Reviews

Oxford Dictionary of Journalism

Tony Harcup.

(Oxford University Press, 2014

The only problem about the late Nick Tomalin’s 1969 assertion that rat-like cunning was one of only three qualities requisite of a good journalist – the others were a plausible manner and a little literary ability – is that it’s pretty damaging to the reputation and standing of the average rat. The RSPCA will probably mount a campaign. Rats get a bad press – ask James Cagney, who in any case was misquoted – though enquiring minds might wonder what’s so particularly cunning about the little blighters, anyway.

Tomalin’s job description appears, under R, in the Oxford Dictionary of Journalism. The rat-like cunning quote, it says, is “particularly beloved of old-school journalists who dismiss the value of journalism education and reject the idea that journalistic skills can be taught.” The notion of hackademics (qv) is seldom absent for long from Tony Harcup’s timely addition to the Oxford’s ostrich-egg oeuvre. He is, after all, a senior lecturer in journalism.

So, hot metal staples like death knock, doorstepping and, yes, Street of Shame, sit a little uncomfortably alongside latter-day concepts like technological determinism, cultural imperialism and reflective practice – all of which, apparently, are now taught to aspiring journalists. It’s unclear if they’re taught how to write and, if they are, how high the success rate is…

Harcup manifestly knows his subject. If not quite allowed by his editors to express an opinion – inconceivable in more traditional dictionaries – then frequently he hints at one. The style’s effective.

Those of us from the Dotheboys Hall school of journalism, raggy trousered practitioners from a two-up, two-down in the Street of Shame – and with an outside netty down the yard – might find his road map of a rapidly changing world especially useful. Churnalism, we learn, is the practice in battery hen newsrooms of simply recycling what arrives electronically at one end and is sexlessly re-laid at the other. Bigfooting is what happens when a star name is allowed out to cover a major story on another guy’s territory. Astroturfing – nice one this – is the false representation of grass roots support for a campaign or idea.

The dictionary also notes that the cuttings library was known as “the morgue”. Such places now rest, their sepulchred treasures seldom disturbed by the technologically literate.

Among all the reflective imperialism (or whatever) it’s comforting also to find room for the much-traduced apostrophe – and here he clearly speaks from exasperated experience. “An important punctuation mark, the misuse of which is common among those training to be journalists.”

Wisely, incidentally, none of the big footers is identified. It is a dictionary of terms, not of individuals. No names, no rat pack drill.

Unlike other Oxford dictionaries, the paperback may not be a doorstop but it is certainly a mile post. Journalism has travelled far since Nick Tomalin’s observations in the Sunday Times. Whether it has changed for the better must be left to those adept at reading between the lines. Tomalin was killed in 1973, while covering the Arab-Israeli war.

(Mike Amos MBE, The Northern Echo)

Mike Amos started his journalistic career on the Northern Despatch before moving to, and staying with, The Northern Echo until his recent retirement. He was awarded an MBE in 2007 for his services to journalism in the North East. Mike continues to write for The Northern Echo in a freelance capacity.

 

Search: Theory and practice in journalism online

Murray Dick

Palgrave Macmillan, 2013

9780230301894

Dick Murray’s book explores the theory and ethics of searching while also including practical guidance on using different tools and approaches for the twenty-first century journalist. The text is ideal reference material for students and journalists.

Journalism in the digital age is explored against the topical issue of ethics. Information overload is also identified as a key challenge facing journalists today and other problems include lack of time and as a result reliance on popular search engines such as Google which raises concerns over personalised results, censorship and commercial interests.

The first chapter provides an introduction to searching theory with practical tips that are ideal for students. In the second chapter Murray includes real life examples when discussing metasearch engines and semantic, virtual, social and mobile searches. Readers can keep updated on developments through a list of websites, including Phil Bradley’s Weblog. The invisible web, the material that a general search is unable to retrieve, is the focus of the third chapter and contains advice on how to use subject directory portals, directories, industry vortals and gateway services where specialists can help with research.

Murray charts the effect of social media upon journalists’ relationships with sources. Chapter four cites social online tools that offer a means for sourcing opinion, expertise and first-hand experiences while also considering the issue of privacy. The theme is continued in the following chapter which explains how journalists can use social networks, including Facebook and Twitter, to make contacts and source news.

Chapter six provides practical tips on finding and using multimedia, while also examining the legal and ethical aspects, including intellectual property rights and contempt laws. The seventh chapter discusses the ‘beat’, the routine the journalist follows each day making contact with organisations in search of news. He explores ‘verticals’ including Google News, Digg and reddit. Verifying online sources and advice on how a journalist can identify a hoax, concludes the book. Search: Theory and practice in journalism online is a comprehensive reference source that is ideal for journalism students and experienced journalists who wish to develop their digital skills. (Lynsey Blandford, LSE)

 

The 21^st century journalism handbook: essential skills for the modern journalist

Tim Holmes, Sara Hadwin and Glyn Mottershed

Pearson, 2013

9781405846325

The 21^st century journalism handbook is primarily an introduction for students training in newspapers, magazine and online reporting. It has a colourful and magazine-styled layout that creates an engaging and modular textbook. The work covers the core principles and practices for today’s journalist and incorporates theory with case studies and practical exercises to help readers learn and develop skills. It is written by experienced journalists and teachers of journalism which is evident through the style of the textbook. There are key points summarised at the end of each chapter and a companion media and journalism website with links and resources. The structure of the book is suited to students dipping into sections to quickly retrieve facts.

The book begins with an exploration of the development of print media, including an overview of legal frameworks and current challenges. Research skills, interview techniques and an introduction to social media and data journalism form the second chapter. The writers offer practical and personal advice by sharing experiences of disastrous interviews. The section on news writing, which opens with a case study of a high profile murder, guides the student through the methods of writing a clear story. Feature writing is also explored in terms of how to find ideas, research and develop them into an engaging piece.

The writers widen their perspective and explain the processes involved in organising production on a modern publication. They identify important skills for the future, including web management, and video, audio and social media skills. The role of the sub-editor and the different demands of print and online offer an interesting insight into another role within the profession. Specialist journalists in diverse fields ranging from business to the arts are also covered. The subject of convergence, the coming together of different media platforms, is examined in terms of how the journalist must now use traditional print skills and be prepared to experiment with new technology. The textbook also provides useful bite-sized guidance on law, regulation and ethics, in particular Freedom of Expression and the Human Rights Act. The final chapter on career development will benefit students with advice on work experience and training, and those near graduation who will be interested in the section on job hunting, CVs and interviews. Building a reputation and creating your own business concludes the textbook, which provides a frank yet inspiring introduction to journalism. (Lynsey Blandford, LSE)

 

Illustrating Shakespeare

Peter Whitfield

The British Library, 2013

9780712358897

In recent times we have been taught that Shakespeare’s texts can only be fully experienced through performance. Peter Whitfield’s book disproves this assumption and collects together a range of illustrations by great artists of the last four hundred years that have been inspired by watching and reading Shakespeare’s plays. Reading through the book is comparable to walking through an exhibition that charts the history of Shakespearean iconography. It is an informative and stimulating reference work that provides an academic perspective on the tradition of illustrations.

Whitfield’s selection of images provides a comprehensive overview of the different eras and artists’ styles. He uses these different artists, eras and editions of the plays as sources for essays exploring aspects of the illustrations of Shakespeare’s plays. The format of the book is useful for students and academics as it offers an insight into how different periods interpreted Shakespeare. There is a large section on the Victorian vogue for Shakespearean art, particularly the paintings of Millais and other Pre-Raphaelites as well as the more mainstream traditions. The chapter on Blake and Fuseli’s art and its exploration of the play text also inspires readers to search beyond the book for other examples of their work.

