Special No 10
Friday 22 January 2010
Vol cxl
pp. 1–80
2008–9 has been a period of considerable change and activity for the Library, and this report sets out the key developments of the past year. Chief amongst these was the retirement of Mr Peter Fox as Librarian on 31 March 2009. Mr Fox’s achievements during his fifteen years of service were highlighted at events hosted by the Vice-Chancellor and the Chairman of the Library Syndicate and attended by University colleagues and library directors from across the UK and beyond. Mrs Anne Jarvis was elected as his successor and took up the post on 1 April 2009.
Some of the major initiatives of the past year have been in the area of fundraising. Not only is this year the University’s 800th anniversary, it is also the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin. It is therefore pertinent that this Report should begin with the news of a generous £480,000 donation from The Bonita Trust for a three-year Darwin and Gender project. Among the specific areas that Darwin and Gender will address are Darwin’s domestic life, gender in a scientific context, and gender and society.
The Library was also offered the exciting opportunity during the year to purchase the residual archive of Siegfried Sassoon. The archive, held by Sotheby’s on behalf of the estate of Sassoon’s son, George, was inspected by senior Library staff and found to be of the greatest importance. As the holder of several highly significant sets of Sassoon’s letters and manuscripts, Cambridge University Library is already recognized for the importance of its Sassoon collections, and for many years has played a leading role in conserving the records of his life and works and making them accessible to readers and to the public. There are numerous close correlations between the documents offered for sale and the Library’s current holdings, while the new material would bring significant additional dimensions to the Library’s existing holdings. A price of £1,250,000 was agreed with Sotheby’s, with a deadline of December 2009 for the Library to raise this sum. This sum is beyond the capacity of the Library’s acquisitions budget to absorb, and therefore the Library is reliant on raising funding from charitable bodies and private individuals. Lord Egremont generously agreed to lead the appeal, and there was a public launch at Sotheby’s on 25 June 2009. By the end of July almost £600,000 had been raised.
The Library has also secured a generous $427,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for a major five-year project to catalogue its collection of fifteenth-century printed books online. Very few records for the Library’s celebrated collection of some 4,650 incunabula are currently in the online catalogue, and this grant will enable the Library to fulfil a long-held ambition to address this omission. The project will start in autumn 2009, with the catalogue records providing subject access to the books for the first time as well as a full account of the provenance of individual copies, recording features such as inscriptions, illuminations, bindings, and the names of former owners.
For some years the Library has been seeking funding to digitize the Genizah fragments Taylor-Schechter manuscripts. Now thanks to a grant of over £1 million from the Friedberg Genizah Project the Genizah Research Unit and Imaging Services Department will be able to complete this ambitious project in under three years, shooting more than a quarter of a million separate high-quality, full-colour images. Such a project is only possible thanks to the recent rapid advances in digital capture technology and the skills of the staff involved. Previous estimates of the time required, made just a few years ago and based on the best technology then available, suggested that it might take 27 years and cost many millions.
Through the generosity of a major donor the University Library has been able to support undergraduate learning by acquiring access in perpetuity to all titles in the Oxford Scholarship Online collection of 2,500 e-books published to the end of 2008 in a wide-ranging group of subjects. Its acquisition helps to meet the fast growing demand for access to textbooks anywhere and at any time, relieves pressure on the most sought-after titles, and complements ebook collections already in heavy use. Innovation was also prominent in the Library’s archival work: this year saw the transfer of the first ever digital records to the University Archives, on CDs and DVDs which were among the six metres of paper archives of the Cambridge-MIT Institute (known as CMI), 1999–2008.
Many recent initiatives have been extending the boundaries of the Library’s engagement with the wider scholarly community at all levels. Following the Arcadia Fund’s generous donation of £500,000, for example, five Arcadia Fellows produced highly significant deliverables during the first year, supporting the programme’s overall objective of rethinking the role of the research library in a digital age. Science@cambridge (Lihua Zhu, Cambridge) is a new portal/gateway for science and technology students that encourages them to engage with library resources, especially online resources. It was launched as a public service on 16 October 2008 and demonstrated both the Library’s commitment to support for the sciences at research and teaching levels and its ability to make use of Web 2.0 technologies. IRIS: Induction, Research and Information Skills (Lizz Edwards-Waller (Cambridge) is the first empirical and qualitative survey spanning the entire University and College system of ways in which Cambridge students are introduced to library services. M-Libraries: Information on the move (Keren Mills, Open University) is an assessment of the actual and potential utility and acceptability of information services provided via mobile phones. Foreign language learning in Second Life and the implications for resource provision in academic libraries (Stefanie Hundsberger, John Rylands Library, University of Manchester) is a study of the ways in which library services might be used to support learning and teaching of modern languages in a digital environment, with special reference to the virtual world of Second Life. Reading lists in Cambridge: a standard system? (Huw Jones, Cambridge) is a study of ways in which reading lists (a key driver of undergraduate use of library resources) can be co-ordinated and computationally supported.
John Naughton, Professor of the Public Understanding of Technology at the Open University, has guided the Fellows. He has also instigated a series of seminars and an annual Arcadia Lecture. The first Arcadia Lecture was presented in March 2009 by Professor James Boyle (Duke University), Cultural Agoraphobia and The Future of The Library. The three seminars also covered pertinent issues – scholarly networking, a publisher’s perspective on academic publishing in the digital age, and supporting early career researchers.
One of the biggest single donations in the history of the Library occurred in February 2009 when Premier Wen Jiabao of the People’s Republic of China, who visited the University in February as part of its 800th Anniversary celebrations, donated 200,000 Chinese e-books. This has more than doubled the size of the University Library’s Chinese monographs collection, which is now the largest in Europe.
The Library also embarked on its first business venture with a publisher, Cambridge University Press (CUP). Over a three-year period CUP’s ‘Cambridge Library Collection’ will digitize important works from the Library’s holdings. The selected out-of-print and out-of-copyright books span the ‘long nineteenth century’ from the late 1780s to the early 1900s, including writings by Charles Darwin and his circle, studies on Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Handel, Wagner, and works of the greatest nineteenth-century mathematicians. The books are selected by subject experts for their continued relevance to researchers, students, and the general reader, and are available to buy as print-on-demand titles. 475 titles were launched in July 2009, to coincide with the Press’s 475th anniversary. Later this year, the titles will be launched as e-books, with free access for members of the University via the University Library.
Steady initial progress has been made on the recommendations of the General Board Review of Teaching and Learning Support Services. This is a unique opportunity to enhance pedagogical support and to ensure that Cambridge is at the forefront of teaching and learning in a period of rapid change. As part of this process, models for working in a federated environment are being devised to ensure the effective representation of all relevant library and departmental interests. This dialogue is already highlighting exciting areas for future collaboration, and further progress will no doubt inform future Annual Reports for several years to come.
On a related theme, the Journals Co-ordination Scheme was extended and will cover all Schools by the start of the 2009–10 financial year. Recurrent transfer of UEF funding for journals has taken place and the Administered fund is now the responsibility of the University Librarian in consultation with the Journals Co-ordination Steering Committee. The next step will be to develop formal links with the Colleges.
