DACH

Laugh? I nearly did

Nothing dates as quickly as political humour. Watch a satirical comedy show from six months ago and already the most topical jokes have lost their edge. Watch one from ten years ago and it’s hard to remember what all the fuss was about. Watch one from before you were born, and it’ll be largely meaningless, any jokes that you do get being filtered through historical knowledge rather than your own experience. So studying the satirical and humorous material in our 1848 collections is particularly difficult. Often the items refer to events or people whose significance at the time is not mirrored by their role in formal histories, or they use catchphrases and in-jokes of the day which are lost on posterity.

Nonetheless, sometimes the joke can be recognised, even if it’s never going to make you laugh out loud. Many Berlin satires played on the title of Friedrich Wilhelm IV’s address to the people after the March revolution, ‘An meine Lieben Berliner’, an easy thread to follow through. Plays on the names of public figures can also be easily identified – as long as the men in question themselves can be identified. One example is the radical writer and demagogue Friedrich Wilhelm Held, whose critics made full ironic use of the fact that his surname means ‘hero’. A more elaborate (and laboured) word-play is found in a broadside describing the Austrian General Windischgrätz as ‘Grenade-Prince Bombowitz’; the author goes on to explain that removing the first and last letters of the General’s name gives the word ‘indischgrät’, i.e. ‘indiskret’ (indiscreet), which the author sees as characteristic of all Windischgrätz’s actions.

Even the humour in visual images, although harder to identify, can sometimes be detected. Clothes are often used as cartoon shorthand to identify political or social groups, and one image (sadly not in the BL’s collections) even provides a handy guide. Similarly, many cartoons use the pigtail traditionally sported by conservative bureaucrats as a symbol of reactionary forces, and coinages such as ‘Zopfentum’ (‘Pigtaildom’) are also used in written satires to refer to the old order.

Finally there is the kind of humour which is recognisable because it’s based on enduring clichés: the nagging wife who asks her husband a string of questions but never lets him answer; the barber who listens to his clients’ different political views and tells them what they want to hear; the dim-witted provincial in the big city. And yesterday I found a prime example of the evergreen very long compound German word joke: a spoof news item in a satirical journal explained that one Herr Duncker had been appointed ‘Volksversammlungs- auseinandertreibungswidrigenfallseinhauenlassungs-Direktor’ (‘Director of dispersing popular assemblies or failing that having them laid into’). Of course, if I’d known which of the two Dunckers involved in Prussian politics at the time was meant and what event had prompted the joke, it would have been funnier. But the sheer ridiculous length of the word still made me smile.
[SR]

Half Time!

Two weeks into my study break already! I really can’t believe it’s gone so quickly, and that I’ve only just got round to blogging about it. Most of my time so far has been spent – on paper at least – in 19th-century Vienna. This paper Vienna takes the form of large volumes of uncatalogued placards and newspaper issues from the revolutions of 1848, and I have been immersed in the events and opinions of that turbulent year. I’ve been longing to really explore this collection for some years, but the fragility both of the items themselves and of their 19th-century binding had effectively rendered it impossible. It’s thanks to the wonderful work of staff from our Conservation Centre who last year treated and repaired the individual sheets, encased them in transparent sleeves, and re-bound them splendidly, that I was able to apply for a study break knowing that I would be able to handle and study the material safely. At the moment I’m simply going through the collection, reading and making notes; eventually this will bear fruit as an article on the collection for the eBLJ (and possibly others for elsewhere) and proper, detailed catalogue records for the material. Once this basic work is done, I hope to examine some of the items in more detail, and to do likewise with a similar collection from Berlin which is more familiar to me but still merits further work.