It is a hardback book with generous yet carefully selected full colour illustrations. The writing tone is from the perspective of an art critic, which by necessity leaves other viewpoints unexplored such as how the image and text interplay. The images are also important artefacts that give us an insight into the performances of the time. Peter Whitfield’s book Illustrated Shakespeare gathers together illustrations which individually and collectively reveal the vitality of the dramatic experience of reading and watching Shakespearean performance. It is a significant reference book for art and theatre historians, as well as literary researchers and those performing or producing Shakespeare’s plays.  (Lynsey Blandford, LSE)

 

1940s Fashion: the definitive sourcebook

Emmanuelle Dirix and Charlotte Fiell

Carlton Publishing Group, 2013

9781847960467

A comprehensive visual guide that fully lives up to its title as the definitive sourcebook. With an extensive range of Illustrations and previously unpublished photographs, the work also features the designers and fashion houses that shaped the style of the period. The 1940s’ wartime utility style is as equally represented as post-war glamour, all of which are worn by models and Hollywood stars of the time such as Joan Fontaine. The book provides a cultural overview of the time including the taste for fur and the use of textiles such as Dupont rayon.

Images are accompanied by annotations concerning designers, date, season, fabric and style. The introduction explores fashions by nationality including “make do and mend” in Great Britain and the French occupation fashions of Spring 1940. The photographs and designers’ drawings are arranged within the categories of daywear, outerwear, eveningwear and accessories such as handbags, hats and shoes, which in turn are organised by season. The book is not just a documentation of the glamour or elite fashions that many popular works focus on, it also includes promotional images of patterns for outfits that were on sale to the general public.

The photographs of models, debutantes and actresses wearing the fashions are complemented by illustrations that were used to promote the designs. The patterns for sale reflect how fashions reached women who could not afford the couture designs and instead made their own versions. The selection of sources would be particularly interesting to fashion students or historic costume designers wishing to ‘unpick’ the designs so that they can recreate authentic shapes. The book is an essential reference source for exploring the styles, textiles and culture of the 1940s fashion scene. (Lynsey Blandford, LSE)

 

Public Sector Information in the Digital Age

Steven Hartshorne, SCOOP

The May meeting of SCOOP saw the delivery and discussion of two presentations of considerable interest to librarians in the information sector. The first, unfortunately not given in person but presented to SCOOP as a Power Point slideshow, was by Aniela Kaczmarczyk of the Tinder Foundation. The subject was the Society of Chief Librarians’ (SCL) Public Libraries Universal Information Offer (PLUIO), for which the Tinder Foundation has been commissioned to create a workforce development programme. Key to the SCL’s offer is the role of public libraries in the government’s Digital By Default agenda, particularly where the programme of welfare reform and the move to increase online interactions with government departments has put pressure on already stretched services.

The statement issued by the SCL makes the case thus:

“The PLUIO seeks to position public libraries so that they are seen as one of the natural places to offer support to citizens accessing government information and services, and so result in the commissioning of public libraries by Government.” The statement’s final phrase is somewhat ambiguous. It could either mean there may be a will to build new public libraries, or (sadly more likely) an intention to give public libraries more work to do which was formerly performed by other elements of the public sector. The brief that Tinder was given looked to address a number of primary concerns: The Tinder project sought to address the following concerns:

• A need to increase staff awareness of the content and scope of government websites.
• The need for increased skills in the area of referral and signposting.
• Training in the awareness and use of local websites and information sources.
• The need to address the needs of particular user groups and the complexity of their needs.
• Increasing awareness of the shifting context of information, services and the development of electronic transactions.
• Resolve anxieties about time, confidentiality and responsibility.

The outcomes of the training programme are that staff delivering the offer:

• Are confident and enthused about their role as a digital champion in a public library.
• Can demonstrate their knowledge of online government and information services.
• Recognise the importance of their role in future policy.
• Can identify and recommend appropriate steps for their customers.

The staff training, composed of five modules, will be delivered via a combination of face to face sessions and an e-learning package, with a network of regional representatives to mentor trainers who will cascade the learning packages to the workforce. The content of the modules did cause some concern, as a central element of libraries’ ability to deliver this offer, training in how to deliver digital skills, is included as an optional module.

The consensus was that any attention given to staff training in the areas of welfare reform and Digital By Default was welcome, but nevertheless, a number of issues were raised:

• Staffing did not seem to be addressed anywhere in the planned programme. Since many library authorities have lost staff trained in information and reference roles, it would be difficult to see how this offer could be provided within existing staffing levels. The same could be said for releasing staff from frontline duties to undertake the training in the first instance.
• Although the details of the training have yet to be finalised, it was felt that the necessity of accessibility requirements to be factored into the training of staff and the delivery of the programme needed to be acknowledged.
• Confidentiality was alluded to in the consultation, but there are considerable problems around the use of volunteers in handling confidential information.
• There is potential for public libraries to work with specialists in other sectors that don’t seem to be included in the programme.
• The members of the committee who work in public library organisations commented that much work had already been done in this area by individual libraries and there was some concern that this had not been taken into account by Tinder.

A final point made during the discussion was perhaps the most pertinent one: since this activity in the library sector is in order to enable the public to access government services and comes as a direct result of government policy changes, surely there is a clear case for the government to fund it?

The second presentation was given by Graham Francis, an Associate Product Manager with the Government Digital Service (GDS) with responsibility for the Gov.UK website. Graham explained that the team with which he works essentially decide what tasks the Gov.UK site should do and what the interface should look like. The driving force of the development of Gov.UK was Martha Lane Fox’s report Directgov 2010 and beyond: revolution not evolution and her subsequent work on rationalising government web sites. The underlying principle of the site is that users shouldn’t have to understand how government works in order to get what they need. The site has been “built around the needs of users” and the site’s structure is designed around the transactions that members of the public have with government departments and agencies. It was at this point that some members of the committee raised the point that the needs of users in the official publications (OP) community didn’t seem to have been addressed particularly well.

For example, when searching for specific publications, some metadata (for works such as HC and Command Papers) does not appear in the initial search results, which can make locating the specific documents problematic. The site also uses the term ‘Policy Paper’ to cover a range of document types, which again isn’t helpful.

Certainly specialist browsing is not well catered for on the site although the improvement of this is a project priority. One problem is the potentially unhelpful terminology (what is the difference between ‘Publication type’ and ‘Official document status’?) There also seems to be no indication of other sources of OP material, such as the National Archives and Parliament.

Another issue some users had with the site is that currently the datasets provided on the site are not available in open data formats, although Graham assured the committee that work was ongoing to address the situation.

The final slide of the presentation described the Government Service Design Manual which is a key element in the government’s Digital By Default strategy and will no doubt influence the format of official publications in the future.

Graham assured us that GDS encourages feedback, although some members of SCOOP had noted that it was not always acknowledged or acted upon.

The content of both presentations generated a great deal of discussion, both during the meeting and in subsequent correspondence. It is clear that the issues raised by both projects will impact the way in which the public and workers in the information sector access official publications in the short and long term. The emphasis on transactions and services rather than access to and retrieval of information does present a number of challenges to users. This would suggest that the necessity of trained information professionals to mediate for them is not going to go away in the age of Digital By Default.

Request for information

Please find below a request for information on behalf of Sharron Wilson, the Serials Librarian at the Advocates Library in Edinburgh.

“The Advocates Library obtains bound volumes of legislation via Legal Deposit. We are very aware at present that there are major delays in the production of UK Statutory Instrument and Scottish Statutory Instrument volumes – mainly due to budgetary constraints. These were last produced for 2009 and 2008 respectively. We are having to cope with a huge number of archive boxes of all of the loose parts. I am trying to establish if I anyone else in a similar position? If you obtain the bound volumes of UK or Scottish SIs can you please contact me directly?

With thanks in advance.”

Sharron’s contact details are:

Sharron Wilson, Serials Librarian,

Advocates Library, 11 Parliament House, Parliament Square,

Edinburgh, EH1 1RF.Tel: 0131 260 5617

Email: sharron.wilson@advocates.org.uk

Journalism: the Other Information Profession

DHelen Edwards: Editor Refer

Like librarianship journalism is concerned with finding and communicating information on things that matter to people.   Social media is having a huge impact on how news is created and reported. For librarians working in information services looking at how journalists approach social media can offer an interesting alternative perspective.

