Library Annual Report 2019-20 by St John's College, Cambridge

St John’s College Library Annual Report 2019-20 The Library, St John’s College, Cambridge CB2 1TP Tel: 01223 338662 Fax: 01223 337035 Email: library@joh.cam.ac.uk

www.joh.cam.ac.uk/library A copy of this Annual Report is sent to the Domestic Bursar’s Office to form part of the College’s Register of Public Benefits. Compiled by the Sub-Librarian’s Administrative Assistant Kirsten Canavan with many thanks to the Sub-Librarian Kathryn McKee, and the Projects Assistant Rebecca Watts for proofreading and advice, and to the Biographical Assistant Paul Everest for cover design, photograph editing and layout guidance. All photographs in the Annual Report were taken by Library staff. St John’s College is a registered charity, number 1137428.

St John’s College Library Annual Report 2019-20 Contents

Page

The Librarian’s Annual Report

Staff Reports

Staff Training

The Working Library

Library Usage

Annual Circulation

Audio-Visual Room and Seminar Room

The Old Library

The Biographical Office

The College Archive

Library Projects

Digital Activities

Environmental Monitoring and Control

Green Initiatives

Feedback

Appendix 1 – Regular Donors

Annual Report 2019-20

The Librarian’s Annual Report Our Departmental Aim is to provide a modern, efficient and welcoming Library service for all members of the College, and for all others with valid reasons to make use of the College’s library and archival collections and facilities, so enabling the College to fulfil its statutory and strategic aims.

An Exceptional Year Cambridge and St John’s have weathered many storms over the centuries. The Civil War was not an easy time, the agricultural depression of the later nineteenth century impoverished the College for three or four decades, while the World Wars took away generations of promising and talented young people and left us literally bereft. Set against these challenges, the strange events of 2020 may not loom too large in the next volume of our history. They have, though, loomed very large indeed to the students, staff and Fellows who have endured them. Until the beginning of March, life was as normal: in the Library refurbishment work was underway, special collections enquiries and cataloguing were proceeding apace, our reader numbers were building up steadily, and we looked forward to the usual busy Easter Vacation and the still busier Easter Term. And then in a trice we were out of our Library, the doors were shut, the students for the most part gone from Cambridge. We were not to return for months, and we returned to a changed world. Getting Back to Normal It is a matter of pride to me that we were among the very first libraries in Cambridge to resume onsite operations, first in June by offering remote services such as book ‘click and collect’ and the scanning and delivering of chapters and passages in our volumes, then in August when the doors opened again and a limited number of readers were able to return to work, in a carefully controlled environment with full risk assessments and with the safety of staff and readers uppermost in our minds. The Academic Services Librarian, Janet Chow, and the 2019-20 Graduate Trainee, Ellie Capeling, must take particular credit for these developments. Janet drove forward necessary arrangements with customary skill and zeal. All Working Library staff, however, deserve credit for the ways in which they facilitated these developments. Our two cleaners Catherine Shanahan and Sandra Aleksiejūtė soon had us shipshape again, cutting speedily

Annual Report 2019-20 through the months of dust, while our Library Assistant Rebecca Le Marchand saw opportunity in the novelty of these days when she ran some highly successful online guided-study sessions, which were welcomed by many students enduring lockdown and the demands of revision at home. Successive Library Secretaries, Angela McKenzie and after Angela’s retirement Davina Turner on secondment from the Bursary, ensured that the administrative show remained on the road. A word of thanks, too, to the College Porters, who kept an eye on everything during lockdown, and who even watered our plants in the Entrance Hall. Staffing Both before and after the virus struck, Ellie Capeling gave us excellent service across every sector of the Library during her one-year appointment. Her wonderful can-do spirit is matched by an ability to write and design displays, and organise any collection. We wish her well with her studies at Sheffield. Ellie’s successor is Katie Hannawin, a graduate in History and Modern Languages from Worcester College, Oxford. As in past years, it is a pleasure to invite Katie to contribute some initial thoughts on her work for the Library later in these pages.

Bidding farewell to Ellie at a tea break via Zoom

This time last year I was concerned that our departing Library Assistant Catherine Ascough and our retiring Archivist Tracy Deakin would be hard acts to follow. Happily, we have managed to recruit to both posts in ways that match the extremely high standards set by both Catherine and Tracy. Rebecca Le Marchand, who had volunteered in St John’s Library earlier in her career, joined us from the University Library, while Lynsey Darby succeeded Tracy as Archivist, moving on from the post of Archivist in the College of Arms. Rebecca’s ability is matched only by her cheerful willingness to tackle anything. Lynsey has got to grips with the collections in the School of Pythagoras while also contributing nobly as my Deputy Data Protection Lead in meeting our College’s obligations under the 3

Annual Report 2019-20 Data Protection Act 2018. While data protection work is unglamorous, necessary labour, she has set to with a will. After seven years as my Secretary, and much longer as the College’s telephony officer, Angela McKenzie retired in June 2020. Angela will be greatly missed both in the Library and across St John’s. She knows everyone in the College and has helped make the Library and its work ever more familiar to other departments. Overhearing her ‘robust’ conversations with recalcitrant representatives of various phone companies was always one of the shared treats in our Office. We now look forward to giving Angela the College send-off that is manifestly her due when catering operations resume, and we wish her every happiness with the grandchildren (and husband Des) in retirement. Angela opening her presents from the College

Angela’s departure meant that we also said goodbye to Alison Hart-Arkley, who had shared the secretarial role since Angela moved to four days a week. We will miss Alison’s cheerful efficiency on Fridays, and send her too every good wish for the future.

Alison with her leaving gifts

Until September, the Library was fortunate to benefit from the services of Davina Turner, experienced Secretary to the Senior Bursar, who gave us half her weekly hours with Chris Ewbank’s generous blessing. It has been a pleasure to work with Davina in this essential though sadly temporary arrangement. On Davina’s recent departure we have welcomed Kirsten Canavan, Assistant to the Fellows’ Steward, who currently has spare capacity for assisting the Library in essential administration. We are grateful indeed to be able to call upon someone with her experience and

knowledge of the College. Until lockdown, Chris Krupa continued to volunteer on Thursdays in the Old Library, as he has done for the past decade. Lockdown also meant we could no longer accommodate our second volunteer Rachel Perry-Eichhorst. We much look forward to welcoming both of them back as soon as the Old Library reopens to readers.

Annual Report 2019-20 Events and Exhibitions 2019 and 2020 offered us a chance to celebrate more than one Johnian anniversary. While our commemoration of the quincentenary of William Cecil’s birth was derailed by the epidemic, and must wait for another day, we did manage to mark, during the Lent Term, the 250th anniversary of the birth of William Wordsworth through a lovely display in the Exhibition Area, curated by Rebecca Watts. By then we had already enjoyed a very wellconceived and interesting exhibition on ‘Blooming Botany’ devised by the then Graduate Trainee, Rowan Rush-Morgan, and had marked our Working Library’s twenty-fifth birthday with a special brochure, designed by Janet Chow, which is available online and also in paper form while limited stocks last.

The Working Library project was pursued and completed during the Mastership of Professor Robert Hinde, who died in 2016, so it was a particular pleasure to invite his widow Joan and other members of his family to unveil a memorial to Robert in our Entrance Lobby, which fittingly now greets every reader and visitor. Those who attended the unveiling also remembered with gratitude the inspirational architect Edward Cullinan, who had died earlier in November, reflecting as they did so that Cullinan’s design for our library had already assisted the studies of generations of Johnians. As usual, our Entrance Hall has been home to several spontaneous smaller-scale topical displays, such as those for World Book Day, Women’s History Month, and literary prize shortlists. The two display cases there also give readers a taste of the lovely items held in our Old Library collections. 5

Annual Report 2019-20 No account of a year in the Library Exhibition Area is complete without a reference to the Staff Photography Competition and the Student Art and Photography Competition. The latter, this year, sadly fell victim to lockdown. Our junior members’ artistic talents, however, will collectively ensure that this ever-popular competition can flourish again in Easter Term 2021. Please visit us at that time and enjoy the fruits of their creative labours. Recognition of Excellence Lockdown and the new focus on remote learning and teaching have highlighted the importance in a modern library of ever more integrated, sophisticated and electronically secure methods of working. Thanks to determined, persistent work led by Janet Chow and our Projects Assistant Rebecca Watts, the College Library was awarded the Technology Excellence in Libraries Award by Book Industry Communication, the UK book industry’s dedicated independent supply chain organisation. Sponsored by the British Library, the Publishers’ Association and the Booksellers’ Association, BIC works to promote the efficiency of supply chains and high standards within the book industry. We are the first library in Collegiate Cambridge to be recognized in this way, and we are proud to add a distinctive new logo to the inside cover of this Report. As Janet reminds us, recognition of this nature reassures those working in the Library, and the College Council, that we are meeting the highest standard expected of contemporary libraries. It also acknowledges that users in College are receiving the best provision of library services. Special Collections: A Way Forward The Rare Books Reading Room and the School of Pythagoras remain closed to readers as I write. All our specialist information services providers, however, continue to catalogue, plan for the future, and respond to readers’ requests, either from home or from the office. The Biographical Librarian Fiona Colbert and her Assistant Paul Everest have been as busy as ever, fielding biographical enquiries, adding records to the biographical database, and helping the Obituaries Editor Colin Greenhalgh craft much-consulted notices – brief lives each telling its unique story – for our College magazine The Eagle.

Annual Report 2019-20 Our Archivist, Lynsey Darby, has pressed ahead with online cataloguing, while also engaging with some complex and interesting enquiries. She has, for example, been helping one of our Fellows explore the lasting impact of an enlightened principle written into the earliest College Statutes, the reservation of Fellowships and Scholarships for able men from the north of England. It is interesting to see how St John’s has honoured, more or less, these early aspirations through the following five centuries. The Sub-Librarian Kathryn McKee and the Special Collections Assistant Adam Crothers have for their part kept up with the steady stream of enquiries drawing on the collections in the Old Library. Digitisation projects have pressed ahead, notably the digitisation of MS D.6, a lovely psalter owned by the Abbot of Peterborough Robert de Lindsay in the early thirteenth century. Like so much else that we do, this digitisation project was made possible through a generous donation from a Johnian benefactor. Our collections on slavery and the abolitionist movement have attracted considerable press MS D.6 (detail) attention this year, as has the handcoloured frontispiece to our glorious Great Bible, a volume that once belonged to Henry VIII’s chief minister Thomas Cromwell. The purpose behind the careful ‘doctoring’ of this handsome image, revealed by a group of scholars led by Dr Eyal Poleg, challenges longheld assumptions and leads to all sorts of stimulating scenarios. Kathryn has also secured support from the College’s Annual Fund to run an eight-month project in which descriptions of the collations, bindings and composition of our oldest manuscripts will be revised and where necessary completely rewritten – part of the long-term work towards a comprehensive new catalogue of our medieval collections. Security and Safety When it comes to keeping staff and students safe, Covid-19 has not surprisingly dominated our thinking. Happily, our Working Library was designed with the safety of its users in mind, and as in so many other ways it can be adapted to the needs of the moment without undue fuss. Our two staircases provide a natural one-way system through the floors. Desks are well separated. Toilet facilities are plentiful. The Library is naturally ventilated and readers are for the most part not asked to work face to face. Add a Perspex screen or two, and plenty of hand sanitiser, and you are well on the way towards compliance with evolving regulations. Janet Chow, Catherine Shanahan and Sandra Aleksiejūtė have worked

Annual Report 2019-20 tirelessly to maintain the highest of standards, and our partial opening of the building over summer 2020 has allowed various arrangements to be tested, and to bed in, before we develop them to cope with demand during the Michaelmas Term.