As part of a concerted outreach strategy the University Library participated in the Alumni weekend, Open Cambridge, and (for the first time) the Cambridge Open Days programme of events for prospective students and their parents. For the latter event over 1,000 visitors were welcomed into the Library over the two-day period and were offered tours of the building by the staff, who greatly enjoyed the opportunity to engage with an extremely receptive audience of potential future users. Anticipating the likely needs and interests of all its future readers remains the defining feature of Library strategic planning, and engagement with readers past, present, and future will continue to inform the activities set out in these reports.
Before outlining in detail the various important additions to the Library’s collections, it is important at the outset to acknowledge that this has been an extremely challenging year for collection development, both in terms of financial and logistical challenges. In last year’s Report it was noted that the volatility of Sterling against the Dollar and the Euro indicated the impact that exchange rates can have on the Library’s ability to meet its readers’ needs. But if things had looked difficult in 2007–08, those difficulties were trivial compared to the year under review, when the collapse of Sterling against the US Dollar and the Euro, anticipated in the final weeks of 2007–08, became a reality. The decline was far steeper than most had predicted. Fiscal rectitude was achieved at the expense (in non-fiscal terms) of a 22% reduction in the number of monograph titles acquired during 2008–09 while the University Resource Management Committee provided an additional 9% funding to cover journal expenditure for the Journals Co-ordination Scheme.
Database collection development continued its shift in emphasis from abstracting and indexing to full-text titles. Notwithstanding this trend, the acquisition of the Scopus database to provide much wider coverage of STM citations and a more usable interface than existing titles was warmly received. The electronic resources budget was particularly affected by changes in exchange rates and rising costs above the rate of inflation and was increasingly unable to meet demand for new titles. This was partly mitigated however by cancellations of a small number of high cost, low use titles and the fact that a high proportion of titles are covered by JISC Collections agreement which limit price rises to around 4% p.a. where possible. The Library will continue to review database usage and value for money in the coming year.
The planned closure of the Agency for the Legal Deposit Libraries London premises occurred at the end of February 2009. The relocation of activities to Edinburgh, and the changed organizational and managerial relationship between the Agency and the libraries it serves were always going to be challenging. Once these issues have been solved it is hoped that among the benefits of embedding the Agency within one of the partner libraries will be a more cost effective and efficient service. A further difficulty has arisen in relation to the legal deposit of electronic material. As noted last year the Legal Deposit Advisory Panel which reports to the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, prepared recommendations for the legal deposit of offline publications and publications available freely on the web. Both of these recommendations were expected to be considered by the Secretary of State during 2008–09 so it is disappointing to report that there has been no progress whatsoever on either of these matters despite continued requests by the Legal Deposit Librarians.
In spite of the above, the Library has managed to acquire some major new purchases and acquisitions. The Library purchased the Springer Online Journal Archives Collection which gave access to 900 titles from volume 1 to 1997 while The Taylor & Francis Geography, Planning, Urban and Environment Online Archive was made available free of charge by JISC Collections.
In addition, the Library was successful in a bid for Capital Investment Framework (CIF) funding for the purchase of the following online journal archives/backfiles: ISI Web of Science Backfiles (Science 1969–1900 and Social Sciences 1969–1956); Springer Online Journal Archives Collection (2008 update) which will complete the set of backfiles purchased in 2008; Taylor & Francis (range of subject collections), and The Economist Historical Archive.
The Tower Project, which is creating online catalogue records for the nineteenth-century British publications that are stored in the topmost floors of the tower and is funded by a $1 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, has had another successful year. Despite a number of staff changes, the target number of books to be catalogued was reached a month early, and almost 52,000 titles were added to Newton by the time the year ended, bringing the total number to over 102,000.
No less important has been the continuing positive reception by users of this project; in an operation such as this, the outreach work is almost as important as the core retrospective cataloguing activity, and it is gratifying to hear and read of the increased interaction between researchers and the collections that the existence of this project has facilitated so ably.
Possibly the most significant purchase of modern mapping to date was of 317 1:50,000 scale maps of India. Although mapping of India at this scale has been published for many years, it had previously proved impossible to purchase. Although most of the new sheets were published in the 1970s and 80s, this is still a significant advance on the mapping of these areas previously held in the collection, the most recent sheets of which were dated in the 1940s.
The Charles Close Society Archive (CCS) of Ordnance Survey Material, which was deposited in the Library in 1997, was presented permanently to the Library in March 2009. It contains much material that is unique or rare, including internal OS documents, work files for different map sheets, proof copies of maps, and examples of maps at the various stages of printing. The CCS will still recommend material for addition to the archive and will continue to offer other expert advice.
As a result of The Ordnance Survey moving to a smaller building they decided to disperse much of their Historic Mapping Archive not required by The National Archives. The Legal Deposit Libraries were approached first and the University Library has opted to take three sets of maps. The first two sets replace the Library’s own copies which have suffered from being well used over the years. They are the County Series maps of Cambridgeshire at all scales and dates, published roughly from 1888 to ca. World War II, and the National Grid maps (published from World War II to present) for an area surrounding Cambridge at scales of 1:25,000 and larger. The third set is all 1:2,500 First Edition County Series maps. The Library had very few of these maps which represent the first detailed survey of Great Britain and which, consequently, are much in demand by our readers. This has been a long-standing failing of our collection so these maps are a very significant and welcome addition. Fourteen pallets containing about five tonnes of maps arrived on 22 July 2009.
Two important collections of music archives were donated this year. Doris Orr presented the Robin Orr manuscripts and papers on the occasion of the 800th anniversary of the University and the centenary of Robin Orr’s birth, and to honour his contribution to the Faculty of Music (as chairman of the fund-raising committee to build the new Music School which opened in 1977). They consist of fourteen boxes of music manuscripts (75% of which have already been catalogued), and a further twelve boxes of miscellaneous papers including programmes, programme notes, writings on food and drink, and letters.
Following the death of Lady Bliss in November 2008 the Bliss papers came to the University Library to join the Bliss material that was already on deposit. The Arthur Bliss Archive now contains ca. 500 music manuscripts, 800 letters, more than 1,000 programmes, papers, and miscellaneous documents, and 100 compact discs. There is also a smaller collection of records and tapes, and around 100 items of printed music, all of which are either new additions to the UL or have been marked up by the composer.
• Brill’s New Jacoby
• Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography
• The Economist Historical Archive
• Eighteenth Century Collections Online, part I
• CHinese ANcient Texts
• Integrum World Wide (Russian newspapers)
• IEEE/IET Electronic Library
• ISI Web of Science Backfiles (Science 1900–1965 & Social Sciences 1956–1965)
• Kikuzo II Visual for Libraries
• Nature Platinum
• 19th Century British Pamphlets on JSTOR
• Oxford Language Dictionaries Online: Chinese and Russian
• Oxford Scholarship Online (purchased with the kind assistance of a private donor)
• Science Citation Index Expanded and the Social Science Citation Index
• Scopus
• Soviet Cinema: Film Periodicals, 1918–1942
• Springer Online Archives Collection
• State Papers Online (Purchased with assistance of a donation of £5,000 from the Glenfield Trust)
• Taylor & Francis Archive
• Wiley Blackwell Journal Backfiles
• Correspondence of the Hungarian-born poet George Gömöri
• Correspondence and papers of members of the Moore family (John Moore, physician; Lt-General Sir John Moore; and Admiral Sir Graham Moore), c. 1776–1840
• Correspondence, poems, and notes of Thom Gunn, poet (1929–2004)
• Current maps of Malaysia – Peninsular Malaysia plus Sabah and Sarawak – (1:25,000 and 1:50,000), Portugal (1:50,000), Liberia (1:50,000), Iran, (1:250,000), and Namibia (1:250,000 and 1:50,000) Bought with the assistance of the Friends of the Library
• A map of the county of Kent / engraven by Saml. Parker. From: The History of Kent / by J. Harris. London, 1719
• Survey of the Lakes of Killarney / by Wm. Fadden. London by Wm. Faden, Geographer to the King, Charing Cross, June 12th, 1978
• Robin Orr & Tom Stoppard, On the Razzle Manuscript score, vocal score, sketches, production notes etc.