Inspired by the free course Community Journalism from the University of Cardiff offered on the MOOC platform Futurelearn https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/community-journalism/ this is a short introductory overview of a journalist’s perspective on social media. It also draws from the BBC Academy of Journalism which has a section devoted to social media skills http://www.bbc.co.uk/academy/journalism/skills/social-media and the work of journalist and media tutor Susan Grossman.http://www.susangrossman.co.uk

Finding Stories

Speaking in March 2014 Sunday Times journalist Eleanor Mills describes how Twitter has transformed the news. Twitter is now the first source many journalists look at for breaking news, so much so that if a story only appears on the newswires it has the chance of being missed. Mills believes it is the brevity and immediacy of Twitter which gives it its huge power and the fact that it is in the public space and that, in many ways, “Twitter curates how we see the world”  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFUAMfVsnt0

Twitter monitoring tools such as Netvibes, Tweetdeck, Hootsuite, Trendsmap, Twitterfall are recommended to keep track of multiple alerts by helping to sort and search through tweets, tweeters and hashtags on a breaking story. Tools such as Storify http://www.storify.com go a step further. They help users to curate stories on a topic from multiple social media platforms, build a context and provide a narrative.

Finding people

Journalists are very focused on people: finding experts, witnesses and people impacted by news events. Journalism tutor Susan Grossman presents a pyramid structure for researching people. At the top are professional bodies and trade associations who can help identify experts who can then be contacted to provide quotes. Tools like Followerwonk and SocialMention can be used to identify people who comment on specific subjects. Professional tools like InkyBee (free trials available) take this even further by helping to track bloggers and influencers by criteria such as size of audience, level of engagement, frequency and recency of posts and numbers of followers on Twitter and Facebook. Free web tools like Who.is PIPL WebMii are useful for checking people out, to collate their web presence and get a broader view of their expertise. Advanced Search features on Twitter can help identify people in a particular location and Facebook Graphs can be used to find people who have moved from one area to another – all useful for getting local opinion on news events.

Using data

The Open Data Initiative means that official data is increasingly available to the public over the web. Data.gov.uk is now the portal to over 9000 government datasets. This notion of transparency lies in the belief that if the public are aware of how much government is spending, how well it is meeting its targets in areas such as health and education or transport, then it will drive public service reform. It opens the door to an army of armchair auditors who can scrutinize how government actions affect them down to the level of their street. There is also the belief that open data will increase innovation and encourage new businesses to be created using the data. Britain is not alone in its championship of open data. In 2013 the G8 signed the Open Data Charter https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/open-data-charter which set out the 5 principles for access to and release and re-use of data.

Open data provides many new opportunities for journalists and even a new speciality -data journalism. Journalists use data to research their community, create niche blogs and stories and use data to illustrate key points. It makes it possible to add a local dimension to national stories – see Damian Radcliffe 5 Ways Hyperlocal Sites can do more with Data

http://www.journalism.co.uk/news/5-ways-hyperlocal-sites-can-do-more-with-data/s2/a555893/

Verification

The use of social media has brought new issues of verification and authenticity. The revolution in Iran was one of the first newsevents that relied heavily on Twitter reports. Some of these turned out not in fact to be accurate. Journalist Alex Murray speaking on the BBC Academy of Journalism site believes verification is now an important part of every day journalism. He describes his own experience of how images submitted, supposedly of the Concordia before it sank in 2012, were really of another ship in New Zealand in 2008.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/academy/journalism/skills/socialmedia/article/art20130702112133524

Metadata can be useful for checking the authenticity of images. Tools such as TinEye http://www.tineye.com enable a reverse image search to find out where an image actually came from, how it is being used and if there is a modified version of it. The BBC Academy of Journalism recommends using Google Streetview to check out photographs of places by matching landmarks – monuments, street names – and checking weather reports to ensure they correspond to the date in question.

While librarians may not be making the decision as to whether to use images and video in news reports these examples are vivid illustrations of authenticity issues that apply also to other types of research.

 

 

Services for Journalism and Creative Writing Students at City University Library

Alexandra Asman, City University 

In my role as the Subject Librarian for Arts at City University, London I support the departments of Journalism and Creative Writing, acting as the first point of library contact for the school which also includes Music, Translation, Publishing and Cultural Policy. I liaise with the departments to actively engage staff and students with the library service and the collection, working with academics to select resources and build up high quality collections and providing information literacy training and research support services to its staff and students.

Journalism is the largest of the departments I support with over 190 undergraduate students studying for a BA (Hons) Journalism and 250 postgraduates studying a range of courses such as Financial, Newspaper, Magazine and Investigative Journalism.

Along with the basics of searching databases and accessing online journals, the skills required for searching newspaper databases and AV resources are all delivered in information literacy training in the first semester of year one for undergraduate journalists. After that we have traditionally offered 1:1 training sessions and reference services for those who need support further down the line. The most requested training sessions tend to be on searching Nexis UK to find specific news items or country information.

The most popular reference resources for undergraduate journalists are the newspaper databases, Nexis UK, Factiva and Press Display which provide student with access to over 20,000 international news sources. In their 3rd year students are also asked to analyse newspaper content in its original print format and this is where our subscription to the digital archive of the Daily Mail and The Times comes in useful. As there is a broadcast element to the degree, the TV recording and media archive service, Box of Broadcasts, is a popular resource for academics and students alike. Academics can create playlists of clips of radio or TV programmes to align with their weekly lectures and students can record and store news reports or documentaries to analyse in their assignments. This resource has especially taken off in the modules looking at conflict reporting and environmental journalism and in recent weeks I have supported students in finding European news coverage of the crisis in Syria and of the 2013 UK flooding for their dissertations and final projects.

Postgraduate journalism students come from a range of different academic backgrounds, perhaps relating to the specialism they have decided to study. They may not have studied journalism before and their library support needs are therefore more varied than at undergraduate level. Training sessions for postgraduates take place in the first semester of their programme. After a general introduction their sessions quickly become much more focused than those given to undergraduates and are concentrated on the specialism of the MA. For instance students on the MA Science Journalism are taught to use Web of Science and Financial Journalism students are introduced to the financial resources available at City such as Bloomberg and IKON. Examples of complex postgraduate research enquiries include a student asking for help to find statistical immigration information on Sri Lankan refugees who came to the UK, Germany and Denmark between the years 1983-1988 for which we searched OECD iLibrary and an investigative journalism student researching the coverage in the British broadsheet press of the troubles in the Democratic Republic of Congo during the 1970s and 80s.

Unlike Journalism, the Creative Writing department specialises only in postgraduate master’s courses covering literary novels, crime novels, narrative non-fiction and play and screenwriting. All of the programs demand the completion of a full-length play, novel, screenplay or non-fiction book meaning the range of resources and the type of help they require will vary immensely depending on the individual. During the first term the students will be familiarised with searching databases such as Academic Search Complete, Art Full Text, and JSTOR and introduced to Box of Broadcasts, Drama Online and Nexis UK. However, as the outlines for their final projects advance, particularly where they are research related, they are encouraged to book a 1:1 training session or contact me via email to explore further the resources we have that can support their development. The emphasis their programmes put on using information resources in a creative and imaginative manner, and using research materials in an analytical and informed way, makes this kind of close engagement a very rewarding part of my role.

Whatever programme students are following, and whatever their level, my aim is to help them to become independent learners able to use resources open to them confidently and effectively

Teaching Information Literacy in an Arts University

Ian Badger, University for the Creative Arts at Canterbury

I have a humanities background and while working at an arts university I have learnt and developed knowledge of the subjects I support. This worried me when I first started at the University for the Creative Arts (UCA), but I soon became familiar with art resources and I have picked up knowledge through answering queries and running information literacy workshops.