The Issue Desk with its new Perspex screen to protect staff and users

Fire-evacuation exercises were conducted in the Library during the Michaelmas Term 2019 and the Lent Term 2020, and the main fire alarm in the Working Library is tested by the Porters once a week. Kathryn and I have again observed the custom of reviewing the Library Disaster Response Plan and the parallel plan for the Archive Centre every September. Departmental risk assessments are also updated annually, and of course this year we have also had to create and maintain a number of Covid-driven risk assessments when reoccupying and opening up our buildings. Working Together Some things said in the seemingly distant past that is last year bear repeating in the autumn of 2020. Confronted with exceptional challenges, College departments have worked together better than ever, both bilaterally and through the meetings of our College CovidSilver Group and other committees and working parties. In the Library we always work particularly closely with our partners in Information Services and Systems, the IT Department and the Communications Office. I am also grateful to the Development Office, the Domestic Bursarâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Office, the Accommodation Office and to the Housekeeping,

Annual Report 2019-20 Maintenance, Porters and Tutorial Departments for helping us, advising us and keeping us safe in College. As always, I am delighted to have this chance to thank the members of the Library and Records Committee, and particularly its Chair Dr Chris Warnes, for their thoughtful scrutiny and support of Library plans and ambition. The Library has long worked in partnership with the libraries of the University and Colleges, particularly in the provision of ebooks and ejournals. Never has such cooperation been more significant. Lockdown saw a massive collaborative effort to expand the electronic provision of resources to support teaching and learning online. Library staff from many different institutions, St John’s included, worked together on the selection of ebook titles, creation of online reading lists, centralised return of books, and many other operations essential to the delivery of services to our student community. I particularly want to thank Kirsten Canavan for assembling and designing this Report, no small task as almost her first duty for the Library, and Paul Everest for his splendid photography. But all the staff have pitched in to ensure that, Covid notwithstanding, the Annual Report appears once again in 2020, and on time too! My final word is one of thanks to Kathryn and to Lynsey. On 1 September 2020 I took up the office of Senior Tutor, on a one-year appointment. Kathryn has very kindly agreed to step in as Head of Department in the Library for this year, while Lynsey, with equal readiness, has agreed to be St John’s Data Protection Lead. Their kindness will make my wider responsibilities bearable, as the College navigates its way through the choppy seas of ‘recovery’, hopefully towards a coast of ‘normality’ which grows ever clearer as the weeks and months pass. Mark Nicholls

Annual Report 2019-20

Staff Reports

The Library Staff Away Day 2020, via Zoom Top line from left to right: Davina Turner, Janet Chow, Sandra Aleksiejūtė, Catherine Shanahan, Katie Hannawin, Paul Everest, Adam Crothers. Middle line from left to right: Kathryn McKee, Rebecca Watts, Lynsey Darby. Bottom line: Fiona Colbert.

Sandra Aleksiejūtė – Library Cleaner I have now been at St John’s for over three years and I just can’t believe how quickly the time has gone. Keeping the Library clean and tidy is an important task. During the pandemic it is an even more challenging role to make sure that everything is sanitized and safe to use. I am looking forward to the coming year even though I suspect it will be really busy. My colleague Catherine and I feel like we have done everything we possibly can to provide a safe environment for everybody using and working in the Library.

Annual Report 2019-20 Janet Chow – Academic Services Librarian Last year started with a busy Michaelmas term. In November 2019, a reception was held to celebrate the opening of the Working Library twenty-five years earlier. At that time, Professor Robert Hinde was Master of the College and it was most appropriate that his widow, Dr Joan Hinde, was the guest of honour. Also present at the reception were Vice-Master Professor Tim Whitmarsh, Professor Malcolm Schofield (President of the College at the time of the Library building’s completion), JCR Presidents and members of the Library staff. Little did I expect that a few months later the Library would be closed because of the global pandemic. Although the Library remained closed during the entire lockdown period, I – like all colleagues – reverted to working at home. I was preoccupied with three activities. The first was to ensure that at least some student support could continue through improving the ebooks provision. The second focused on constructing a risk management strategy for the Working Library that would identify and mitigate the dangers and threats posed by Covid-19 for when the Library reopened. The third involved completing all necessary formalities involved in applying for accreditation of the Working Library. During the lockdown period of library closure, we were still able to offer some, if limited, support to students. For example, I identified key textbooks and liaised with Directors of Studies for recommendations for ebooks provision. A list of nearly 200 titles was compiled and sent to the ebooks team at the University Library for central purchase. Needless to say, many students were appreciative of the support they received. Drafting a Library risk assessment strategy in preparation for returning to work and subsequently reopening the Library to readers was an interesting and novel experience. I was pleased to return to the Library on 1 June. With invaluable help from our previous Graduate Trainee, Ellie Capeling, we quickly responded by offering the ‘click & collect’ service by which junior members and Fellows could order books in advance. I also introduced some basic changes in the Library as a result of the risk assessment. For example, signs were posted indicating one-way systems; posters for encouraging good hygiene practice were printed; and dedicated spaces for quarantining Library items were created. With social distancing in place, we have had to reduce the number of available seating spaces. This has led to a surplus of chairs, which have had to be removed – and thanks to our heroic cleaners, Catherine and Sandra, nearly 100 chairs have been moved to the Upper Library. With all the appropriate measures and an online desk space booking system in place, I was delighted when the Working Library reopened on 6 August. I am thankful to my colleagues in the Working Library for their return to work to enable us to provide services to readers. In particular, I would like to thank Katie Hannawin, our new Graduate Trainee, who has swiftly grasped the new ways of operating in the Working Library and conducts her duties

Annual Report 2019-20 from the Issue Desk with impressive efficiency, energy and enthusiasm. It was both exciting and emotional to see the first reader(s) coming through the Library door. It has been an unusual and exceptional few months. However, the unique conditions brought about by Covid-19 have offered interesting challenges that question traditional ways of functioning. In short, I feel I have had to rethink conventional ways of doing things. How to manage a library in times of crises provokes constructive questioning about all the takenfor-granted things we normally do – from planning to executing. Consequently, and paradoxically, these exceptional times have provided some positive learning experiences for me. Besides affording time to draft the risk management strategy, the lockdown period proved ideal for me to focus on the application for Working Library accreditation. With an emphasis on technology, the award is called ‘Technology Excellence in Libraries Accreditation’ (TEiLA) and is granted by Book Industry Communication (BIC). To gain the accreditation, we had to demonstrate how we use beneficial technologies to assist Library staff to perform some of their library tasks more effectively, and how we improve library services to users. I am grateful for the support given by Dr Mark Nicholls, Kathryn McKee and Rebecca Watts in completing what was quite a demanding application process. I was delighted when in June I learnt that our application had been successful. I saw the accreditation process as a great opportunity to prove that we have been improving and developing the Library and to get some outside recognition for our achievements. Having now achieved successful accreditation, it must remain an ongoing aim to continue the process of meeting ever-changing user needs in the future. Fiona Colbert – Biographical Librarian ‘Why does reality have to interrupt interesting matters?’ a researcher asked recently when I explained I had needed to step away from our email conversation for a bit as we had a gas leak and the engineer had just informed us he was cutting off our supply for the weekend. Being cold reminds me of working in the Biographical Office! Despite my reliance on an oil heater to keep warm, I love the office, and sharing it with Paul, and I felt really sad when we left it in March, not knowing when we’d be back. I certainly didn’t expect we’d still be working from home six months later. However, I haven’t missed catching a bus just after 6.00am and not getting home until 8.00pm. Other people’s lives have been turned upside down due to the pandemic, and I feel rather guilty saying that for me working from home has been a positive experience. Of course I miss my colleagues, but generally this introvert is having a wonderful time doing a job I love from the comfort of my own home, and getting to see my husband and cats more.

Annual Report 2019-20 As a lot of the people I speak to on the phone are elderly widows, it is no surprise that some have been struggling even more this year because in addition to dealing with their grief many have been shielding because of the virus, unable to see their family, some weren’t able to visit the hospital or care home before their partner died, or couldn’t attend the funeral. Much of the work I do is connected with death, but it is very much about life too: what people achieve, what means something to them, the difference they make, and how that affects those around them and makes them feel. I ensure people are remembered and live on in some way through their connection with the College, and I feel privileged to do it. I’ve been so busy I haven’t had time to think about missing the College because I’m still doing the same work, just in a different location. But when I speak to colleagues who are on site and talking about what’s happening, or when via a Zoom conversation or livestream of an event I am transported virtually to the Library, the College Chapel, or the Main Lecture Theatre in the Old Divinity School, I do realise I miss the place and the people. It’s nice to feel a sense of belonging to the community – even from afar. There are actually fewer interruptions at home than in the office, but one thing’s for sure: my work is always interesting. Adam Crothers – Special Collections Assistant Transcribing and cataloguing, as a lockdown project, letters about the day-to-day workings of Jamaican slave plantations (where the evils come across as banal and cognitively dissonant, rather than the stuff of cackling malevolence, which would in a way have been easier to handle) – and doing so while the Black Lives Matter protests raged and the pandemic highlighted the cynicism and the decency, the ineptitude and the innovation, of so many people – was surreal, in the classic sense of heightening and complicating one’s perception of reality through jarring juxtaposition. It felt like a modest contribution. I do love wandering down niche-filled academic rabbitholes, but working on material like this, of broader cultural import, is a different sort of privilege.

While there have been, and will be, other tasks to attend to while off site, it was good, in September, to start returning to the Rare Books Reading Room in an, ahem, ‘limited and specific’ way, direct consultation of physical items often being a necessary part of my job. On my first visit in six months, the place looked so barren, so eerily calm… and then I realised that this wasn’t a pandemic thing but an Adam-did-a-lot-of-tidying-at-the-start-ofthe-year thing, and congratulated myself. I hope I’m able to continue these visits to the Old Library; I’m writing this in early October, so goodness knows.

Annual Report 2019-20 Meanwhile my second collection of poems, The Culture of My Stuff, appeared from Carcanet in May; it has an ace cover that would have worked to its advantage had physical bookshops been open, and it’s a better piece of writing than my first and is likely to sell even worse. Sigh. Anyway, two further books of poems are on the go, as is a novel (a jolly space opera with FTL travel, attotechnology and, least feasibly, a distant future for humanity, one in which people are mostly good to one another); and there’s been a happy combination of cooking and weight loss, which is rather more than can be said for the garden birds, towards whose suet-and-mealworm demands our funds are largely directed. Lynsey Darby – College Archivist Starting a new job and moving house just when the Covid-19 situation was starting to ‘feel real’ in the UK was a bit of a discombobulating experience, so I’m very glad to have had a few weeks on site before we started to work from home. The archives centre itself is, of course, a fantastic working environment. Having online cataloguing software to work with, accessible both onsite and remotely, is also a bit of a dream come true and I am greatly enjoying the intellectual challenge of arranging material onto the online catalogue AtoM (in draft form, only publishing once a section is completed). Other highlights so far have included research into the Registers of Fellows, Officers and Scholars (sixteenth to nineteenth centuries) and early Admissions Registers, to assist a College Fellow with his research while in-person visits to the archives centre by anyone other than the archivist were not possible. In September, I completed an online course created by the Digital Preservation Coalition in collaboration with the National Archives. The course emphasised that digital preservation is not about finding a one-off storage solution, but is a continuous process with a broad range of activities that have to be undertaken proactively. Topics covered included the creation of a digital preservation policy and digital asset register, workflows, and guidance on how to use tools including checksums (to check for bit rot), write protectors, and characterisation tools. With ever-increasing amounts of archives being created and stored digitally, the importance of developing a strategy and procedures for digital preservation is clear and is something I intend to work on, with colleagues, in the coming year.