• W. Karczag, W. & C. Wallner, Ein Wintermarchen / Carl Goldmark. Wien: c1907 (1908 printing) – Purchased with the assistance of the Friends of the Library
• Facsimile of Bologna Q15 / edited by Margaret Bent
• Jacobus Francus [Conrad Memmius], Lutetia restituta ... ([S.l.], 1594), a very rare account of the siege of Paris and its subsequent capture by Henry of Navarre, extra-illustrated with two contemporary maps of the city
• Scipione Chiaramonti, Opus de universo (Cologne 1644), the exceptionally rare first edition of Chiaramonti’s magnum opus, in which he reviews and criticizes the various competing theories of astronomy, particularly those of the Copernicans with Galileo in the forefront
• Antonio Enríquez Gómez, La torre de Babilonia, premiera parte (Rouen, 1649), the first edition, all published, of this satirical novel attacking the excesses of the Spanish Inquisition through the device of a dream narrative
• Kant, Critik der reinen Vernunft (Riga, 1790), the third edition, first issue, of the Critique of pure reason, and the interleaved, copiously glossed master copy of Johann Friedrich Christoph Gräffe, Professor of Philosophy at Göttingen
• Dmtri Ivanovich Evarnitskiy (text), Nikolay Semenovich Samokish and Sergey Ivanovich Vasilovskiy (illustrations), Iz ukraynskoy stariny. La Petite Russe d’autrefois (St Petersburg, [1900]), a fine example of Ukrainian artistic and academic collaboration, celebrating – under Russian rule – the country’s history and past glory.
• Additional literary papers and correspondence of the poet Anne Stevenson (presented by Miss Stevenson)
• Additional papers of the poet Nicholas Moore (1918–1986) (presented by Mr Peter Riley)
• Archive of Harley Books, publishers of natural history books (presented by Annette and Basil Harley through the agency of the bookseller Michael Taylor)
• Correspondence between the archaeologists Dorothy Garrod and Theodore McCown, 1930–54 (presented by Prof. Alan Almquist); correspondence and literary papers of John Mole, poet (b. 1941) (presented by Mr Mole)
• Papers of Peter W. Hawkes, principally concerning electron microscopy (presented by Dr Hawkes)
• Notes taken by F. A. Fuggle during Louis Leakey’s excavation at Rickson’s Pit, Swanscombe, Kent, 1934 (presented by Prof. D. A. Roe)
• Bliss Archive
• Robert Orr Archive
• 100 books from the Waddleton collection (Mr Norman Waddleton)
• Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century books on European history donated by Professor Derek Beales (via the Friends of the Library)
• Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Italian books, donated by Ms Caroline Laws and given to her by Quintus Benziger from his family collection
• Archive of the Cambridge-MIT Institute (CMI) 1999–2008
• Archive of the Cambridge Committee for Russian and East European Studies (CamCREES), 1995–2004
• Archive of Women in Science, Engineering and Technology Initiative (WiSETI), 1993–2007
• Records from the Computer Laboratory, 1946–2005; Divinity Faculty, 1937–93
• Records from the General Board of the Academic Division, 1950s–90s (significant continuations to existing series)
• Records of the Agency for the Copyright Libraries, 1950–2008
The award of HEFCE’s Capital Investment Framework funding supported the acquisition of significant sets of e-journal backfiles and has allowed the Library to procure resource discovery software, both as a planned replacement for the Universal Catalogue and as a new generation tool for access to a wider range of digital resources in the future. The process of selecting and procuring the system through an EU tender was almost complete by the end of July 2009 with implementation expected in Spring 2010.
The libraries@cambridge team implemented record sharing within all Department, Faculty, and College library databases, making progress towards the strategic goal of using a single MARC (Machine-Readable Cataloguing) record with attached holdings within one Voyager catalogue.
The Library continues to operate a Federated Search System to allow users to search multiple eresources from a single interface. In 2008 the Webfeat Express Federated Search system from Serials Solutions was purchased and implemented as the CrossSearch service. In its first year of operation, this service has delivered over 30,000 searches across over 200 electronic resources. Alongside the ejournals A–Z and a separate A–Z of databases, this service underpins the libraries’ subject based electronic resource portals, eresources@cambridge and science@cambridge.
The University Library public web pages (including those of the Dependent Libraries), were completely redesigned over several months in line with the new University style, and the recommendations of a Senior Management Team working group.
The year-long project to incorporate the records of Cambridge University clubs and societies into the University Archives and to publish their catalogues on Janus ended in September. Catalogues of 61 bodies were completed in total, across the entire range of extra-curricular activities, from dramatic and musical to sporting and scientific. The catalogues are among the University Archives’ most frequently consulted lists on Janus.
The University Archives staff formulated a cataloguing project to improve the structure and detail of the current listing of the Cambridge University Press archive, to complete the retrospective conversion of paper finding aids and to create descriptions from scratch for uncatalogued material. The resultant catalogue will greatly enhance access to the archives, which, at c. 200 linear metres, form the largest constituent part of the University Archives outside the records of the central administration and are unique among publishers’ records in their diversity and time span. CUP generously agreed to fund this project.
The Admissions Office service was greatly improved by some IT changes such as new web pages informing readers of the documentation required to obtain a Library ticket. Online application forms have been created, and an online appointments diary set up to provide a more efficient service for new readers. From May 2009 CamSIS, the student record database, has been made available to the University Library. This has enabled Admissions staff to check student records and update patron accounts accordingly, without the need for students to bring in supporting documentation. Entrance Hall staff have undertaken training so that University Card accounts can be updated at the Entrance desk during busy times, thereby offering a more flexible and time efficient service for readers.
Following the successful introduction of online renewals and vacation borrowing in 2007, fines received by the Library during 2008–09 fell by 20% compared to 2007–08. Most Library communications to readers are sent via email which not only reduces the use of paper but has proved to be a much more effective means of informing readers when books need to be returned or recalls are ready for collection. This year over 65% of renewals were carried out online.
The Darwin anniversaries resulted in unusually frequent requests for filming or recording. They included Pioneer Products for a Channel 4 film about Darwin; the BBC for its films Notes from a genius and The Cell; a Radio 3 documentary about Darwin and religion, Darwin’s Conundrum and for a programme by its Gaelic services; Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen for television filming; and National Public Radio of America for a recording directly involving staff from the Darwin Correspondence Project and others.
