Don’t Stop! Your Reading! Hold on to that Fielding!

If there is no ebook, or an electronic copy would present a difficulty to the student, the easiest thing to do is to order a physical copy directly to the student and keep meticulous records of what is where. So far we have ordered over 130 books to go to students across the world. Where there are no electronic copies, or the student’s internet or devices are unreliable, this is by far the best option and means that we will have a copy in the library going forward. There are a surprising number of these books that we probably would have bought this term anyway.

On the odd occasion (and within copyright!), we have scanned articles and sections of books either from our own collections or that have been ordered to us (I take no credit for that; that was James). Essentially, we look at each situation individually and decide how best to help. The Conference of College Libraries maillist is extremely active at the moment, with college librarians in various situations with different staffing and service levels. It has been really useful to hear what others are doing and more than one of our own logistical problems has been solved by another college librarian. We are trying to maintain as normal a service as possible for a library with no accessible books, so do get in contact if you need anything!

For those of you who are still teaching and learning this Trinity Term, we are offering a reading list checking service. We have received a number of reading lists which are being used this term and are busy going through them, adding links to online resources and flagging where there could be problems accessing resources. We find it’s always useful to know if you need something tricky a few weeks before you actually need it rather than submitting to the all-consuming panic of having 12 hours to find a copy of an out-of-print, hard copy only book!

Outside of the immediate resource provision, we have a number of exciting projects to work on, including remote sessions for schools, preparing for our new graduate trainee in September, and running a remote book club. Most relevant to the college community is the book club. The COVID-19 pandemic means that most of our staff and students are working from home and are unable to take part in normal college activities or even say hello to each other on college ground so this is a good excuse to talk to some members of college and share opinions.

It was important to us that the members had a choice in which book was selected for reading so we have a poll each time we change book. In the current situation, we decided that the book should be out of copyright and freely available online in as many forms as we could reasonably find so that as many people as possible could join in. No book ordering or purchasing necessary! The other slightly subjective restrictions we had were ‘not too miserable’ (goodbye Brontës) and ‘not too long’ (so nothing Russian on both counts). We have so far read a few of the stories in Katherine Mansfield’s ‘The Garden Party’ and have moved on to Jane Austen’s ‘Persuasion’ at a rate of 10 or so chapters per week. Anyone is welcome to join in! In addition to the librarians, we have had lecturers, professors, members of non-academic staff, students, as well as people who just wish to listen in rather than take part. Please do let us know if you’d like the link. We meet for about 25 minutes, usually on a Thursday. Join in at any point, in any week, and turn up when you can.

Have a lovely start to the weirdest Trinity Term most of us can remember and we’re here to help if you need anything. Just ask!