Annual Report 2019-20 Paul Everest – Biographical Assistant Wow. OK. So usually at this point I’d be scratching my head at what to write; how to say much the same as the previous year’s entry, in a slightly different way so that no one notices! Well, this year has been very different: my Outlook calendar tells me that I last saw the Library on 18 March, and I can remember heading home with a bag full of volumes of the Cambridge Historical Register, not even knowing if I’d be able to work remotely straight away. Fortunately, IT swiftly gave me access to the Remote Desktop Service and I was back in action… then schools closed, and being furloughed for six weeks was the only way I could realistically manage childcare. I really enjoyed being able to spend so much time with my children, but began to miss the structure and stimulation of work, so when my daughter’s school reopened in June, I returned to remote working. Nothing much has really changed in terms of what I’m able to do whilst working remotely – not having access to the Biographical Archive and other source material in the Library has hampered a few things, but not as much as I’d thought. I would estimate that I can do somewhere in excess of 90% of my work from home. As with everything, there are positives and negatives: I certainly don’t miss the hours sat on the bus every day (or the price of it), and I can work with music on all day long! On the other hand, my sofa is noticeably depressed from being sat on so much, I have a tonne of recycling that I can’t deal with at the moment, and I miss the College – the friendly faces and passing interactions, the lunchtime wanders with my camera through the gardens, the freewheeling randomness of conversation at coffee break. In such testing and uncertain times, I’m incredibly grateful to have a job I really enjoy, and be able to do it effectively from home to minimise the stress on those who are back on site. Katie Hannawin – Library Graduate Trainee Moving cities and starting a new job in the middle of a pandemic has been an interesting experience to say the least, but the two months I have spent here at St John’s College Library has already made it all absolutely worth it. I have learnt so much in such a short space of time, and even though at times it’s felt like my head might explode from all the new information, I have had such fantastic support from the rest of the Library staff that it’s been very easy to adapt to my new environment. This is my first experience of being behind the scenes of a library, and I have thoroughly enjoyed becoming a part of the process that

Annual Report 2019-20 gets books from their boxes to shelves, and then on to readers. I think my favourite task so far has been getting to grips with classifying books. It’s been so interesting sitting and spending an afternoon solving the puzzle of ‘on which shelf does this book belong?’ Hint: it’s not as straightforward as you think! When I have not found myself wrestling with difficult books, my time has been full of other equally interesting jobs, including virtual cataloguing training, research for the Biographical Office, environmental monitoring, planning displays, shelving books, and working through reading lists to check that the Library is well stocked for the year ahead. It’s a very busy job, and quite often it gets to 5pm and I have no idea where the day has gone! My traineeship so far has certainly been a different experience from what I had anticipated, but I have been amazed at the resilience of the Library staff and the lengths that the Library has gone to in order to ensure that it still provides top-class support to its students. Michaelmas 2020 is going to be very different from usual, but I am excited to meet the students and am ready to work hard to make sure that the Library can still support them, whatever the next few months may throw our way! Rebecca Le Marchand – Library Assistant As this is the first one of these I have done, I have just been looking through other annual reports to see what people write in this bit and oh my gosh, I found a photo of me in the Annual Report for 2017-18! It’s quite a nice one too! I am sitting in the staff corner having a cup of tea. Why is there a picture of me in an old(ish) Annual Report? Because I started my library career here in the Working Library. Janet and Mark had very kindly agreed to take me on as a volunteer with the aim of helping me move from my bookselling work into academic libraries. After volunteering here for a while, I got my first job as a temporary library assistant at Robinson College for the Easter Term of 2019, and then I got a part-time placement with the University Library at the Reader Services desk. I started full-time work here a few weeks into the Michaelmas term of 2019 and I have had a fantastic and rather memorable first year so far. I was tempted to try and write this without mentioning pandemics at all but that just wouldn’t be what happened would it? When I started in late November, Covid-19 was not even something we talked about at break time. By January, it was all we were talking about. By March, the Library was closed and I was working from home. Luckily, I had managed to get to grips with the basic running of the Library by then – I had done my first (almost full) term and my first ‘holiday’ clear up and tidy. I had learned how to catalogue and process the books, manage the journals, and, most importantly, how to help our fabulous fellows and students get the most out of their Library.

Annual Report 2019-20 My lockdown weeks were spent learning how to catalogue DVDs and CDs to RDA standard. I got very good at this and can now catalogue a DVD from scratch in about 20 minutes (the first one took me over an hour!). I spent some time updating the biographies in the Archives database. I completed an online training course in Excel. This has already been very useful as the Library Assistant is now required to update and manage the statistics for the Working Library. I have to admit I now relish the moment when an idea gets big enough that it requires a spreadsheet to manage! I also set up and ran a successful online study group for St John’s students who were missing the Library. I ran this once a week over the lockdown period and, owing to popular demand, it continued over the summer vacation. Spending a large part of my first year at John’s working from home was not an easy experience, as I had to learn to manage my full-time workload, look after my teenage son and help my elderly mother. Luckily, my colleagues were unfailingly understanding and lovely. Lockdown was definitely a time when I counted my many blessings and high up on that list was my new job and St John’s College; the beautiful buildings and gardens; the warm community of people; the feeling that you are of worth. Having come from years of working zero hours contracts in which I was not well cared for – the sense of support that I have received since working here is something I find really special. Kathryn McKee – Sub-Librarian (Acting Head of Department) The year started on a distinctly positive note, taking a medieval Bible ‘home’ to Guisborough for their Priory’s 900-year celebration. It took a huge amount of work from the Priory Project team and us to put everything in place for this loan to happen, but it was worth it. It was thrilling to see the enthusiasm and interest in the manuscript. When I arrived at the public library, where the Bible was to be displayed for a month, word rapidly went round: “The Bible’s here!” I had taken the manuscript into the librarian’s office to condition-check it on arrival, but as more and more of the project team, and the library staff, and people who just happened to be in the library at the time crammed into the office for a first look, I rapidly found myself delivering an impromptu ‘show and tell’ session on medieval manuscript production to an enthralled crowd. It was incredibly rewarding to be able to share such a treasure with the local community. I’m so glad that the loan took place back in the autumn when travelling to North Yorkshire squashed into a security van kneeto-knee with two strange men was a perfectly normal and safe thing to do. How life has changed. For the last six months I’ve been running special collections from home, managing to answer far more enquiries and do more tasks remotely than I would ever have imagined possible. Thank heavens for technology and good catalogues!

Annual Report 2019-20 Catherine Shanahan - Library Cleaner (part time) Well this has certainly been a year of two halves! Up until March things were operating in the Library as normal, although February was rife with Coronavirus speculation. We were happy to have some new windows on the third floor. Whilst trying to open and close the old ones, for cleaning purposes, I often felt like I was taking part in the Krypton Factor (readers of a certain age may need to google that reference). My cleaning routines continued along the same lines as they had done in my previous two years of working in the Library. Library users who had missed all the ‘no food in the Library’ rules and continued to leave their half-eaten chips or pizzas remained my main source of annoyance! Little did I know that this problem would pale into insignificance with the emergence of a global pandemic! After eleven weeks of furlough, myself and my colleague Sandra returned to work and set about creating a new working environment for the return of all Library users. Removing 70-plus chairs from the Working Library to the Old Library was not the highlight of this experience but a necessary task in order to create socially distanced work stations. We have created a new cleaning regime which is targeted at keeping all Library users and staff as safe as we possibly can. Hopefully, sooner rather than later, we will be able to open up the Library to its full glory and life will return to the normal that we once knew.

Rebecca Watts – Projects Assistant (part-time) In the first half of the academic year I found myself working full-time, with a morning job in the Communications Office to complement my afternoons in the Library. The nature of the new role meant I had much more opportunity than usual to liaise with staff across all departments of the College, and it was nice (after nine years at St John’s) to learn more about the intricate and important work other people are doing to keep the wheels turning. Full-time employment was only ever going to be a temporary arrangement, however, as I generally try to preserve half of my time for conducting my parallel life as a writer. Not wanting to leave Adam as the only Library staff member with a second poetry collection published by Carcanet in 2020, I managed to get my new book out in June – a fact that has no doubt, in this year of global cataclysm, brought solace to millions. The First Floor of the Library provided a suitably bookish backdrop for the online launch event, at which I aired one of several poems inspired by my work here, appealingly titled ‘Having bled on a library book’. (Not special collections, I promise.)

Annual Report 2019-20 The highlight of my project schedule this year was curating the exhibition ‘Wordsworth at 250’ – one of the few conceivable tasks for which reading poetry at my desk could justifiably be labelled work. I also completed an online course on the ‘History of the Book in the Early Modern Period’, run by Trinity College Dublin, which was extremely interesting and kept me busy and engaged during the working-from-home period.

Annual Report 2019-20

Staff Training As usual staff have undertaken a range of training. Statutory training in fire and ladder safety for new staff and Prevent training for all staff was delivered, though Dignity at Work fell victim of lockdown, having been scheduled for late March. The vast majority of training undertaken was free, being provided within the Cambridge University community, and as such was also highly relevant and directly beneficial to the areas of work concerned. It is unfortunate that the Archivist made her unexpected decision to retire so soon after undertaking intensive three-day training in the AtoM Archives management system. She was able to cascade some information to remaining staff before leaving though. Training in EDI contributed directly to the success of the Library’s successful accreditation, as well as being of practical application. While not all staff recorded attendance at formal training events, continual professional development, through informal sharing of skills and knowledge and individual learning and reading, takes place throughout the department. Lockdown did not bring an end to training, as several staff took up online opportunities from home. The online training in online inductions was immediately applied to the creation of video inductions for our students. The results can be seen on the Library’s website. As this report tallies with the College’s financial year (July–June) the Away Day in question is that for August 2019, which was as always a tremendously useful opportunity to plan for the year ahead and discuss strategic aims and the wider College. Staff member Sub-Librarian/Special Collections Librarian Academic Services Librarian Archivist (TD) Projects Assistant

Graduate Trainee

Biographical Librarian

Part-time Cleaner (CS) Library Assistant (CA) Library Assistant (RL)

Training Data Protection Talk

Provider CAG/TNA

Cost Free

First aid refresher course (online) EDI training AtoM Camp Online course: The History of the Book in the Early Modern Period: 1450 to 1800 Conducting library inductions online Cataloguing Alma fulfilment eBooks training HTML Fire safety Ladder training Introduction to Indexing Mental Health Awareness Stay Safe Online Data Protection Talk Mental Health Awareness Introduction to Indexing Fire safety

Sellwood BIC Artefactual TCD

32.52 375.00 Free

CILN/LiT

Free

L@C L@C L@C UIS SJC SJC LiT Sellwood UIS CAG/TNA Sellwood LiT SJC

Free Free Free Free Free Free Free Free -

Annual Report 2019-20 Library Assistant’s Forum Copyright at the issue desk Library of Congress subject headings Ladder training Departmental Away Day Prevent e-learning refresher

ALL staff

UC LiT LiT SJC SJCL HMG

TOTAL

Key to training providers Artefactual BIC CAG CILN HMG L@C LiT Sellwood SJC SJCL TCD TNA UC UIS

Artefactual (developers of Atom archive management system) Book Industry Communication Cambridge Archivists Group Cambridge Information Literacy Network Her Majesty’s Government Libraries@Cambridge Librarians in Training Sellwood Training St John’s College St John’s College Library Trinity College Dublin The National Archives University of Cambridge Cambridge University Information Service

Kathryn McKee Sub-Librarian

Training ranged from subject cataloguing to ladder safety

Free Free Free 450.00 Free £875.52

Annual Report 2019-20

The Working Library 2019 was the Working Library’s 25th anniversary. In opening the new building in 1994, the then Master, Professor Robert Hinde, was given a silver hammer as a memorial. Professor Hinde enthusiastically championed the library project; he envisaged “a library which will take us forward into the twenty-first century”. An evening reception was held in the Library on Tuesday 29 November 2019 to celebrate the opening of the Library a quarter of a century ago. It seemed fitting that Professor Hinde’s widow, Dr Joan Hinde, was the guest of honour. It was decided that the silver hammer should henceforth be placed on display in the Library entrance. Present at the reception were Vice-Master Professor Tim Whitmarsh, Professor Malcolm Schofield (President of the College at the time of the Library building’s completion), JCR Presidents and members of the Library staff. Back in November 2019, little did we expect that the Covid-19 crisis was shortly to engulf us. A consequence of the pandemic was the closure of the Library for approximately two months to staff and four months to students. Working from home during this period afforded the opportunity to plan for a number of changes and safety measures to be incorporated in a risk assessment strategy for when the Working Library would reopen. When the Library did finally open to users, it adopted extended hours rather than the normal 24/7. With hand sanitiser at strategic points and social distancing in place, the seating capacity across all floors has been reduced to half normal capacity. In order to control user numbers working/studying in the Library, readers are now required to pre-book a desk space via Moodle. Other safety requirements include face coverings at all times in the Library public spaces, and a one-way system whereby the main staircase is for going up and the back staircase is for coming down. To minimise touching of door handles, all internal doors including fire doors are propped open during staffed hours. Readers are encouraged to continue to use the ‘click & collect’ service to order books and to collect them later from the Library. Despite all these changes and new arrangements, when the Working Library did finally open in early August 2020, it was warmly received by our readers. A Research Fellow commented: “Thank you so much for getting the library up and running again!” And a student added: “It is really nice to have somewhere to go other than home.”

