Tag: #librarypeople

Cleaning up

A post by Faculty Librarian Ben Taylorson

I’m not really one for new year’s resolutions, but one thing I wanted to make sure I did in 2023 was make full use of the volunteering time that Durham University generously provides for staff. I have done a bit of volunteering through work before, at a foodbank and preparing Christmas treats for children. But with an entitlement of 35 hours of volunteering time to use, I set about finding something that I could do across the course of the whole year, via the Staff Volunteering Newsletter.

I’m quite an outdoorsy type, so I settled on litter picking/beach cleaning. The university work closely with SeaScapes to improve the state of our beaches and ultimately protect the fragile marine environment, and run monthly beach cleans (starting in April) on 1st Wednesday of every month 10 – 12pm.

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#DULibIntroducing Rebecca Jones

In the next of our series introducing members of staff, #DULibIntroducing meets Digital Learning Developer Rebecca Jones.

Rebecca Jones

Please state your name, full job title, and a brief description of what that entails:

Rebecca Jones, Digital Learning Developer. My job involves developing digital resources and online provisions for the library and collections. Digital learning developers often have a varied skill set. For example, they can shoot and edit educational videos, design courses and tutorials, create animations, or even produce immersive augmented or virtual reality experiences.

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#DULibIntroducing Kate Williamson

In the next of our series introducing members of staff, #DULibIntroducing meets Information Assistant Kate Williamson.

Kate Williamson (and Archie!)

Please tell us your name, full job title, and a brief description of your role.

Kate Williamson, Information Assistant. I work at the Bill Bryson Library in a customer service role. You will usually find me at the Help and Information Desk helping with queries, finding books for people, fixing printers, and passing out the ever so popular staplers and pens. I am also part of the team that processes resource requests, which is our service to help provide staff and students with Scan and Deliver requests, Postal Loans, Inter-Library loans, and book purchases through our Acquisitions team.

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#DULibIntroducing Martin Gleghorn

In the next of our series introducing members of staff, #DULibIntroducing meets Repository Coordinator Martin Gleghorn.

Martin Gleghorn

Please state your name, full job title, and a brief description of what that entails:

Martin Gleghorn, Repository Coordinator. Which means I coordinate the repository… Alongside the legend that is Kelly Hetherington, and working as part of the Scholarly Communications team, I help look after the University’s open access repository, Durham Research Online. Day-to-day, this involves a lot of liaising with academic staff, providing training for whoever might need it, advocating for open access research more generally, working with metadata, and – ultimately – making sure that the research being published at Durham is as widely accessible as physically possible. I’m also one of the people behind the @DROdurham twitter account, which we use to promote that research.

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Graduate intern update: Elisabeth

Graduate intern Elisabeth Prestgard updates us on what she’s been up to in the last month or so…

Hello everyone! Since I last updated you there have been many changes that I’d like to tell you about. Now that the new term has started, the library is open for all students, and as a result it has become a lot busier. When I work at the help and information desk, there are a lot more students queuing up and asking questions. Providing frontline customer service is one of my favourite tasks, because I get to assist people while learning more information about the library. With all the students now allowed in the library, I actually get to see what the library was like before the pandemic!  

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Romanesque bindings

A post by Assistant Curator Katie Brew

I have recently been fortunate to attend a five day Romanesque binding course with experienced bookbinder and conservator Arthur Green. It was a largely practical course, attended to gain a deeper understanding of this particular binding style and its construction – to improve my own skills and directly inform the conservation of the early medieval bindings we have here in Special Collections.

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#DULibIntroducing Tom Henderson

In the next of our series introducing members of staff, #DULibIntroducing welcomes University Library and Collections graduate intern Tom Henderson.

Tom Henderson

Please tell us your name, full job title, and a brief description of what that entails:

My name is Tom Henderson and I work as a ‘Graduate Intern (Ushaw Collections)’. I divide my time between Ushaw College and Palace Green Library, since parts of Ushaw’s collections are held at both. The role involves working in the search rooms at Ushaw and Palace Green, processing reader bookings and requests, and cataloguing collections.

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Inter-lending from the back of beyond

Hi, my name’s Judith Walton and I look after the day to day running of the library’s Inter-Library Loans team (previously known as the Document Delivery Service – we changed our name this summer just to keep everyone on their toes). One of the smaller ‘behind-the-scenes’ teams that you might not have come across, Inter-Library Loans is here to get hold of things not held our own library – books, articles, theses etc. It’s a lovely place to work, with a really positive feel to it. In daily contact with librarians all-round the UK (and the world), we’re always problem solving, tracking down hard to get items, which suits my inquisitive nature, and there’s always something new to learn. There’s a real sense of achievement when you track down something truly obscure and it’s lovely to see the smile on the researcher’s face when it finally arrives!

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Graduate intern update: Beth

Graduate intern Beth Hall updates us on what she’s been up to in the last month or so…

Hello, it’s Beth! Back again with another update from my Archives and Special Collections internship.

I promised an update on my time with conservation in my last post, and what a fascinating couple of weeks it has been.

We kicked off with a tour of the building, with a view to look at the conservation measures that we have in place to keep the collections safe. We have pest traps around the building (not necessarily to catch all the insects we might have here as you might think, but to monitor their levels and where they are likely to be found), which are mostly by the strong rooms where the collections are kept. We also have temperature and humidity monitors that make sure the environment for the collections are stable. These are regularly checked, and radiators come on if humidity levels get too high to make sure everything balances out!

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