Project-Report for the internship Course library and information science <Creating a special collection about the United Society for the Propagation of the Gospel>
Name: Dominik Seemann Date: 19.02.13 Head of the project: Gemma Jane Wright (alternate head of the project / senior cataloguer) Contents 1. Order... 3 1.1 Starting situation... 3 1.2 Aims of the project... 4 1.3 Organisation of the project... 4 2. Project design... 5 2.1 Work breakdown structure... 5 2.2 Project flow chart... 6 3. Evaluation... 8 3.1 Project progression... 8 3.2 Achieving objectives... 9 4. Results... 10 5. Prospects... 11 Appendices... 12 HdM 2008; Projektbericht zum Projekt im IPS, Seite 2 von 13
1. Order 1.1 Starting situation I started my project on the 23 rd of July in Bodleian Library for Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House which is one of the many libraries at the University of Oxford (around 100). The only thing I knew was that my part is to catalogue books of a big collection. The USPG (United Society for the Propagation of the Gospel) library (since December 2012 US archives) in London has offered a part of its holdings as a consequence of a plenty of free space in the shelves in the USPG library. But after the first two days in Rhodes House and many talks with Lucy McCann, my line manager, and Gemma Wright who is leading the project as alternate head of the project, I knew a bit better what I have to do. It wasn t only a cataloguing project my duty was to work on the creation of a special collection. A plan how I have to do this and the criteria for keeping or don t keeping publications had already been worked out by my predecessor. So I was not the first trainee who has to work on this special collection. Another trainee from the Media University and several others have already catalogued books and written instructions to deal with the collection. In accordance with my predecessor the transferred holdings contain about 8,000 books and many boxes filled with pamphlets and documents. Some of the books are in Rhodes House others in the big archive Book Facility Storage, Swindon (BSF) where many stacked material of the Bodleian library is stored. 1 From the USPG collection are only 5% in Swindon. The USPG founded in 1701 look back on a history of 311 years. Because of that several books are very old and most of them are divided or fallen apart over the years. Besides there are many amongst them with dusty and fading covers and spots of mould inside. The archiving of the pamphlets hurt me in my soul as ex-trainee of the German Literature Archive and was a witness for the unknowingness librarians have with archiving old material reasonable. That is only a plea to the USPG library. I think Lucy knows about the problem as archivist. The pamphlets and documents aren t stored in acid-free boxes and because there are many paper clips and stapler needles which are totally impractical for archiving these items. I should decide which books and pamphlets we want to keep and which not by following an instruction sheet which the other trainees worked out for the project in the past. For publications which has nothing to do with the USPG or we have already in the catalogue I have to estimate the value and then they were free for sale. The books which were published by the USPG or about the USPG and their missionaries I had to keep. The publications are written in many different languages and often it was not easy to decide by reading the title if the book has anything to do with the USPG. These were two obstacles I have to deal with. To get it I have often to read a bit of the book and scanning it with my eyes. A list with the names of the USPG missionaries from the 1 Marina Stahl HdM 2008; Projektbericht zum Projekt im IPS, Seite 3 von 13
USPG librarian Catherine helped me make decisions. Books we want to keep I have to catalogue and if they are stored in Rhodes House stack I have to label them, too. 1.2 Aims of the project The main aim of the project was to create a special collection about USPG. The duty, the alternate head of the project fixed with me was to work through as many books as possible. In the end there should be a collection in the reading room where all the catalogued books about USPG and the USPG missionaries are located on the same shelf together. She told me to put these books in an Excel file that readers can have an overview what the collection contains. The non-relevant books should after the research for their prices and the calculation free for sale. By coincidence the side-effect of the process is to get space in the shelves. 1.3 Organisation of the project My commissioner and line manager was Lucy McCann who is archivist and the boss of Rhodes House Library. The alternate head of the project and because of that simultaneously my specialist contact person was Gemma Jane Wright. The head of the project Joanna Mopert was out because of her nursery for a few months. Gemma was also the person who gave me an introduction to the library software Aleph and the criteria for dealing with the publications of the USPG library. External expert and assistant was Catherine Wakeling the USPG librarian. She has checked the list with the books less than 20 Pounds and the list with the books I ve catalogued and sent her queries back to me. The second external partner was BSF (Book Storage Facility) Swindon. Most of the USPG books which are not catalogued are stored in Swindon. So I often sent the books to Rhodes House and catalogued books we want to keep. For books from Swindon we don t want to keep I have to send a message to Swindon with the books I have deleted in Aleph that they can delete the items in their system which is different from Aleph. HdM 2008; Projektbericht zum Projekt im IPS, Seite 4 von 13