Annual Report 2019-20 The period of lockdown afforded the opportunity to plan, prepare and submit the Working Library’s application for accreditation. Spirits were high when we received the news that our application had been successful. We have achieved accreditation through the ‘Technology Excellence in Libraries Accreditation’ (TEiLA) run by BIC (Book Industries Communications), the UK standards body for the book industry. To achieve this award, we were required to demonstrate how our Library uses technologies to streamline the workflow to provide a more efficient library service. The main criteria to be met included the use of RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) technology for self-issue/self-return of library items, security and stock checking; the employment of EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) function in the library management system to facilitate an efficient communication with book suppliers for library orders and invoices; demonstration of how the Library supports the adoption of new technologies in its work; and how it obtains accurate, up-to-date and comprehensive bibliographic information for use by library staff and users. The significance of the accreditation is to give reassurance to those working in the Library that we are meeting the high standard expected. It also acknowledges that readers in College are receiving the best provision of Library services. To our knowledge, we are the first Cambridge College working library to have received the award. Improvements, however, have not just focused on technology. Our programme of renovating buildings and the physical fabric continues apace, thanks to support from the Maintenance Department. Following the installation of a new Issue Desk, display cases and sofa seating on the Ground Floor in early 2019, work continued in the Computer Room on the Third Floor during the summer of 2020. After many years of usage, window panes were cracked, and window tracks showed signs of wear and tear, making it difficult to open and close windows. Now that new windows have been fitted – accompanied by new roller blinds to control sunlight – the Computer Room is more attractive and has greater functionality. Further improvement to equipment was also necessary. To cope with the high demand for photocopying/printing, an additional new photocopier has been installed in the alcove on the Ground Floor. The self-issue machine that was installed in 2012 reached the end of its lifespan. Consequently, a new self-issue machine was installed during summer 2020, with a larger touch screen and updated software. Janet Chow Academic Services Librarian

Annual Report 2019-20

Library Usage The number of Library users and visitors accessing the Library is recorded throughout the year by an electronic counter positioned at the entrance of the Working Library. A reading is taken from this at 9am every weekday. The numbers are recorded in a spreadsheet and the resulting data is analysed to give us an idea of how often the Library is being used by the College community, and to enable direct comparisons to be made with trends in footfall in previous years. 180,000 160,000

147,621

152,712

144,356

139,833

140,000 2015-16

120,000

2016-17

100,000 76,574

80,000

2017-18 2018-19

60,000

2019-20

40,000 20,000 0 Figure 1. Five-year comparison of total entries to the Library by academic year

Over the past academic year, Figure 1 shows that the total number of visits to the Library has decreased from 139,833 in 2018-19 to 76,574 in 2019-20. However, the figures this year are rather tricky to assess owing to the fact that the Library was closed from 19 March to 8 August 2020. This period included the entirety of the Easter Term, which is usually the busiest term for Library usage due to student exam preparation. This means that the total number of visits to the Library will obviously be far lower than it has been in any other year. It is therefore particularly useful this year to compare the number of entries for individual terms as well as the total figures across the academic year. In fact, if we look at the figures for the Michaelmas and Lent Terms across the last three years (Figure 2), we can see a different picture emerging. In this past academic year, for both the Michaelmas and Lent terms, the number of entries to the Library has risen compared to the figures recorded in 2018-19. Last yearâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Lent Term was particularly strong and recorded a bigger number of entries (35,814) than either of the previous two years, being over 1000 more entries than the same term in 2017-18 (34,090) and over 3000 more than the Lent Term in 2018-19 (31,633). This is interestingly the case even though the Library closed for the national lockdown before the term had finished.

Annual Report 2019-20 Judging by the figures for the previous two terms, it is possible that we would have had a very busy Easter Term in respect of entries to the Library. 2017-18

2018-19

2019-20

40314 42582 35184

33848

Number of entries

30996

34090 31633

32099

17855 17374 11010 10199

7239 7057 6210

1149 Michaelmas Term

Christmas Vacation

Lent Term Term

Easter Vacation

1932

Easter Term

Summer Vacation

Figure 2. Three-year comparison of entries to the Library by term, 2017-20

It should be noted that during the period when the Library was closed, we continued to support students by offering a ‘virtual’ study space via Zoom. This was an offer that was taken up enthusiastically by a group of students who were ‘locked down’ at home. In addition to monitoring footfall, the Library also gathers data on the usage of collections and services during Week 5 of each term. This provides a more detailed snapshot of life in the Library during the busiest periods of full term. 6627 4879

4854 3178 1757

2876

3156

4640

Unstaffed entries Staffed entries

3078

1644 0

Michaelmas 2018

Lent 2019

Easter 2019 Michaelmas 2019

Figure 3. Library entries in Week 5 by term, 2018-20

Lent 2020

Easter 2020

Annual Report 2019-20 The footfall data allows comparison of entries to the Library during staffed and unstaffed hours during this specific week of term. It is obviously not possible to compare figures for Week 5 of the Easter Term as the Library was closed, but we can see, as illustrated in Figure 3, some interesting results for the Michaelmas and Lent Terms where we do have data. The number of unstaffed entries in the Week 5 of Michaelmas Term last year (4,879) is just slightly higher than that of the previous year (4,854). Interestingly, the number of entries to the Library during the staffed hours in Week 5 (3,156) has increased by over 1000 compared to the figure for the same week in 2018 (1,757). The Lent Term figures for 2020 show a large increase on the previous year for entries during both staffed and unstaffed hours. The number of entries to the Library during staffed hours for the first two terms of last year is actually comparable to the number of staffed entries for the very busy Easter Term of the previous year! There is a much smaller disparity between the number of staffed and unstaffed entries to the Library, compared to the previous academic year. It is hard to account for this, but it is in line with the general increase in footfall, particularly over Lent Term, that has already been observed. 232

Michaelmas 2018

32 252

Lent 2019

9 177

Easter 2019

250

Michaelmas 2019

Staff issued

21 253

Lent 2020 Easter 2020

Self-issued

21 0 0

Figure 4. Items issued in Week 5 by term, 2018-20

Figure 4 compares the number of items issued from our collections to students using the self-issue machine with the number issued by a member of staff at the issue desk. This data is also collected during the Week 5 of every full term so that we can compare different terms and one academic year with another. Once again, we cannot compare figures for Week 5 in the Easter Term as the Library was closed, but we can look at the figures for the previous two terms. Given that the entry figures to the Library during staffed hours were so much higher last year than in the previous year, it would perhaps be expected that the number of items issued both by staff and by the self-issue machine would also be significantly higher. Interestingly, this is not the case. The number of items issued by the self-issue machine has remained at almost the same level for 2019-20 as it was for 2018-19. The overall number of items issued over both terms to students by staff is almost identical, with the total figure for 2018-19 26

Annual Report 2019-20 being 41 and the total figure for 2019-20 being 42. This means that, although last academic year saw a much higher footfall in Week 5 than the previous year, particularly during staffed hours, this has not resulted in more items being issued to students, and the ratio of books issued by self-issue machine to books issued by staff has remained the same.

204 182

Michaelmas

Term

110

2017-18 2018-19 2019-20

122 Lent

92 91 96 99

Easter 0 0

100 150 Number of Enquiries Figure 5. Enquiries in Week 5 by term, 2017-20

200

250

As well as collecting data from the self-issue machine and the issue desk, during Week 5 of full term we also keep a record of the number of enquiries made to the issue desk in order to further gauge how our services are being used. Figure 5 shows the number of enquiries made to the issue desk during Week 5 over the past three years. This illustrates a drop in the number of enquiries over the last three academic years. This is particularly the case over the Michaelmas Term, as the figures for the Lent Term have remained similar for the last two years. Again, given the fact that the Library has been much busier in terms of the number of people coming in to the building, this downward trend is perhaps surprising. This is difficult to account for but it may be that students are able to answer a lot more of their questions for themselves online and that they are perhaps coming to Cambridge with more information than in previous years or with more confidence in their own ability to solve problems.

Annual Report 2019-20

40 34

35 30 25

21 18

10 5 0

14 12 13 11 10 8 9 7 5 5 6 3 3 4 2 2 2 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1

Reference Music Vet. Medicine Education General Interest Linguistics Archaeology Maths Anthropology HPS Other Engineering Geography Economics MML (incl. ASNaC) Physical Sciences Medicine Psychology Philosophy Biological Sciences Literary Criticism/Film… Theology HSPS History English Law Classics Art

Figure 6. Total books cleared in Week 5 (all terms) by subject, 2019-20

The final set of data taken during Week 5 of full term is a count of the number of books cleared from desks by staff in the morning. This count is broken down by subject area and displayed in Figure 6. This information reveals more about which sections of the Library collection are being used but not necessarily borrowed. The top six subjects with the most books cleared during Week 5 of both terms that the Library was open last year were the same as the top six subjects for the previous year – namely, Art, Classics, Law, English, and History. The large number of Art books cleared from desks is perhaps to be expected given that the books for this subject are often large and heavy. This means that students are more likely to refer to them in the Library rather than take them back to their rooms. Art, English, Law, and Classics are also subjects which often require a ‘quick reference’ to a specific work for a quotation and this is also likely to result in a large number of books being used within the Library itself rather than being borrowed for a longer read. The majority of books in the Law section are reference only, and so we would expect to clear a large number of Law books from desks during the busiest weeks of the term. Perhaps surprisingly, the numbers of books cleared in Medicine and Biological Sciences are not as high as one might expect, given that books in these subjects are often large and consulted for reference by students who are writing or revising for exams. It may be that the figures for these two subjects would have been higher if the Library had been open for the exam period. Rebecca Le Marchand Library Assistant

Annual Report 2019-20

Annual Circulation The borrowing levels (based on frequency counts of items borrowed) in the last academic year (2019-20) have dropped from 12,510 to 8,846 (Figure 1) due to the global pandemic forcing the Library to close in March. No borrowing activities were recorded between March and June. Issues

25000

21363 21481 20000

15000

20063 18837 19031 18812 17305 17070 16821

19313

18648 17464

14082 14037 13575

14614

12510

10000

8846

5000

Figure 1. Library Borrowing â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Annual Circulation

As shown in the termly borrowing figures for the past three years (see Table 1 below), Michaelmas Term remains the busiest term, followed by Lent Term. Normally it is expected that Easter Term is a busy term with students borrowing Library items for revision or completing dissertations. However, due to the Library closure from March to June, it is not surprising that the combined borrowing figures for the Easter Term and Summer Vacation in 2019-20 show a significant drop of 2,965 (92%) compared to the previous year (2018-19). 29

Annual Report 2019-20 2019-20 3975 374 3754 483 35 225 8846

Michaelmas Term Christmas vacation Lent Term Easter vacation Easter Term Summer vacation Total

2018-19 4607 482 3721 475 2457 768 12510

2017-18 4903 393 4560 671 3149 938 14614

Table 1. Borrowing figures for the last three academic years by term

According to Figure 2 for 2019-20 shown below, the three most heavily borrowed subjects were History, HSPS and MML. Despite History being the most heavily borrowed subject, the borrowing figure fell from 1,656 (2018-19) to 1,170 (2019-2020). For the first time, HSPS and MML became the second (844) and third highest (791) subjects respectively in terms of borrowing, overtaking English (587) and Economics (562); both of these latter subjects saw a decline in borrowing compared with 2018-19. By contrast, subjects experiencing an increase in borrowing in 2019-20 compared with the previous year (despite the effects of the pandemic causing the closure of the Library) were Biological Sciences, Geography and Vet Medicine. There was, however, a slight drop in borrowing figures for Art and Architecture, Linguistics and Theology. 1800 1600 1400

