Hello everybody,

I’m Katie Flanagan, and I love rare books cataloguing, although I don’t actually do very much of it at the moment! I am Special Collections Librarian at Brunel University, which means I don’t get very much time to do cataloguing these days, although I train and supervise other people doing cataloguing.

I always wanted to work in rare books/special collections, and during my graduate trainee year at Exeter University Library learnt how to do basic cataloguing in one of their departmental libraries. Then I started the MA in Library & Information Studies at UCL, where I studied part-time, and included modules in cataloguing & classification, and historical bibliography. Alongside this I worked part-time at St Paul’s Cathedral, where I worked in the library on the inventory project. This involved imaging title pages, which were then matched with records by an external company to create an electronic catalogue. So, I learnt a huge amount from critiquing catalogue records and working on the standards and guidelines for the catalogue, alongside learning historic bibliography.

My MA dissertation involved a volunteer placement with the National Trust, cataloguing the library of a small country house in Lincolnshire. That turned into a freelance rare books cataloguing post, where I travelled to properties in the East Midlands, Yorkshire and East Anglia – I got to catalogue lots of lovely books and learnt a huge amount about provenance, in particular, through this. After several years, I then moved to a post at Eton College, where 50% of my job involved cataloguing rare books. After that I went to the Royal College of Physicians as Rare books & special collections librarian, so I still got to do some cataloguing!

Katie

Katie Flanagan BA(Hons), MA, MCLIP

Special Collections Librarian

T +44 (0)1895 266139

From: CIG E-Forum [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Lucy Evans
Sent: 15 April 2015 10:09
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [CIG-E-FORUM] Routes into Rare Books Cataloguing

Good Morning everybody,

I’m Lucy Evans, at the Bodleian Library and I consider myself a rare books cataloguer at heart.

I began my library career at the Bodleian Library as a graduate trainee, which involved a three month placement in the RB department. This was easily my favourite department and I was keen to get into the rare books world in general. I was very lucky in that a project job opened up in the department, cataloguing the modern items in the Opie Collection of Children’s Literature. I trained as an OLIS cataloguer (the Oxford standard) and catalogued modern books for about a year before starting in house training on antiquarian items. I then moved on to working on the Early Printed Books Project (EPB), a Bodleian project which catalogued items in the colleges of Oxford. I was mainly based at Harris Manchester College cataloguing non-conformist tracts but I also worked at Merton and Lady Margaret Hall. From here I moved to Reading to work as the maternity cover for the RB Librarian and from there on to the exciting “returned books” project at Lambeth Palace Library. http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/apr/29/lambeth-palace-stolen-books-retrieved

I am now working as the Assistant Curator of Rare Books at the Bodleian Library, I spend about half of my time cataloguing. At the moment my projects include cataloguing all the newly purchased books in the department, a collection of French books recently purchased, a collection of uncatalogued ballads and, just completed, the collection of the West Indian Committee.

All the best, Lucy

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