Celebrating Diversity: A look at the Library EDI Book Giveaway

A post by Tim Buckle, Acquisitions Co-ordinator

Here at Durham University Library & Collections, having a collection that is represents all communities has been something that we have been developing over the years. As someone who grew up in the 1980’s under Section 28 it is heartwarming to see such a growing range of inclusive titles being made accessible.

The launch of the Liberate My Library Scheme in February 2020 was one of the initiatives we started to help diversify our collections even further. We have done this against a National and International debate around what type of materials should a library give access to.

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How do you decolonise a Reading List? One step at a time… 

A post by Maria Carnegie, Head of Customer Services, and Simon Speight, Head of Education, Learning and Engagement.

What we learn is inherently political. From what we are taught to how we are taught, certain values and voices are prioritised, and others marginalised. Decolonisation centres the impact of colonialism, both historic and ongoing, on how we understand the world in which we live and the information that we teach. 

Durham SU: Decolonise Durham Network Manifesto 

When did you last challenge your reading list? No, not to a duel! But by asking questions.  

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Item of the month: Letter from Sarah Child-Villiers, Countess of Jersey, to Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey – 8th January 1827

A post by Collections Assistant Jennifer Leach

This letter is one of 152 letters held in our collections written from the Countess of Jersey to Earl Grey. In 1827 Earl Grey was a prominent member of the Whig party but had just resigned his leadership to Lord Lansdowne, partly due to how at odds he was with the Prince Regent. However, in just three years he would become Prime Minister. The Countess was an influential member of the London social elite as she was not only a member of the aristocracy and extremely wealthy independently of her husband but also a patron of Almack’s, the most exclusive social club in London.

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“Feels like home…”

A post by Mitali Goel (DU Hindu Society President) and Charlotte Spink (Learning Coordinator)

The Oriental Museum has been collaborating with the local Indian community for the last decade to host annual Diwali celebrations.

However, 2023 marked our first formal collaboration with the Durham University Hindu Society. Working alongside Hindu Society’s fantastic President Mitali Goel and her dedicated exec team, the event was a shining success.

Tell us a bit about it, Mitali:

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eResource of the month: the Financial Times

Each month we spotlight one of our databases to highlight the range of resources available to our users. This month, Business Faculty Librarian Ben Taylorson writes about the Financial Times.

I’m always keen to draw the attention of our users to the vast collection of news and newspaper resources that we have. I feel they are something of a hidden or underutilised resource, but one that can prove invaluable to those studying certain subjects.

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Team Work Makes the Dream Work: My Experience at Durham University

The image is a photograph of Palace Green Library, a historic stone building, under a clear blue sky and in front of the green lawn of Palace Green. Vans and a visitor are passing in front of the building, showing the continued liveliness of the historic space.

By Amber Russell

Becoming a book conservator isn’t easy. Finding a program that will teach you the necessary skills and techniques is difficult enough, then you have to find a job. That’s normally when a post graduate work placement comes into play. Work placement is like a mini-internship, you will generally end up emailing every conservation lab, library, university, or museum you know and ask them, in a politely begging tone, to let you come and do volunteer work with them for a handful of weeks. If you’re very lucky and find someone kind enough to say yes then you get the opportunity to walk into a conservation lab as a volunteer conservator complete with responsibilities and goals and a few projects on your desk, and you do your very best not to blow it. Like I said: not easy. But if you’re very, very lucky you get to work in one of the most incredible settings in the world, with a collection people only dream of, and with a amazing team of not just conservators, but archivists, librarians, and the various staff that keep a collection available to the public. It just so happens, I am very, very lucky, because I was able to spend my work placement at Durham University.

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“I want the work I am involved in to be discoverable and accessible to an audience beyond the Ivory Tower, Westminster and Whitehall”

Celebrating Dr Michelle Addison: Associate Professor, Department of Sociology – International Open Access Week 2023

A post by Open Access Publications Officer, Katie Skellett

The theme of International Open Access Week 2023 is ‘Community over Commercialization’-spotlighting focus on supporting communities to seize the ‘opportunity to join together, take action, and raise awareness around the importance of community control of knowledge sharing systems’.

As Open Access Publications Officer at the University, the announcement of this year’s theme made me wonder…how do our researchers relate to the idea of knowledge sharing systems when embarking on iterative research processes, and is this idea of ‘community control’ over emerging knowledge a part of our researchers’ consciousness? Certainly, within the Open Research Team we understand that community control can be a valuable form of protection for researchers against inequalities that exist in the academic publishing space. We also realise though that it’s our occupational ‘bread and butter’ to consider these things, and that, we aren’t, for the most part, engaged in day-to-day research processes that might distract from exploring inequalities in this arena.

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Open Access Week 2023: Durham’s Research Publications Policy

While our team will enthusiastically bang the drum for Open Access all year round, Open Access Week provides us with a great platform to highlight the work we do, and the ways in which we’re able to remove barriers to accessing the research being undertaken and published by our academic colleagues. It also always feels like an appropriate moment for us to reflect on what we’ve achieved over the past twelve months, particularly as it feels as though 2023 has been a uniquely busy year; it’s seen us launch our new repository in Worktribe, start using our Safepod in the Bill Bryson Library, and provide an institutional open access fund – all of which helps us in our aim of assisting researchers and readers across the full spectrum of Open Access and academic publishing.

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Item of the Month: Photograph Album from the White Russian Camp in Kellerberg

The Kellerberg (also spelled Kellerburg) and Feffernitz Camps in Austria housed 10,000 displaced persons between them in the late 1940s. The Camp was located near the town of Kellerberg in the Drava River valley, northwest of Villach, Austria. Largely new barracks, the camp consisted of, at minimum, beds and basic structures, although it was built up to include a Church, Cemetery, Theatre Hall, and barracks for living quarters as more persons arrived. The camp was multinational, Slovenes were the largest group followed by persons from the Baltic countries and other Eastern and Southeastern countries of Europe. While families had their own barracks for privacy, single men and women had separate barracks, one for women and one for men.

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