spoke against the motion ‘That this House disapproves of the present methods of charity’ (a majority of seven voted against).
This emphasis on famous names is, however, sometimes less interesting than Johnians the public are less familiar with. Some of these are still well known to other Johnians, or those with an interest in a particular field, such as: •
Samuel Purchas (1594), for whom the College’s Purchas Society (for Geographers and Land Economists) is named – a geographical editor and compiler, and Church of England Clergyman, who was no traveller himself but collected oral and written accounts of travels in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas.
•
Martin Lister (1655), the first arachnologist, and Theodore Savory (1915), one of the world’s foremost authorities on arachnids.
But other Johnians, with apparently more modest backgrounds and careers, who are interesting only to their own family and friends, can be some of the most engaging enquiries dealt with by the Biographical Office. Often that is because of the enthusiasm of the genealogists researching them, who have a personal connection with the subject. The information we can provide allows them to have a deeper understanding of where their ancestor came from and to build up a clearer picture of the person – sometimes quite literally, if we are fortunate enough to have a matriculation or sports team photograph too.
After graduation with an Ordinary Degree in Theology in 1901 he was ordained and Crockford’s Clerical Directory details positions held in various parts of the country. He married and had a son – who also became a Johnian. A cutting we have in the Biographical Archive from The Times shows he died aged 94. Through the information in our records we were able to show where he was at each stage of his life from his birth in 1864 through to his death in 1959 – including his final resting place.
In the case of a recent enquiry, someone wanted to know how his grandfather, from a modest background as the son of a labourer, came to be at St John’s. We were able to show how he matriculated as a non-Collegiate student in 1897, and was later awarded one of the four Choral Studentships available at St John’s in 1898, to the value of £40 a year. Admission to the College
In the above example I have not even addressed the further information we have on the son, who came up to the College 31 years later. That no names have been mentioned here reflects the fact these are people of modest backgrounds with no particular notoriety whose names would mean nothing to most people, but they are of great interest to those who care about them. Fiona Colbert, Biographical Librarian
E-books update The ebooks@cambridge team is constantly expanding the range of ebooks which can be accessed free by Cambridge students and staff. There are currently over 1000 ebook titles. Recent purchases included Oxford Handbooks Online collections, which cover 12 subject areas across the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences; and the Routledge Handbooks Online collections, which cover a wide range of subjects such as Archaeology, Economics, History, Linguistics, Philosophy and many more. Both Handbooks can be searched and accessed via iDiscover.
If you would like to suggest an ebook title or have any comments on ebooks, please email the ebooks team at: ebooks@lib.cam.ac.uk.
You can find out more about ebooks via the Cambridge LibGuides webpages (libguides.cam.ac.uk/ebookscam) and blog (ebookscambridge.wordpress.com ). Janet Chow, Academic Services Librarian
For this short review, I was invited to choose from amongst the books I have recently borrowed from the Library, or those recently purchased on my recommendation. I found this a difficult task, since we are very lucky to have such a generously stocked College Library. This said, I have chosen one of each: Faysal Devji’s The Impossible Indian: Gandhi and the Temptation of Violence (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2012) and J.C.D. Clark’s hot-off-the-press Thomas Paine: Britain, America, and France in the Age of Enlightenment and Revolution, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). The first is a relatively slim volume of 213 pages, the other a hefty tome of 485 pages. Both make important contributions to their respective subjects. The Gandhi that emerges from Devji’s study is one that must not be cut out of the great revolutionary movements of his time; he is to be considered ‘in the same group as his contemporaries, Lenin, Hitler, and Mao’ (4). What makes Gandhi exceptional is the view that nonviolence, when countering violence, will morally rejuvenate any political system. What is more, nonviolence was not a historically novel path; it was the norm, Devji explains, from which humanity had departed time and again, according to Gandhi. This said, his movement did not seek to avoid violence, but on the contrary invited it upon itself for the sake of transforming it, sublimating it, so as to metamorphose India into a new moral community. Rich in new interpretations of everything upon which
it touches – from the Indian Mutiny of 1857 to Gandhi’s disregard of normative arguments grounded in majoritarianism, from the Mahatma’s negation of nationality to his choosing to sacrifice the future for the sake of the present, given that securing the virtue of today’s world would bring about that of tomorrow – Devji’s work provides a convincing portrait of one of the twentieth century’ s greatest figures, one who ‘by refusing to treat life as an absolute value […] was able to accomplish his aim and spiritualize politics’ (187). While Clark describes Paine as ‘a man of extraordinary talents who played significant (though not dominating) roles in a series of extraordinary episodes’ (417), he explains how, though understandable, it is a mistake to think of him as the pioneer of modern politics, arguing for popular sovereignty resting on natural rights and expressed through representative democracy. The Irish, Welsh, Scots, and English were not in any need of Paine’s pamphleteering to acquire such ideas. In Clark’s view, Paine worked within a tradition stretching to the political debates of the 1640s. The ideas were not new, and Paine’s own criticisms of hereditary monarchy and aristocracy, and Trinitarian Christianity, have to be considered in their particular intellectual and political contexts. Clark’s vast scholarship removes Paine from a false canonical pedestal on which ideologically driven anachronisms have placed him, so as to enable us to understand him and his times truly. Two very different studies of two very different men. Both asking us to shed our preconceptions of their respective subjects and think again, and do so contextually. Both highly, but rightly, challenging. Sylvana Tomaselli Director of Studies in History and in Human, Social & Political Sciences