The Library July/August 2012

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ContentsJuly 2012 The Library P

Nicola Stephenson Academic Skills Support Event, Leeds Metropolitan University 20th

June 2012

Kevin Wilson BFI Library Visit 10th July 2012

Lesley Ruthven Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre history resource: from the Amarc Summer meeting

Lucy Lambe Literary Library – Defence of the book by Julian Barnes Academic Skills Support Event – Leeds Metropolitan University 20th June 2012

I was attracted to this event because one of the keynote speakers was from the Skills@Library at the University of Leeds team and they had won the Credo Reference prize in June.

Helen Howard from Leeds University said she thought the Skills@Library had won the prize because they had put their library skills material on open access on the internet. You can see her slides, and several of the other presentations at http://www.slideshare.net/LeedsMetS4L/ it is clear from her analysis of the challenges facing us all in tackling library skills training that they deserved the prize. At Leeds they have decided to blend academic skills and information literacies. Throughout the day, there were presentations showing different models of dealing with training in academic study skills and information skills. At some universities the teaching of academic skills and information skills are separate, while at others it has all fallen to the library to deal with it all.

The final talk of the day was by Katie Barnett from Hull who has been part of the Study Advice Service at Hull for many years. There, students could book appointments and were seen individually. Katie expressed her anger at the new attitude at Hull which will end this scheme. In future, all students will receive training in academic and information skills at the University of Hull and they will not be

dealt with individually as a matter of course. Katie was glad to be retiring in the near future.

The decision to either teach students, or to just give them the information they need when they ask for help is ours. Every member of the library staff is contributing to the level of academic and information literacy of students at some point in the day in the library but are we agreed on our policy? We as a team have the choice to be proactive in predicting student need such as the skills needed for writing their first essay or their dissertation, for example. We do offer help before they ask through e resources sessions but not many students take up this offer. At the session in Leeds I learned that other universities have shared and are very willing to share their ideas and skill sessions plans so there is help and inspiration out there. At Goldsmiths, we could contact the departments which offer help in academic skills and work more closely together. We as library staff have the option to look at the CELAW section of the VLE to see what they are offering to help students write their essays, for example. We could also view information skills as crucial work skills and offer students training and testing to demonstrate that they have gained that skill. We could ask for this to be offered in 3D Graduate and the Gold Award.

I returned to London from Leeds thinking that other universities were way ahead of Goldsmiths. When I checked our website and searched for the keywords to do with academic skills, employability, etc I realized

that we had all of these aspects covered but in the usual, diverged, Goldsmiths way – with departments under acronyms, or marketing titles – 3D Graduate, Gold Award, CELAW, GLEU. Does the library have a role to play in any of these initiatives?

I recommend that you look at the presentations on Slideshare. It was an inspiring day.

Leeds is beautiful. The university is next to the Leeds Civic Hall, which is surrounded by massive golden owls on plinths.

They also have spacious, clean, lavatories at Leeds Met with Dyson blade driers – so why is this something we can only long for here?

Nicola Stephenson

BFI Library visit 10th July 2012

The previous incarnation of the BFI library was based in Stephen Street (just off Tottenham Court Road) and was membership-based. We held two passes but often found that waves of students would want to visit at the same time, leaving some frustrated until the passes were returned to us.

The BFI library has now relocated to the BFI Southbank in the old gallery space next to the film store. This is not just easier to find but also establishes the library with other BFI projects in an important area in terms of London’s cultural life. The most important change is that membership is now a thing of the past and the library is now freely accessible to all. Students can now visit between Tuesday-Saturday (10.30-19.00) without appointment or passes.

We were shown around by Sarah Currant, the reading room librarian. She gave us an overview of the history of the library and where it’s intending to go, as well as a tour and demo of some of the resources. The library is rather on the small side, though it makes good use of the space by having its collections on shelves fitted to the walls; journals to your left as you enter, then books thereafter, including an absolutely huge display of their Hitchcock collection, which coincides with the BFI’s three month long Hitchcock season this Summer.

There are state of the art facilities for viewing microfiches and scanning, as well as around half a dozen search terminals. Although the library catalogue can be accessed online, the Collections Information Database is currently a work in progress and can only be accessed in the library itself. Also, because the library is in a period of transition, we were told that some items aren’t always where the catalogue suggests they might be, so any

visitors are advised to check. Items from other sites have to be ordered in advance.

