Category: The Department of Collections and Academic Liaison

Our 600th blogpost!

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The beginning of blogpost 1.

When this blog was launched, the thought of reaching 600 posts would have seemed absurd.  Producing the first 6 felt like enough of a challenge.  This blogpost celebrates some of our blogging activity over the last 7 years.

The blog was the brainchild of David Lowe, our now-retired head of department.  A great deal has changed since the first blog post appeared in November 2013.  In it, David introduced the blog and also what was then the department: European Collections & Cataloguing.  In 2016, he wrote again about the department, this time to introduce its new incarnation: Collections and Academic Liaison, a coming together of European Collections & Cataloguing and the English Collections Department.  More recently, I touched upon the need to think about a new name for the blog itself (as yet unresolved) in this post.

Continue reading “Our 600th blogpost!” →

An update on print operations

On By europeancollectionsIn New Acquisitions, The Department of Collections and Academic LiaisonLeave a comment

In a post in September, I described the temporary procedures we had introduced to get as many new books into the catalogue and available to readers as possible following so many months away.  We have made huge progress, passing hundreds upon hundreds of titles into iDiscover while upgrading their catalogue records where possible from home.

Since we got back into the building, we have for example put the following numbers of titles for our largest languages alone into the borrowable C3-figure and non-borrowable S3-figure classes:

  • French: 320 borrowable titles, 38 non-borrowable
  • German: 291 borrowable titles, 25 non-borrowable
  • Italian: 452 borrowable titles, 51 non-borrowable
  • Spanish: 415 borrowable titles, 40 non-borrowable

Working together with our colleagues in the English Cataloguing department (they have concentrated on Legal Deposit intake, we have focused on bought books), we have also put 1457 English titles into C3-figures and 171 into S3-figures.

Continue reading “An update on print operations” →

An assortment of new books

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Mel Bach recently wrote about our processes for dealing with newly unpacked printed books. I am one of the small number of CAL staff who have resumed some work in the UL building and have been privileged to sit at my desk in South Wing 1 for a couple of days a week since early September. During this time I have handled a few hundred books and I must say it has been a joy to actually touch physical books again. I hadn’t realised how much I had missed this while working exclusively from home during lockdown.

My cataloguing work usually centres predominantly on material in German, Dutch and Scandinavian. I was pleased to see that some relevant Dutch titles on race, ordered in June to supplement titles referred to in my post on Dutch titles on race and decolonisation, had already arrived: Continue reading “An assortment of new books” →

Getting back to printed books

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Over the last few weeks, some members of CAL, the Collections and Academic Liaison department, have started working back in our South Wing 1 office in the main University Library.  Our work so far has needed to focus solely on the tasks agreed by the ominous PORG – the Print Operations Recovery Group.  What has this meant in practice?

The ‘Rukhnama’ (see end of post)

Since March, when my colleagues and I had last been in the building, large amounts of books we had ordered before lockdown had arrived.  The question was how to deal with this impressively enormous physical backlog. Continue reading “Getting back to printed books” →

Moving online… and back to the printed page!

On By europeancollectionsIn The Department of Collections and Academic LiaisonLeave a comment

Having concluded earlier this week that we should focus our blog for the time being on electronic resources only, I was lobbied by a couple of colleagues to allow some print-focused posts to be allowed in, so that our readers could enjoy these posts even if they would have to wait until the UL reopens to look at the material under discussion.  Anything that helps keep people interested and diverted is definitely something to hold on to at the moment, so while we will try to up the focus on eresources as we go along, we will keep print in the picture too, with the next item already scheduled to go up being a post about some wonderful (and very much physical) German books left to the Library by George Steiner – so enjoy!

Moving online

On By europeancollectionsIn ebooks, The Department of Collections and Academic LiaisonLeave a comment

At the time of writing, the University Library remains open (with reading rooms shut) but it will close its doors to readers at 5pm today until further notice.  Given the situation, it seems rather perverse to promote print material through this blog until the UL is fully operational again.  Over the next few weeks, our posts will instead focus on books, journals, and databases which are available electronically, certainly to University staff and students.