So far the actual material is proving to be as fascinating as I hoped – and I promise to share some of it in another post – but part of the pleasure has been simply being on study leave and being able to devote my days to research. Although research into the collections is built into our job plans as curators, it can easily get pushed aside by more humdrum professional concerns. In fact, I’ve been surprised how easily I’ve been able to ignore and forget the daily round, despite the fact that I’m working in the Library most days and chat to colleagues at lunchtime. I’ve set myself up as a reader in the Maps Reading Room, where I don’t know many of the staff or readers so am less likely to be interrupted, and sometimes feel I’m ‘living the dream’ of being a private scholar, even if only for a few weeks. Not that it’s an easy life: I’ve found myself mentally exhausted at the end of most days. But exhausted in a good way, with a head full of ideas, and not full of the minor everyday worries of work. Still, perhaps after the break I’ll find that those have a comforting sense of familiarity. Hmmm. I’ll let you know in a few weeks’ time…
[SR]

Discoveries 1

As I already stated in Dealing with Enquiries sometimes we make the most interesting discoveries prompted by fairly boring or mundane enquiries. This is the first in a series of shorter posts in which I will share these discoveries.

A couple of months ago, whilst checking a shelf in the basement, I found the following book:

Engländertum. (Halle : Gebauer-Schwetschke Verlag Nachf., c1938.) Ac.877.

This little booklet of only 44 pages, contains the three following texts:

• 'Eigenart englischer Kultur' [Peculiarities of English culture] (Lore Liebenam)
• 'A Holiday in the Country' (Reginald William Ford)
• "Engländertum und Gottesgedanke" [Englishness and the notion of god] (Lore Liebenam)

From this information and especially with regard to the date, I was expecting some pretty dire and horrible texts. Okay, maybe not yet fully-fledged Nazi propaganda, but I had my special reading glasses at hand which deflect some of the repulsiveness of texts I come across frequently. However, I think - apart from a naive belief in positivism and a generous helping of national stereotyping - these texts are supposed to be 'semi-scientifically proven' facts on "all things English"; you know, in the way how you adore (and sometimes adoringly mock) a sibling.

A couple of further thoughts:
First, this is number one of a series by the 'Deutsch-Englischen Kulturaustausch' (DEKA) ['German-English cultural exchange']; maybe I will devote a separate Blog post to the use of "England" and "English" as opposed to "Britain" and "British" in German(y), but this is not the place. According to the crest of this organisation (see below), the DEKA was founded in 1930 to 'explore, understand and value the peculiarities of the nations' (a brief aside: the oak leaf equals Germany, as the oak is the German national tree, the middle is an arty arrangement of 'deka' and the rose, well, is the English rose; at first, I was a bit puzzled by the globe, but realised that of course they used the shape of the 1930s "Deutsches Reich" - a form of my country of birth which looks wrong to me nowadays.).

This idea of education, as articulated in the crest, is already in the preface of this booklet, where it states the reason for this publication is: wir müssen 'auch die Engländer zu Worte kommen lassen und hören, was sie über sich und ihre besondere Art zu sagen haben.' [we must also let the English have their say here and hear what they have to say about themselves and their own ways.] The preface goes on to say that luckily they have obliged to the request and that they have shown a ' - for an English person surprisingly - spontaneous readiness to be talkative'. Wow! That's a big one. I don't feel I have to comment on this here (I mean: I don't really need to, do I?).

However, that's where you could come in! Most curators at the British Library do not have enough time during their normal working hours to follow-up such interesting "leads", but maybe one day I will - unless you "beat me to it." If you manage to "get there first" and do research on either the DEKA or specifically this booklet, please email me your findings or the reference to your publication please.
[CG]

Donations to German Collections at the British Library

Another one of my remits is to deal with donations. Most often this means books published in Germany, and in German. However, we also quite often deal with publications in English which are published in German-speaking European countries. There are four generic types of donations:
1. We receive one book by an author which s/he offers to us.
2. A publisher is sending us a copy, because the British Library has given permission for images of one of our unique items to be reproduced in this new book.
3. An organisation or institution has sponsored or financed an author or a publication, and would like to deposit a copy with us.
4. An individual has inherited a collection, or has a high number of books they would like to offer us, rather than throwing them away or trying to sell them. (Susan has already written about such donations in a previous post, titled Unwanted gifts?