There is also a dozen or more study spaces, which even during the lull of a summer were incredibly busy, which suggests September/October could be really manic; as well as more comfortable chairs and tables for quick browsing. The library is reference only, which makes the lack of space in the library even more of a potential issue.

I will publicize the new library as a resource for our students, both in the AV area itself and in subject guides. Now that access is free and unrestricted and its location is local, hopefully our students will make good use of a library that is arguably the best and most comprehensive in the world for film. For those who couldn’t attend, its worth dropping by if you’re ever at the South Bank.

BFI library website

http://www.bfi.org.uk/education-research/

bfi-library

Library catalogue

http://webview.bfi.hostedbyfdi.net/webview/

Kevin Wilson

Elizabethan & Jacobean theatre history resource: from the AMARC summer meeting

On Friday 13 July I attended the summer meeting of the Association for Manuscripts and Archives in Research Collections at Dulwich College. The theme for the meeting was research collections in schools (read: Public Schools).

I was interested in this meeting because school collections can contain outstanding items, but they’re much more hidden than

university and other research collections. This is partly because schools tend to have much lower budgets for online catalogues, digitization, promotion and accommodation of external researchers. In addition, schools tend to be more concerned about catering to their students than the outside world.

We heard about highlights from the collections of Dulwich, Eaton, Westminster and Winchester. All were interesting, but I won’t go into detail. My main interest was in hearing about Dulwich College’s outstanding collection relating to Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre. It is based on the papers of Dulwich College founder Edward Alleyn (1566-1626) and his father-in-law Philip Henslowe (d.1616). They were big players in the theatre world, building and expanding several playhouses. They ran or were closely associated with several major companies, and Alleyn was also an actor in his time. Best of all, they kept meticulous diaries and records! Their papers “comprise the largest and most important single extant archive of material on the professional theatre and dramatic performance in early modern England” (from their website – see below).

These records have now been digitized in the Henslowe-Alleyn Digitization Project, a free online resource: www.henslowe-alleyn.org.uk. It features high-resolution images of each item (with a great zoom function) and digital essays that give context. Some highlights:

The only extant actor’s script (an actor’s script has only one part so that the actors couldn’t sell the whole script to a competitor).

Alleyn’s meticulous records of everything he bought, including how much was paid for costumes, paper, the services of a scrivener, etc.

A complete inventory of the costumes in Alleyn’s possession (another unique item for this period).

The only extant written description of the original Globe theatre: in the contract to build a new theatre Alleyn and Henslowe made specific reference to the Globe and described how they wanted the new playhouse to be the same or different. It seems as if they sat in the pit at the Globe and wrote down everything they thought was wrong with it!

Original scenarios and scripts. Insight into the business of theatre

through Alleyn’s diaries and papers. This includes many legal proceedings; the buying and selling of property in Southwark not just for playhouses, but to build concessions nearby; the bribing of bailiffs to keep Alleyn off juries; and receipts for dinner and drinks for important decision-makers.

If you come across a student or researcher studying Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre (including, of course, the time of Shakespeare), send them to the Henslowe-Alleyn Digitization Project.

Lesley Ruthven

Literary library

Lucy Lambe has chosen Julian Barnes’ contribution to The Library Books published by Profile Books

The Defence of the Book: a story by Julian Barnes

To mark National Libraries Day, the novelist adds an extra scene to his 1998 satire England, England in which he imagines what happens when the

'National Coalition' closes every library down

Julian Barnes: one of the contributors to The Library Book. Photograph: Richard Saker/Rex Features

(As Sir Jack Pitman's project for a replica version of England on the Isle of Wight proves an enormous commercial success, the mainland, or "Old England" as it has come to be known, goes into sharp decline …)

The first signs had been misleading, and greeted by some islanders with delight. After Scotland and Wales had left the Union, and Northern Ireland been reunited with the Republic, Europe lost patience with the sulky rump that remained. Decades of carping from the sidelines, while constantly demanding special favours and the repatriation of powers, were finally repaid. Germany and France, strongly backed by Europe's newest Celtic adherents, led a swift campaign to evict England. "At last," as the 93-year-old European President-for-Life, Angela Merkel, put it, "we are repatriating to you your powers, and not just the ones you asked for, but all the other ones as well."

