The books of the dead, and the subject librarian

One regular job that raises its head in the life of the subject librarian is the question of "legacy" collections. Surprisingly often I am sent huge lists of the books of the recently deceased, sometimes with an offer to go to houses to look through somebody's lifetime's collection. With a subject like Welsh, these houses full of books are not necessarily local, and sometimes instead I have to do the work remotely, attempting to judge from a list what might be useful and trying to work out how to get it from a distance (even from another country).

This can be an enormously time-consuming job. If it is merely a question of checking a list against what is in stock in our library and what is not, I can get someone else to do the checking - but it isn't usually as simple as that. We may already have a couple of copies of a book which is long out of print, but if it is in high demand a couple is not enough: a mechanical search rejecting duplicates won't pick up on such a gem. You need a fairly good knowledge of the subject to spot what may be potentially useful. The tendency for arbitrary stock selection criteria relating to the age of an item won't help with a humanities subject.

There are also practical difficulties. I do have a car (a lot of my subject librarian colleagues do not drive), but  I don't have parking rights at work, so actually unloading and carting boxes of books in an appropriate place isn't without problems. These collections are not always offered for nothing, so there is the question of finding money for them, and families often have no idea what to ask for. As we already have a broad and comprehensive collection in my subject area, I am more likely to want to fill gaps rather than take a whole library off someone's hands, but if the family is looking to sell the books, they would usually, understandably, rather take an offer for the whole lot than have people cherry-picking.

If you don't actually see the books, you can be in for some unwelcome surprises. People will tell you that they are in good condition, but that's a relative term. Yellowing Reader's Digest compends and the cheap paperbacks of yesteryear may have had sentimental value for someone, but they are not going to enhance a university's bookstock (this is a fairly regular issue in public libraries too - no doubt those libraries which have been decoupled from professional supervision and stock selection will be a dumping ground for much of this sort of thing).  In Wales, we have the added occasional hazard of chapels closing down, many of them having had vestries with their own libraries, once valuable community resources but often more recently sadly neglected. Items which might once have been welcome may have deteriorated beyond the point at which it may be reasonable to try to repair them. Condition is very much in the eye of the beholder. If you can't see what you're getting, be prepared for other unpleasantnesses: one colleague once arranged (expensive) transport for boxes of books from someone's house, and found herself having to dispose of, mainly, old clothes and other jumble which came with them.

Sometimes there are moments of sheer delight, as on the occasion when a bereaved son discovered among his father's possessions approximately fifty 19th century books which had been removed from our library years ago. They were all part of the original personal collection of Enoch Salisbury, and were all to do with the history of Glamorgan. This was embarrassing for the son, but we were pleased to have them back!

So many important Welsh books are out of print and unobtainable that the only place they can be (unless they have all been pulped) is in the houses of the elderly, so I am always hopeful of finding gold when a collection becomes available. On the whole, though, the amount of effort I put in to checking long lists against stock and making practical arrangements is disproportionate to any benefit ultimately gained by the library.

The whole question of book collections in private houses is fraught with sensitive issues. Bereaved people don't want to hear that you don't want their loved one's prized possessions. Sometimes they are under pressure of time to clear a house. Perhaps the dead relative had always expressed a wish that his/her books should go to their own old university library. It's a minefield! It's also one I'm personally very aware of, as I come from a family with a serious book habit myself. My father was a son of the manse, as was his own father, and he himself was an academic, so that's three generations of book accumulation, and I used to buy a lot of books too (I've slowed down now, due to lack of money and space). My husband grew up in a large rectory, so he also was exposed to the book habit from early on, and he is less disciplined than I am in trying not to persist. The clergy have a lot to answer for in the book sphere! The Methodist manse at one time came equipped with furniture and household goods, rather like army married quarters, so pictures and books were the only personal items on view in the home, and in my grandparents' case they went all over the country from Shetland to Portland. We have not kept everything which belonged to the now deceased book collectors in the family, but we still have an awful lot and the sentimental value they have for us won't be the same for those who come after us. I am not naive enough to think that any library will be interested in much of it (with the exception of certain subjects); no doubt we are also guilty of creating a problem for future generations.

With the advent of the e-reader, perhaps the book problem will be one day be worse than I have been thinking. I'm not sure I can cope with the thought of all these books being of no value to anyone, nor can I imagine living in a bookless house. We are still a good way off the "everything is on the Internet" scenario so much beloved of politicians and journalists, but the secondhand book market may certainly suffer. If it does, there will be a tidal wave of books emerging from the houses of the dead one day, and some hard decisions to make, both personally and for librarians.