Circulation of books by subject area in 2018-19 and 2019-20

1200 1000

800 600 2018-19 2019-2020

400 200

Archaeology Criminology Asian & ME Studies Education Vet Medicine Law HPS Linguistics Geography Engineering Music Anthropology Medicine Art & Architecture Theology Biological sciences Maths MML (inc. ASNaC) Classics Physical sciences Philosophy HSPS English History Economics

Figure 2. Circulation of books by subject area in 2018-19 and 2019-20

Janet Chow Academic Services Librarian

Annual Report 2019-20

Audio-Visual Room and Seminar Room Audio-Visual Room The Audio-Visual collection has now grown to over 2,800 items. This is thanks to both the generosity of Dr Terence Denman (1976) and the work of the Library Assistant. The Complete Harry Potter Collection topped the charts for the most borrowed item from the collection â&#x20AC;&#x201C; so much so that a second copy has just been purchased. DVDs from the new TV box set collection are also proving popular. The newly designed space is a real asset to the Library and the focus this year has been on expanding the collection. The Library Assistant felt that a more immediate way of letting students recommend an item for the Audio-Visual Room might be useful. A suggestions box was installed over the Christmas Vacation and a friendly sign was put up to encourage students to recommend something for the room. The opportunity was taken to design a suggestions slip that was anonymous (so a student need not be embarrassed about asking for nonacademic titles!). The slip was also designed with an area where students could tick a box indicating what kind of new materials they would like to see bought for the collection. A new acquisitions display area was then created so that students could see that their requests were being responded to. Over the following Lent Term, the box was a real success and the number of student The new suggestions box and display area recommendations for the Audio-Visual Room went in the Audio-Visual Room from four a year to nine in just that one term. This year has also seen the creation of a new Shakespeare DVD section. All the filmed performances and adaptations of Shakespeareâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s plays were moved from the films in the English section, reclassified and then shelved together. This resulted in a significant uptake in use by students and more much-needed space for more films in English. The Library Assistant also created a spreadsheet that listed which Shakespeare plays we had and when they were performed or filmed. This informed the buying of some more classic and contemporary Shakespeare adaptations and performances filmed live from theatres.

Annual Report 2019-20 Seminar Room The new-look Seminar Room was very popular over the course of the last year. The new smart screen and laptop setup has proved easy to use and it has all run very smoothly. This has been reflected in the numbers of bookings, which stood at 354 by the end of Lent Term. It perhaps would have been a record year for the Seminar Room if we had not had to close the Library. The room was used for prospective student interviews, supervisions, informal ideas groups and for teaching. We have also been enjoying using the space ourselves for our weekly Zoom staff meetings and the room has proved very useful over the summer for online staff training. Rebecca Le Marchand Library Assistant

Annual Report 2019-20

The Old Library

The â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;new normalâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;: fewer chairs in Working Library = more chairs in Old Library

Statistics

Readers consulting special collections material Visitors taking a tour of the Old Library* Letters filed E-mail responses to enquiries Reproductions of special collections material processed outside College *** Onsite professional photography Reproductions of special collections material processed in house** Permissions granted to reproduce special collections material in published works Use of special collections material in connection with biographical work

2019-20 206

2018-19 288

2017-18 286

873 3 1077 6

1395 11 1360 4

1345 11 1371 0

3 days 1478

2 half-days 378

* Does not include visitors at public open days or educational and group visits ** Includes reproductions of material to answer biographical enquiries

Annual Report 2019-20 *** Six Greek manuscripts were photographed at the UL as part of the Greek manuscripts project.

These figures cover the period from 1 August to 31 July in each year. All statistics for 2019-20 were affected by the fact that the Library was closed from 20 March 2020. Had we had readers from April to July in numbers similar to the preceding two years, 2019-20 would have shown an increase in consultations. A full enquiry service has been delivered by staff working from home throughout the closure period. From 30 June onwards staff have been able to make some site visits, enabling reproduction requests to be fulfilled.

Purchases The Noel Marshall fund has again enabled us to develop our collections in interesting ways. This year has seen a significant expansion in the Library’s historical resources relating to the slave trade, the acquisition of a novel by a female writer known to many Johnians at the time and written just a stone’s throw from the College, letters from prominent Johnians, and other works with a close association to our collections. Mary Davys, The reform’d coquet. 1724. £3750. Blackwells Rare Books. James Wood, The elements of optics. 1799. First edition interleaved and heavily annotated. £950. Modern First Editions. A collection of correspondence relating to William Phelp Perrin’s Jamaica estates, directly associated with material purchased in 2014 for the Slavery Abolition Collection. £5000. Chris Record. Autograph letter from George Augustus Selwyn to Charles Merivale, 23 January 1831, describing the announcement of the results of the Bachelors’ Commencement. £660 (inc. VAT). Richard M. Ford Ltd.

A much crossed letter from William Selwyn

Thomas a Kempis, De imitatione Christi. c.1900. Privately printed edition formerly owned by Lionel Graham Horton-Smith. £600. Bernard Quaritch Ltd.

Annual Report 2019-20 Autograph letter from Herbert Marsh to John Chappel Woodhouse. 1806. £90. Richard M. Ford Ltd. A further significant collection of papers relating to the Perrin estates in Jamaica is being purchased for £24,000 (inc. VAT) over four financial years from John Morten. An initial payment of £5004 was made in 2019-20. Donations Dr Juliet Mitchell Medals and memorabilia of her late husband, Professor Sir Jack Goody (Fellow 19612015). Francis Wilfred Shawcross (adm. 1957) Manuscript ‘Go in peace!’, a record of Wilfred’s father Cyril Wilfred Shawcross’s wartime experiences in north Africa and Iraq. The Bhavaraju family Engraved commemorative glass award celebrating the birth centenary of Professor Rao (adm. 1950, PhD 1958). The Wordie family James M. Wordie, Imperial trans-Antarctic expedition: Weddell sea log 1914-1916. Personal diary of James M. Wordie. 2015. Mervyn Capel Three novelisations of Doctor Who stories originally written by Douglas Adams, produced by the New Zealand Doctor Who Fan Club. Andrew Ginger Photocopy of the script of Cecil Beaton’s play The Gainsborough Girls taken from the copy owned by Ann Firbank, who played Margaret Gainsborough in the 1959 production.

Visits and classes Adult group visits College Housekeeping staff (Aug. 2019) Groningen Summer Academy (Sep. 2019) Visitors from Yale University (Sep. 2019) The Wordie family and guests (Sep. 2019) Australians Studying Abroad Tour (Oct. 2019) Catering managers (Oct. 2019) SBR visit to Upper Library with show-and-tell with Librarian (Oct. 2019) Attendees at the inaugural CCARHT sponsored Thomas Clarkson Lecture (Nov. 2019)

Annual Report 2019-20 Group visit to see material from the papers of Maurice Wilkes (Nov. 2019) Two groups of reader services staff from the University Library (Jan. 2020) Students from Germany (Jan. 2020) Juvenile groups and educational sessions There were no school visits during 2019-20. Several sessions were cancelled during the Michaelmas and Lent terms when schools’ plans changed. Closure in March meant that no further school visits could be arranged.

Manuscript N.31, the Mortuary roll of Prioress Amphelisa: much used by palaeography classes

University teaching English MPhil class on C18-19th manuscripts (Oct. 2019) English undergraduate medieval manuscript class (Oct. 2019) English MPhil class (two groups) on Samuel Butler (Oct. 2019) Oslo University manuscripts class (Oct. 2019) Queen Mary University undergraduates on the history of the College (Nov. 2019) English MPhil class on C18-19th printed books (Nov. 2019) English undergraduate manuscripts class (Nov. 2019) English first year undergraduate class on Coleridge’s Christabel (Nov. 2019) MML two undergraduate manuscripts classes (Nov. 2019) MML two postgraduate manuscripts classes (Jan. 2020) English second year undergraduate class on Abolitionist literature (Jan. 2020) English first year undergraduate class on early modern literature (Feb. 2020) York University MA class on medieval manuscripts (Feb. 2020) Following on from last year’s successful pilot, the second Cambridge-wide dissertation fair, bringing together library special collections, archives, museums, and academic

Annual Report 2019-20 advisors was held in St John’s on 5 November 2019, attracting 120 students from the universities of Cambridge and Anglia Ruskin.

Events The Upper Library was open for Open Cambridge on the Friday and Saturday afternoons of 13-14 September, with an exhibition of treasures, bringing 893 visitors through the door in five hours. The Upper Library was open for the Festival of Ideas on Saturday 26 October with an exhibition on education through the ages, attracting 435 visitors. Also for the Festival of Ideas, Dr Orietta da Rold ran a fully booked ‘show-and-tell’ session with medieval manuscripts for 16 participants in the reading room. For the Science Festival an exhibition Draw your own conclusions: scientific illustration in manuscript and print was scheduled for Saturday 21 March, but was cancelled. The Upper Library was the venue for the Graduate Matriculation ceremony in October 2019, standing in most atmospherically for the Master’s Lodge. The Upper Library hosted receptions prior to the Michaelmas Entertainment and the Philosophical Society’s anniversary dinner in 2019. The Cripps Feast and Port Latin Feast were cancelled.

Preservation This year’s work by the Conservation Consortium has concentrated on books which were too badly damaged to be consulted by readers: many being books whose text block had completely split in two. A consequence of tackling severely damaged items is that repairs are time-consuming, so it is not possible to mend many in a year. Seven such works were completed in 2019-20 (Ee.2.5; 8/W.20.17; A/G.20.2; A/G.25.2; A/G.20.10; A/G.8.13; Aa/G.26.5).

Before and after (Photos: Cambridge Colleges Conservation Consortium)

In addition, the Consortium carried out repairs to a 1504 edition of the Imitatio Christi (A.2.3), which was published at the behest of Lady Margaret Beaufort and contained her 37

Annual Report 2019-20 own translation of book four. Repairs to Albinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hand-coloured 1720 work on insects (Kk.5.1), which was to be displayed in the Science Festival exhibition on 21 March, were also completed. In addition to book repairs, the Consortium also made two drop-leaf boxes for medieval manuscripts K.26 and A.4. The former is one of our treasures and is frequently used, but its box was unsuitable and in poor condition; the latter was unboxed. After several years in which environmental conditions were not suitable for bread beetle larvae to hatch, early August 2020 saw a sustained hot and humid spell. All books previously infected were checked twice over the next two weeks, and four books were found to be affected by new infestation. The volumes will be sent to Harwells for freeze drying.

Exhibitions in the Library Exhibition Area Michaelmas Term: A Race to Neptune: John Couch Adams. This exhibition celebrated the bicentenary of Adamsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s birth and was curated by Kathryn McKee. Christmas Vacation: Staff photography competition on the theme of Light and Shade. Lent Term: Wordsworth at 250, curated by Rebecca Watts. An online version of this exhibition remains available on the Library website. Easter Term: the Student Art and Photography Competition was cancelled. Summer 2020: although a physical exhibition was impossible, an online exhibition Wild World: Visual Representations of Animals in Manuscripts and Early Printed Books, curated by Ellie Capeling, Graduate Trainee, was made available on the Library website.

Annual Report 2019-20 Loans Two documents from the Slavery collections, an early printed book Tacuini Sanitatis (Ll.4.27) and a list of expenses for a dinner for Lady Margaret Beaufort’s executors (Archives SJLM/7/5/14), were loaned to the Fitzwilliam Museum for display from October 2019 to April 2020 in their exhibition Feast and Fast: The Art of Food in Europe 15001800. Following the closure of the Fitzwilliam Museum in March 2020, this loan was extended to 31 August. A total of 61,254 visitors attended the exhibition, including 702 who were able to visit during August under socially distanced conditions. The Times Literary Supplement described the exhibition as ‘a delight: erudite and joyful, it sparks endless reflection’. Manuscript C.24, ‘the Gisburne Bible’, was displayed in Guisborough Public Library from 26 September to 29 October 2019 as part of the Gisborough Priory Project’s 900 years celebrations. The manuscript is one of only 17 surviving books known to have been at the priory, having been given to the priory after a catastrophic fire in 1289 destroyed most of its books. The local community’s enthusiasm for seeing the Bible was very gratifying.

Detail of grotesque from MS C.24

A portrait of Elizabeth I was due to be loaned to the Theatre, Shoreditch from March 2020 to March 2021. The opening of the museum was delayed due to construction issues and then the Covid-19 virus. The loan has now been rescheduled for the summer of 2021.