If you would like to donate a publication to us, you can email us in advance and check whether we would include this item to our collection; also, we might already have purchased your book, but it has not been fully processed, and therefore you cannot find it on our Integrated Catalogue yet. Also, you might find it useful to read our collection policy. If we already have a copy of book, we cannot add another copy to our collections. Of course, there are a number of books we will be extremely happy to receive, so please contact us with your suggested donation in advance. However, if we receive a book which is either a duplicate or out-of-scope, we are always happy to offer it to another library, and therefore find a good home for it.

Quite frequently we are offered a number of items from one donor. In these cases we are happy to check a list of these items - it is a time-consuming process for us, but we are happy to do this. If there are too many to make a list, please either have a cross-check with our catalogue, or provide us with details of 5-10 items from the total of all of the books you would like to donate to us, so that we can have an idea of what kind of publications are in your possession. If you live in or near London, we might be able to come to you, and get an impression of what you are offering. One criterium for rejecting an offered book, and which is surprising for a lot of people, is that we can normally not include a German translation of a book for which we already hold a copy in English or French.

Also, we hold a high number of “German” books of the Twentieth century, so please do not be disappointed if we cannot add another copy of a book you hold to our collections. However, whereas we receive donations quite regularly, we are happy to deal with your offerings.
[CG]

WESLINE 09 – The Organiser’s Tale

What else do we do?

Occasionally we organise a conference …

I had been asked over a year ago to organise what would become the Fourth Annual WESLINE Conference (2nd to 5th September 2009) – in Durham. WESLINE stands for ‘West European Studies Library and Information Network’, and it is an active and dynamic professional studies interest group for librarians working with West European-language materials, highly-regarded by its membership, and an umbrella group for the individual French, German, Italian, and Hispanic/Latin American studies library groups. And the reason why I had been asked to organise this event in Durham has to do with the fact that whilst I work in the German Section of the BL in London, I happen to live in the beautiful cathedral city of Durham in the north of England. Yes, I am a regular long-distance commuter. (The background to this might be revealed to readers of this blog in a future posting...)

[Photo by Tim Packer]

What makes a good conference?

Already in the first planning stages, I decided to model this Durham conference on the tried and tested pattern of the numerous excellent German Studies Library Group conferences which I have been fortunate enough to attend during my time at the BL. Last year’s WESLINE conference had been organised by two BL colleagues, senior to me, and at their home institution, and I would be organising this conference largely alone and at an ‘away’ institution – so I knew I had my work cut out for me. This conference was to be run over three days, as a residential event in one of the Durham colleges (Van Mildert College, as it turned out). It seemed an excellent idea to have the conference in Durham, a fantastic location and home to one of the UK’s top universities, England’s third oldest – somewhere outside the ‘golden triangle’ (for a change!) The programme would incorporate visits to historical and modern library sites and include discussions on relevant library matters relating to West European language materials. But as its most significant component, it would include papers by members of the academic teaching staff in the School of Modern Languages and Cultures at Durham University, one of the leading schools of its kind.

I aim to be a good organiser. However, as a part-time member of curatorial staff, organising an event away from my home institution, I needed for quite a while to work pretty much full-time (especially in the run up to the conference), and to liaise closely with colleagues at the host institution, Durham University Library.

I aimed to exploit to the full all that Durham has to offer: its wonderful, historic library buildings in a World Heritage site; its fabulous special collections; its buzzing Main Library (in the midst of refurbishments for a planned large extension, which added to the logistics I needed to juggle!); its world-renowned Cathedral and beautiful Cathedral Library; the very special ‘hidden treasure’ which is Ushaw College Library; but, above all perhaps, its expert and friendly academic and library staff, who provided presentations, tours, displays – and a really wide range of content for us all to chew over. I know Durham well – I was a visiting student there from Tübingen University (more years ago than I care to remember) at St Mary’s College, and I had my first library post in Durham immediately after qualifying as a librarian (from Aberystwyth). I knew what a wonderful place it is, but I knew that many delegates would have little or no acquaintance with it, so I was looking forward to their falling in love with it too. I hope that a few of the delegates really have …

Over forty delegates (and speakers) took part, from a wide range of university and research libraries, including the London Library, Senate House Library, the John Rylands, the Bodleian, Cambridge University Library and Cambridge’s Modern and Medieval Languages Faculty Library and its Murray Edwards College Library, UCL, King’s College, Glasgow, Aston, Leeds, Warwick, Westminster, and West of England university libraries, plus a contingent of seven from the BL. (It was good to have the moral support of BL and German Studies Library Group colleagues attending.)

