‘Whilst politics, history and culture can often divide people, the sharing of knowledge has the capacity to transcend boundaries.’

Continuing our Libraries Week launch of our new series, Library Lives, we meet Thurstan Young, qualified librarian and Collection Metadata Analyst in the Collection Metadata Standards team at Boston Spa.

Thurstan Young

Where was your local library growing up?

Horsforth Public Library, which is just north of Leeds. It used to have a tree growing in the middle of it towards a glass roof. As a child it felt like a light and airy, nature friendly space. 

What does your current job involve?

Metadata is data which provides information about other data. For example, descriptive metadata can be used to support the discovery and identification of a resource within a library catalogue. It includes elements for recording titles, authors, publishers, etc. My current job involves metadata standards application, interpretation, communication and development. I support the application of metadata standards at the British Library as well as their development in cooperation with national and international partners.

Do you have a favourite item in the Library’s collection?

Vladimir Il'ich Lenin’s Reader request to study the Russian ‘land question’ at the British Museum (submitted under the pseudonym ‘Jakob Richter’ in 1902). I love the fact that a single sheet of writing paper holds so many implications for the course of 20th-century history.

Letter from Lenin (Add. MS.54579.)

Do you have a favourite or unexpected enquiry that you’ve helped someone with?

I began working at the British Library in retrieval. This involved responding to Reading Room, loan, fax and photocopy requests from Library customers. Soon after I joined I remember dealing with an item request from an academic institution based in Iran. It struck me that the British Library had a truly global reach in terms of the service it provides. It also struck me that, whilst politics, history and culture can often divide people, the sharing of knowledge has the capacity to transcend boundaries.

What's your favourite thing that you can do in a library?

I can’t narrow it down to one thing. The best I can do is five: read, listen, watch, learn, escape. 

Where's your favourite library, or one you would most like to visit?

I’ve been lucky enough to visit a number of national libraries overseas. However, I haven’t made it to the Vatican Library yet. I’d like to visit that at some point.

Can you sum up being a librarian in three words?

Exciting. Intriguing. Challenging.

What do you think makes a good librarian?

A willingness to learn, an interest in helping the public and an eye for detail.

Tell us something about yourself that has nothing to do with your job

I enjoy birdwatching. Interacting with nature appeals to me because nothing is guaranteed and so there’s always an opportunity for surprise. The most beautiful animals can appear in the most mundane places (like a goldcrest outside a postal depot).

Favourite fictional librarian?

Zoe Heriot in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. She makes her first appearance in a story entitled ‘The Wheel in Space’. If I had the chance to work as a librarian on a space station, then I’d definitely be up for that. I’m not so keen on being menaced by the cybermen though.

Can you give us a book recommendation?

Tales of the Alhambra by Washington Irving.

Interview by Ellen Morgan

We spoke to people who have professional registration status as a librarian via the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals or who have an academic qualification such as a first degree, a postgraduate diploma or a Master’s degree in library and information studies or librarianship.

Is this you? If you’d like to feature in Library Lives, get in touch with [email protected]

Would you like this to be you? Find out more about becoming a librarian on the CILIP website.

‘Favourite thing that you can do in a library? Stumbling across something that means a great deal to you, that you would never dream existed.’

Continuing our Libraries Week launch of our new series, Library Lives, we meet Hedley Sutton, qualified librarian and Reference Team Leader in the Asian and African Studies Reading Room.

Where was your local library growing up?

I grew up in a small town in Lancashire, and my local library was Bury Public Library.

What does your current job involve?

I manage and am part of the small team that provides the front of house enquiry desk service in the Reading Room, and fields enquiries that come in remotely, mostly via email, from all over the world.

Do you have a favourite item in the Library’s collection?

This is unsurprisingly a difficult question to answer! But I do have one – it’s a very strange item: it’s The Necronomicon. The American writer H P Lovecraft’s tales involve mention of an ancient manuscript, which can be used as a spell to summon spirits from other worlds to earth. Some fans of Lovecraft thought it would be a good wheeze to pretend that this book really existed, so they produced a facsimile edition of this ‘ancient manuscript’. Because the supposed original script came from Mesopotamia / Iraq, within the Library the copy we have was thought to properly ‘belong’ to Asian and African Studies, rather than in, say, the general humanities collection. If and when Readers ask for a translation – as has happened – that’s when we have to tell them it’s all just meaningless scribble. And, in fact, the same meaningless scribble gets repeated every 16 pages!

Do you have a favourite or unexpected enquiry that you’ve helped someone with?

Our collection in Asian and African Studies includes a certain amount of material useful to those researching family history – particularly relating to India before Independence in 1947. I remember, vividly, helping someone find out about their father who they had never known, and them – to their own huge embarrassment – bursting into tears. I thought: that’s something you don’t experience every day, in any walk of life.

What's your favourite thing that you can do in a library?

Stumbling across something that means a great deal to you, that you would never dream existed. It’s a great pleasure as a librarian to be able to put the collection item alongside the person who wants to see it.