Supply of digital images for public exhibitions Copies of documents from the John Couch Adams papers were supplied to Kresen Kernow, the new home of Cornwall’s Archives, for their exhibition John Couch Adams: a Cornish Spaceman, running from 5 October to 29 February, for the accompanying online exhibition, and for inclusion in an animation inspired by the story of the discovery of Neptune, with artwork by the children of Penponds Primary School.

Projects Old Library projects are outlined in the ‘Library Projects’ section of this Annual Report (see p.55).

Annual Report 2019-20 Staffing We were delighted to welcome volunteer Rachel Perry-Eichhorst to work in the Old Library from Michaelmas 2019 on a project to catalogue prints and drawings in the Special Collections. Rachel had previously volunteered in the College Archives, and transferred to the Library when the post of Archivist fell vacant. It has not been possible to accommodate our regular volunteers since Covid-19 restrictions came into force. Thanks to a successful bid to the College’s Annual Fund, from July 2020 funding is available for a short-term (eight-month) post for an experienced medievalist to assist with the technical descriptions for the new catalogue of medieval manuscripts. The post-holder will focus primarily on codicological and binding descriptions. Recruitment will take place as soon as it is safe and practicable to welcome a new staff member.

Media Publicity shots of the Master-Elect, Heather Hancock, were taken in the Upper Library. Benjamin Kantor filmed a short publicity film about his facsimile edition of a book from the Old Library. Fellow of the College Dr John Weisweiler was photographed along with his mother for an exhibition relating to his father at a museum in Germany. St John’s PhD student Laura van Holstein was photographed in the Old Library with Samuel Butler’s first edition of Darwin’s On the origin of species for a news story relating to her research on evolutionary theory. Filming in the Working and Old Libraries was undertaken by the Communications Office as part of the creation of a virtual tour of the College for the Virtual Open Days held in early July 2020. The Vice-Master’s video message to 2020 graduands, shown on the College’s website and social media, was filmed in the Upper Library. The Vice-Master was also filmed by BBC Look East discussing the abolition of slavery, using material from the Library’s collections relating to Thomas Clarkson and William Wilberforce. Kathryn McKee Sub-Librarian and Special Collections Librarian

Annual Report 2019-20

The Biographical Office

General Overview The period covered here – August 2019 to July 2020 – included four months working from home, which continues at the time of publication. Our report commences with a photograph showing a squirrel outside one of the windows of our office, and ends with one depicting an occupational hazard of working from home – the desk being commandeered by a cat. The environment may be different, but the work is the same, and the duties of this office have been largely unaffected by the pandemic. Just as whether it is term time or not does not have much impact on this section of the Library, the fact the country went into lockdown in March did not greatly alter the tasks we have to perform. We have continued to record, and respond to questions about, the lives of five centuries of Johnians. Sometimes technology has got in the way a little, and we were not able to bring home all the paperwork which would have been useful, as nothing which included personal details of members of the College could be removed from the office of course. On the last day there was a lot of scanning/photographing of material which could be accessed from home via the secure College network. The table below offers an insight into the volume of biographical information received and correspondence generated over the last year, concerning members of the College from the sixteenth century to the present day. The previous three years’ figures are provided for comparison. Action Biographical material received Biographical Archive consulted Items filed in Biographical Archive Emails and letters sent Proactive research

2019-20 4099 559 235 5019 2390 41

2018-19 4021 611 515 3816 2415

2017-18 4169 651 527 3791 2402

2016-17 4290 736 557 3751 2813

Annual Report 2019-20 The figure for consultation of the Biographical Archive goes down each year because much of the information required is entered on the Biographical Database, but it includes digital material scanned from the collection so still remains high despite not being on site for a period of time. The number of items filed in the collection is significantly down however, and there is a great deal of printing and filing to be done when we return to the office. The figure for letters sent is very small but a huge amount of email correspondence is generated and this year it has been particularly high. We do not include every single message in an email conversation as part of these figures so the true number of emails sent exceeds this. The majority of the work of the office is carried out by the two full-time members of staff, but data inputting and checking records for Freshers who came up in 2019 was undertaken by a temporary Biographical Data Assistant, Amanda Kilgour, who over the course of six weeks did valuable work inputting and checking information on Freshers. This will need to be undertaken by the existing staff for the coming year. The Library Graduate Trainee 2019-20, Ellie Capeling, also assisted with biographical work, particularly in terms of daily checks of death notices in the press, and work relating to mentions of Johnians in the media, and other data entry and research work. It is a shame that her traineeship was severely disrupted by the lockdown due to Covid-19, and certain biographical work which we had been hoping to involve her in was not possible with us working from home for some time. The Library Projects Assistant has also been most helpful in taking on certain tasks such as inputting degree conferrals and working on the Famous Johnians page on our website, which she mentions elsewhere in this Annual Report. Regular Tasks There are certain tasks which are undertaken on a regular basis, or the information is received by our office at these intervals (at a minimum â&#x20AC;&#x201C; sometimes more often) and we do our best to keep up with that work but it is not always possible due to the huge volume of data entry. Many of these are attended to annually but take a number of days, weeks, or months to complete. Opposite are details of some of these jobs to give an idea of the range of work and cyclical nature of the tasks; it is by no means comprehensive (the full document outlining this work runs to eight pages).

Annual Report 2019-20 Frequency

Task (Type/Brief Details)

Daily

Deaths: announcements check in The Times and the Telegraph; correspondence with families/friends reporting deaths; notifying College and University sources; adding to document for the attention of the Master; updating the database Biographical enquiries General data entry Obituaries: work connected with the publication of obituaries in The Eagle Proactive research/data entry: Clubs and Societies Data entry: Cambridge University Reporter Data entry: Amendment Sheets from Student Services Data entry: College Council Minutes Proactive research/data checking: 90th and 100th Birthdays (to receive letters from the Master) Data entry: Communications Office news checks (daily media trawls checking for news stories featuring Johnians, passed to the office at the end of each month to update records) Data entry: Raiser’s Edge updates (checking for new biographical information added to the alumni and fundraising database by the Development Office which needs to be retained on the biographical records for posterity) Data entry: Updates from Amicus, the Cambridge University Development and Alumni Relations Office database Data entry: Congregations Data entry: Fellows and Affiliates, Honorary Fellows, Fellows’ Widows Filing Honours Lists Fellowships prizes and awards of at least a dozen learned societies Add Freshers to Biographical Database and check key documents Who’s Who checks Graduands’ biographical information (from forms submitted and/or CVs) Student prizes and awards (College and University, including Blues) Dining Privileges check Annual Biographical Data Audit (to check compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation) ‘Housekeeping’ of digital Biographical files Supply Next of Kin data for relatives of Johnians featured in the Alumni Obituaries section of The Eagle ready for autumn mailing Oxford and Cambridge Heads of House (check for Johnians) Vice-Chancellors of UK Universities (check for Johnians) Annual Report Crockford’s Clerical Directory/check of all Johnian clergy

Weekly

Fortnightly Monthly

Termly/as required Biannually Annually

Biennially/ less often

Annual Report 2019-20 Biographical Data Entry ‘Data entry’ appears several times in the above table, and while the term no doubt conjures muted images of someone hunched over a keyboard punching information into a system against the clock, in our office it is a time consuming, often meticulous process which can be either thoroughly rewarding when adding large amounts of new information to someone’s record, or incredibly frustrating when working across multiple sources which disagree and create inconsistency. Much of this work is ad hoc and such an intrinsic part of our day-to-day work that it passes without note, but we also engage with specific projects to target certain areas of backlog or interest. This year, the Biographical Assistant has taken on management of information relating to College and University clubs and societies, a task previously attempted, at varying levels of success, by a procession of Graduate Trainees. This involves researching each and every club and society and endeavouring to add information of committee membership/sporting participation to the database. In the case of College clubs and societies (of which there are around 64) the information can be very hard to come by as they have no independent web presence, and no formal team/committee lists come our way. Counterintuitively perhaps, it’s easier with the University ones, as they often have their own websites and Facebook pages, then it is a case of checking the names of committee members against our database to identify Johnians. At the last count, there were 437 of these though, so it’s not a quick task! By building this into the Biographical Assistant’s annual responsibilities, it is hoped that we will be able to develop a familiarity with the process, and bring greater consistency to our attempts to document Johnian engagement in extra-curricular activities.

Aside from this, the Biographical Assistant checked another five decades’ worth of the Cambridge Historical Register, updating records with a plethora of valuable information pertaining to University scholarships, prizes and awards, as well as adding numerous hitherto overlooked diplomas. This academic year will see a return to a structured, three-tiered project to check Johnians featured in Who’s Who: fully checking the entries for all Fellows and Honorary Fellows every year, a ‘headline’ check for every Johnian to capture important career updates, and lastly, a plan to ensure that no record goes more than five years without being thoroughly updated. 44

Annual Report 2019-20 Honours and Learned Societies Every year, we monitor announcements by the country’s foremost learned societies and organisations for news of elections to fellowships and prizes awarded, and also the biannual Queen’s Honours lists released in January and June (though this year, the Birthday Honours were cancelled), collectively trawling thousands of names on the lookout for Johnians. While the list below is by no means reflective of the extent of Johnian achievement this year, it highlights that Johnians continue to be represented among the most respected of professional bodies, and in receipt of some of the most important honours.            

1 CB 1 Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) 1 Medallist of the Order of the British Empire (BEM) 3 Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) 2 Royal Society Awards 2 Fellows of the British Academy (FBA) 1 Royal Society of Chemistry Award 1 QC 1 Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (FREng) 4 Royal Academy of Engineering President’s Special Awards for Pandemic Service 1 Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society (FRAS) 2 Fellows of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons (FRCVS)

This information is consistently fed through to the Communications Office, for dissemination via the College website and social media, and to the Master (this year the Vice-Master), who personally writes in congratulation – often prompting a surprised and delighted response. It was pleasing to have our efficiency at checking the Honours Lists mentioned by Cambridge University Development and Alumni Relations (CUDAR) in a circular to all Colleges in January which specifically mentioned St John’s as being ‘incredibly quick’ in identifying Johnians on the list. 45

Annual Report 2019-20 Biographical Enquiries The pattern of enquiries completed this year is shown below, along with the previous three yearsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; figures for comparison. Century Sixteenth Seventeenth Eighteenth Nineteenth Twentieth Twenty-first More than one century/Other Total

2019-20 11 10 11 51 334 39 10 466

2018-19 15 13 14 53 348 45 12 500

2017-18 14 7 9 48 321 45 10 454

2016-17 9 12 14 55 293 35 19 437

The figure is down from last year partly because it was an objective to answer 500 enquiries during 2018-19 and a particular effort was put in to achieve that, which was only just achieved by the end of the year. During 2019-20, although work continued much the same as usual despite working from home during the pandemic, there were some enquiries which we could only respond to in part and the work will not be finalised until we are back in the Library. In such cases we have checked there is no particular deadline involved and the researchers are content with what we have been able to provide so far and look forward to receiving the rest when we are in a position to do so. The feedback section at the end of the Annual Report includes just a few comments we have received which show people are appreciative of the fact we have continued to offer a service during this time. We make the point each year that while some of the requests received are straightforward and relate to just one individual, many relate to several members of the same family, or particular topics involving multiple Johnians connected by a common interest or participation in a sporting activity or other club or society. An example of this is we received an enquiry last year from Dr Michael Colley, an alumnus of Caius College, who was researching the history of The Pentacle Club â&#x20AC;&#x201C; a society for members of the University with an interest in magic which was founded in 1919 by W. W. Rouse Ball, Fellow of Trinity College (these days its membership is drawn from town as well as gown). Initially, the enquiry was regarding just two individuals, but as correspondence progressed, we obtained a list of forty-eight Johnians who had been members of the Club. Many of these are still living so we were unable to divulge further information about them, but we were able to put the researcher in touch with two people whom he had not previously been aware were members of the Club (without giving him their names, but by forwarding a request to them so that they could approach him if they wished to). We were able to provide

