Decolonising the old classification of Ukrainian literature

Iurii Sherekh’s ‘Ne dlia ditei’ – one of the many Ukrainian texts in the “Russian literature” section.

Readers might remember that one strand of decolonising our collections in response to Russia’s war against Ukraine, as outlined in an earlier blog post, was about classification.  As explained then and long known by readers using our open-shelf collections, large parts of the UL’s classification system still strongly reflect the times and attitudes of empire.  There’s a lot of work to be done here just to tease all the various threads out.

Taking the focus back to Ukraine specifically, I have taken a preliminary look at the Ukrainian component in the “Russian literature” classes – 756 and 757.  These classes, meant to contain Russophone literature only, was in practice also the destination for Ukrainophone literature too until the introduction in 2011 of a separate class (758:6) for the latter.  There was always a different classmark for “Other Slavonic” (758:8) for languages without their own classmark, but unfortunately Ukrainian appears to have been placed standardly in Russian for decades.

Today’s initial work has been to work out what at least roughly what amount of books it is that we might potentially move, reclassify, and re-label.  Here are the initial results.

• 756 contains 252 titles in or translated from Ukrainian
• 757 contains 190 titles in or translated from Ukrainian

So far, so relatively straightforward, if still representing quite a lot of work (I think it would be a challenge to deal with one book in 10 minutes, given all the things that would need to happen, so those figures alone would mean 2 weeks full-time as a minimum).  What is missing here, though?

#LibrariesWeek: Cataloguing, Classification, and Critical Librarianship at Cambridge University

This year’s Libraries Week, the annual showcase of what the UK’s libraries have to offer, is centered around the theme of Taking Action, Changing Lives, with the aim of “highlighting the diverse ways that [libraries] take action with and for their community and make a positive impact on people’s lives; to showcase their central role in the community as a driver for inclusion, sustainability, social mobility and community cohesion”. 

Within this initiative is featured the upcoming Facet publication Narrative expansions: interpreting decolonisation in academic libraries, edited by Jess Crilly and Regina Everitt. The book “explores what is specific to colonial contexts that has impacted knowledge production, how these impacts are still circulating in our libraries, and what we can do about it.” 

Bolesław Prus : the September 2020 Slavonic item of the month

It is easy to tell that a cataloguer has struggled with a set when its classmark sequence comes out as 758:53.c.201.33(1a-1c,2a-2h,4c-4d,5a-5b,5e-5f,5i,6a-6b,7a-7c).  This was one of the last things I catalogued before lockdown, and provides the beginnings (and hopefully more!) of the Library’s fine new set of Bolesław Prus.

Buying a major new set of collected works has always been a big step, and that is of course even more the case now.  Significant new academic editions often come with a similarly significant price tag, and our budgets are under pressure as never before.  Added to this is the very topical question of whether an electronic copy (if available) should be preferred (to which the answer, no matter how much readers might prefer a physical book, generally needs to be yes at the moment, price differences permitting (ebooks are largely more expensive, sometimes unbelievably so)).

Bolesław Prus (the nom de plume of Aleksander Głowacki), 1847-1912, was a major and significant writer of prose, yet the UL had relatively scant holdings.  This new set is Pisma wszystkie (Complete works), which will run to dozens of volumes.  Until this acquisition, we had only a 6-volume Pisma wybrane (Selected works) from the early 1980s and an incomplete set of a 1940s Pisma (Works; we hold v. 1, 2, 4-9, 22, 23, 25…), alongside fewer than 30 publications of individual works in Prus’ original Polish or in English translation.  The new set, providing not only Prus’ complete works but also major academic commentaries, was too good an opportunity to miss – particularly with the ever-growing success of the Cambridge Polish Studies programme, which attracts more and more undergraduates and postgraduates.

S3-figures and the January 2020 Slavonic items of the month

The introduction to the 1945 ‘Select classes classification’

The University Library’s classification schemes can sometimes seem designed to hinder rather than aid the reader.  This post looks at some recent and lovely East European additions to the S3-figure class and briefly explains its history and current use.

In the past, the Library produced publications about specific classification schemes, chiefly for staff but apparently also for sale (many have prices printed on them!).  From my predecessor as head of department, David Lowe, I inherited a third edition of Select books classification, published in 1945 in a print run of 100 copies following a first edition in 1925 and a second very shortly thereafter in 1926.

The S3-figure class was designed for ‘select books’ which didn’t already fall into one of the other ‘select classes’ covered by the pamphlet.  Most commonly, a ‘select book’ was, and still is, something extensively illustrated or very heavy (archaeology books and art catalogues often tick both boxes) which the Library would want to provide access to only in a supervised reading room.  The class traditionally held only hardbacks but we now add sturdy paperbacks to the sequence too.  The S3-figure class was originally applied in combination with a simplified version of the open-shelf 3-figure scheme, so a book about Russian history which would count as ‘select’ would have been given a classmark starting with S586 (since 586 is the main Russian history class).  About 15 years ago, the decision was made to stop the subject classification of S3-figure books, and now the classmark is standardly S950 and otherwise reflects only size and date of publications with a running number (eg S950.c.201.1).  As is the case with many classes in the UL, then, readers need to use the subject headings in catalogue records to trace subjects for titles added to the S3-figure class since that time.  This post looks at three new additions to the class which relate to East European art.

