Good morning everyone,

I’m Ken Gibb and I am the rare books cataloguer at Lambeth Palace Library. I completed my library MSc in Glasgow after some time working in law and the civil service. Although I was immediately interested in becoming a cataloguer, my first post was a busy and useful year in reader services in Cambridge. I was then lucky enough to join the Foyle Special Collections Library at King’s College London where I received a great introduction to rare books and have mostly worked in special collections ever since. I catalogued the library of HG Adler, novelist and historian of the Holocaust, and curated an exhibition about his life and work.

I joined the Bodleian Library in 2007 as a project cataloguer working on the John Johnson Ephemera Collection, cataloguing everything from crime broadsides and theatre playbills to cigarette cards and soap adverts. After the project ended, I moved to Cardiff University for three years as the cataloguer of the Cardiff Rare Books Collection. I worked on the 14,000 books, including private presses and incunabula, which came to the university from Cardiff Public Library, and also trained and supervised other cataloguers, as I do in my current post. I moved to Lambeth in June 2014 and am now cataloguing the fascinating pre-1850 Sion College Library collections, which are held here at Lambeth Palace Library.

Best wishes,

Ken