Annual Report 2019-20 biographical details on twenty-six Johnians, in addition to the ones dealt with in the original enquiry last year. This is a prime example of how a simple initial enquiry can turn into something much bigger, and also offer us the opportunity to add historical information to our records when those who have asked us for assistance are in turn able to supply us with what they know. Being in a position to help someone to ensure their documentation accurately reflects the contribution of Johnians, as well as corroborate and enhance our own biographical records – not just for individuals but for a Club which several members of the College were involved in – is both interesting and valuable. Deceased Johnians The year covered by the Biographical Office report runs from August to July, so this year had only just begun when we learnt of the death of the Master, Professor Sir Christopher Dobson. The death of members of the College is something the Biographical Librarian handles on a daily basis, but of course some are more difficult to deal with than others. Sadly the period ended with another significant passing: that of Dr Peter Linehan, who regularly asked for our assistance with biographical details of members of the College, including in connection with St John’s College, Cambridge: A History, which was published to commemorate the Quincentenary. Much has been written about both these key figures in College, but recording the lives of all Johnians is the role of this office, and it is the varied experiences of members of the College, many of whom are not well known, which makes this an interesting task. It is for this reason – that all Johnians are important – that we do not normally focus on particular individuals in this report. However, someone many people may not have been aware was a member of this College was Sidney Holt (1980), who did not matriculate in the University but was an Overseas Visiting Scholar at St John's 198081. At a time when the environment is a key issue, and fishing rights and over-fishing are debated both from that standpoint and because of the UK’s departure from the EU, it seems significant to note the death of this fisheries scientist, committed to conservation, who fought for nearly sixty years to save the great whales from extinction. This particularly comes to mind as Ellie Capeling, whose traineeship should have culminated in an exhibition in the Library, which due to the pandemic had to be online only, produced a fascinating showcase of ‘Visual Representation of Animals in Manuscripts and Early Printed Books’, which featured Purchas His Pilgrimes by Samuel

Annual Report 2019-20 Purchas (1594), and a description of whaling. Ellie mentions the International Whaling Commissionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work in conserving whales, and banning commercial whaling; Sidney was key in achieving this. It is the calendar year that is used to determine which obituaries appear in The Eagle. In the calendar year 2019 the deaths of 160 members of the College were either reported to this office or discovered by us. This was more than the previous year and may account for the increased email correspondence recorded earlier in this report. Details of Johnians who have died in the last five years which have been reported to us in this twelve-month period are passed to the Obituaries Editor of The Eagle, Colin Greenhalgh (1960), in order to prepare obituaries for that annual publication, which during this period was 137 individuals. This highlights that there are a number of people whose deaths are not reported to us until several years later, sometimes with it only being mentioned in passing as part of an enquiry, or even when some mail is returned letting us know they no longer live at the address to which the Development Office have been sending College publications and other material for a long time. Ahead of next yearâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s volume, it is worth noting that despite Covid19 the number of Johnian deaths reported to us since January is almost identical to last year at the same time. Fiona Colbert Biographical Librarian

Paul Everest Biographical Assistant

Annual Report 2019-20

The College Archive Reading Room and Enquiries This report covers the period since late January 2020, when the new Archivist took up post. The timing of the commencement of home working due to the Covid-19 pandemic meant only 13 visits by researchers took place, with no group visits (a planned school visit and a small group visit had to be cancelled). However, with a small library of reference books transferred to the Archivist’s home and remote access to computer files and databases provided by the IT department, enquiries continued to be answered, often including the supply of digital images where these already existed. As restrictions eased it became possible for the Archivist to visit the School of Pythagoras periodically to pursue lines of enquiry and to take more digital photographs, facilitating remote access for researchers while the College remains closed to visitors. It should be stated that images are provided on the understanding they are used only for research and are in any case of a quality suitable for research but not publication. Eighty-nine enquiries were received and answered between late January and late September. Topics studied by researchers included Lady Margaret’s will, College estates, correspondence between the Earl of Southampton’s family and College Fellows in the seventeenth century, and the Cripps building. Exhibitions An exhibition on the early years of the Lady Margaret Boat Club was displayed in the Archives Centre Reading Room and presented as an online ‘virtual exhibition’ (www.joh.cam.ac.uk/head-river-first-100-years-lady-margaret-boat-club).

Cap said to have been worn by Loftus Henry Kendal Bushe-Fox (BA 1885), President of the Lady Margaret Boat Club 1897-1916 (SJCR/SJCS/2/13/9).

Annual Report 2019-20 Cataloguing The main focus during this period has been on continuing the re-cataloguing work begun by the previous Archivist, in particular arranging onto the online catalogue material relating to College estates and to the foundation, by benefactors, of fellowships, scholarships, and exhibitions. The interrelation of these types of material – with foundations funded by the proceeds from managing estates – is especially interesting and provides certain challenges to the cataloguer. Working with AtoM, the online cataloguing software, has proven to be a pleasant experience, as it easy to move and edit records; item locations are recorded with each item’s catalogue entry (password protected), and the system is also used to log new accessions.

Grant by William, son of Engelram of Munsterol, to Hubert, squire, of manors of ‘Redeswell’ and ‘Geldam’ [Ridgewell and Yeldham], Essex, 12th century. At the head of the witness list are Count Eustache of Boulogne and his kinsman, Faramus.

Annual Report 2019-20 Preservation SJGR/3/4/1/4 (fragments of statutes, 1516-30) have been treated by the Cambridge Conservation Consortium and are being bound and boxed. Gifts The following items have been received, with thanks to the donors:  

Menu for dinner given by members of the legal profession of St John's College to The Honourable Mr Justice Morton, 1938. Photograph of the May Ball ‘Survivors’, 1988.

Lynsey Darby College Archivist

Annual Report 2019-20

Library Projects ‘Wordsworth at 250’ To mark William Wordsworth’s 250th birthday on 7 April 2020, a public exhibition of items from the Wordsworth Collection was scheduled to be in place in the Library Exhibition Area for the duration of the Lent Term and Easter Vacation. Despite having to close before the big day, the exhibition attracted a good number of visitors between January and March. To complement the live exhibition, a corresponding online exhibition was created on the College website, enabling a wider audience to engage with the material in perpetuity.

Porcelain breakfast set, purportedly used by Wordsworth between 1816 and 1850

Wordsworth’s poetry has long attracted a global readership, and it was nice to take the opportunity to display items unique to St John’s that offer an insight into some less wellknown aspects of his life and work. As well as letters to his eminent contemporaries and first-edition copies of his published works, exhibits included the College Admissions Register signed (somewhat wonkily) by Wordsworth during his first term at Cambridge; a manuscript sonnet addressed to his portrait, which still hangs in the College Hall; and a set of breakfast crockery, which was gifted to Wordsworth in 1816 by the art patron and poetry enthusiast Sir George Beaumont. The online exhibition can be accessed via www.joh.cam.ac.uk/online-exhibitions, where a range of other exhibitions from the Library and Archive can also be found.

Annual Report 2019-20 Working Library Stock Check The first few months of the year were partly dedicated to resolving the issues thrown up by last summer’s stock-checking exercise in the Working Library. While the informationgathering phase of the stock check is conducted using a digital barcode scanner (known as the ‘Digital Library Assistant’), the anomalies the scanner picks up have to be investigated manually. The most laborious part of this process involves checking the shelves where any items flagged by the DLA as missing should ordinarily be found. Thankfully, only 287 of the 4584 items flagged as missing turned out to be actually missing – a very small portion (0.1% per year) of the overall stock, though still higher than we would like (to be investigated). On the flipside, the scanning process turned up 179 items previously thought to be missing. The catalogue status of all of these items has since been updated to reflect their availability. Cataloguing of Graphic Materials Last year, we began the long-term project of cataloguing and scanning the Library’s sizeable collection of prints and drawings, which has hitherto only been documented to list level. While the Library’s closure between March and June temporarily put a stop to the cataloguing and scanning of the original material, working from home provided the impetus to transfer the catalogue information already recorded in document format into the online AtoM database. This is relatively time-consuming work, as authorised headings must be entered for every named individual associated with the item. In the case of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century prints the process can be especially complicated; not only are several parties (artists, engravers, printers and publishers) involved in their production, but often those Engraving by D. Havell after W. Westall (Arch/1/17) parties are only partially identified on the production itself – simply by a surname, or a set of initials, which might refer to any number of not-necessarily-well-known individuals. To identify the correct (or, in the more obscure cases, most likely) creator, and thereby ensure the appropriate authorised heading is attached to the catalogue record, research is therefore required. Here, the internet is extremely useful, as images and information from obscure auction-house sale lists can be cross-referenced with online museum catalogues and encyclopaedias such as the ODNB, usually leading to a positive identification (or at least a more helpful identification than ‘Unknown’). At the time of writing, four boxes

Annual Report 2019-20 from the ARCH collection (architectural prints and drawings) have been fully catalogued online. The transfer of existing catalogue data online, as well as the creation of documentary catalogue information for the rest of this large collection, will continue in the coming year. Video Inductions With the usual face-to-face Freshers’ induction tours off the menu for Michaelmas 2020, part of the summer vacation was spent planning, filming and editing a suite of videos that would help introduce new students to the Working Library building and facilities, and help returning students get to grips with the temporary changes currently in place as a result of Covid-19. This project was a collaborative effort, with the two Rebeccas planning and overseeing the video content and captions, Janet and Katie assisting with the preparation and filming, and Adam doing a stellar job in the edit suite. The Oscar-worthy results are a four-minute (read very speedy) walk-around virtual tour of the Working Library; a twominute guide to using the Library safely during Covid-19; and a one-minute demonstration of borrowing and returning items using the self-issue machine.

All three videos are hosted on the College’s Youtube channel and appear in various locations within the Library’s webpages, as well as in the Freshers’ app (created by Student Services), which is used to collate induction materials for new undergraduate and postgraduate students. The Covid-related content was deliberately kept separate to ensure that the other two videos will remain useful well beyond the 2020-21 academic year. Rebecca Watts Projects Assistant 54

Annual Report 2019-20 Old Library Projects Six Greek manuscripts from the College’s collections are being catalogued, conserved, and digitised as part of a wider Greek manuscript project based at the University Library and funded by the Polonsky Foundation. Full images will be made available online via the Cambridge Digital Library. The illustrated title pages of the Great Bible, formerly owned by Thomas Cromwell, have undergone pigment analysis at the Fitzwilliam Museum as part of a collaborative project by Dr Paola Riccardi, research scientist at the Fitzwilliam and Dr Eyal Poleg, historian at Queen Mary University, London. Their research has uncovered fascinating hitherto unknown ‘doctoring’ of the images and has attracted significant public interest. The project aims to analyse the second vellum presentation copy of the Great Bible now held in the National Library of Wales and undertake detailed comparison.