Where's your favourite library, or one you would most like to visit?

The New York Public Library, as I’ve heard a great deal about it but have not yet visited it.

Can you sum up being a librarian in three words?

Friendly. Diligent. Curious.

What do you think makes a good librarian?

You need to have people skills, to put people at ease and extract from them the information you need to be able to help them. Together with a good working knowledge of your own collection, and some knowledge as to where else someone might be able to find what they’re looking for.

Tell us something about yourself that has nothing to do with your job

I compose limericks! Both for and about colleagues, and about a wide range of other things.

There was a young lady called Janet
Who went to a library on Thanet
She saw (it was blatant),
The enquiry desk vacant,
So she thought to herself – should I man it?

Plenty more where that came from!

Can you give us a book recommendation?

Yes, one I was given recently: it’s a modern anthology of writings about libraries and librarians called Long Overdue: A Library Reader by Alan F Taylor.

Interview by Ellen Morgan

We spoke to people who have professional registration status as a librarian via the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals or who have an academic qualification such as a first degree, a postgraduate diploma or a Master’s degree in library and information studies or librarianship.

Is this you? If you’d like to feature in Library Lives, get in touch with [email protected]

Would you like this to be you? Find out more about becoming a librarian on the CILIP website.

‘Being a librarian in three words? An absolute privilege.’

Continuing the Libraries Week launch of our new series, Library Lives, we meet Caroline Kent, qualified librarian and Metadata Creation Programmes Manager.

Caroline Kent

Where was your local library growing up?

We didn’t really have a local anything! I grew up in rural North Yorkshire. But I do have very fond memories of my primary school library. It was admittedly tiny, as there were fewer than 100 pupils in the school, but it was wonderful: a set of shelves along the wall of the assembly/gym/dinner room. It was fabulous to visit and sit in the big hall once a week to read, or choose a new book, and take it home for the weekend.

Why did you want to become a librarian?

It was entirely by accident! I took a temporary job in the university library where I studied for my first (non-library) degree while I was waiting for my results. Almost immediately I thought ‘I love this’ and decided I would take the first chance at a full time permanent role. From there I did an Information and Library Studies Degree at Aberystwyth, and have been loving the constant change and new challenges ever since.

What does your current job involve?

I manage the cataloguing teams based at Boston Spa, with a temporary caretaker role looking after some of the cataloguing teams in St Pancras whilst we get a new manager in place.

Do you have a favourite item in the Library’s collection?

Possibly a cliché but I love the Lindisfarne Gospels.

Lindisfarne Gospels, Cotton MS Nero D IV

The role and life of a scribe has always fascinated me: both incredibly isolated but yet with such broad connections geographically and through time. I know I am romanticising – we do need to remember the dark, cold, cramped and often painful situations endured – but for me that adds to the amazing objects that were created. It’s a wonderful object in its own right but more than that, it now represents the best of what the British Library does: an incredible historic artefact, made widely available through the fabulous digitisation techniques behind our online services, and the most amazing facsimile edition that can be loaned for others to see beyond the Library.

What's your favourite thing that you can do in a library?

Travel. Every book is a journey, fiction and non-fiction. Whether it is a tiny tot amazed at reading hour with their mum, or a researcher who finds the one piece of a puzzle they’ve been missing, everyone in a library is on a journey.

Where's your favourite library, or one you would most like to visit?

The Library of Alexandria, the modern version! Although of course if I could time travel… I have been lucky enough to visit once, and was struck by the amazing vision of the designers; incorporating ideals of inclusivity and accessibility, with the amazing history of the location, and balancing print books with digital access.

Can you sum up being a librarian in three words?

An absolute privilege.

What do you think makes a good librarian?

Patience and curiosity.

If you weren't doing your current job, what would you be?

Something to do with gardening. I love growing things and exploring gardens, especially historic and re-created kitchen gardens. There is something very humbling about watching your food grow from a seed, looking after it, and then seeing it on your plate.

What one thing do you wish people knew about libraries or being a librarian that you suspect they don’t?

Everyone is welcome. I’d like everyone to realise that whether it’s the local newspaper, a coffee and browse, a children’s hour, or just information about the local area, libraries are there for everyone to use as they need. It’s not important whether you liked school or not, or even whether you liked books. All that matters is that you are curious.

Tell us something about yourself that has nothing to do with your job

I love trying new things. I don’t have any sports or hobbies that I really focus on, except perhaps walking, but I do just love to dabble. This is a picture at the top of the Devil’s Staircase. It’s part of the West Highland Way, a long distance route I walked a couple of years ago with my husband and a friend. Yes, he knows the picture is being included!

Interview by Ellen Morgan

We spoke to people who have professional registration status as a librarian via the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals or who have an academic qualification such as a first degree, a postgraduate diploma or a Master’s degree in library and information studies or librarianship.

Is this you? If you’d like to feature in Library Lives, get in touch with [email protected]

Would you like this to be you? Find out more about becoming a librarian on the CILIP website.