The feedback I have received so far has been very positive and hugely encouraging. I know that librarians are nice people (!), but they have all said really, really nice things, so I think the conference has, genuinely, been much appreciated and has been enjoyable and profitable for all the delegates who attended. In short, I loved organising this conference, and now that I’ve just about recovered, would still, I think, say ‘yes’ the next time I’m asked – as long as that’s not too soon!
[DM]

WESLINE 09 – The Delegate’s Tale

Another week, another conference... The first few days of September saw the whole German Section in Durham for the annual meeting of WESLINE, the West European Studies Library and Information Network. Like many of those who attend, I’ve been a regular at these meetings (and in earlier days at those of one of its constituent groups, the German Studies Library Group) ever since I started at the BL, so the conference always involves meeting old friends, as well as welcoming new faces. This year we had an excellent programme of talks, discussions and visits, expertly organised by Dorothea and hosted by Durham University Library. Durham is my alma mater, and it was the first time I’d been back there in nearly twenty years! I was delighted to find the city as beautiful as ever and comparatively unchanged.

Most of the conference sessions were held in the main library building, which brought back memories, but we were also shown round the historic library, set in the UNESCO World Heritage site of Palace Green, and the Cathedral Library. The latter visit included a marvellous display of mediaeval manuscripts presented by Professor Richard Gameson of the history department, one of those rare speakers who combines vast knowledge with a real gift for communication.

Back in the main library we heard a wide range of papers: German photography, French manuscript illumination, Spanish theatre censorship and the appropriation of Italy as part of British culture were among the topics and, as is usual at these events, the speakers emphasised how they used library and other information resources in their work. In the context of professional issues there was a presentation on academic liaison in university libraries, which led to some interesting discussion. Although this isn’t of such direct relevance to the BL, it was interesting to hear how colleagues in the HE sector manage this aspect of their work, and how electronic resources are continually changing the ways in which university librarians communicate with academics and students.

Most of the people who attend WESLINE come from university libraries, and for us BL people one of the most sobering aspects of this annual get-together is to realise what pressure they are under. Many universities are cutting back on library staff, and since many are also cutting back on modern language courses, language specialists in university libraries are under particular threat. This year alone Queen’s University Belfast has closed its German department, and the University of the West of England is ceasing to offer modern language degree courses, and I returned to work to find a mailing list post with news of a similar threat to the German department at Leicester. It’s a sobering reflection at the end of a happy and productive few days.
[SR]

Gruß aus München!

“Deutschland schwitzt!” (Germany’s sweating!) proclaimed the popular tabloid Bild-Zeitung, and it was right: in Munich at the end of last week the temperature soared to the mid-30’s. A local paper which I read over breakfast one morning recommended ways to keep cool – head for the shade of the Englischer Garten, swim in an open air pool, or enjoy a long, cool Bavarian beer. Alas, quite apart from not being a beer drinker (though a well-chilled glass of Franconian white wine or a nice Apfelschorle would have been viable alternatives), I was in Munich for work and spent most of my three days in the Bavarian capital in a rather airless lecture theatre at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek. But in all respects other than the heat there was no ‘alas’ about it as I was listening to some of the great and good of the bibliographical world discussing ‘Early printed books as material objects’ at a satellite meeting of the annual International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) conference.