Images from Digitalia
Images from Torrossa
Images from De Gruyter

Last September, I wrote a blog post about foreign-language ebook packages, whose details it might be useful for readers to remind themselves about now: https://europeancollections.wordpress.com/2019/09/23/foreign-language-ebooks/

The Library’s FAQs about library services during the Coronavirus outbreak can be found here: https://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/news/coronavirus-faqs

We wish all our readers good health.

Mel Bach

European and “European” : Collections and Academic Liaison and the countries our books come from

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What it means to be European has been in the thoughts of many recently, including many in our department.  The issue of the term “European” has long been a thought-provoking one for us on the work side too.  Our department, Collections and Academic Liaison, was formed a few years ago from two departments: English Accessions and European Collections and Cataloguing.  This blog was set up under the auspices of the latter, and the name of the blog – European languages across borders – hints at the tension felt then between the department’s name and its work.  While we collect largely in languages with roots in European countries (including English, since CAL was created), our collecting activity has always been global.  Portuguese material, for example, comes not only from Portugal but also from Brazil and Mozambique and more.

As part of an ongoing piece of work on subject-specific collection development policies, I have been gathering data from our library management system about the geographical spread of our purchases, focusing chiefly on hard copy purchases.  It is a rather fiddly but satisfying job.  In the last two years, the Collections and Academic Liaison department has collected from over 110 different countries/territories.  The top 15 countries in terms of numbers of titles collected over this period are: France, Italy, Germany, USA, Russia, Spain, Portugal, Mexico, Poland, Brazil, Argentina, the UK, Ukraine, Switzerland, and Chile. Continue reading “European and “European” : Collections and Academic Liaison and the countries our books come from” →

Preaching what we practise

On By europeancollectionsIn Faculty Libraries, New Acquisitions, The Department of Collections and Academic LiaisonLeave a comment

In late 2017, our department started to produce termly newsletters about our acquisitions work, and the latest newsletter – for Michaelmas 2018, also covering the summer and Christmas breaks – has just been put online.  The idea for the newsletter came from discussions with faculty librarians.  What we in Collections and Academic Liaison (CAL) do in terms of selecting and acquiring books was not always well understood, and our faculty colleagues agreed that a regular newsletter which shed light on the kinds of things we buy would be welcome.  While the newsletter is written primarily for a library audience, readers are also welcome to look at it.  All four newsletters produced so far are now publicly available on CAL’s public webpage. Continue reading “Preaching what we practise” →

Exit, pursued by a warehouse operative : Soviet drama and the Library Storage Facility

On By europeancollectionsIn Georgian, Russian, Slavonic, The Department of Collections and Academic LiaisonLeave a comment

Inside the new Library Storage Facility

The Library Storage Facility (LSF), whose contents can be ordered to the Library but cannot be borrowed, was opened in June 2018.  By the end of 2019, the store’s astonishing 4,000,000-book capacity will be one third full.  We in Collections and Academic Liaison have started sending a few books there, and this blog post looks at the what, the why, and the how.

Continue reading “Exit, pursued by a warehouse operative : Soviet drama and the Library Storage Facility” →

Farewell and thanks to David Lowe

On By europeancollectionsIn The Department of Collections and Academic Liaison1 Comment

The head of our department, David Lowe, retires today, after a career at the University Library stretching back more than forty years.  This afternoon, the Library gave him a grand send-off attended by scores of current and former staff, with speeches from former full and acting University Librarians among those given, ending with a lovely speech by David himself.

Apart from one year at library school in Sheffield, David has been in Cambridge since he left school to study German and French at Jesus College.  He first came to the University Library as a trainee for one year; after completing his library course, he returned to take up employment at the UL once again.  He was appointed as the German specialist in 1979 and held this role for over twenty years, during which time he had a crucial role in accessions such as the Stefan Heym archive and he led work with other UK libraries to set up the German Studies Library Group.  He then moved up to become head of the new European Collections and Cataloguing department, which recently merged with English Collections to become Collections and Academic Liaison.  Through these roles, David has had a fundamental effect on the University Library’s collections, either through direct selection, through careful instruction to new staff regarding selection, or through the negotiation of both small and vast donations. Continue reading “Farewell and thanks to David Lowe” →