Following the announcement of funding through HEFCE’s Capital Investment Framework (CIF), the construction of Phase 6 of the extension to the West Road building began in Michaelmas Term 2008 with a completion date due early in 2010. Both staff and readers look forward to being able to reclaim the reader spaces on the open floors, which in recent times have been overflowing with books.
Along with providing a further 30km of shelving capacity and correct environmental conditions to store the expanding print collections, Phase 6 will enable the Library to release what is currently a closed access bookstack floor on the fourth floor into a fully refurbished open stack with new group study spaces. One of the special features of this Library is the 80km of open stack where readers can browse at their leisure and this enhancement is welcomed.
The year saw the completion of the Medical Library’s major refurbishment project. Funded with the aid of a grant of £200,000 from The Wolfson Foundation’s RLUK Library Programme, together with substantial grants from the Clinical School and the University’s CIF budget, the project has provided a new 60-workstation IT room for clinical students, replacing about one-third of the journal backset stacks on the upper floor, while restructuring on the lower floor has created a remodelled reception area, a new IT training room and two small seminar rooms, and new library staff offices.
Construction work, with project management provided by EMBS, began in June 2008. The Library remained open throughout the construction work, with Phase 2 requiring the Library staff’s relocation to the new upper-floor IT room and the opening of a temporary side entrance for readers. The refurbished areas were handed over to the Medical Library in mid-November 2008, though some further minor work has continued since then.
The results have been well-received by Library users, by the Clinical School, and by the Medical Library staff. Users have gained from the more effective design of the main enquiry desk, which allows for better interaction between staff and readers. The new clinical students’ IT room has successfully enabled the School to run computer-based exams in the Library, while the School’s staff have made extensive use of the new seminar rooms.
The new layout of the reception area, and the loss of about 15% of the staff’s office space, have prompted a thorough review of staff working practices, with the result that more efficient workflows have now been implemented in several areas. The redesign has also included provision of a dedicated staff room.
In a subsequent development, following further negotiations between the Medical Library and the Clinical School, the Library has agreed to release a further area (the former carrels corridor on the lower floor) so that the School can construct a new research office to support Cambridge Health Partners, with access via the Library. While this may cause minor inconvenience to some readers because it will seal off one of the two existing main routes to the main study and bookstack area, the School will in return provide funding to cover the cost of further improvements in the Library, including the provision of study booths. This work is expected to be undertaken in early 2010.
The Library purchased its first wide format scanner in order to reduce wear and tear on some of the larger maps, especially the 1:2,500 County Series Ordnance Survey maps, which are subject to damage on an ordinary photocopier. The new scanner is used to provide map extracts as well as copies of whole sheets, both printed and digital.
Four important Royal Commonwealth Society collections were conserved during the year. Four boxes from the British Association of Malaysia archives were re-packaged; Andrew Arthur Anderson drawings of South Africa were professionally conserved, individually mounted, and re-packaged by the Conservation Department; Frederick Hardyman Parker’s 18th Century legal manuscripts on British Honduras were individually sleeved in inert plastic; conservation work began on nine large photographic panoramas of Hong Kong, Shanghai, Macau and Medicine Hat (Alberta), by Nicholas Burnett, Museum Conservation Services, Duxford. Once conserved, they will be encapsulated and digitized for research and exhibition purposes.
Conservation staff completed the work on the Mellon funded Identical Books Project which involved initial recording and sampling of 367 Identical Books across the Legal Deposit Libraries. Results have shown that the books exhibited small but significant differences in condition but the historic environmental data necessary to correlate with changes in condition was lacking. The initial recording and sampling and the data gathered still represents a significant beginning to understanding conditions and usage across the Libraries. The goal is to build on the data already collated, record and analyse the changes in condition of books and the factors that may impact on such changes.
Awareness of DSpace@cambridge was promoted successfully through a new advocacy campaign and although growth has been steady rather than spectacular the number of new communities is encouraging. Preparations in progress to accept electronic theses, first on a voluntary basis and later as part of a mandatory scheme, are expected to increase uptake substantially in 2009–10.
The acquisition of the Montaigne Library of Gilbert de Botton was marked by a conference of the French Department’s Cambridge French Colloquia in September 2008, devoted to the ‘Librairie de Montaigne’. Delegates attended the opening of the Montaigne exhibition at the Library and were invited to a private view of the collection in the newly created Montaigne Room in the Munby Rare Books Room. One fruitful outcome of the conference was a planned collaboration between the Library and the Université François-Rabelais, Tours, to digitize books from the collection for Les Bibliothèques Virtuelles Humanistes.
It was agreed that there should be a separate section within the digital repository DSpace@cambridge, to be known as ASpace, to accommodate administrative records of historic importance. The Library has investigated the most appropriate way to arrange and describe material ingested into the repository. The simple structure and workflow of ASpace as a repository system does not make it ideal for use with the highly structured archival accumulations or complex objects commonly associated with the University Archives. Thus, it may be necessary in due course to replace it with a system more suited to this complexity and which could be integrated into the working practices of record creators. But for the time being, ASpace will enable the University Archives to secure digital materials of historic value against alteration, loss, or deletion.
Richard Blake of the National Archives’ Records Management Advisory Service, visited several departments of the University’s Academic Division in November 2008. His report on current record-keeping practices formed part of a successful application to the Technology Development Fund for funding for a records management scoping study in the Unified Administrative Service and certain representative departments. An external consultant has been commissioned to begin this work in Michaelmas Term 2009.
The Harmonia Mundi Project, a 14-month pilot collaborative project between the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge began this year. The project, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, will investigate the best way to provide online access to catalogue records for the printed music collections of Cambridge University Library and the Bodleian. During this period just under 1,500 items will have been catalogued as part of a sample cataloguing project. The results of these investigations will be presented in a report to the Mellon Foundation and will include a recommendation of how best to achieve full access via the web to information about the printed music collections held by both institutions.
In response to the JISC funding call for projects relating to ‘Islamic Studies Catalogue and Manuscript Digitisation’, a proposal for a joint project with the Bodleian Library, Oxford was submitted in May 2009. This is a project to create a fully searchable online catalogue of the Islamic manuscripts collection using TEI mark-up language and including descriptive details in the original languages. This bid has recently been successful and the project is due to start in September 2009 and to run for a period of eighteen months.
‘My booke and my selfe; Michel de Montaigne 1533–1592’
July–December 2008
Prepared by Dr Jill Whitelock
‘Advancing by Degrees: the University of Cambridge 1209–2009’
January–July 2009
Prepared by Ms Jacqueline Cox and opened by the Vice-Chancellor
The receptions for the opening ceremonies were generously sponsored by Cambridge University Press.
