These articles were written for and published by Cherwell Student Newspaper.
Interviews with the unsung heroes of Oxford.
Laura Cracknell, Pembroke Librarian
I wish there was a typical day for a college librarian here at Oxford. Obviously all the books have to go back on the shelves, the library has to be tidied up and all the new books that come in have to be catalogued, stamped and tagged. We also do a lot of project work, which a lot of people don’t realise. Then there’s all the email queries from students. Tutors often put classic works on their lists, so if they were published in, for example, 1975, you can’t just turn up to Blackwell’s and buy them. Then you have to make sure that you’re getting the best value for money for what you buy. There are lots of micro-decisions that you have to make.
We also get many external visitors because we’ve got the only copy of a book in Oxford, or because they want to look at our rare books collection. My favourite is the Nuremburg chronicle, it’s an early printed book published in the 1490s. It was one of the earliest books to combine print and woodblock pictures. It’s this amazing book with a fold out map of the world at the back. It’s also got pictures of cities. However, because they had a limited number of woodblocks for the cities, all of them look more or less the same, and they all look like small towns in medieval Germany.
My favourite thing about being a librarian here is the students, definitely, and I’m not just saying that. Being able to answer questions is by far the most satisfying aspect of the job.
The strangest book request I’ve ever received is for a book called The O Mission Repo, and it’s a book of poems that have been created by blacking out words from the report on the mission to find Osama Bin Laden. We had to contact the publisher directly for it, who was really helpful and let us have a PDF copy early, because it wouldn’t have shipped here from New York in time for the student who needed it. The actual book arrived about three weeks later, but when it arrived I didn’t realise what it was. I opened it and flicked through and I thought “ugh! They’ve sent us a duff copy!” It took me about five minutes to realise that it was supposed to look like that! I also once had a historian working on medieval mystics, who asked me how to cite God. We settled on citing the person who had quoted God.
Neal Marjoram, Pembroke Maintenance Team
Usually two or three of these lights go at the same time, so I’ve got a couple of them to do today. It’s shame it’s today that they’ve gone, because it’s raining.
I like the sort of variety you get working here. You never know what you’re going to get that day. A lot of it is routine. We get a lot of heating problems. On an average day I get in to Pembroke early in the morning and begin my day by checking the system and seeing what’s been reported overnight. I spend my morning responding to them. A problem to do with heating is nearly always among them. They are priority so I make sure to get them done. The boilers normally need the pressure dropped on them, or you need a new part. Sometimes I have to call someone in to look at things like that.
I mostly work at the GAB (Sir Geoffrey Arthur Building; Pembroke’s off site accommodation), and I prefer it down there. I just know it a lot better. When someone describes a fault I know what they mean or I know what it’s going to be, whereas up in college I don’t know the set up so well.
This time of year we start to get some stranger requests. Everyone’s got their exams coming up so little things get more annoying and more highlighted. For instance, last week I had people complaining about banging and squeaking doors. It’s little annoying things. It’s not a big deal, but when your exams are coming up it becomes more of a big deal. You do get more of that at certain times of the year, which is understandable.
It’s the routine, small things that are important. They’re part and parcel of the job. The most important thing is to keep the students happy. If they’re happy then it’s a lot easier, and college runs a lot more smoothly.
Al Musaafira 