Support is being given to an Annual Fund project led by Prof. Máire Ní Mhaonaigh and Dr Rebecca Shercliff, titled ‘Looking at Collections: A How-to Guide for Researchers – the Southampton Psalter’, to develop an electronic resource aimed at school students undertaking independent research projects, based upon manuscript C.9. There has been much progress with the transcription and cataloguing of two purchases of correspondence for the Slavery Abolition Movement collection. The letters are largely addressed to plantation owner William Perrin; written by the various attorneys and property managers who handled Perrin’s affairs in both Jamaica and England, they reveal much about attitudes towards enslaved Africans, and about agricultural practices, the practicalities of manufacturing and shipping sugar and rum, and other quotidian realities of the economic structures against which abolitionists were struggling. Kathryn McKee Special Collections Librarian

Adam Crothers Special Collections Assistant

A selection of the papers relating to slave plantations in Jamaica

Annual Report 2019-20

Digital Activities Website In addition to the routine work of keeping the Library’s webpages up to date, several new resources have been developed for the website this year. These include two online exhibitions (‘Wordsworth at 250’ and ‘Wild World: Visual Representation of Animals in Manuscripts and Early Printed Books’); three video guides to using the Library, aimed at current students; and an entirely new page collating information on ‘Famous Johnians’ (www.joh.cam.ac.uk/famous-johnians). Developed in collaboration with the Biographical Office, the latter highlights a selection of some of the College’s best-known alumni from the last 500 years, grouped by field of activity, and is intended to be a starting point for researchers, as well as an inspiring reminder of the significant collective achievements of the College’s alumni. It remains, of course, a work in progress, and we look forward to expanding and diversifying the list over the coming years. Rebecca Watts Projects Assistant

Social Media The Library has maintained its social media presence throughout the course of this year, with our Twitter and Facebook accounts being used to achieve different objectives. The Twitter account has been a great way for us to stay connected within the Cambridge Libraries and Museums network, and has proven to be a solid platform for interacting with these institutions during the pandemic. It’s an easy way for us to share what we are up to, whilst also being able to view and support the programmes and exhibitions that take place all over Cambridge, both physically and, particularly this year, virtually. In contrast, our Facebook page has been used much more as a means of getting information to students, and has proven to be the best way to keep students updated on the constant changes taking place in the Library. It has been noted that there is a limit on how far we can currently reach via this platform, and in the course of the coming year we are hoping to adopt a more targeted approach; specifically aiming to start interacting directly with student committee pages, as this will enable many more students to view our posts and enable us to expand our current presence on social media. Katie Hannawin Graduate Trainee

Annual Report 2019-20

Environmental Monitoring and Control Old Library Environment Temperature and relative humidity are monitored at three locations in the Upper Library, three in the Lower Library, plus the Manuscripts Store and the Rare Books Reading Room. Although readings could not be downloaded remotely during lockdown, data are recorded continually so there is no gap in the records. Conditions were relatively stable throughout 2019-20, although relative humidity was a little higher than recommended levels during the summer months. A close watch will be kept on Lower Library collections for mould. The temperature in the Reading Room during winter continues to be lower than desirable. Alongside the permanent sensors throughout the building, a trial area of the Lower Library where mitigating measures to improve air flow are being tested is being monitored by Tobit Curteis Associates. Their report on the trial is expected later in the year. Light readings are taken manually, so could not be undertaken whilst staff were off site. In addition to the Libraryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s monitoring system, Maintenance also monitor conditions in the Manuscripts Store directly through their control system, and indeed took rapid action in April to repair a fault when the controls showed a problem. We are grateful for their diligence. Working Library Environment Tinytag sensors are used in various locations throughout the Working Library in both working and storage areas to monitor temperature and relative humidity. There were some interruptions in measurements when batteries ran down, and readings could not be downloaded whilst staff were off site, but most data could be retrieved once staff were back on site. In general the conditions are entirely comparable with previous years. It will be interesting to see if conditions in study spaces vary during the Michaelmas Term 2020 when occupancy is lower and windows are kept open for ventilation. Archives Centre Environment Temperature and relative humidity levels in the School of Pythagoras are recorded using Tiny Tag devices at strategic positions throughout the building. Stable conditions are maintained by a high-specification air conditioning and dehumidification unit. Just before lockdown a leak in the dehumidification unit waste pipe (located in a cupboard off the kitchen) meant readings were higher than usual, but our Maintenance team were able to carry out a temporary repair, which had to be maintained for much longer than would have been expected due to a Covid-related supply chain issue delaying delivery of the

Annual Report 2019-20 replacement part. Their excellent work, and that of the Porters in emptying the bucket when the pipe occasionally continued to drip, are just some examples of the work that onsite staff were doing while the majority of us (Archivist included) worked from home. Monitoring of insects continued, which recorded a number of baby silverfish over a period of months. As relative humidity is within the accepted parameters for archive storage, and cleaning of the areas is carried out, the only thing left was to try silverfish traps as well as the usual â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;blunder trapsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; and so far these seem to be working. The insects caught in the greatest number are woodlice and spiders. Lynsey Darby Archivist

Kathryn McKee Sub-Librarian

Annual Report 2019-20

Green Initiatives As a heavily-used communal space, sustainability has long been a concern in the Library. From mere paper and printer toner recycling bins in the early 2000s, we have engaged with a plethora of new ideas and facilities: installation of the lobby recycling bins in 2008 (then for separate waste streams, but now mixed recycling); battery recycling; low-energy lighting in the vast majority of areas; improved signage to discourage energy wastage; mobile phone recycling (now moved to IT); becoming a focal point for various TerraCycle schemes such as the recycling of crisp packets and writing implements; and more besides. With a member of staff on the College’s Sustainability Forum, we have the platform to garner new ideas from elsewhere, and to promote our initiatives within the Library, meaningfully contributing to the College’s wider successes in the area of sustainability, this year winning a Gold Award in the University’s Green Impact Awards. TerraCycle The TerraCycle initiatives have hit a bit of a stumbling block since last year. The biscuit and cracker packaging scheme was closed to private collectors in late July, and working from home due to Covid-19 meant that I was unable to send a final shipment before the deadline. While we can no longer officially collect for this recycling stream, I am investigating alternatives that I can pursue independently, as I have around 3kg of this waste sitting in the office that I refuse to send to landfill. I have also been collecting for the confectionary waste scheme, though the local school I was taking these to are not currently accepting waste due to Covid-19 restrictions. I am hopeful that they will resume collecting when it is safe to do so. On a more positive note, we are still officially collecting crisp packets, and while I haven’t been into the Library since lockdown began in March, have been informed that waste is still being delivered to me, so I have that to look forward to upon my return! The pandemic has understandably affected my ability to sort and send this waste, but I know that once I’m in a position to return to work, I have at least 6kg of crisp packets to deal with. As a registered collector, I regularly receive updates on new schemes, and was happy to relay to the College community the recent information that Superdrug on Sidney Street is now collecting make-up packaging. I am hopeful that as a College we can continue to engage with these schemes in whatever way possible. Paul Everest Biographical Assistant

Annual Report 2019-20 Recycling Bins Last year we decided to trial a new bin system to encourage more recycling of refuse. Small bins were removed from the Mezzanine Floor and replaced with a large bin for general rubbish, which was placed close to a large bin for recycling. This seems to have had the desired effect of ensuring that when Library users donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have the convenience of putting rubbish into small bins next to them they are more likely to recycle when appropriate. In light of this success we have decided to implement this system throughout the Library. Catherine Shanahan Library Cleaner

Annual Report 2019-20

Feedback Comments received by the Working Library On the ‘click & collect’ and quarantine delivery service:  Thank you very much for providing the chance for students like myself to get books from college – it is a really kind thought of you.  As a St John’s student in quarantine it is wonderful that you were able to bring a book to me. It has been so helpful. Thank you so much. On the scan and deliver service:  Many thanks for taking the trouble to copy the pages for me. I have already read them through; they are spot on what I required and excellently clear. I am so grateful to have access to the work. It has been frustrating trying to complete the book in the lock down, but your coming to the rescue has resolved a major challenge for me.  Thank you so much for your help – this is such a relief to receive these scans! I am very grateful. On the online virtual study group:  The study group has a been a lovely safe haven for me this summer, and has encouraged me to be productive, even when I had found it difficult to motivate myself. That is down to you and the supportive environment you have created.  Thank you so much either way for organising the study sessions and giving us a piece of John’s and sanity during these unpredictable times!  As someone who gets VERY distracted when left on their own, the SJC Library Virtual Study groups every Thursday have been fantastic. I think it’s such a great idea, helping students to stay productive but also sane! Especially during the lockdown period, the weekly sessions provided a welcome change of scene and a chance to catch up with other members of the college community. I would like to say a big thank you to Rebecca [Le Marchand] for organising and hosting the sessions! And the feedback that says it all:  Thank you so much Janet for getting the library up and running again!

Comments received by Special Collections and the Archive These sections are combined this year, as Special Collections were answering archival enquiries while the post of Archivist was vacant (5 September 2019–26 January 2020).  

My warmest thanks for the fantastic visit of the Library. Thank you for your time, your explanations and... your passion! Thank you very much for going the extra mile in researching this.

Annual Report 2019-20          

I’m immensely grateful and appreciative for all your support and expertise – this time and over the last years! Thank you so much for the session on Thursday. The students loved it, and commented time and again about how much they enjoyed the documents and your presentation. We all so much enjoyed that memorable visit to the magnificent St John’s Library – I am glad I bought the book to show my family. I really appreciate your very kind and thorough reply. It is so good of you to take the trouble to look through the records so thoroughly, in response to such a very specific query and when you are not the regular archivist. Terrific! You do not decline from the amazingly high standard of helpfulness shown me on previous occasions. Thank you for these treasures! I appreciate the ways in which you facilitate access for those of us across the Atlantic. Although I do hope to visit Cambridge some day in person… Thanks so much for sending the proof, this is absolutely amazing and made my day! Once the Library is open again I will definitely have a look at the full Library treasures book. Thanks so very much – I immensely appreciate all your help, especially amid these unprecedented challenges! Your well-ordered list (with matching scan numbers) provided an ease of reference that was truly appreciated, and thank you for the extra Crashaw item. Profound thanks for this extraordinary care – I really am most grateful. This is really splendid of you. What you have photographed is extremely useful to me as it sorts out exactly the dating of these appointments.

Comments from the Visitors’ Book in the Exhibition Area      

A beautiful collection, truly inspiring. Made me want to apply here. An amazing sight to eyes and mind. Collection of books that takes you to a different world and stimulates imagination. Impressive. V. interesting to discover J. C. Adams. Wonderful. Thank you for opening up these treasures for us! Lovely exhibition, much enjoyed. Thanks for organising staff photos. Great selection of lovely photos in the staff photo comp. Well done to the winners.

The following comments relate specifically to the Wordsworth exhibition:     

Wonderful layout. Approachable exhibit. A fascinating exhibition. Most informative and interesting. Particularly enjoyed the timeline. Superb original letters. Impressed with the great explanations. Lots of interesting things I didn’t know. Lovely!

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Comments received by the Biographical Office          

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It is no exaggeration to say that without your help it would have been impossible to complete the article in the form that I had in mind and managed to achieve. Thank you! Thank you for thinking of me after all these years. I am thoroughly impressed by your record keeping. I really appreciate all the help you have given me. It has certainly added to the chapters of my book about the two brothers. Thank you for the trouble you have taken over this. It would have meant a lot to my father to be remembered in this way. He was so proud of the education he received at the College and felt everything he achieved was thanks to that. You are an absolute miracle! How can you be this good this fast?! Thank you so much, this is invaluable, you are an utter angel as always! How thoughtful of you to reach out to me. I really do feel the care and attention you have shown is remarkable. I was so taken aback by the photo and attachments you sent months ago, that I forgot to reply and say ‘Thank you!’ Your email meant so much to me and my family and I appreciated the little info and photo so much. Thank you so much for this. It truly means a lot to me that you took your precious time to find these things for me. I look forward to sharing these with my grandmother. Under the current circumstances I consider it nothing short of operationally miraculous that you could respond in such a timely fashion. Take a bow :-). You have enabled me to bring to an end a long running issue for which I am extremely grateful. Thank you for your kindness and efficiency. I am impressed with what you’ve received without direct access to the archive! Thank you so much.

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Appendix 1 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Regular Donors We are most grateful to the following donors for their generous and ongoing financial support in 2019 and 2020. This list includes those who contribute through the Sponsor a Shelf scheme to support the acquisition of new books in specific subject areas. Professor Bob Aliber Bill Ball FIMechE (Mechanical Engineering) Hugh M. F. Barnes-Yallowley (Political Economy) Ian and Fumiyo Boulton (Chemistry) Paul Cockerham FSA (Art History) Dr John Crompton Alan Daniels, in memoriam Reginald W. Daniels (Economics and Social Sciences) Patrick Field (Linguistics and Languages) Dr Bernard Freudenthal Barbara Goodman, in memoriam Henry Goodman (Computer Science) Dr Peter Hacking (Medicine) Simon Holmes David Hughes Christopher Joseph (Historical and Human Geography) Professor Edmund King Garth Lindrup (Private International Law) Greg Lowden (Modern History) John R. Morris (Engineering) Dr Michael Neiditch Michael Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Hara Professor Stefan Reif Dr John H. W. Shaw (Victorian Poetry) Christine Schoenzart Richard Tomlinson (Classical Archaeology and Classics) Irene Vest, in memoriam Michael John Vest Nicholas Wood (British History and Politics from 1980 onwards) David M. Wright (Geology and Earth Sciences) A full list of donors to the Library is published annually in The Eagle.