2. Project design 2.1 Work breakdown structure At the very start of my project Lucy showed me a document which was a brief review to the history of USPG since the 17 th century. At this time it existed as the SPG (Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts dating from 1701), the UMCA (Universities Mission to Central Africa) and later the Cambridge Mission to Delhi. And all these associations merged in 1965 to form the United Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. The first thing I had to do was to select from some of the pamphlets stored in the Rhodes House stack the USPG relevant publications and to search for the value of the non-relevant pamphlets for the USPG collection. The trainee who has worked on the project in the past has already created lists for the USPG relevant books, for the non- relevant valuable books and for the non-relevant books for that she hasn t found a price in the internet. I created new lists after the same scheme for my work. So my boss can check which work Marina the former Media University student did and what I have done in my time on RHL (Rhodes House Library). The information the lists include is title, author, place of publication, year of publication and the shelf mark, in the list for the relevant books. The nonrelevant books were divided in three categories less valuable than 20, more valuable than 20 and no price found. The exact price for the valuable books was also noted in the appropriate Excel list. I was the first trainee who worked with the pamphlets and it was very difficult to search for them in the internet. The fact that some of the letters, pamphlets or documents have no title caused a problem. The search for an author or the year of a publication was often not successful or useless. Sometimes it was possible to find the pamphlets with the first sentences of the publications in the search request field ALL fields in the Karlsruhe Virtual Catalogue and as relevant institutions, I ve only selected the Book traders. Nevertheless many leaflets or documents have never been catalogued by a book trader. The most items are only noted in the World cat. I searched the pamphlets in ABAAA; abebooks; choosebooks.com; lovelybooks; Amazon; KNV and libri. Later I have to do a selection of the relevant books amongst the USPG library holdings in Rhodes House stack and in the Book Storage, Swindon. But to work effectively on the Swindon stuff was not possible because of the Request holding limit. You can only order 10 books with each delivery from Swindon. The Bodleian van arrives two times a day in the morning and the afternoon in VHL (Vere Harmsworth Library) the building where my office was located. 2 Every day the traffic played a role and delayed often the arrival times of the van. So I was always ready with the ten books, when the new 10 books were arriving at my desk in the afternoon. To fill the work gaps I catalogued another pamphlet box till the next delivery service arrived. It was important for this selection of books in difference to the pamphlets we keep that we keep the book when we don t have it already. A different date of publication was a reason to keep the book as well when we have it already with another publication date. HdM 2008; Projektbericht zum Projekt im IPS, Seite 5 von 13
Furthermore it was not easy or even possible to find the non- relevant old books in the antiquarian or secondhand bookshops. Especially if the items are older than 112 years then they were nowhere in the book trade sector noted or available. Sometimes Amazon find the book but without price because it is a print on demand offering. So I have had big boxes with books and pamphlets which I found no price for. Other boxes contained the books which are less valuable than 20 and others the books more valuable than 20. In the end of November the problem was perfect I have encircled my own working place with many boxes, so I asked Lucy for advice. At first I ve sent the list with all the discarded books 20 at most valuable and the catalogued books to Catherine Wakeling to check the books. A short time later I knew that she wanted to keep some books of the discarded ones and so I searched for these books and catalogued them. Afterwards I ve carried all the boxes numbered and with content lists to Rhodes House stack. 3 There was no unobstructed space in the stack but with the help of Tony an archive worker I managed it to stow the boxes in the overcrowded stack. A librarian from Uganda was interested in some of the non-relevant USPG books. Thank goodness that the boxes in the stack are numbered and the box number of the different books was documented so it was easy to find them. Only the search for the boxes was sometimes difficult by a shortage of space has someone buried some boxes under rubbish. To find it was a real challenge. The biggest thing was when on a Monday my computer didn t accept my login data. The call with the helpdesk wasn t expedient. So a librarian from VHL with the same problem informed the IT administrator for our department. Then at twelve o clock in the afternoon the error was fixed. In very few instances when I was cataloguing multilevel descriptions there was no way to index them appropriately because missing permissions. The head of the project advised me to keyboard the data of the item like cataloguing a monograph. 2.2 Project flow chart I have had no time permitted deadlines. Well, I felt free in working with all the stuff as well as possible. From time to time I get positive feedback and I was in constant consultation with Lucy, my line manager and Gemma, the alternate head of the project. In this way I was taught over and over that my work is going in the right direction. In one of these conversations said Lucy that she s glad that I work with the pamphlets and that I m the first intern who dares to sort out and catalogue them. Even though the responsible persons haven t given temporal deadlines I talked from time to time about my temporal plans.i did this to see if the project meets the temporal ideas of Lucy and Gemma. But even here, was signalled to me that I should set my own targets. I worked through HdM 2008; Projektbericht zum Projekt im IPS, Seite 6 von 13
more publications than I want. My aim was to reach the goal of 1000 catalogued books, now it has already been exceeded. A big time took proscribed books and the countless and numbered series It made me very frustrated when all pamphlets of one series are located in different boxes because there are shelves full with boxes and it is too much effort to look for one certain pamphlet series in every box. That I started one day with labelling was like all in this library because of a lack of space. So Lucy told Rose an archive staff member to show me how I have to label the USPG books. Then it took in fact half a day to label all catalogued books which returned from my office to Rhodes House stack. Lucy was proud to hear that I ve recently labelled my first books in RHL. In January 2013 was Lucy briefing me on to prepare the boxes in the stack for the transfer to Abingdon. To leave not a big collection of countless series I ve found in the pamphlet boxes I worked through and brought causes of catalogue optimization and all the things which need a lot of time now in the right order. Update the Pamphlet lists to the new version, cataloguing the collected pamphlet series and sort them to the right archive boxes has taken more time than 2 days one of them completely down in the stack with Tony. HdM 2008; Projektbericht zum Projekt im IPS, Seite 7 von 13