‘Cambridge Assessment 1858–2008’
August–September 2008
Prepared by Gillian Cooke
‘George Szirtes at sixty’
October–January 2009
Prepared by Mr John Wells
‘Edward FitzGerald and his Rubaiyat 1809–2009’
February–April 2009
Prepared by Bill Martin, Sandra Mason, and Mr John Wells
‘Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909)’
May–July 2009
Prepared by Mr Clive Simmonds
‘A Cambridge treasure of books’
July–September 2009
Prepared by Mr Paul Woudhuysen
• Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin, ‘Die Sprache Deutsch’
• Kulturhistorisches Museum, Magdeburg, ‘Spectacles of Power. Rituals in Old Europe 800–1800’
• Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge, ‘Bodies of Evidence: Exploring the Technologies that make Bodies Visible’
• Royal Academy of Arts, London,’Byzantium, 303–1453’
• The British Library, ‘Henry VIII, Man and Monarch’
• The Natural History Museum, ‘Darwin’
• Yale Centre for British Art, ‘Endless Forms’ – Charles Darwin, Natural Science, and the Visual Arts’
In addition to Peter Fox, a number of other long-serving staff retired this year. Richard Andrewes, Head of Music, retired in April 2009 after eighteen years’ service while Sheila Cameron retired in July 2009 after sixteen years’ service as a Cataloguer in English Collections and Cataloguing. Brian Jenkins retired as Divisional Head of Special Collections and Collection Management in May 2009 having worked in the University Library for over 38 years. Adrian Miller, who was responsible in the latter years for the Data Control Department, retired in March 2009 having spent all of his working life (46 years) in the University Library. Godfrey Waller, Superintendent in the Manuscripts Room, retired in August 2008 after 44 years of service.
Annette Brighton was awarded a M.Sc. in Library and Information Studies from City University, London; Dr Emma Coonan was awarded an M.Sc. in Information and Library Studies from Northumbria University; Lizz Edwards-Waller was awarded a Postgraduate Diploma in Information and Library Studies from Robert Gordon University; Jason Grace was awarded an M.A. in Information and Library Management from Loughborough University; and Angela Pittock was awarded an M.A. in Information Services Management from London Metropolitan University. Joanne Farrant gained the Level 2 Introductory Certificate in Purchasing and Supply from the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply.
It is with profound sadness that we report the death of Dr Friedrich Niessen in January 2009. Friedrich had worked as Senior Research Associate in the Genizah Research Unit since October 1998.
The deaths of four former members of staff are recorded with regret. Mr Arthur Owen, former Keeper of Manuscripts and Head of the Special Collections Division, died on 28 August 2008. Mr Roger Fairclough, Head of the Map Department from 1958 to 1997, died on 13 February 2009. Mrs Margaret Clifton, who worked in Labelling/Periodicals, died in September 2008, and Mr Jim Beaumont, a former electrician in the Library, died in February 2009.
The Munby Fellow for 2008–09 was Dr Deirdre Serjeantson, whose research topic was ‘Petrarch and the Early-Modern English Reader: a case study in the printing and circulation of the Babylon Sonnets’.
Performance indicator and quality-assurance issues were raised in June 2009 when the Library was required to provide TRAC (Transparent Approach to Costing) data to consultants conducting a survey of the National Research Libraries for HEFCE. This was a follow-up to the Library being designated in 2008 by HEFCE as a National Research Library (NRL), along with the libraries of Oxford, Manchester, LSE, and SOAS, in recognition of the services provided to academic staff and research students from other universities. The report recommended that each NRL should be entitled to renewable long-term supplementary funding ‘in return for a specified and periodically assessed quality of provision and collaboration in national strategic programmes for collection development and services.’ The aim of the TRAC review was to develop a methodology that takes into account the different circumstances of each NRL, but can nevertheless produce comparable costing information on which funding decisions can be made. As no additional funding will be made available, each NRL is competing for a limited amount of funding.
|
‘The Chest’ |
£12,003,300 |
|
|
HEFCE |
Improving access to research collections |
£566,000 |
|
HEFCE |
Capital Investment Framework |
£211,000 |
|
Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies |
Part funding of staff in the Japanese Department |
£37,500 |
|
Sixth Earl of Enniskillen Fund |
Acquisitions of books in specified subjects |
£180,000 |
|
Commonwealth Library Fund |
Royal Commonwealth Society Library projects |
£96,000 |
|
Kaplanoff Fund |
American Studies material |
£55,000 |
|
Munby Memorial Fund |
Munby Fellowship in Bibliography |
£27,000 |
|
Oschinsky Fund |
Support for research in medieval history |
£25,000 |
|
Smuts Memorial Fund |
Part funding of Smuts Librarian for Commonwealth Studies |
£23,000 |
|
Wilson-Barkworth Fund |
Special Collections material |
£20,000 |
|
Richard Tench Fund |
Contribution towards Saturday afternoon opening |
£14,500 |
|
Nock Fund |
Modern Foreign books |
£9,000 |
|
Rustat Fund |
Special Collections material |
£9,000 |
|
LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell |
Purchases for the Squire Law Library |
$22,000 |
|
Weil, Gotshal and Manges |
Textbooks, periodical subscriptions, and electronic resources for the Squire Law Library |
£15,000 |
|
Cambridge Law Journal |
Purchases for the Squire Law Library |
£15,000 |
|
Friends of Cambridge University Library |
Special Collections material |
£10,000 |
|
Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer |
Electronic resources for the Squire Law Library |
£9,400 |
|
John Templeton Foundation |
£194,100 |
|
The Bonita Trust |
£160,000 |
|
American Council of Learned Societies |
£121,000 |
|
Golden Family Foundation |
$100,000 |
|
Isaac Newton Trust |
£56,000 |
|
Cambridge University Press |
£53,500 |
|
British Ecological Society |
£20,000 |
|
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation |
£20,000 |
|
Natural Environment Research Council |
£5,000 |
|
Jewish Manuscript Preservation Society |
£293,000 |
|
Arts and Humanities Research Council |
£149,000 |
|
Friedberg Genizah Unit |
£43,000 |
|
NHS East of England Strategic Health Authority |
£158,000 |
|
NHS Foundation Trust |
£40,000 |
|
Medical Research Council |
£35,000 |
|
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation |
Incunables Cataloguing Project |
£427,000 |
|
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation |
Digital imaging for ‘Parker on the Web’ project |
£236,000 |
|
Anonymous donation |
Oxford Scholarship Online |
£100,000 |
|
Jardine Matheson |
Digitization/cataloguing of collection |
£53,000 |
|
British and Foreign Bible Society |
Bible Society Library staff |
£34,000 |
|
Isaac Newton Trust |
Manuscripts Specialist |
£24,000 |
|
Corpus Christi College |
Digital imaging for ‘Parker on the Web’ project |
£19,000 |
|
VCM London |
Bequest |
£7,000 |
|
Friends of Cambridge University Library |
Contribution to exhibition costs |
£5,000 |
|
Glenfield Trust |
Contribution to purchase of State Papers Online (1509–1714) |
£5,000 |
|
William Alwyn Foundation |
William Alwyn Archive cataloguing project |
£5,000 |
|
John R. Murray Charitable Trust |
£25,000 |
|
Dulverton Trust |
£10,000 |
|
The Golden Charitable Trust |
£10,000 |
|
The Weinstock Fund |
£5,000 |
|
Esmee Fairbairn Foundation |
£5,000 |
Unless indicated by an asterisk, the statistics refer to the main University Library building only.