When I started at UCA it was difficult to obtain information from the courses. I had to pester academics for reading lists and generally only saw the assessments for units where I would be delivering workshops. All this has changed since the increase in use of the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) at UCA. I have access to the units and courses for every subject I support, which means I can access all of the information provided by the academics for students. Information found on the VLE includes unit briefs, course handbooks, lecture slides, hand-outs and timetables. The VLE has proven to be vital in understanding the courses and with it the needs of the students. Using this information effectively, I can be proactive in offering support for units where students will need to carry out research. I can also pass information onto the Collections and Discovery team who purchase physical and electronic stock to ensure that we have the correct resources to support the course.

Using information gathered from the VLE, I have been able to deliver focused information literacy sessions. The majority of the sessions I deliver support students when they are undertaking written assessments, such as essays and dissertations. In order to make the sessions relevant, I develop the activities so that they can be used in their assessments. By completing a Preparing to Teach in the Lifelong Learning Sector course I learnt that if activities are linked to assessments students will be more motivated to complete them. During a workshop with 1^st year Architecture students, they were asked to find three articles relevant to their essay question. I asked the students to send their bibliographies to me, so that I could collate the bibliographies and upload them onto the VLE. The students could see the value in this as by completing the task they would be helping to create a larger bibliography which they could then view to find material relevant to their assignment.

I am also involved in delivering workshops to support the practical units, where assessment is not a written assignment and students tend to use information in a more creative way. To support Interior Architecture and Design students who were experiencing difficulties with writing up their design projects, I ran a session with the Learning Development Tutor, who covers academic writing and study skills, on how architecture articles are written in journals. The students were shown how to locate articles on architecture projects and then asked to evaluate some text. The session ended with the students creating a piece of text describing the library, they then took photos to illustrate their writing. We also ran a session for Extended Diploma students who were creating animations for UNESCO’s International “Arts for Peace” Festival, which required them to research the meaning of the key theme words of their animations in Oxford Reference Premium.

I am based in the University Library at Canterbury UCA and I am part of the Learning Enhancement & Support Team. The team is formed of a Learning & Teaching Librarian, a Learning Development Tutor who is responsible for language and study skills, a Careers & Employability Advisor, Dyslexia Advisor and a Learning Support Manager. The aims of the team are to enhance learning, teaching and research, and to develop new approaches to curriculum design and delivery which embrace inclusivity, utilise technology, embed employability and promote academic and information literacy. There are huge benefits to the students at UCA by working so closely with other professionals. In particular by working collaboratively and delivering sessions with the Learning Development Tutor we can offer more comprehensive sessions and support. A recent session we delivered to 1^st year Fine Art students followed the process of creating an essay. We started by showing them a past essay, they then carried out some research to add to the argument in the essay, finally they added citations and bibliography to the essay. By working together we can combine the different aspects of finding, evaluating and using information into one session that reflects the real experience of writing an essay. This puts the skills into context, rather than teaching them separately and leaving it to the students to fill in the gaps.

At UCA we subscribe to over fifty online resources as subject area of the arts has numerous resources which are essential for students. Many are general and can be used by students on most courses at UCA, such as Art Full Text and Oxford Art Online. Specific subjects, for example architecture will have key resources such as the RIBA Catalogue and the Construction Information Service, which are essential to their subject but are not relevant to other students. The scope of student essays can be a particular challenge to librarians. A recent class of Architecture and Interior Architecture and Design students had a choice of three essay questions. Students who chose one question on ‘transient event and actions in cities’ could base their argument on a variety of topics which would affect the resource they would need to use.

Third year students researching their dissertations need assistance to select from a variety of resources. Their dissertations are predominantly art-based but touch on a wide variety of subjects from current affairs, politics, the environment and psychology. The selection of resources is a key issue in my role and the students find it frustrating having to deal with different interfaces and access points. We are currently looking at discovery tool products which will make my role easier as those students confused by the variety of resources and who carry out their research on the Internet will be able to locate and access relevant peer-reviewed sources quickly.

Effective information skills workshops are a huge benefit to students. To make them effective it is important that I keep abreast of what is happening on the courses, this can be done by viewing course announcements, lecture slides and assessments on the VLE. Working with colleagues that are specialists in other areas has been enlightening. Their experience can lead to more effective sessions, as combining specialisms makes learning easier for students as the support they receive is comprehensive. It is essential to continue to develop my skills through gaining qualifications and attending courses, and to keep updated on how workshops are being delivered in other institutions.

 

 

A Haven for the Insatiably Curious: Writers and the London Library

Amanda Stebbings, The London Library

A haven for the insatiably curious, or a treasure-trove of knowledge, the London Library has always been at the heart of cultural and literary life since it was founded by the writer and thinker Thomas Carlyle in 1841. It is difficult not to wander through the bookstacks wondering how many scholarly revelations have been made or fiendish fictional murders plotted within these walls. Today, we count many distinguished writers and journalists as members and the role that the Library’s collections and ever-helpful staff has played in their work can be seen in the frequent acknowledgements we receive:

“The London Library is my favourite place in the whole of London. A unique resource and a wonderful place in which to read and research.” (John O’Farrell)

As an institution the London Library is unique and members each have their own experience of it. For some, it is a calm place to work. Following an extensive refurbishment programme the Library has five designated reading rooms and a range of individual writing spaces fitted into nooks and crannies throughout the building. An informal community of writers has developed at the Library and they relish the opportunity to work amongst their peers.

“Amid the cram of London, this building has been a refuge and a tonic. The Library has also been, on a much more practical level, my office. Granted it’s a communal office, but I work better there than anywhere else. I can’t quite describe the peculiar little skip of joy inside me when I enter the Library’s front door, but I get it every time.” (Nikki Gemmell)

Whilst the main Reading Room is a silent reading area where electronic equipment is not permitted, the use of technology is encouraged throughout the rest of the Library, with wi-fi coverage and free access to a very wide range of electronic resources including JSTOR and the recently added 17^th-18^th Century Burney Collection of Newspapers. The e-library is one of the most rapidly expanding collections, available for members both in the Library and remotely via our website (www.londonlibrary.co.uk).

“I use the Library as a secondary, and occasionally a primary, source for research, and I also love to write there, its atmosphere being perfect for work. It is the only library I know which grants every reader open access to the book shelves, and this is invaluable if you are writing and suddenly need to research something unexpected. It has made the process of writing more enjoyable and less solitary, as I have made new friends there and there is always an opportunity to discuss one’s work with other writers, or just have a good gossip.” (Christopher Simon Sykes)

For other members, it is the depth and breadth of our collections that is the draw. We hold over one million items, 97% on open access and almost all available for loan. Here you can find recently published volumes shelved next to books from the 1730s. Our periodical holdings cover 750 current titles as well as backruns of over 2,000 titles, many of which are now discontinued. The focus of the collection is arts and humanities, and we are especially strong in history, topography, philosophy, biography and religion. There are over fifty languages represented on our shelves, with particular strengths in French, German, Italian, Russian and Spanish literatures.

The Library’s unique classification scheme was created around the collection by Librarian Charles Hagberg Wright (1893-1940, our longest serving Librarian to date). Having despatched the arts and humanities books to their appropriate areas he was left with some 40,000 volumes which formed the wonderfully named Science & Miscellaneous section, and one fortuitous result of this scheme is the element of serendipity that it introduces. There are not many libraries where books on Butterflies sit next to Camels, or Dentistry to Devils, or even Housing next to Human Sacrifice. It is this juxtaposition that can lead writers in different and unexpected directions, creating connections that they had not considered.

One of the Library’s greatest resources is its staff, and our specialist team are not afraid to tackle the tricky enquiry. Recent enquiries have covered the peasant costume of medieval Spain, historical uniforms of the Hungarian army, and the various patterns to be found on larks’ eggs.   It is a service that is greatly appreciated by the members who visit the Library and by those who use our postal service.