3. Evaluation 3.1 Project progression In the beginning of my project I ve had problems to learn all the stuff my colleagues want to teach or advise me. There was a barrier of language that vanished appreciably after two weeks, in my selected home country for 6 months. Increasingly I got more confidence in cataloguing and language skills to take the responsibility for the project. A conversation with the help desk was necessary on the day I want to create a SSO (single sign on) Account and have no activation code. I got an activation code but not on the usual way. That the activation code the administration office has sent me by internal delivery never arrived was not my mistake. Because I was working with a special collection the administration office have sent the letter in August to the Special Collections Reading Room where they don t know me, so the letter goes from pillar to post and ended up his way at the end of September in the Special Collections Reading Room again. That went too far for the library assistant on duty and she looked my name up on the staff list. She can t find it and asked my in an e-mail where I work. The letter was useless when he was arriving VHL in the beginning of October. The SSO Account was important that I can order myself uncatalogued books from BSF to VHL. To order the books was the easiest thing in my project. But often it causes a problem if something is too easy and so I ordered twice a book to the Social Science Reading Room by mistake. The good thing on this error was that it improved my language skills to talk with Dawn Young the librarian in the Social Science RR who was very patient and friendly to me. In the afternoon the Bodleian van arrived then with a crate includes my book in VHL. Because of the old pamphlets and the subject focused talks in the breaks I learned many new words and copied British ways of life and working as well. Sometimes I get books with languages that use different letters than the European languages f. ex. Sinhalese, Telugu, Punjabi, Urdu, Ainu etc. in the beginning Gemma catalogued this books for me. Later Lucy decided that I should send the books which use Arabic, Chinese or other strange letters uncatalogued back to Swindon and put the title in a new Excel file. 4 She said we ll order the books in the end of the whole project and then professors who teach these languages should catalogue these books. They never talked about a transliteration Miss Wiesenmüller introduced to her students including me in the second semester at Media University, Stuttgart. To catalogue relevant USPG books was not very difficult because I ve only to create ΜINIMUM LEVEL RECORDS but I tried to key in all formal information the book offers on the title page. Sometimes the field General note was the only possibility to add useful search options. HdM 2008; Projektbericht zum Projekt im IPS, Seite 8 von 13
3.2 Achieving objectives I achieved the aim to create a collection about the USPG including pamphlets and books. The collection didn t end with my work but more than 1000 new USPG relevant books are now available through my work. I have worked through as many books as possible and the collection is used by some interested library users what shows that it is very important to do stock exploitation of the USPG holdings. The non-relevant books are now free for disposal but who is allowed to buy them or what happens to them Catherine has to decide. Space in the shelves emerged for sure because I ve more books and pamphlets discarded than I ve catalogued. Many books and pamphlets are not catalogued yet. They wait for the next intern. Lucy said something about an American trainee who will come soon. I have reached my goals which were set in the beginning. My own objectives were to catalogue more than thousand books in the period of time which I ve achieved with an amount of 1100 books just now. Besides it was in my mind to bring all pamphlets of one series together. I have stated the work with these complicated documents now and have merged all pamphlets of a series I ve found and hope the next will continue in this way. So I caught also my own ideas of success. HdM 2008; Projektbericht zum Projekt im IPS, Seite 9 von 13
4. Results Many pamphlets and books which belongs to the USPG collection are now catalogued and the library users can search the books in the library system OLIS with the search engine Solo (Search Oxford libraries online). As well they can look up available media on a printed hand list in the RHORR (Rhodes House Reading Room). Everyone with a valid library passport can order some of the USPG books from the stack or BSF to the RHORR to perceive them there. The collection includes 1610 items. The disposal price of the most discarded books is estimated and librarians from Kenya and Uganda have already bought some of the books. The others go now to Abingdon till Catherine let us know what she wants to do with them. Many pamphlet series were scattered over many different boxes now they re all together in the same box with the same shelf mark. I m sure that will facilitate the traceability significant. HdM 2008; Projektbericht zum Projekt im IPS, Seite 10 von 13
5. Prospects The USPG collection is only usable in RHL it is not possible to order the books to other Reading Rooms of the Bodleian Library. In the next months another trainee is going to join the project from America. For the continuance of the project is Lucy McCann is responsible. In 2014 all the little libraries which are now located in different places across Oxford are moving in the Weston Library (WL) on the cross Parks Road, Broad Street. It is planned that all the USPG holdings will be situated in the reading room as open-access shelves. Then is the collection held there for members of the University of Oxford only. After the closure of RHO in August 2014 the public will have access to the Weston Library in March 2015. This is the deadline for book movings from the old library locations to the WL as well. HdM 2008; Projektbericht zum Projekt im IPS, Seite 11 von 13
Appendices List of USPG Publications HdM 2008; Projektbericht zum Projekt im IPS, Seite 12 von 13
List of discarded valuable books HdM 2008; Projektbericht zum Projekt im IPS, Seite 13 von 13