The Library November 2011

– May 2012

Photo by Fiona McKnight

ContentsNovember 2011 – May 2012 The Library P

Fiona McKnight American Musicological Society Conference, 9 -14 November 2011, San Francisco

Mark Preston CILIP CDG East’s visit to the Scott Polar Institute Library,

Cambridge 9 February 2012

Helen Stephen ALISS (Association of Librarians and Information Professionals in the Social Sciences Professionals) Christmas Meeting 2011

Literary Library - Midnight Library

Nicola StephensonAmerican Musicological Society Conference, 9 -14 November 2011,San Francisco

At the request of the Prokofiev Foundation trustees, I attended the AMS annual conference in San Francisco. The purpose of the trip was to promote and market the journal which we publish, Three Oranges http://www.sprkfv.net/journal/journalin.html.

The journal is published twice a year, in May and November, and – given the very narrow focus of the journal – we have a wide subscription base. After the UK, the USA is our largest single market, where subscriber numbers have remained steady, but not significantly increased, over the last few years. The libraries of a number of universities, including Yale, Princeton and Harvard, subscribe, but there are thousands of academic libraries in the USA, and we hoped to spread the Prokofiev word to at least some of them.

In preparation, I ordered a new pull-up poster, which we will use for various promotional events in the future, and packed up display copies of all 21 issues of the journal, as well as our ”Highlights” publication to give away as samples, business cards, and had new and up-to-date leaflets designed and printed. These were all ready to be shipped, but when the quote came back at £1850(!) I changed tack, acquired an extra suitcase and carried it myself, costing a mere £76 for the excess baggage…

The conference was held in the rather plush surroundings of the Hyatt Regency hotel on the Embarcadero in San Francisco, right on the waterfront. I have attended many musicological

conferences, but nothing on the scale of this: 1700 delegates. In the exhibit area, the Serge Prokofiev Foundation was one of the smaller publishers, among the likes of Oxford, Cambridge and the various American university presses, Baerenreiter, Schirmer and others.

Over the four days of the conference, I had many conversations with a variety of people interested in the journal, including a former Goldsmiths student, two people who had met Lina Prokofiev in the USA in the 1970s, and countless Prokofiev fans. Three types of feedback were often repeated:

o Compliments on the title (“great name”)

o Compliments on the design (“coolest looking journal in the room”)

o “Is this a new publication? I’ve never heard of it.”

The last confirmed that we needed to work harder on publicizing on the other side of the Atlantic – the journal is 10 years old. It also led to further discussions about the Archive more generally.

Ultimately, the success (or otherwise) of the trip will show in how many new subscriptions materialize. Regardless of that, however, through conversations with various people at the conference, I have a number of contacts to follow up to increase our subscription base. I was invited (encouraged) to attend and exhibit at the Music Libraries Association conference in Dallas in February, but will put that on the backburner for this year until we see what comes out of AMS,

Photo: Fiona McKnightOutside the exhibition area, I was able to catch a few musicology papers (thanks to a Prokofiev scholar from Chicago who kindly looked after my stand for a couple of hours), but it was clear to me, not least from the dizzying whirl of university and publisher’s parties in the evening, that AMS is rather more about networking than about the paper sessions. Sadly I had such awful jetlag that I wasn’t able to take full advantage of the copious free wine and food on offer.

I took a day at the end of the conference to see a bit of the city, which was well worth it. San Francisco is lovely, and the food in particular is amazing. Highly recommended!

Fiona McKnight

CILIP CDG East’s visit to the Scott Polar Research Institute Library, Cambridge on 9th February 2012The Scott Polar Research Institute was set up by Antarctic geologist Frank Debenham in 1920, to commemorate the life and work of Captain Scott and his companions. Its reference Library serves polar researchers from all over the world, with visitors ranging from scientists to members of the public, while the SPRI has a number of its own MPhil and

PhD students. Overall the Library contains an estimated 260,000 items, including material in 79 languages, and employs 16 members of staff, including 4 multi-lingual bibliographers. The subject matter includes anything concerning the Arctic and Antarctic, particularly the history of polar exploration, scientific and environmental material, related fiction and children’s books. In addition, the SPRI archives house over a million manuscripts relating to polar expeditions, with an emphasis on British Antarctic expeditions of the early twentieth century.

The Library is well-used, but the University of Cambridge can only provide limited funding, and so fund-raising is a constant activity. Other regular donations come from the Royal Society, the Royal Navy, HEFCE and the Friends of the SPRI. A recent success for the Library has been the funding and renovation of the museum on the ground floor, which now attracts 50,000 visitors per year. The SPRI has been heavily involved in the current Scott centenary year celebrations, with its own exhibition devoted to Scott’s final expedition, and collaborates with the National History Museum in London. Exhibits include Scott’s snow goggles and camera, Lieutenant Oates’ sleeping bag, and (on loan) Scott’s final diary entries. Outside the Library, the bell from Scott’s ship ‘Terra Nova’ sits on the stairs and is rung twice a day to summon SPRI staff to tea.

After an introductory talk by Librarian Heather Lane the CDG East group was shown around the Library, starting with the wooden 1930s reading room, which includes several desks for visitors. This room has a history of

polar networking: during the Cold War there were meetings here between US and Russian ships’ captains, and in one corner sits a table used by Sir Ranulph Fiennes to plan his expeditions.

On one side of the reading room is a modern extension containing the Shackleton Memorial Library. This is used by the Friends of the SPRI and contains an archive of the explorer Ernest Shackleton. On the walls are objects such as a spar from the ‘Endurance’ (one of the few surviving relics of the ship crushed in the ice in 1915), and examples of the ‘lost’ photographs of Captain Scott, which were recently bought by the SPRI with funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund.

