Annual Report 2012-13
The Librarian’s Annual Report Our Departmental Aim is to provide a modern, efficient and welcoming Library service for all members of the College, and for all others with valid reasons to make use of the College’s library and archival collections and facilities, so enabling the College to fulfil its statutory and strategic aims. Summary This year has seen some recent structural changes put to good use, and others pressed enthusiastically towards completion. The refurbishment of the Working Library over the summer of 2012, described in the last Report, has offered our readers a still more comfortable and convenient service during the past year. The new selfissue system has reversed the decline in borrowing observed across the past five years, while additional seating on two Floors, the larger Seminar Room, and the partitioning of space elsewhere on the Mezzanine Floor have all given those using the Library more flexibility to pursue their preferred methods of study. They can take advantage of a fine new coffee machine too: following a request from the JCR this facility was brought in during Easter Term 2013 with essential support from the College’s Catering and Conference Manager. Across the College, building work on the new Archive Centre in the School of Pythagoras progresses on schedule, and walking the site at the time of writing one can readily see both the elegance and the functionality of the Architect Oliver Caroe’s plans; they are fully in sympathy with a very special ancient building. When the next Report is written, if all continues to go well, we shall be moving the College’s incomparable archival collections into their new home. It is worth remembering that our collections of portraits and other paintings and drawings will also be administered from the School of Pythagoras; another longstanding need is thus addressed. Rather more frustrating challenges lie ahead too. I am obliged to highlight some significant and as yet unresolved environmental issues in the Old Library as well as the wider questions posed by changing resource provision across the University. Both points are developed in the paragraphs that follow. Away Day In the last three or four years we have grown accustomed to holding our annual Library Away Day in other Colleges, an informative and I believe productive habit. In 2012 we visited Hughes Hall, and in the course of a busy day discussed the Strategic Plan, the best ways to exploit the summer refurbishment, and challenges posed by the departure of long-serving members of staff. We are not a large department, and we talk to one another daily. But the chance for all staff to sit around a table, undistracted by readers and daily routines, is still welcome. Excellent 1