So great and good were many of those present that, as someone pointed out, a bomb falling on the hall would have effectively decimated international bibliographical scholarship! I was there in a much lesser capacity, despite the location not as head of German but wearing my other ‘BL hat’ as support to the Curator of Incunabula. I felt that I was very much there to learn, and learn I did from papers on topics ranging from the smallest details of marginal notes or rubrication to online projects of ambitious international scope, e.g. http://www.cerl.org/web/en/resources/cerl_thesaurus/main

The emphasis on books as material objects brought some strong feelings to the fore, especially those of bindings experts for whom repairing a severely dilapidated binding was little more than vandalism, although it had brought to light some fascinating 15th-century documents used as binder’s waste and rendered the book usable again. Another speaker talked about books which had been made up of pages from different editions, and argued for treating them not as single books but as fragments of multiple copies. This is a vital distinction for expert bibliographers, but perhaps not for readers past or present: an example of how a book can be a material object in different ways to different people.

I was also introduced to a colleague from the Munich office of the ISTC project and found out more about its international aspects. And there was an opportunity to see the Staatsbibliothek’s accompanying exhibition, showcasing some of their amazing holdings of incunabula. Well worth a visit if you’re in Munich between now and the end of October – if you can tear yourself away from the Englischer Garten and the cool beer.
[SR]

Document Supply Centre requests and the 'r-word'

Sometimes I feel that we are high in demand. I'm talking specifically about Document Supply Centre (DSC) requests, in other institutions 'inter-library-loan requests' (ILL). Those for German-language materials published in DACH end up on my desks.

The colleagues in Boston Spa deal with the processing and liaise with the libraries in the UK and Ireland, and we only receive the requests, if an item has not been acquired. Obviously, it is impossible to approve all requests received, but we try to be as generous as possible.

Absolute 'no-nos' are pure legal, economic, scientific or technical publications (i.e. "pure" meaning: they lack any historical angle). Also, we do not buy single journal issues - the only exception is, if a publication is called journal by name, but actually works as a 'monograph in series'.

Back to me feeling that we are in high demand: in May I felt that I was getting more and more DSC requests. I wondered: Is the 'r-word' cutting academic libraries' budgets? Do they rather send an ILL request to us than buying and processing German-language materials?

Susan suggested that I should make an analysis in order to find answers. Luckily the German Section has kept the data of the last 5 years on neat Excel spreadsheets, so the analysis wasn't that hard to do.

After 3 month of analysis now, my preliminary results with regard to number of requests are:

1. Whereas the average number of requests received in April (financial years 2005 to 2009) is 19, this compares to 38 requests in April 2009 (the standard deviation is 10, and it is noteworthy that in April
   2006, 2007, 2008 we had all less than 15 requests).
2. The trend for April was similar for May, if not quite as striking:
   the number of requests received within the 5 years sampled was 21 requests, compared to 31 in May 2009 (the standard deviation is 5, but importantly, for none of the previous years more than 19 requests were received!).
3. June: An average of 21 requests, compared to 32 in June 2009 (standard deviation: 8, but 2 out of 5 previous years had less than 17 requests!)

So, yes it seems that the last three months really saw an increase in the number of DSC requests received. This means more work for me, and more potential burden on our budget. Yet, I cannot say whether this is a result of the recession. As any institution, the academic libraries sending these requests must surely feel the pinch, if not the pain, of the recession. It is likely that they have made more cuts in budgets of acquiring new foreign-language materials. And, therefore it is plausible, that the research-centred ILL requests shot up.

Watch this space for an update in a couple of months time.
[CG]

Unwanted gifts?

We occasionally get offered as donations collections of books which belonged to recently-deceased German and Austrian exiles who came to Britain in the 1930s. The families don’t want to keep them – often they don’t actually speak or read German – but feel that the books should be given a good home.

Although these collections are seldom outstanding in themselves, each represents a snapshot of the reading habits and intellectual world of a ‘common reader’ in the Germany of the 1920s and 1930s. Indeed, from looking at lists or at the books themselves, I now have a fair idea of the kind of books that such readers collected, and can predict reasonably well the authors and genres that I will find among them; it would make an interesting little research project for anyone with the time and inclination. But, sadly, that doesn’t enable us to accept these collections any more than does the would-be donors’ powerful wish to see the books preserved in a major library, just as they were preserved by their original owner.