“I was researching Vichy France for Charlotte Grey. The only reliable history was by the American historian Robert Paxton…He said that two out-of-print French novels of the late forties had some flavour of the period, but that was all. I was living in France at the time. I faxed the London Library more in hope than in expectation. Both novels arrived by post within the week.” (Sebastian Faulks)

Membership of the Library is open to all, and at less than £40 per month is cheaper than most gym fees.   Here you can exercise your mind and then your body, if you wish, walking the eight floors up to the Members’ Room from the Basement. The Library has introduced a number of initiatives to ease the financial burden, such as reduced fees for young people and the spouses of members, and supported membership through the London Library Trust for those to whom the membership fee would be a barrier to use.

And as for the fiendish fictional murders, maybe someone has beaten me to it…

“How is the Library different from others? Open stacks…but ours are more magical, sinister and beguiling than anyone else’s. I always thought that ‘Murder in the London Library’ would be a promising book – with victims being squished in the rolling shelves of Periodicals, and electrocuted pulling the light cords in Biography, trapped for weeks in Religion or German Literature before anyone noticed – it has great potential.” (Artemis Cooper)

 

An Interview with Children’s Author Caroline Lawrence

Lucy Saint Smith, The Grey Coat Hospital

Caroline Lawrence is the author of 32 historical-fiction books for children, spanning two series: the Roman Mysteries, set in first century Ostia and the P.K. Pinkerton Mysteries, set in the 19^th century American West. Before becoming a full-time writer she studied Classics at Berkeley and Classical Art and Archaeology at Newnham College Cambridge, and worked as a primary school teacher. She is currently the president of the Joint Association for Classical Teachers. Caroline also maintains a highly informative blog, which is itself a great reference site for children. She posts lots of factual information and links about the historical period she writes about, as well as tips on writing for young people.

In describing her research process the author states that she imagines she is “going to a foreign country”. This means she takes a multi-sensory approach, considering what people’s voices sound like, what food and drink was available and what clothes and objects people used. Her preferred material is primary sources, like contemporary fiction, eyewitness accounts and objects: “there is nothing like handling an object from your time period to bring it alive”. She says that she finds herself getting “quite nerdy” about objects, weapons in particular, because being specific and accurate is important to the story.

When asked about how she goes about acquiring this information Caroline describes herself as being “intrinsically lazy…My husband Richard is a member of the London Library. I often send him off on a quest for specific books. Very occasionally I use the Classics Library at UCLbut I use the internet for 95% of my research”.

It is obvious from her blog that she is enthusiastic about promoting good online research and the resources that she has used to inform her work. “Most of my sources for the P.K. Pinkerton books, set in Nevada Territory 1862, come from online newspaper and magazine archives”. She is constantly amazed to discover the “vast wealth” of primary sources that were available online.

In Caroline’s first series of books, The Roman Mysteries, language and the way the characters spoke was not so important to her, “because Latin would have sounded modern to them”. However in her latest series, the P.K. Pinkerton Mysteries, language in particular has been a real focus for her research. “I am much more careful to use authentic vocabulary, word order and slang. In fact, I’ve composed a whole dictionary of authentic and non-authentic words for Nevada Territory in 1862”.

Many of the primary resources she uses she has acquired via the “ever-useful” Internet Archive, including Godey’s Lady’s Book (https://archive.org/details/godeysladysbook1862hale)

and A New Dictionary of Americanisms:

(http://www.archive.org/stream/newdictionaryofa00clapuoft/newdictionaryofa00clapuoft_djvu.txt). “The Internet Archive is an American non-profit organisation that describes itself as building an ‘internet library’.” They catalogue both born digital content (they created the Wayback Machine) and digitised books. It has a vast range of primary sources, particularly for scholars of America in the 18^th, 19^th and early 20^th centuries, but due to the resources coming from a wide variety of sources the classification is somewhat haphazard and not all resources are available in all formats. “I find it to be a fantastic resource for finding research material”.

Caroline has a subscription to the Harper’s Magazine online archive (http://harpers.org/archive/), which she finds particularly useful for the illustrations. She describes Mark Twain’s online archive (http://www.marktwainproject.org/) and Alfred Doten’s journal (ISBN 978-0874170320) as her “go-to reference works”. The Mark Twain archive is “a very well put together website with an easy-to-use search-engine” that enables the user to search through Mark Twain’s letters, works and photographs as well as writings about him by his contemporaries and maps of the parts of the world he lived in. It has a helpful user guide, and each record is accompanied by short biographies of any other individuals mentioned in the writings. Alfred Doten’s journal is not available digitally, but Caroline relies on it for “fascinating glimpses into the daily life in the American West of the second half of the 19^th century” and often quotes from it on her blog.

Caroline rather interestingly adopts an auditory approach to some of her research in order to be better able to use the appropriate language and “to get the speech rhythms right”. As well as listening to period-appropriate audio books, she will often read parts of a resource she is using into her iphone, and then listen to it when she is out and about.

The author maintains that researching for fiction in general, and children’s fiction in particular, is no different from researching for an academic piece. “The difference comes in the writing” she explains, “Any modification or softening of material occurs in the actual writing process”. She doesn’t believe in patronising her readers by removing historical detail they may not understand, however, “I don’t care if people get [the historical details] or not. I know they give a sense of authenticity to my stories! So I use the ones that are relevant to my story.”

One might argue, however that she is not completely accurate with this assessment of her research. Although she frequently posts about her sources on her blog, Caroline’s method of recording her sources is less than rigorous: “I usually just jot down key phrases or sentences on my computer”. Additionally her phenomenological focus on how things looked, how things sounded, is a research goal that is more specific to fiction, or other creative arts. She is not interested in analysis, but in “bringing a world to life”, which by necessity affects the information that she is looking for.

So how do we, as librarians, go about supporting authors like Caroline in her work? Caroline suggests that easily accessible online support, such as the blog she herself has created, would be most helpful. “The internet has a truly amazing range of literature available at the touch of a keyboard” she says. “For a writer of historic fiction, it is important to know how to reach all those archives of primary sources that might be useful”.

Caroline’s blog, “Roman Mysteries & Western Mysteries” is available from: http://flavias.blogspot.co.uk/

 

 

 

 

 

Historical Novelists in Conversation: Helen Dunmore, Stef Penney, Kate Williams and Katy Darby

Historical Novelists in Conversation:

For this issue of Refer about information services for writers and journalists, the Editor asked four historical novelists – Helen Dunmore, Stef Penney, Kate Williams and Katy Darby – about their choice of historic period, their research process and their use of libraries.

Helen Dunmore is anacclaimed bestselling author of eleven novels including The Siege, The Betrayal and The Greatcoat. A Spell in Winter won the inaugural Orange Prize for Fiction. Her new novel The Lie was published in 2014.

What attracts you about the historical period you write about?

I have written about a number of historical periods. The Lie, set around the First World War is the story of the times of my grandparents. In my childhood one had the sense that everyone of that generation was affected somehow – a great uncle gassed. But people didn’t really want to talk about it. Now that speaking voice is gone.

How do you go about doing research?

Research can be a trap. It is enjoyably seductive to go here and go there finding things out. The writer who researches is far easier to be that the writer who writes the first draft. Its best to start writing and mark the text where more research is needed.

Are there any particular libraries or research resources you especially like?

I have used many small special libraries depending on what I am researching – for example collections about gardens and World War 1. It wouldn’t be fair to name any particular library. But I am very grateful to libraries – you can write that!

(Helen Dunmore speaking about her new novel The Lie at the London Book Fair, April 2014)

http://www.helendunmore.com

Stef Penney’s first novel The Tenderness of Wolves won the Costa Book Award in 2006. Although set in Canada in the 1860s Stef Penney did all the research in libraries in London and has never visited Canada.

What attracts you about the historical period you write about?

I don’t feel that I’m writing about any single period, having – so far – set stories in the 1860s, and the 1980s – and am currently working on a story set in the 1890s. But that said, perhaps there is something about late 19^th century that does particularly appeal to me – it’s not that long ago, so it is feasible to give a character a recognizably ‘modern’ mind – as you can see when you read authors of the period, from Tolstoy to George Gissing. And yet cultural mores were that much more restricted, giving characters more problems (or at least different ones) than they would have now. What I particularly enjoy is the challenge of making a female character do something that might have been thought of as impossible for a woman at the time – it’s right on the cusp of feasibility.