Next door, the modern circular Rotunda is where regularly used stock on expeditions is kept for everyday reference. The books are classified using a polar version of UDC and divided principally by place. Upstairs there is the science collection, containing material on biology, climate change, glaciology, and snow and ice. The British Antarctic Survey on the other side of Cambridge specializes in more technical scientific material, and they often collaborate with the SPRI.

A further room contains periodicals, pamphlets and grey literature, representing the output of many smaller organizations. There is also a ‘Russian gallery’ and seminar room, and laboratory space for SPRI students. Examples of current project work on display range from satellite data for world weather patterns to reindeer-herding peoples of the Arctic.

Library staff are currently in the middle of a programme of retrospective cataloguing, and regularly produce indexes and abstracts of books and journals in the collections. Future projects include the digitization of photos and meteorological data, and the creation of a proper Special Collections environment for humidity control and preservation. A new Scott museum exhibition is planned for the autumn ; NASA are collaborating to produce a 3D model of Scott’s expedition hut ; and Channel 4’s Time Team may come to make a polar-related programme. After a fascinating afternoon’s visit, it was clear that demand for the SPRI Library remains high, and the Librarian is kept busy honing her fundraising and TV interview skills!

Mark Preston

ALISS Christmas meeting 2011

As usual I went to the ALISS (Association of Librarians and Information Professionals in the Social Sciences) Christmas meeting at the British Library – a welcome break from the pre-Christmas frenetic activity. This year there were presentations on 3 new gateways/portals each providing access to large collections of documents and/or databases. All are freely available, although Connected Histories and the Third Sector Knowledge Portal do index some subscription only material.

I was particularly interested in the Third Sector Knowledge Portal, launched in October 2011, as a

resource for Social Work and Community and Youth Work students.

Third Sector Knowledge Portal – www.tsrc.ac.uk

There is no agreed definition of the “Third Sector”. It is usually understood as the not-for-profit sector, encompassing the voluntary, community and social enterprise sectors. Information in this area is plentiful but can be hard to find, ephemeral, fragmented and difficult to access. Potential users are often unaware of its existence which leads to duplication of effort. Projects can be short lived - staff leave and the political agenda shifts – which are all detrimental to the preservation of a usable body of knowledge.

The target audiences are the Third Sector, Government and researchers. Access wherever possible is as fully downloadable PDFs. Additional content is available from British Library collections and, where it is not freely available, users are linked to the BL catalogue or DSC.

It is a joint project between Third Sector Research Centre (TSRC) and British Library funded by the Big Lottery Fund. It uses Heritage LMS and the newly created (and evolving) Third Sector Thesaurus which is

hierarchical and built into the LMS software.

Third Sector organizations are invited to contribute material including archives and collections which may be at risk due to funding cuts.

Digital Education Resource Archive (DERA) - http://dera.ioe.ac.uk

DERA was launched in February 2011 as a means of maintaining the completeness of the Institute of Education’s Official Publications Collection which dates back to 1850 and includes documents, many unique, on education published in the UK by government and publicly funded education bodies.

Before DERA, online-only documents and websites were added to the IOE library catalogue but major problems with links were identified due to websites moving or closing. Fortunately, some years ago the IOE started printing and storing relevant online-only publications so these can now be scanned.

DERA uses E-prints software so the full text of document is now searchable. For details of its development see: www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue67/scaife.

Connected Histories - Building Sources for British History, 1500-1900

www.connectedhistories.org

This is a JISC project involving the Institute of Historical Research and the Universities of Hertfordshire and Sheffield.

It currently provides an integrated search facility for fifteen major electronic resources including: British History Online, Clergy of the Church of England database, Convict Transportation Registers and John Strype’s Survey of London Online. It is intended that more should be added.

The specially developed search engine does not search the sources directly but searches indexes created from the full-text content of each resource using natural language processing. The indexing can be incomplete for documents that have been poorly scanned by Optical Character Recognition (OCR).

Users can set up their own workspace and make lists of resources (called connections) which can be public or private. Public connections are encouraged.

So …. a very enjoyable afternoon followed by chat and a mince pie; lengthy visit to British Library shop (highly recommended) and horrendous train journey home!

Helen Stephen

Literary library

Dear Nicola:

Since the extended hours were introduced I have been taking advantage of the library till midnight every single day. Despite the hard work and the tiredness I still have been able to enjoy the weekends. Last Sunday, after having breakfast, Walkyria Weiffen and I went for a

stroll in the labyrinth of the streets of London. The coincidence of her visit and the launching of the 'London Antique Books Fair' took us to drop in the Stephen's Foster's Bookshop, in Bell Street, just close to the river in Richmond. We were perusing old catalogues and rare books chaotically stacked in defiance of gravity on top of the tables, when a heavy volume called our attention: The XLVI volume of the Anglo-American Cyclopaedia, New York 1917, 921 pages, was before our eyes. After spending more than three hours reading in stasis the last entry, we decided to buy the volume. She picked up a piece of paper that fell from the book and we went to the hotel to get my credit card I have inadvertently left in the reception. To our surprise, when we were back, there was no sign of the book. In vain all four attendants and the two of us searched the small library up and down. We cannot but treasure the fragment recorded in the note we found on the floor. The original is in Latin. I have indicated with brackets the place in which a name or words have been erased by time:

'Welcome, Reader.

My name is [ ], Curator of that secret institution:

The Midnight Library

Where is the Midnight Library, you ask? Why have you never heard of it? For the sake of your own safety, these questions are better left unanswered. However... so long as you promise not to reveal where you heard the following -no matter whom or what demands it of you-, I will unveil what I keep here in the ancient vaults. After

many years of searching I have gathered the most [ ] collection of...'

The Library November 2011 – May 2012Edited by Nicola Stephensonn.stephenson@gold.ac.uk