Library day in the life: round 8, day 2 (Tuesday 31st January 2012)

Subject librarian day today, with odd little bits of cataloguing in passing. The main item on the "to do" list was to see whether it was going to be possible to copy the Welsh play needed by students, requested yesterday. Publishers have refused in the past, but, oh joy! Gwasg Gomer couldn't have been more helpful, and I soon had permission both verbally and in writing (by email). Even so, the early birds among the students nearly thwarted us, as two out of our three copies had already been borrowed by the time everything was in place. The remaining book was put aside for copying and with any luck all will be well. Even with permission you still cannot make unlimited numbers of copies: I am sure the students would like one each, but there is a maximum permitted number which is well short of the number of students taking the module.

Apart from that, the day was spent catching up with queries including book orders, hunting for missing books, deciding whether to replace them or not, and working on the first phase of the reclassification project which is coming up (which also throws up cataloguing questions and more evidence of missing stock). The library is quite quiet at the moment, so not many enquiries from students, and a bit of time to talk to a retired member of staff (who has been lured out of retirement recently to take part in a general introductory course on Welsh culture for the first year students).

Late in the afternoon, a member of staff with an interest in the history of Cardiff reported that many copies of "Cardiff Yesterday" are missing from the shelves. I was instantly transported back to my public library days, as "Cardiff Yesterday" was kept under lock and key in the public library due to its tendency to disappear. It is a series of 36 books which came out in the 1980s and 1990s, containing old photographs of Cardiff, and in Cardiff it is right up there with Archbold's "Criminal pleading and evidence" as the book most likely to be stolen from a library, that is, of which a library may be permanently deprived with intent (I know my legal definitions!). I checked the shelves and could not find one of the 22 volumes which are not on loan. Too late now, but I played with the idea of making it compulsory for staff members to borrow them and keep them safe in their own homes. We could at least recall them from there if needed!

Library day in the life : round 8 (Monday 30 January 2012)

The "Library Day in the Life" project, coordinated by Bobbi Newman, runs twice a year: librarians, library staff and library students share their day, or week, through various media (blogs, Twitter, photos and videos).

I am rather late to the party here, as although I knew that round 8 was happening on Monday 30th January, I didn't join as that day was scheduled as a teachers' training day at my son's school, which meant I couldn't be at work. Then I realised that the project is running for the whole week, so I did sign up, but, as yet, I have not added my details to the project wiki, as there always seems to be someone else editing it, and only one person can do it at a time. Details, details ...

I'm one of those awkward part-timers who is never there or always in the wrong place on any given day. I work the equivalent of three days a week, spread over four days, and I have two roles, one third as Subject Librarian for the School of Welsh at Cardiff University and two thirds cataloguer. In practice, the boundaries are quite blurred. Both functions used to take place in the Arts &Social Studies Library, but in 2004 cataloguing was moved to an office block a couple of miles away to make room for the new Special Collections & Archives (SCOLAR). To complicate matters further, I catalogue material in SCOLAR, which often means being back in our old, transformed, home, as the nature of the material is such that it isn't advisable to move it around too much. So, two roles, in three locations.

Monday 30th January:
I took this day off as annual leave because of the school INSET day, but I did take some paperwork home with me and went through quite a heap of queries, emerging at the end with a pile of paper for recycling and a totally tidy set of different coloured plastic wallets with remaining work items nicely sorted. Not exactly a typical day's work, but worthwhile! I also made the mistake of looking at my work email late in the afternoon while not in work, which can often lead to stressful moments (being in possession of the facts but without the tools to deal with things). In this case, there was an email from a tutor who is teaching a module beginning this week, who had just realised that we have only three copies of a Welsh play published in 1982, which she would like 32 students to have read by next week. Would it be possible to make copies or obtain copies of the play somehow?

This is not an uncommon scenario with humanities subjects in general, and Welsh in particular. Publications tend to have a very limited print run, and by the time they are wanted in a university they are often out of print. Commercial interest decreases, whereas academic interest grows, over time. We do aim to buy every adult novel, book of poetry, and published play where possible, so we have a very wide range of Welsh literature, but we do not buy multiple copies unless or until they are requested (by which time, in publishing terms, it is often too late) - otherwise we would need a very much bigger library! Plays in particular are very ephemeral publications: not many make it into the canon.

Because of copyright restrictions, we are not allowed to copy whole plays without permission, so I sent a "holding" email to the tutor promising to deal with this in the morning, and explained the copyright rules. I reflected on the gulf between the students' expectations and the reality of needing to work both within these rules and in the context of a market which doesn't put out of print 30-year-old Welsh plays very high on its list of priorities.