How do you go about doing research?  

Research is completely interwoven with writing for me. I start long before I write a word, and never really stop. There’s always another direction or angle to look at. It’s a positive in that I am constantly stimulated and excited by discovering new stuff, and a negative in that the volume of knowledge that you either know (or feel you don’t know but should really find out) can be overwhelming – somehow you have to find a balance between the two.

Are there any particular libraries or research resources you especially like?

For me, the British Library has been a brilliant, essential resource. I love going there, even when I am not researching, for a change of atmosphere – which can be very helpful at times. And I have to acknowledge Wikipedia, which has made the researchers job far, far quicker, and can answer the most esoteric questions.

http://www.stefpenney.co.uk

Kate Williams is a historian, broadcaster and novelist. She has written biographies of Emma Hamilton and Queen Victoria and a novel The Pleasures of Men. Her new novel The Storms of War, first of a trilogy starting in 2014, is published in July 2014.

What attracts you about the historical period you write about?

I’m fascinated by the eighteenth and nineteenth century because its such a time of energy and exploration – and so many women’s voices. Women burst onto the stage – and had a power they’d never had before.

How do you go about doing research?

I like to get all the research done before I start writing – For my current novel, The Storms of War, on a family in World War One, I hit the letters, the diaries and the archives. Letters and diaries are the best way to capture the voice of the period – through them, you hear the voices of the long dead, hear their hopes and dreams – and then you know how to bring them alive. I research as I’m writing as well….

Are there any particular libraries or research resources you especially like?

I love the British Library and for my most recent book I spent a lot if time in the Imperial War Museum – and archives all over the country.

https://sites.google.com/site/kwilliamsauthor/

Katy Darby’s first novel The Whore’s Asylum was published in 2012. Two of her short stories Cries of London were read on BBC Radio 4 in August 2013.

What attracts you about the historical period you write about?

The Victorian period was one of enormous change – social and technological – as well as a rapidly increasing wealth and privilege gap between the richest and the poorest, even as the prosperous middle classes expanded. It was a time of very strict conventions, but also of increasing rights and freedoms, especially towards the close of the nineteenth century. Basically, all human life is here, and so it’s possible to set stories of extremes – forbidden love, desperate murder, violent hatred etc. – in the period without them seeming incredible or ludicrous; it’s much harder to do that in the context of a modern narrative. It’s also a lush and romantic period, visually speaking – the clothes were frankly fabulous, the cabs and trains elegant … and of course the literature (Dickens, Collins, the Brontes, Thackeray etc.) is fantastic.

Finally, it’s incredibly well documented – the Victorians were maniacs for social studies and reports, and there’s a wealth of research resources out there for those who care to look, as well as early photographs, surviving buildings etc.

How do you go about doing research? 

Lots of ways, in no particular order:

I read fiction of the period, contemporary to when my novel’s set. For example, when writing The Whores’ Asylum (set in the 1870s and 1880s) I read a lot of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories. I read modern fiction about the period – eg Sarah Waters’s first three novels. Then I read nonfiction of the period – social studies, essays, lots of contemporaneous newspaper articles available on the excellent and vast archive that is www.victorianlondon.org – things like Bradshaw’s guides to London, to find out details like how much a cab fare was from Euston to the West End – and finally I read modern books and articles about the period. I have a whole bookshelf of this stuff and I read it for pleasure as well as research purposes.

Other things I do are look at photos and pictures of/from the time, visit buildings or places I’m going to use in my story, and look at old maps. I love old maps – I have an enormous wall-sized one of London from 1863 I’m using for the next two books. I got it at the London Transport Museum for about £30 and it was worth every penny. Also, if I need to fact-check something like when a particular music hall was built and can’t find it in my books, I confess I rely on Wikipedia for a quick and easy answer. The main thing is to get on with the story without drowning in information …

Are there any particular libraries or research resources you especially like? Victorianlondon.org, as mentioned above. Lee Jackson, who runs the site, styles it: “The Dictionary of Victorian London – an Illustrated Encyclopaedia of the Great Metropolis”, and that’s exactly what it is. He writes both fiction and nonfiction about the period and has gathered an astonishing wealth of material on there, from old photos to snippets of articles about just about everything from hansom cabs to debutantes’ balls. The best thing is that you can look up articles by subject, e.g. Prisons will get you pieces on Newgate, Holloway, Millbank etc. – sometimes it’s journalistic thinkpieces, or first person reports by visitors to prisons, and sometimes even personal accounts by the prisoners themselves. It’s a black hole of browsing, though – I can spend hours on there.  Shire Books are good sources too – specific, short and full of visual references – period photos, paintings, artefacts etc. I even managed to find one on Victorian & Edwardian Horse Cabs!

http://www.katydarby.com

 

The New Newsroom at the British Library

Stewart Gillies, British Library

The British Library’s Newsroom opened to researchers on Monday 7 April and is the new dedicated Reading Room for researching the Library’s news collections. It is the first new Reading Room to be opened at the Library’s St Pancras site in almost a decade and replaces the old Colindale Newspaper Library which was closed in November last year. For the first time since 1932, it allows researchers to study the news collections alongside books, journals and other collection materials from the British Library’s general reference collection.

The opening of the Newsroom was a key milestone in the Library’s £33 million seven-year Newspaper Programme, designed to ensure the long-term preservation of the UK’s collection of newspapers by building a state of the art store in Boston Spa, Yorkshire and to provide improved reader access to the collection at the Library’s St Pancras and Boston Spa sites.

The name of the new St Pancras reading room was chosen to reflect the Library’s recently developed strategy for turning its world famous printed newspaper service into a world-class news service. The traditional newspaper is now of course only one of the many formats to carry news. The British Library’s news offering is being developed to incorporate the full range of news media – newspapers, news websites, television news, radio news, and other media, through a combination of legal deposit, purchase and voluntary deposit, and capture through copyright exception. The News collections include 60 million newspaper issues (from the 1600s onwards), 25,000 news-based websites (archived since 2013) and over 40,000 television and radio programmes (mostly recorded since 2010). The collection grows by over 2,400 news publications each week – 1,500 newspapers, 500 news websites, 280 television news programmes and 140 news radio programmes.

The Newsroom was designed as a modern research space to facilitate the study of news in all of these formats in one place. One of the most striking features of the Newsroom is the networking area at the front of the Reading Room which provides space for more collaborative working and discussion among news researchers. The networking area builds on the user behaviour and preferences that have been observed in the public areas of the British Library, and on market research the Library has carried out including focus groups with current readers and non-readers. The networking area has different kinds of seating arrangements and many charging points for researchers’ own devices. As it is a public area and a Reader Pass is not required to enter, it also provides an opportunity to show-case and promote the Library’s news collections in all formats to a wider audience. There is a large video wall which currently features live TV news feeds and news websites which we archive and which can also be used to show archived news from our collection, whether in video format, or digitised images from our print collection. There is also a separate projected Twitter feed showing tweets from the news websites that the Library archives so this serves as both a live news feed and a picture of the news being archived by the Library as it is published (we don’t archive Twitter itself, however).

A glass wall separates the networking area from the Reading Room space and allows general visitors to the Library a view into the world of research in British Library Reading Rooms. It is hoped that this view may inspire some of them to become fully fledged British Library Readers.

Researchers wishing to use the main Reading Room will need a current British Library Reader Pass before they can use the Room. In the Reading Room there are 107 reader spaces including 40 multi-media workstations which allow researchers to access the TV & radio news, archived news websites, licensed online content such as a large range of digitised newspapers and the British Library’s catalogues. Each of these multi-media workstations is attached to a digital microfilm scanner which allows the same workstation to be used to view and copy from microfilmed newspapers. One of the most popular features of the Newsroom has proved to be the increased amount of microfilmed newspapers available for immediate access. In Colindale, there was room only for The Times on the open shelves; in the Newsroom in addition, you can find the top 15 most highly requested microfilmed titles including the Guardian, the Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mail, the Sun and the Evening Standard. The remainder of the microfilm collection (some 625,000 reels of microfilm) has been moved to basement storage in the St Pancras building and can be delivered to the Newsroom within 70 minutes.