There are various reasons why we cannot offer a home to such collections. The first is simply that many of the books will be standard editions of German classics, duplicates of texts we already hold. German translations of other literatures are also common, but outside the scope of our collection policy. Of course there can also be material which does interest us, if the donor is willing to let us cherry-pick: examples of exile publishing sometimes turn up, as do works by, for and about the Jewish community in early twentieth-century Germany. Minor but interesting works on political, social and intellectual issues of the day, and novels by neglected authors can usefully fill gaps in our collections. The owner’s academic or professional interests may be reflected in important and useful works on specific topics.

Even ‘out-of-scope’ material such as children’s books or domestic manuals may now be of historical interest. Thus it is always worth investigating further, but this brings more problems. Although I always ask donors for a basic list of titles, they are not always able or willing to provide this. When they do, checking can take a long time, especially where valiant attempts have been made to transcribe fraktur type. If we do agree to take some books, more practical problems include the condition they are in (well-used in the past and sometimes more recently stored in an attic or garage) and the whole question of arranging delivery to the Library – to say nothing of the extra processing and cataloguing work involved when the books arrive.

It is also difficult to suggest other institutions which might be interested; academic and research collections will have the same issues of duplication and relevance as us, and few if any public libraries would want to accept such a large amount of foreign-language material. Often we have to recommend trying a second-hand dealer or a charity shop, which I always feel sounds rather dismissive, especially in the face of what is intended as a generous offer in memory of a loved relative. It’s a difficult business and needs a considerable degree of tact. But for all the personal and emotional importance of these collections to the original owners and their families, the sad fact remains that they are largely unwanted by the wider world.
[SR]

Work experience at BL

Most people seem to end up in shops or offices for their work experience – so it was with some surprise that I arrived on a Monday morning and realised that I was one of nine students with placements in the British Library for a week (for official purposes, I was “Work Experience 08” for that time), spread between the numerous departments.  After the inevitable health and safety briefing – I’m now well versed in the Library’s intricate fire alarm system – I was introduced to the equally intricate cataloguing system, with which I spent some time doing battle before I got the hang of it.

Probably the most exciting part of my placement was visiting the enormous basements, or, as I called them to my slightly bemused friends, “Book Mecca” – partly because I’m very proud of not shutting either myself or anyone else in the mobile bookshelves, but mostly because old books fascinate me, and if there’s one thing the British Library has a lot of, it’s old books.  Some of them are so old, in fact, that touching them was off limits; but even discovering that copies of some of the same books I’ve studied in preparation for A Levels, such as Ovid’s poetry, were being printed, read and studied in the fifteenth century is a reminder that texts like these have and are part of a history outside of both the time they were written and their readers today.

Also interesting – if a little disturbing – was the process of identifying for transfer a number of Nazi propaganda books collected at the end of the Second World War. I say disturbing because the books all have titles like Unser Führer: ein deutsches Jungen-und Mädchenbuch (Our Führer: a German book for boys and girls; @ BL W90/7328 DSC) and Mutter, erzähl von Adolf Hitler!, (Tell me about Adolf Hitler, Mum!; @ BL W90/9808 DSC). In the beginning of one of the books I actually saw a large glossy picture of Hitler himself bending down and patting a young boy reassuringly on the shoulder – so I suppose one thing I’ve learnt this week is that politics never changes.

As well as this sort of work in German collections, I’ve done some similar work in French collections and spent a day in the Modern British department; moving around the departments tested my sense of direction (the British Library is a huge and somewhat bewildering, but mercifully air conditioned, building) but also gave me a much clearer idea of the Library as a whole and the diversity of its roles – from web archiving to blogs to collecting Nazi propaganda.

Now, after my week’s work experience, I can’t say I know what kind of career I’d like any more than I did at the beginning – but I came to the British Library because I have an interest in books, and to European collections because I have an interest in languages, both of which have been reinforced by seeing how they can be used in the “real world” beyond A levels!
[Rachel Rowan-Olive, on work experience in July 2009]