a joyous jumble of

board to hold the book securely; and 6) finally, sticking the original book cover page on the front and back of the hard board so that one can still see the title and details of the book. Library books that continue to be relevant and used over a long period of time, such as many History and English books, will be drop-boarded to prolong their shelf life. Apart from preserving new books, Phil also repairs existing Library books by, for example, re-backing broken book spines and using heat set tissue to mend torn pages.

In terms of tools and materials used in bookbinding and book repair today, Phil thinks they have not changed much over time, except for the glue: ‘The glue I used in the old days was animal glue made from skin and bone. It smells and it looks like a jelly pot. You had to put the pot in a bowl of boiling water, otherwise it [the glue] would go solid. Also, the glue we use today is softer, you could thin it with water, whereas the old glue was brittle, it stuck to your fingers.’ Other tools Phil uses are cloth with different textures, a paring knife, scissors, and a press (to clamp the book while working on it). Outside work, Phil uses his creativity to design and make sketch books and wedding albums for friends.

Images: Phil and his book press (left); paperback books given hard covers (right)

Janet Chow, Academic Services Librarian

A Special Collections Assistant walks into a Library Newsletter article, and is surprised to see a bartender there. The bartender greets him thus:

‘I say, I say, I say! Why did the charismatic and intelligent person cross the road on the first day of April this year?’

‘Gosh,’ says the Special Collections Assistant, taking a moment to remember that the date in question hasn’t occurred yet. He tries to get into the spirit. ‘Why…perhaps to visit the April Fool’s Day exhibition in the Old Library of St John’s?’

‘What’s the difference,’ asks the bartender, ‘between an Old Library and a New Library?’

‘There isn’t a New Library. That’s not the name for it, anyway. The Old Library’s where we have medieval manuscripts containing charming images of fools, and printed books concerning, for example, magic tricks, or fake Wordsworth poems, or factually baseless guides to Taiwan, or pamphlets about life being discovered on the Moon, or accounts of women giving birth to rabbits, or…’

‘Sounds like a lot, mister!’

‘Doctor, actually.’

‘Doctor, doctor!’

‘Yes.’

‘I keep thinking I’m an exhibition case!’

‘Oh? How does that make you feel?’

‘Full of interesting items!’

Cite Them Right online access

Online access to Cite Them Right is available to all current Cambridge University staff and students. There you can find the guidelines for different referencing styles (e.g. APA, Harvard and Chicago) for books, journals, reports, pamphlets, websites, social media and many other sources. For each referencing style, it gives you the citation order of all the elements you need to include in your reference(s). There are examples showing you how to insert citations into your text and document the full reference details. If you are still unsure, there is a tutorial section which you can explore. The website also provides useful information on plagiarism.

Access via https://www.citethemrightonline.com/

The bartender pauses for a laugh, which the Special Collections Assistant nervously offers.

‘Ha, yes. That’s right. We do an event for the Cambridge Festival every spring, and as one of the possible dates this year was April Fool’s Day I thought it might be amusing to attempt a very topical event. Goodness knows how this will translate to the online version that will appear the following week, but I’ve still time to figure it out. And while obviously I’d like the exhibition to be entertaining, I hope there’ll be an instructive element: a book, I suppose a bit like an exhibition caption, carries some authority, and I want people to think about the nature of that authority, and about the correct application of scepticism. So, I suppose I could ask you: what do you get if you cross a lighthearted exhibition about jokes with serious educational ambitions? Well? What do you… what do you get when…’

The bartender looks unamused. Blank. Points at a sign. 400-WORD LIMIT.

‘Er, what?’ says the Special Collections Assistant.

And the bartender picks him up and throws him out of the Library Newsletter; his head collides with the ground, the infinite dark plain outside the Newsletter, once, and then once again.

Knock, knock.

‘”What strange tricks”: Fools, Hoaxes, Pranks and Jokes’ will be exhibited in the Upper Library from 10.00 to 16.00 on Saturday 1 April 2023, as part of the Cambridge Festival. An online version will follow.