In addition to the top newspaper microfilms, researchers also have access to a wealth of open access printed material on news media to support their research. This includes newspaper bibliographies; sets of important historic and current press directories such as Mitchell’s Newspaper Press Directory, Benn’s Media Guide and Willing’s Press Guide; published newspaper indexes; and a collection of monographs on news media history and the news media industry.

The vast print newspaper collection is currently being moved from Colindale to the new Newspaper Storage Building in Boston Spa and will become available to order again in autumn 2014. Once available, readers will be able to order print newspapers where there is no digital or microfilm surrogate available. Print items will be delivered to the Newsroom within 48 hours.

The Colindale Newspaper Library had a diverse and loyal group of regular users including academic researchers, journalists, creative writers, family historians, sports historians and newspaper enthusiasts. We very much hope that these researchers will migrate to St Pancras and enjoy using not only the traditional print media collections but also the other formats which are now available alongside them.

Our aim for the Newsroom is not simply to be the place where researchers access these different news forms, but to facilitate the connection between them and allow researchers to study any news collection item in its wider context and achieve new research outputs based on interlinked news media resources.

Above all by bringing access to the news collections into the heart of the British Library’s St Pancras building, we hope to transform and increase awareness of the collections for both current and future generations of users.

Further information on the Newsroom and the British Library News collections can be found at http://www.bl.uk/subjects/news-media
 

 

 

Skivers and Strivers and the “National interest”: Working with Journalists at the Guardian

Richard Nelsson, Guardian News and Media

There was a time when almost every news operation in the land had its own library. From the smallest of regional papers to the great national broadcasters, each would maintain its own information desk within walking – often shouting – distance of the newsroom. These libraries were primarily cuttings collections. Librarians would cut out stories from newspapers then file them away in subject folders according to their organisation’s unique classification system. While labour intensive, if well-managed this system was reasonably good at supplying many of the facts, figures and background information that go into producing news stories. However, with the advent of online newspaper text databases in the 1980s, and the web in the following decade, the need for such vast hard-copy collections diminished. By the late 1990s many news organisations had begun the process of getting rid of their libraries and but a handful remain today.

One of the few that survives is the information unit at Guardian News and Media (GNM), publisher of theguardian.com and the Guardian and Observer newspapers.Based at Kings Place in London, the library, known as Research & Information (R&I), provides a research service for editorial departments: writers, sub-editors, graphics, but increasingly for the commercial side of the business too. Five members of staff – a manager, three research librarians and a trainee – sit amidst editorial teams in a large open plan office. There is also a small library housing mainly books.

Queries come in by email, phone or journalists simply wandering over. The most basic of these is the fact-check which can be on anything from the correct spelling of a name, date of a particular quote (or even finding a quote) to the more exotic such as establishing what types of drug a famous singer used to deal in – important, if nothing else, for legal reasons. Beyond this, there is the digging up of nuggets of information that give colour to, or enhance, stories. Aditya Chakrabortty, senior economics commentator for the Guardian, explains:“Our librarians have gone through the archives to find out if any prime minister in recent history has ever referred to another industry as being ‘in the national interest’, as David Cameron has done with the finance sector (they haven’t). They’ve totted up mentions of ‘skivers’ and ‘strivers’ in the British press and compiled an alternative R-index – an index of times that newspapers have used the word ‘recovery’. All this has been invaluable help to my work and has drawn on the team’s imagination and diligence”

For interviews or in-depth investigations, writers require extensive background searches. Simon Hattenstone, a senior features writer at the Guardian, stresses the need to be fully prepared before going into an interview:“The first place I go whenever I start a piece is the library. It’s indispensible. Lots of people tell me I should be able to do my own research, which I can to an extent – but not to the level, and at the speed, top researchers can. The best researchers not only find stuff for you, they point you towards what’s important in it.”As well as researching material, R&I writes many of the fact-boxes and timelines that go into making up news packages – both online and in the paper. The team has always found statistics and data for graphics but the web versions provide an opportunity for more in-depth work. One such project was an interactive about how political shifts have altered the map of Europe over the past 40 years (it must also be updated every time there is a change of government).

Just like the days of cuttings, old news reports are still one of the main information sources. As well as using LexisNexis, Factiva and the papers’ own internal text archive, R&I has access to ClipShare, a news article PDF database. People-finding services such as 192.com, forward planning diaries and the Land Registry are regularly used and naturally there is in-depth online searching. This is all backed up with traditional reference sources such as Who’s Who, Britannica and political guides.On top of this, researchers sometimes use the nearby British Library and one recently made a trip to Birmingham central library to find material for an article pegged to the furore surrounding Channel 4’s Benefits Street. Having a good list of contacts is important and there is also the GNM archive, a separate department, but one with which R&I works very closely.

Of course while knowing which sources to use is an essential research skill, understanding exactly what the writer needs is almost as important. An ability to decode any request starting with ‘Could you get me everything on…’, plus being able to filter and edit results are prerequisites to becoming a good news librarian.  A point echoed by Simon Hattenstone: “When you have a relationship with a good researcher they know just what you’re looking for – often more than you do. I used to write a sports column, and often I felt it was co-written with Research because they would find anecdotes and facts that you didn’t have a clue about, and they would become the nut of the piece.”

While reactive research is a major part of R&I’s job, the department has several other roles. In 2007 the Guardian/Observer digital archive launched, giving access to almost every article published, in the case of the Observer, since 1791. The team was responsible for locating and removing legally sensitive material from the database as well as testing the product.

Obviously it’s a valuable research tool, but one of the main uses of the digital archive is as a source for From the archive, a daily series of what was happening on a particular day in history. There is also an archive blog, which gives staff an opportunity to go into more detail about a current subject. Recent posts have included republishing the paper’s original 1853 report of Solomon Northtop’s ‘12 yeas a slave’ and a comprehensive look at all of the Guardian’s April Fools’ day stories. Here, R&I does the research, writing and most of the production.

Another responsibility is the editing of the birthday column, a daily list of around 25 names of the great and good. This involves checking whether someone has died, changed role, plus the adding of new names. Other tasks include adding corrections/making deletions to the text archive and maintaining a section of the corporate intranet, the key part being a page of reliable reference sources.The trainee is responsible for archiving the day’s newspaper text before it is sent to the internal archive and third parties, as well as sending off hard-copy papers for binding and microfilming. There is also the important task of handling enquiries from the public.

While the media landscape is constantly changing, there is still a strong case to be made for news organisations supporting a dedicated library, complete with qualified staff. As Aditya Chakrabortty concludes: “The internet is no respecter of institutions, but I believe that great newspapers will thrive if they draw upon their strengths as institutions: the plurality of a newsdesk, the judgment of editors and the dexterity of lawyers. And the skills of research department.”

References and Links

• Richard Nelsson. ‘News Libraries.’ British Librarianship and information work 1991-2000, ed J.H. Bowman. Ashgate, 2006, pp 210-26
• Katy Heslop. ‘ “The simple sword of truth”: ensuring the quality of a digital archive.’ Library & Information Update, Vol. 7 (4), April 2008, pp. 40-41.
• Richard Nelsson. ‘Open door: The head of the Guardian’s library on digging out gems from the archive.’ The Guardian, 31 December 2012.
• Katy Stoddard. ‘Media Librarians: Writing ourselves new roles.’ Library & Information Update, Vol May 2010, pp.36-37
• Aditya Chakrabortty: http://www.theguardian.com/profile/adityachakrabortty
• Skivers/strivers story:http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jan/14/deepening-mess-words-polish-economist
• Simon Hattenstone: http://www.theguardian.com/profile/simonhattenstone
• European political shifts map:http://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2011/jul/28/europe-politics-interactive-map-left-right
• ClipShare: http://www.nlamediaaccess.com/default.aspx?tabId=40
• GNM archive: http://www.theguardian.com/gnm-archive
• Guardian/Observer digital archive: http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/guardian/advancedsearch.html
• From the Guardian archive: http://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/series/from-the-archive
• From the archive blog: http://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/from-the-archive-blog
• April Fools’ day story: http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/apr/01/guardian-april-fools-list

Rewriting the Book: the New Library of Birmingham

Ralph Adam: Journalist

“Libraries are a thing of the past like ration books and Rod Hull”.