|
Additions to stock |
2008–09 |
2007–08 |
2006–07 |
|
Books and pamphlets* |
102,835 |
119,874 |
123,228 |
|
Periodicals and newspapers* |
124,991 |
139,366 |
145,731 |
|
Microfilm reels |
3,105 |
3,567 |
4,177 |
|
Microfiche units |
744 |
1,193 |
1,494 |
|
Maps and atlases |
30,129 |
9,037 |
8,731 |
|
Printed music |
3,498 |
5,790 |
5,879 |
|
Manuscripts and archives |
1,896 |
3,065 |
1,869 |
|
Cambridge theses |
969 |
1,015 |
954 |
|
New entries added to the Catalogue* |
139,905 |
134,326 |
91,076 |
|
Items fetched: |
|||
|
West Room bookfetching |
|||
|
– Select books |
33,582 |
33,080 |
29,825 |
|
– Reading Room classes |
46,851 |
44,925 |
42,519 |
|
– Reserved periodicals |
28,842 |
29,598 |
31,161 |
|
Manuscripts Reading Room |
14,038 |
14,127 |
12,434 |
|
Map Room |
11,880 |
12,169 |
21,849 |
|
Anderson Room and East Asian Reading Room |
2,045 |
2,363 |
2,832 |
|
Official Publications |
5,688 |
6,913 |
7,038 |
|
Microforms |
7,454 |
7,243 |
11,304 |
|
Rare Books Reading Room |
42,726 |
47,747 |
45,262 |
|
Bible Society’s Library |
1,746 |
1,764 |
1,265 |
|
Total |
194,852 |
199,929 |
204,289 |
|
Bindery/Conservation output |
|||
|
Modern case work |
22,374 |
22,155 |
25,141 |
|
Modern repair work |
1,232 |
844 |
1,064 |
|
Rebacking and minor repairs |
2,168 |
1,331 |
1,461 |
|
Lyfguarding |
11,035 |
2,976 |
6,350 |
|
Imaging Services Department |
|||
|
Digital images |
79,271 |
73,503 |
73,603 |
|
Microfilm frames exposed |
74,314 |
94,510 |
180,333 |
|
Photocopies (includes Moore, Squire, and CSL) |
2,105,491 |
1,824,185 |
2,114,244 |
|
Expenditure on purchased acquisitions1 |
£ |
£ |
£ |
|
Main Library |
2008–09 |
2007–08 |
2006–07 |
|
Modern Western Books |
700,572 |
701,236 |
692,992 |
|
Indian and Middle Eastern |
37,525 |
18,228 |
41,448 |
|
Chinese and Japanese |
61,489 |
77,705 |
64,571 |
|
Maps |
43,458 |
37,712 |
37,804 |
|
Music |
39,556 |
40,606 |
42,694 |
|
Rare books and manuscripts |
150,268 |
207,072 |
254,274 |
|
Electronic resources and microforms |
853,571 |
607,634 |
451,927 |
|
Periodicals |
824,471 |
746,238 |
697,925 |
|
Total |
2,710,911 |
2,436,431 |
2,330,242 |
|
Medical Library |
|||
|
Books |
16,341 |
16,316 |
18,835 |
|
Periodicals |
211,721 |
200,017 |
202,443 |
|
Science Libraries |
|||
|
Books |
30,245 |
15,635 |
17,185 |
|
Periodicals |
989,143 |
935,791 |
921,814 |
|
Squire Law Library |
|||
|
Books |
18,423 |
40,167 |
33,330 |
|
Periodicals |
327,669 |
297,651 |
280,222 |
|
Total (consolidated) |
4,304,453 |
3,942,008 |
3,804,071 |
1Includes expenditure from grants and trust funds
|
Andrew D. Cliff (Vice-Chancellor’s Deputy) |
Christopher J. Howe |
John R. Spencer |
|
Jennifer Barnes |
Ian M. Hutchings |
Morag Styles |
|
Richard Beadle |
Peter Kornicki |
Liba Taub |
|
John Bell |
David J. McKitterick |
Gotthelf Wiedermann |
|
Robert Glen |
John Morrill |
Diana F. Wood |
|
William Hale |
Simon Rowbotham |
Marjolein Allen
Committee membership
Agency for the Legal Deposit Libraries, Customer Advisory Group
Richard Andrewes
Committee membership
Bliss Trust (Trustee)
RISM (UK) Trust (Trustee and Treasurer)
RILM Technical Advisory Committee
William Alwyn Foundation (Trustee)
Cambridge University Musical Society (Vice-President)
Charles Aylmer
Paper presented
‘Internet and related resources for Oriental studies’, NCOLR Professional Development Seminar, Cambridge, September 2008
Committee membership
China Library Group, Periodicals Sub-Committee
Barbara Bultmann
Committee membership
UK Council of Research Repositories
Iain Burke
Committee membership
Agency for the Legal Deposit Libraries IT project board
libraries@cambridge Advisory Group
Sheila Cameron
Joint Editor: CULIB (Cambridge University Libraries Information Bulletin)
John Cardwell
Papers presented
‘The Archives of the Royal Commonwealth Society’, Cambridge Library Group, January 2009
‘The Royal Commonwealth Society Collections’, Australian and New Zealand Library and Archives Group, Menzies Centre for Australian Studies, Kings College London, April 2009
James Caudwell
Papers presented
‘Working with serials’, City University, Department of Information Science, December 2008
‘Psyching up to RDA’, ARLIS UK and Ireland Cataloguing and Classification Committee Annual Conference, Cambridge, July 2009
Committee membership
CILIP/BL Committee on RDA
ARLIS UK and Ireland Cataloguing & Classification Committee
JIBS User Group
Legal Deposit Technical Advisory Group
Ed Chamberlain
Committee membership
libraries@cambridge Advisory Group
Arcadia Support Group, Easter Term 2009 (Chair)
Anne Collins
Committee membership
Clinical School Educational Resources Working Group
ECLaKSA (NHS Eastern Counties Library and Knowledge Services Alliance)
Higher Education Health Librarians in the Eastern Region
Emma Coonan
Papers presented
‘From the Gutenberg Bible to born digital: electronic and digitized collections at CUL’, CRASSH seminar, February 2009 [with Sue Mehrer]
‘Arts & Humanities Citation Index’, ‘Food for Thought’ Fair, Faculty of English, June 2009
Committee membership
Cambridge Library Group (web and newsletter editor)
Jacqueline Cox
Paper presented
‘From muniment chest to DSpace: the safe-keeping of records at Cambridge University’, Higher Education Archivists Group, Cambridge, May 2009
Committee membership
Janus Steering Group (Chair)
Cambridge Archivists Group (Secretary)
Society for the History of the University (Secretary)
Data Standards Group, Society of Archivists
Higher Education Archivists Group
Daniel Davies
Review of Joseph Dan, ‘Kabbalah: a very short introduction’ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), Journal of Jewish Studies (2008)
Review of Peter Adamson, ‘Al-Kindī’ (New York, 2007), Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews (2009)
Affiliated Lecturer in Philosophy of Religion, Faculty of Divinity, Cambridge
Sessional lecturer in Religious Studies, Canterbury Christchurch University
Papers presented
‘Can the Trinity be part of inter-faith discussion: Maimonides and Aquinas as test case’, Theology and Religious Studies Departmental Seminar Series, Nottingham, March 2009
‘Is there an implicit Trinity in mediæval Jewish and Islamic philosophy? An historical thought experiment’, Society for the Study of Theology, Amsterdam, April 2009
Sophie Defrance
Paper presented
‘Networking for girls’ secondary education: women teachers and the educational press at the end of the nineteenth century in France and England’, Faculty of History, Modern European History Research Seminar, Cambridge, May 2009
Lesley Dingle
‘A sensible radical: conversations with Professor Sir Bob Hepple’ (Part 1 – South Africa), Legal Information Management (2009)
‘Conversations with Professor Peter Gonville Stein: a contribution to the Squire Law Library Eminent Scholars Archive’, Legal Information Management (2008)
‘Sources of foreign & international law: comparisons and use of FLAG & FLARE’, Recht Bibliothek Dokumentation (2009)
Papers presented
‘Opening up the UK’s foreign and international law collections: the FLARE initiative and the FLAG databases’, British and Irish Association of Law Libraries, Manchester 2008
‘Sources of public international law’, British and Irish Association of Law Libraries in association with Institute of Advanced Legal Studies Seminar, London 2008
‘Where does international law come from?’, Foreign and Commonwealth Law Course, Cambridge, September 2008
‘Roman law and Peter Stein’, American Association of Law Libraries Roman Law Special Interest Group, Washington DC 2009
Committee membership
American Association of Law Libraries, Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals Advisory Committee
FLARE (Foreign Law Research Consortium)
Freshfields / Faculty of Law Liaison Committee
Emily Dourish
Committee membership
Cambridge Bibliographical Society
Peter Fox
‘Stir up other men’s benevolence’, Cambridge University Libraries Information Bulletin, 64 (Lent 2009)
