‘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.

‘Favourite fictional librarian? Batgirl!’

With over 1500 staff covering areas from security to events management, the British Library is a multi-professional team – and this includes, of course, librarians. Library Lives is our new series celebrating and profiling librarians across the British Library and the UK. And what better time to launch it than Libraries Week, the annual showcase of the best that libraries have to offer.

Today we meet Stella Wisdom, qualified librarian and Digital Curator in our Digital Scholarship team.

Where was your local library growing up?

Bedworth in Warwickshire.

Why did you want to become a librarian?

When I was at secondary school I did my work experience at Bedworth Library. They encouraged me to curate a part of the teenage section, and I did it on rock music and heavy metal: I put all these posters up and organised displays of CDs. I also organised a Beatrix Potter themed children’s event. I just had such an amazing time and couldn’t believe this was a job that I could do.

What does your current job involve?

That’s a very good question! I promote innovative and creative reuse, and also computational and data-driven research using the Library’s data and digital collections – both the digitised analogue collections and born-digital material.

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

This is a difficult one, but I’m going to pick 80 Days by a small studio in Cambridge called inkle. It’s a retelling of Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days but it’s an interactive app. You read the story by going on different journeys as you go round the world, unlocking different parts of the journey narrative as you progress. Here at the Library we have been investigating complex digital publications, which we call emerging formats, and collecting 80 Days has been an experiment for us.

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

For me, it’s to attend and to organise events. I love events in libraries, from game jams to Wikipedia edit-a-thons – even raves. We had an algorave at the British Library in 2019 and it was such a fun evening.

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

The library I’d most like to visit is the public library in Seattle. It’s a big glass building – it looks super impressive. And Seattle’s not too far away from Washington State University, Vancouver and they’ve got the Electronic Literature Lab there.

What do you think makes a good librarian?

Being adaptable and willing to change and learn, and helping others to learn.

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

I’d like to be a lawyer – I’ve got quite interested in copyright and trademark law. I think that kind of attention to detail, looking up sources – there are some similar skills.

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

How much collecting of digital material we do. People may know we collect e-books and e-journals, but they may not be aware of the annual crawl of websites we do for the UK web archive, or the emerging formats collecting we’re doing.

How have things changed in libraries since you qualified?

When I did my Information and Library Studies degree at Aberystwyth in the late 90s, the World Wide Web was quite a new thing. I didn’t ever imagine that there would be roles like Digital Curators and departments like Digital Scholarship when I was studying to be a librarian.  

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

When I’m not being a librarian, I’m a volunteer roadie and driver for the UK goth band Inkubus Sukkubus.

Stella photographed by Candia McKormack

Favourite fictional librarian

Batgirl! A superhero and a librarian. Very cool.

Can you give us a book recommendation?

Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch. Modern urban fantasy set in London.

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

We go behind the scenes to introduce you to our people and the many ways they work to open up our collection for everyone. This month we meet Senior Imaging Technician, Isabelle Reynolds-Logue.

Isabelle Portrait

Tell me about your role?

Isabelle joined the Library in January 2020 as a photographer on the International Dunhuang Project, working on the Lotus Sutra Manuscript Digitisation Project. She has since worked on a number of other projects including Heritage Made Digital, medieval manuscripts and the Bollinger Javanese manuscripts, as well as exhibition photography and commercial orders.

How did you get into this field?

Isabelle first encountered cultural heritage photography at university during her course in Arts and Sciences. However, it was after university, working front of house at the Postal Museum, where she discovered her passion.

‘I love photography and cultural heritage, so seeing the two combined was a dream! In my spare time, I went to the studio and was trained on the equipment. I knew this was the path I wanted to follow so I set about looking for more experience.’

She embarked on a digital archiving traineeship with the National Archives, learning on the job, which then led her to her current role as a Senior Imaging Technician at the British Library working on the International Dunhuang Project.

Isabelle working on the Lotus Sutra scrolls

What do you love about the Library?

Isabelle is passionate about the collection and also enjoys the diversity of her work.

‘I love how the Library holds such a wide range of material that anyone can access. From a great Philatelic collection to the Sound Archive, and all the incredible manuscripts, there is something for everyone here. I also love the variety of exhibitions the Library puts on. Women’s Rights followed by Paddington Bear? Excellent!’

What are some of your favourite projects you have been a part of recently?

In almost two years at the Library, Isabelle has worked on a number of diverse projects and a variety of medieval manuscripts, requiring different types of digitisation and photography techniques.

Her favourite project so far has been the medieval manuscripts project where she discovered the incredible and fascinating illustrations of armed hares found in Yates Thompson MS 8 during the digitisation process.

‘They are as weird as they sound,’ she says. However there is no doubting the beauty of the illustrations.

Examples of the hare illustration on the Yates Thompson manuscripts

For the upcoming Elizabeth and Mary: Royal Cousins, Rival Queens exhibition, Isabelle digitised the Elizabeth I funeral procession scrolls. This manuscript is unique in being ‘the first ever visual record of the funeral of an English monarch’.

The panels of the scroll had been cut and bound into a large volume, and for the exhibition Isabelle was asked to generate a stitched image of all the panels so that the item could be viewed in its original state.

[Left hand of drawing]: The horse trapped with velvet, led by two attendants; the Sergeant of the Vestry and Children of the Chapel Royal

She captured each panel of the item individually, straightened and cropped the images using Capture One and then pieced these files together to generate a stitched image in Photoshop. As it wasn’t a continuous scroll and has been cut into pieces, Isabelle had to manually stitch each panel together, making sure they aligned properly and making the join line invisible.

This step by step guide, based on the Lotus Sutra scrolls for the International Dunhuang Project, shows you how she did it.

Overhead camera set up capturing the funeral procession drawings

What is your favourite object in the collection?

Currently her favourite is the manuscript containing a lock of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s hair and ashes, alongside a lock of Mary Shelley’s hair. She found it while working at home on the metadata of images in the Library storage system, Portfolio.

‘However, there is so much to discover at the Library that my favourite object in the collection is bound to change!’

Any book recommendations for our readers?

The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist by Adrian Tomine. ‘I’m a huge fan of graphic novels and this cartoonist in particular, and this is the last one I read. It is so well put together, it really made me laugh and cringe. It is such an honest depiction of the artist’s life.’

Find out more about our Digitisation Services.