“The days of the local libraries are, sadly, finished”.

“Antiquated and totally redundant”.

“Surely it’s only benefit scroungers and single mothers scrounging benefits who use libraries anyway? And their children don’t need education, or free internet access”.

(comments from a BBC discussion list about libraries).

When did you last see guards having to hold back the crowds trying to enter a library?

We read much about the death of the public library, but far less on the many innovative openings and re-launches. Even new national libraries are being built – though few acquisitions policies match those of Tajikistan’s (where reports suggest residents have been ‘encouraged’ to donate their private collections as an alternative to losing their jobs!).

Europe’s biggest library, the Library of Birmingham (LOB), has sparked interest worldwide. Opened in September 2013 by Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani schoolgirl shot for daring to campaign for girls’ education, it is becoming a major cultural destination. Malala, in her address, said, “pens and books are the weapons that defeat terrorism”.

Located in Centenary Square, Birmingham’s new ‘cultural heart’ and part of the Corporation’s Big City Plan (claimed to be Britain’s biggest-ever city centre regeneration project), it is hoped that, with its important special collections, the library will attract 3?m. visitors annually and, of course, many more online. The idea was to create a debibliophied library: its Director, Brian Gambles (who received an MBE in the 2014 Queen’s Birthday Honours List for services to libraries) emphasised the need for “an open, accessible and welcoming space – a democratic space….” In that, they have certainly succeeded. The outside of a library encapsulates its content, rather as a jacket does a book. Perhaps the LOB’s design is really an ad for the ‘new’ Birmingham?

A new People’s Palace

Francine Houben of Mecanoo, a Dutch practice, won the international competition and was selected as the lead architect, in conjunction with the engineering consultancy Buro Happold. Construction was by Carillion, while Capita Symonds were the project managers. The plan was to create a ‘people’s palace’ – a place of learning and community, rather than a traditional library. The budget was £193m. (though only £186m.was actually spent). The building covers 35 000m? (of which around 7 000m? is taken up by the rebuilt repertory theatre and ancillary features). A recessed circular performance space in Centenary Square is also intended to “engage the public with the library programme via a public entertainment venue”. The LOB’s theme, which appears on much of its excellent literature and publicity is “Rewriting the book”. Its first major photography exhibition was punningly entitled Reference Works – but does it still? Not, according to the Director, when asked about the future of library reference services.

Architectural features are frequently the main focus of reviews. But architects are artists. They often have little concern for the users of the buildings they design; more important is the beauty of their vision. And few people ask: “what is the point of a library?”. Jonathan Glancey in the Telegraph compared the LOB to a pile of enormous, geometrically-arranged birthday presents, gift-wrapped in gold and black, surmounted by a gold hatbox with everything tied with ribbons adorned with interlocking black and silver circles. Notice – his review talks only of the architecture; no mention of the library’s content or services. Metro did, at least, comment on “the library’s designers being more concerned by its appearance than its practical use.”

So, what is it like?

A spacious entrance area (shared with the theatre) welcomes ‘customers’ to the library’s ten floors, The design is spectacular: a transparent, light-filled façade, laced with delicate metal filigree and composed of interlocking circles reminds us of Birmingham’s industrial past. At its heart, and zigzagged by escalators over four balcony levels, is the book rotunda carrying 400,000 volumes (a further 600,000 are on closed access – and, as yet, apparently uncatalogued). Natural daylight and ventilation have been emphasised.   Unusual features of the library are its two tranquil garden terraces (to help people learn about food and its literature), children’s spaces and a panoramic viewing gallery on the roof (a ‘secret’ garden – ideal for staff parties, but one of the highest points in the city and open to all). It also features a study centre, (plus spacious carrels within the reading rooms), a substantial music library, a BFI-backed mediatheque, community health centre and the archives, as well as cafes and much lounge space.

Brian Gambles says that: “it will become a centre of learning, information and culture designed to handle 10 000 people a day. The library’s influence will extend beyond the physical boundaries of the building, its global digital presence allowing the public to access content from anywhere in the world.” That seems to have succeeded: in its first eight months the Library welcomed over 2m. visitors (50-60,000 a week).

This is Birmingham’s fourth central library. The original, opened in 1865, burned down fourteen years later with most of the reference stock, including the Shakespeare collection, destroyed. A club was formed locally to collect donations in the hope of recreating the historic collection. It excelled and the new library, built in 1882, found itself with one of the world’s strongest collections of the Bard’s works. A specially-built Shakespeare Memorial Room was designed to hold it. Later, when this library was itself replaced by a brutalist concrete 1970s building (which soon became ‘the place to hang out!’ – but never received its marble exterior or underground bus station’) the room was dismantled and stored. It has now been recreated as a beautiful feature of the LOB.

Birmingham claims to be Europe’s ‘youngest’ city (25% of the population are under 25) and the library is very much geared to the young. There is no ‘silence rule’ – it is acknowledged that many users attracted by the new services also want to use the library as a place to meet their friends.

The LOB has had in instant impact: the Birmingham Mail’s report on the opening was headed: Crowds flock to the “breathtakingly wonderful” Library of Birmingham.   Visitors will have noticed the massive queue at the entrance, as if the city’s residents had, at last, found something to do on a Saturday afternoon: take a stroll around their library! Even now, many visitors are there purely to sightsee. Go to the French Trip Advisor, for example, and you will find such comments as; “sublime!”, “don’t go for the books – go for the view”, “the best library ever” and “great staff.”.

A users’-eye view

As a heavy user of London’s libraries (which can be overly-bureaucratic), it is great to find one that is easy to join (it took less than a minute to get a four-year membership) and has superb computer and wi-fi facilities (at first PC access was unlimited; now it is restricted to nine hours per week – all of which can be used in one day). In the early part of the year, when the London-Birmingham rail fare tends to be 25p, the LOB is a viable option! Unlike many libraries, you feel you are getting a real welcome as soon as you enter. There is much explanatory material: lots of leaflets emphasising staff expertise and the range of resources (including free legal and intellectual property advice) in a clear, encouraging style. Leaflet topics range from excellent guides for newcomers (Introduction, Knowledge & discovery and Study & research) to Health & well-being, Music & film, Young people (covering the Soundbox studio and rehearsal facilities), the business information and planning service and lots more. There is, of course, also a visitors’ guide and floor plan (much needed!).

It is nice to find large, free lockers in a library to save carrying heavy bags around. The reference section is disappointingly small; I found the staff I tested poor at answering general questions or at directing me to sources, such as the OED or the Statesman’s yearbook. The bookstacks are high (even at 6’ I found some hard to reach) and there have been many complaints about the inaccessibility of research resources. One problem is that much of the large reserve stock (the ‘stack’, containing more than half the library’s total book stock , has been inaccessible due to lack of essential equipment (mobile lift platforms to enable staff to access resources safely ) which has not arrived. In mid-June two members of staff told me they had been banned from discussing stack access and cataloguing! More than one paper has suggested F for farce as a suitable classification for the story!

Staff are not always easy to find – and can be very busy. Although staff claim that their numbers have been cut substantially, figures suggest that the totals are the same as for the old (but smaller) library.

Asked about his own favourite libraries (his perfect one doesn’t yet exist!), Brian Gambles named Peckham, Aarhus and Seattle, among others. Perhaps, soon the Library of Birmingham will be everyone’s favourite!

(Photograph Christian Richter)