Papers presented
‘The Fagel Collection: from Den Haag to Dublin’, Fagel Symposium, Trinity College Dublin, September 2008
‘The future of the library/information landscape in a Cambridge context’, libraries@cambridge 2009, January 2009
Committee membership
Curators of the University Libraries, University of Oxford
Department for Culture, Media and Sport, Legal Deposit Advisory Panel
Friends of the National Libraries, Executive Committee
International Editorial Board, Journal of Library Administration
Joint Committee on Legal Deposit
LIBER: Association of European Research Libraries (Vice-President)
Long Room Hub External Advisory Board, Trinity College Dublin
Ludmila Ginsburskaya
‘The idea of sin-impurity: the Dead Sea Scrolls in the light of Leviticus’, Awarded a Ph.D. in Ancient Judaism, Faculty of Divinity, Cambridge
‘Published material from the Cambridge Genizah Collections: a bibliography 1998–2003’ (http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/Taylor-Schechter/GOLD/) [edited with Rebecca Jefferson]
Peter Girling
Committee membership
libraries@cambridge Advisory Group
Lesley Gray
Committee membership
International Group of Ex Libris Users, Steering Committee
libraries@cambridge Advisory Group
Will Hale
Paper presented
‘Digitization of the Gutenberg Bible: Retrospect and Prospect’, (Respondent), DARC/CCH Symposium, King’s College, London, November 2008
Committee membership
CILIP Rare Books and Special Collections Group Bibliographic Standards Committee
Library Syndicate (Staff representative)
Stephen Hills
Editor: Cambridge University Library Readers’ Newsletter
University Library Staff Club (President)
Neil Hudson
University Vice-Marshall
Craig Jamieson
Committee membership
Union Handlist of Manuscripts in North Indian Languages
National Committee for Information Resources on Asia
Anne Jarvis
Committee membership
Joint Committee on Legal Deposit
Friends of the National Libraries, Executive Committee
Research Libraries Group, Program Council
Research Libraries UK, Workforce Think-Tank
Rebecca Jefferson
Editor: Genizah Fragments
‘When curator and conservator meet: some issues arising from the preservation and conservation of the Jacques Mosseri Genizah Collection at Cambridge University Library’, Journal of the Society of Archivists 29/1 (2008) [with N. Vince-Dewerse]
‘A Genizah secret: the Count d’Hulst and the letters revealing the race to recover the lost leaves of the original Ecclesiasticus’, Journal of the History of Collections 21/1 (2009)
‘Published material from the Cambridge Genizah collections: a bibliography 1998–2003’ (http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/Taylor-Schechter/GOLD/) [edited with Ludmila Ginsburskaya]
Brian Jenkins
Committee membership
English Short Title Catalogue, UK Committee
National Preservation Office, Preservation Advisory Panel
Brotherton Collection Advisory Committee
Cambridge University Joint Committee on Museums
Huw Jones
Papers presented
‘From data to discovery: building automated cataloguing tools with Perl’, IGELU, Madrid, September 2009
‘Just for the record: bibliographic data – where we were, where we are, where we’re going’, libraries@cambridge2009, January 2009
‘Automated tools for bibliographic data’, Voyager Developer Meeting, Chicago, March 2009 (http://www.youtube.com/user/ExLibrisGroup#play/uploads/11/8ar9po0UINs)
Committee membership
libraries@cambridge Advisory Group
Jayne Kelly
Committee membership
British Association of American Studies Library and Resources Sub-Committee (Secretary)
CILIP University College and Research Group Committee
Patricia Killiard
Paper presented
‘Held in trust: the role of the institutional repository in sustaining the digital humanities’, at the Scriptorium Symposium: Sustaining Digital Resources in the Humanities, Cambridge, July 2009 [with Grant Young]
Committee membership
Digital Preservation Coalition Board
Legal Deposit Libraries Act Implementation Group
JCLD-LDAP ejournals Working Group
libraries@cambridge Advisory Group
Noboru Koyama
Committee membership
Japan Library Group
European Association of Japanese Resource Specialists (Board member)
Isla Kuhn
‘Can we show we make a difference? Yes we can’, Libraries for Nursing Bulletin 19 (2009) [with P. Hockley and D. Lepley]
‘Evaluating our training – a pragmatic approach: the East of England experience’, INFORM: Information for the Management of Healthcare Newsletter 19 (2008) [with D. Lepley and P. Hockley] http://www.ifmh.org.uk/inform/infm19_2.htm
Paper presented
‘Coming at them from a different angle: using Web 2.0 to engage with library users’, University Health and Medical Librarians Group Summer Conference, UEA, 2–3 July 2009
Committee and representative membership
Clinical School Educational IT Steering Group
NHS Eastern Counties Library and Knowledge Services Alliance
East of England Health Information Skills Trainers
Vanessa Lacey
Paper presented
‘Rat-catching for schools’, Cambridge Library Group, March 2009
Sue Lambert
Assistant editor: The Indexer
David Lowe
Committee membership
French Studies Library Group
West European Studies Library and Information Network (Convenor)
Peter Meadows
Paper presented
‘Two lost Cambridgeshire churches’, Cambridge National Trust Association, November 2008
Committee membership
Cambridgeshire County Archives Advisory Group
Degree Sub-Committee for Master of Studies in Local and Regional History
Sue Mehrer
Paper presented
‘From the Gutenberg Bible to born digital: electronic and digitized collections at CUL’, CRASSH seminar, February 2009 [with Emma Coonan]
Committee Membership
SCONUL (Society of College, National and University Libraries) Deputies Group
Sonia Morcillo García
Committee membership
Advisory Council on Latin American and Iberian Information Resources
Peter Morgan
‘Open data: the elephant in the room?’, Journal of the European Association for Health Information and Libraries 4 (2008) http://www.eahil.net/journal/journal_2008_vol4_n4.pdf
Committee membership
Clinical School/Addenbrooke’s Hospital SIFT Liaison Group
Clinical School Building Safety and Users Committee
Clinical School Educational Resources Working Group
NHS Eastern Counties Library and Knowledge Services Alliance
Higher Education Health Librarians in the Eastern Region
New Review of Academic Librarianship – Editorial Board
Research Information Network – Librarianship and Information Science Consultative Group
SHERPA Management Group
University Health and Medical Librarians Group
Bill Noblett
Book reviews in CILIP Rare Books Group Newsletter
Papers presented
‘Material for the study of Indian history in the Official Publications Collection’, South Asia Archive and Library Group, July 2009
‘The sale of James West’s Library in 1773’, British Book Trade Index Annual Conference, July 2009
Committee membership
Council of the Society for the History of Natural History
Ben Outhwaite
‘The Hebrew manuscript collection of Cambridge University Library’, European Judaism (2008)
‘Byzantium and Byzantine in the Cairo Genizah: new and old sources’, Proceedings of the International Colloquium on the Greek Bible in Byzantine Judaism (2009)
‘Adaptions and innovations: studies on the interaction between Jewish and Islamic thought and literature from the early Middle Ages to the late Twentieth Century, dedicated to Professor Joel L. Kraemer’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (2009)
Affiliated lecturer in Medieval and Rabbinic Hebrew, Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies
Papers presented
‘The Genizah Research Unit: current projects and plans’, Charles Taylor and the Genizah Collection, a centenary seminar, St John’s College, Cambridge, November 2008
‘Digging in the crates: the Cairo Genizah in the digital age’, The Archive: Past, Present and Future, Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities, Cambridge, February 2009.