There was much excitement, as the country, having become smaller and less influential, had also become more xenophobic. The Daily Mail which, after the demise of the Times, was widely referred to as "the newspaper of record” funded street parties and firework displays. But the euphoria was brief. Europe, not content just to evict England, also wanted to bring her low. Subtle and sometimes unsubtle trade barriers were raised; appeals to international organizations against such tariffs

failed. The United States had long been looking westward, and now tended to regard England as an embarrassing ancestor, and a case for humane termination.

Trade collapsed, and the nation's infrastructure with it. The health service, long privatized, had become known to the poor as the Death Service, since the government was now only responsible for the minimal duty to dispose of dead bodies. For the few surviving rich, there were regular flights to the continent, from which they returned with new German hips, cataract-free Czech eyes, and all manner of French cosmetic enhancement. Pensions were no longer paid and rubbish no longer collected. Looted and burnt-out shops were a common sight; communities gated themselves in; armed guards protected allotments at night.

Poverty threw up a few improvements, like the renaissance of the canal system. The re-establishment of the old barter system was welcomed by many. But it was the Defence of the Book that caused the most surprise. The widespread library protests of the early 2010s, more than a generation back, meant that much of the service had then been saved, an outcome for which all three parties had taken the credit (though it was thought that the ritual suicides of three novelists and a poet outside the Houses of Parliament had proved the tipping point). But little opposition was expected when the National Coalition announced that every remaining library was to be closed within a month. Since the digitization of all forms of information, libraries – like churches under communism – were inhabited mainly

by the elderly, that last generation which held on to the idea of the physical book as an item of value in itself.

Since the contents of libraries were deemed valueless, the Coalition simply instructed its enforcement agency (formerly known as the army) to burn the buildings to the ground. But after the first two incinerations, there were mass protests, and human shields were formed round many libraries. More menacingly, two offices of the enforcement agency were burnt down in retaliation. There was a broad suspicion, especially among the elderly, that once information and culture were only available digitally through the englandwideweb, truth would be easier for the government to control. To the surprise of many, the printed book began to take on a symbolic significance, as once it had done in the early years of printing.

This standoff continued for several months, because even to the National Coalition the notion of scores of incinerated citizens as acceptable collateral damage seemed a little excessive. There was negotiation; promises were made, and then more promises, until – to the government's surprise – the armies of white-haired activists agreed to stop protecting libraries in exchange for an official promise to keep them open, on terms and conditions to be mutually agreed. Naturally, as soon as the defendants withdrew, the government sent in its enforcers with the instruction that not a book survive. Indeed, there was a ministerial memo proposing that the very word "book" should be withdrawn from public discourse. When the thing no longer existed, the

word to denote it would surely not survive either.

But when the official arsonists arrived to carry out their work, they discovered that all the libraries had been secretly emptied of their contents. One by one, often at night, books had been removed to safety. At first they were simply hidden, in attics, hayricks and henhouses. And so the government concluded that it had in any case won: the book had gone into internal exile and would die off when those arm-linking old fools who had held up progress for the length of a summer died off themselves. Yet in this they were much deceived. The truth was only pieced together many decades later. But it seems that at first there was a samizdat circulation of individual books among trusted "readers". Then, in a bold move started in West Yorkshire, the first underground mobile library was set up by a book-loving milkman, whose horse-drawn cart held a secret compartment in which a few dozen volumes could be hidden. Since books were scarce and forbidden by authority, children suddenly valued them the more. Boldly, adults began meeting in "reading groups", which passed round a single existing copy of a book and then discussed it in its absence; many of these groups were raided but without success. Finally, books began to multiply, from which the only conclusion to be drawn was that an underground publishing and printing company had been set up. The government, for all its enforcement agencies, was unable to discover either the location or the membership of this enterprise.

Later, much later, this famous Defence of the Book was regularly compared by historians to the way in which culture and learning were kept alive by monks during the dark ages until better, safer times returned. And even if others maintained that this renaissance would have occurred anyway, it is nonetheless true that this Defence of the Book, both actual and symbolic, undoubtedly led to …

• "The Defence of the Book" appears in The Library Book alongside stories by Alan Bennett, Val McDermid, Zadie Smith and many others.

The Library July 2012Edited by Nicola Stephensonn.stephenson@gold.ac.uk