Exit, pursued by a warehouse operative : Soviet drama and the Library Storage Facility

Inside the new Library Storage Facility

The Library Storage Facility (LSF), whose contents can be ordered to the Library but cannot be borrowed, was opened in June 2018.  By the end of 2019, the store’s astonishing 4,000,000-book capacity will be one third full.  We in Collections and Academic Liaison have started sending a few books there, and this blog post looks at the what, the why, and the how.

Grouping material by subject

It was only with the closure of the Guardbook for 1978 imprints, and the introduction of a new cataloguing code accompanied by Library of Congress subject headings, that serious attempts were made to analyse the subject content of each item acquired by the University Library. Up until that point subject analysis had been minimal – access points for material about a named individual, and for grammars, dictionaries, encyclopaedias and volumes of conference proceedings, without using a controlled vocabulary. For much of its earlier history, the only consideration of subject which took place was in determining where to place each item on the shelves.

The persistence of the eighteenth century in the Russian cultural imagination

The first lines of Rossiiada by Mikhail Kheraskov (7756.c.1)

The second 2014/15 CamCREES seminar saw Professor Luba Golburt of UC Berkeley speak about the paradox of the obscurity and tenacity of the 18th century in the Russian cultural and historical imagination.  These notes go on to look at her question of the Russian 18th century’s true length, in terms of classification and subject headings.

Russian literature’s “Golden Age” was the 19th century, exemplified by Pushkin, the poet described to this day in Russia as nashe vse (our everything).  Professor Golburt’s absorbing talk looked at the way in which the epoch which preceded it, the 18th century, both fell into undeserved obscurity and yet also cast an enduring shadow long after it ended.  The talk was based on Professor Golburt’s recently published book, The first epoch : the eighteenth century and the Russian cultural imagination (the University Library’s copy is electronic and can be accessed by Library readers from this LibrarySearch record).

Closed or open access – how do we decide?

Overflows on North Front 4

Many of you will have noticed the groaning shelves around the library, and our attempts to accommodate the continuous supply of new material. We move things around, we take away lesser consulted items, we remove the very large “a” size material, constantly revisiting and looking for ways in which to give our readers easy access to what they most need. It is not an easy task. Books keep coming, and overflows grow.

In European Collections and Cataloguing we are trying to address this, by looking carefully at what we send to the open shelves. As we catalogue an item, we decide where it should stand, going through a checklist of decisions in our minds. Firstly, should it be borrowable or non-borrowable? Wanting readers to have easy access to an item, we would prefer to make it borrowable where possible, only making it non-borrowable if it were particularly expensive or rare, if it had many plates and illustrations, or if it were either very large or conversely quite slight.

Modern Greek in the University Library

Cover of ‘Thalassina eidyllia (1887-1891)’ by Alexandros Papadiamantes (S706.d.94.14)

The University Library’s Modern Greek collection, which numbers over 13,000 items, is now represented on the Library’s language-specific webpages.  An introduction to the collection, with an explanation about transliteration and a guide to history and literature classmarks, has been put up on this page.  The text of that page is provided in this blog post.

The Modern Greek collection

The University Library has got over 13,000 items in Modern Greek in the electronic catalogue, stretching from the 16th century to the current day.  The 16th to 18th centuries are represented by over 400 books in total, and then the 19th century sees a leap up to over 1,000 items.  A greater leap still follows for the 20th century, with over 8,500.  The 21st century is so far represented by nearly 3,000 books.

 

Dating Diderot acquisitions

Nowadays many library users of the University Library collections have the classmarks of the books and journals they wish to consult before they enter any Library building. In the main University Library the room at the top of the central stairs, which still contains the printed guardbook catalogue, is often deserted, but 40 years ago when the guardbook was the only place where readers could locate most material, the catalogue hall was a constant hubbub of activity. The guardbook catalogue still has an important function today, but only on the rare occasions when online data seems unclear or inconsistent, or there is reason to suspect an item has missed retrospective conversion and doesn’t appear on the computer.

Guardbook in the Catalogue Hall of the University Library

The printed guardbook does have other values, however, which the online catalogue cannot replicate. Anyone who is interested in the history of the Library’s collections can quickly make an initial assessment of when titles were acquired by running the eye over the individual guardbook entries. The colour of the paper and the varying styles of printing give lots of clues. As well as the classmark in the top left-hand corner of each slip, there is a printing number in the top right-hand corner, which usually incorporates in an abbreviated form the year in which the catalogue entry was produced.