‘Diversity in medieval documentary Hebrew’, ‘Manuscripts as artefacts’, the Third Workshop of the AHRC John Rylands Cairo Genizah Project, Manchester, June 2009
Committee membership
AHRC John Rylands Genizah Project, Advisory Board
Adam Perkins
Paper presented
‘A case of archival theft’, Society for the History of Astronomy, April 2009
Committee membership
International Astronomical Union’s Commission 41/Inter-Union Commission for History of Astronomy, Working Group on Astronomical Archives
Angela Pittock
Committee membership
libraries@cambridge Advisory Group
Bettina Rex
Committee membership
Italian Studies Library Group
Rachel Rowe
Committee membership
South Asia Archives and Library Group (Chair)
Ray Scrivens
Committee membership
Council for Slavonic and East European Library and Information Sciences
Charlotte Smith
Paper presented
‘User-based indexing: a leap of faith or a descent into the abyss?’, CILIP Cataloguing and Indexing Group Conference, University of Strathclyde, September 2008
Nick Smith
Committee membership
Cambridge Bibliographical Society (Hon. Secretary)
Cambridge Museum of Technology (Treasurer)
Elin Stangeland
Committee membership
DSpace Global Outreach Committee
UK Council of Research Repositories
Christian Staufenbiel
Committee membership
German Studies Library Group (Treasurer)
Anne Taylor
Editor: Bulletin of the Friends of Cambridge University Library
Committee membership
British and Irish Committee for Map Information and Catalogue Systems (BRICMICS)
Charles Close Society Archives Sub Committee
MapForum (Editorial Board member)
United Kingdom Cartography Committee
Hugh Taylor
Paper presented
‘RDA: past, present, future’, libraries@cambridge2009, January 2009
Committee membership
Legal Deposit Libraries Shared Cataloguing Programme Steering Group (Chair)
Joint Steering Committee for Revision of Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules (CILIP representative)
SUNCAT Bibliographic Quality Advisory Group
RLG Programs Working Group ‘Implications of MARC Tag Usage on Library Metadata Practices’
Esther-Miriam Wagner
Paper presented
‘The Genizah and Arabic and Islam’, Charles Taylor and the Genizah Collection, a centenary seminar, St John’s College, Cambridge, November 2008
John Wells
Committee membership
Friends of Cambridge University Library, Secretary and Treasurer
Group for Literary Archives and Manuscripts
Brotherton Collection Advisory Committee
Jill Whitelock
Editor: Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society and Monographs
Committee membership
Cambridge Bibliographical Society
Friends of Cambridge University Library (Committee member)
800th Anniversary Steering Committee
libraries@cambridge Advisory Group
Library Syndicate (Staff representative)
Gotthelf Wiedermann
Committee membership
Coutts OASIS Advisory Group
Library Syndicate (Staff representative)
David Wills
‘Collaborating on collections: a structured approach’, BIALL Newsletter (March 2009) [With R. Bird and J. Winterton]
Paper presented
‘Law reporting in English law’, Institute of Continuing Education International Summer School (2009)
Committee membership
President Elect, BIALL
BIALL Awards and Bursaries Committee
BIALL Council Member
FLARE (Foreign Law Research Consortium)
Freshfields / Faculty of Law Liaison Committee
Grant Young
Papers presented
‘Unlocking the library: new digitisation initiatives’, Library Visiting Committee, Library, October 2008
‘Large-scale collaborative digitisation: 19th century pamphlets online’, libraries@cambridge2009, January 2009
‘19th Century pamphlets online: building resources and relationships’, RLUK Conference, Leeds, September 2008
‘Held in trust: the role of the institutional repository in sustaining the digital humanities’, at the Scriptorium Symposium: Sustaining Digital Resources in the Humanities, Cambridge, July 2009 [with Patricia Killiard]
Committee membership
RLUK Digitisation Think Tank
Peter Zawada
Committee membership
EU Databases User Group (EUDUG)
Patrick Zutshi
‘The Book of Deer after c. 1150’, Studies on the Book of Deer, editedbyK. Forsyth (Dublin 2008)
General editor: The history of the University of Cambridge: texts and studies
Paper presented
‘The publication of entries in the papal registers concerning Great Britain’, German Historical Institute, Rome, November 2008
Committee membership
Oxford University Archives Committee
Advisory and Technical Panel, Northamptonshire Record Office
Charles Darwin Trust (Trustee)
Editorial Advisory Board, Journal of Ecclesiastical History
PSQG Access and Security Working Party
Ely Cathedral Archives Committee
• Second meeting of University Library Visiting Committee
• Visit by Her Excellency Mme Fu Ying, Ambassador of the People’s Republic of China
• Visit by Mme. Liu Yandong, State Councillor of the People’s Republic of China
• Opening by the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Alison Richard, of the exhibition ‘Advancing by Degrees: the University of Cambridge 1209–2009’
• Libraries@cambridge 2009 day
• First Arcadia Seminar: Dr Frances Pinter (Bloomsbury Publishing), ‘A Publisher’s Perspective on the Future of Academic Publishing in the Digital Era’
• Visit by His Excellency Shin Ebihara, Ambassador of Japan
• Sandars Lectures: Professor Michelle Brown, ‘The book and the transformation of Britain, c. 550–1050’
• First Arcadia Lecture: Professor James Boyle (Duke University), ‘Cultural agoraphobia and the future of the library’
• Second Arcadia Seminar: Dr Laura James (CARET), ‘Scholarly Networking’
• Visit by His Excellency Maurice Gourdault-Mongagne, Ambassador of France
• Third Arcadia Seminar: Dr Patrick Carmichael (CARET), ‘Supporting early career researchers and building research communities in education’
• Visit by Their Excellencies the Ambassadors of Arab League countries to the UK and chargés d’affaires