Library Newsletter Michaelmas 2023

St John’s College Library Newsletter L

Michaelmas 2023

VOLUME 7, ISSUE 1

Curious cures As we approach the season of coughs and colds, no doubt some of us will be reaching for the Lemsip (other brands are available) or perhaps mixing our own hot honey and lemon. But what did our medieval forebears do before lemons were readily available? The Curious Cures project, running from May 2022 to May 2024, may be able to provide some answers.

Thanks to funding from the Wellcome Trust, a team at Cambridge University Library is conserving, cataloguing, and digitising 180 manuscripts containing medical recipes from across the libraries of Cambridge. Full-text transcriptions will also be made of the 8,000 recipes they hold, and will be hosted alongside high-resolution images on the Cambridge Digital Library (https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk).

Eight manuscripts from St John’s have been included in the project, dating from the eleventh to the fifteenth century. All have now been conserved and catalogued, and digital images have just been made available of the first batch. The project will be harnessing artificial intelligence to create transcriptions using cutting-edge Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR) technology on the Transkribus platform. We’re delighted to be able to participate in this ambitious project, which not only makes the content of these manuscripts readily

accessible to researchers worldwide, but places them in their broader context and facilitates comparative study with manuscripts from other libraries.

Kathryn McKee, Special Collections Librarian and Sub-Librarian

Above: The start of ‘Liber urinarum’ from folio 59v of MS D.24, a compendium of medical texts probably written in France in the thirteenth century. The opening initial contains a picture of a monk studying a flask of a patient’s urine.

Below: Vervain and recently blessed holy water are apparently guaranteed to get rid of unwelcome flies in this fifteenth-century recipe ‘Ffor to make flyes fle from a mannys howse’ from folio 60r of MS K.49, a Middle English manuscript of medical recipes and treatises.

Reclassifying the Cambridge Collection Over the 2023 summer vacation, Working Library staff undertook a reclassification project for the Cambridge Collection, housed in the Working Library Chapel Basement. For those who have not come across it before, the Cambridge Collection is a fantastic collection of about 700 books that are all related to Cambridge and the local area. It is a real treasure trove, with a wide variety of items including modern and historical guidebooks, beautiful art and photography books, history books, and an amazing range of literature all inspired

by Cambridge – there is even a book reviewing Cambridge’s public loos! This collection was previously organised using a system based on size, which meant that it was not particularly easy to browse, and many of the wonderful and unique books it contains were

difficult to find. It was therefore decided that this collection needed a revamp to try to make it a bit more accessible.

Rather than being based on size, the new classification system is based on subject, with three broad initial categories that are then further divided into a range of subcategories. The initial categories are: ‘C’ for general books about Cambridge/Cambridgeshire; ‘CA’ for Cambridge ‘art’ books (e.g. literature, drawings, photography and architecture); and ‘CU’ for anything to do with the University.

Subcategories then distinguish formal or thematic features, such as ‘CA.Lit.Nov’, representing ‘Art -> Literature -> Novels’, or ‘CU.Spo.Row’ for ‘University -> Sport -> Rowing’. This new arrangement of the books means that the subjects that are present within the collection are much clearer, and items about similar subjects now find themselves next to each other on the shelf. There is also a new oversize section after the ‘normal-sized’ part of the collection, which has dramatically improved the tidiness of the shelves. The new organisation has greatly increased the accessibility of the collection, and we can’t wait for readers to now be able to discover the weird and wonderful things it contains.

Katie Hannawin, Library Assistant (part-time)

Dissertation Support Group This term we have relaunched the Dissertation Support Group, which now takes place in person in the Library Seminar Room every Monday afternoon during term time. This informal, drop-in group is primarily aimed at undergraduate students completing dissertations or other large pieces of coursework, who would benefit from a weekly session where they can ask for help with things like finding resources and referencing, and work alongside other students going through the same thing. It also allows for better time management, as students know they have a weekly timeslot where they can chip away at their work in a supportive environment as well as setting regular goals.

The group is run by the Library’s Graduate Trainee, Harriet Edwards, who is also a recent Cambridge graduate with experience of completing dissertations and coursework portfolios. So far, students from Music and Land Economy have come along to the Monday sessions, and we expect attendance to increase in Lent and Easter terms once those dissertation deadlines begin to loom!

Students are encouraged to email Harriet (hke23@cam.ac.uk) if they have any questions about how the group works, or just turn up to the next group session with something they’d like to work on.

Harriet Edwards, Library Graduate Trainee 2023-24

Meet this year’s Library Graduate Trainee I started at the Library at the beginning of August after graduating with a BA in Music from Robinson College, Cambridge in July. I volunteered weekly in my college library during my degree and so had a little experience in what is involved in the day-to-day running of a library, though, as a (very!) recent graduate, my main experience has been as a student user. I am extremely keen to look at measures to improve the accessibility of the library, building on outreach work I took on during my degree and also my own experience as a disabled user of a college library.

Other than the obvious reading and music, my interests include baking, crafting, and musical theatre, as well as occasional football and boxing (despite being hampered by an extreme lack of talent or ability). My special interests in my degree included music psychology, with my dissertation focusing on the use of music in end-of-life care, and the transcription of older forms of notation, something which I am hoping will be of use for any projects I may take on in the Old Library. Having learned so much in such a short period of time, I am really looking forward to the rest of this year and am excited to see what’s in store!

Harriet Edwards, Library Graduate Trainee 2023-24

Secret matters and courtly machinations The correspondence of John Fisher which is held in the College’s institutional archives has now been catalogued, along with some of his papers. The online catalogue already included a section called ‘Executors’ Correspondence’ which contained four letters, so the rest of his correspondence has been added to that, but with some slight restructuring. The first file contains letters between Fisher, some of the other executors of Lady Margaret’s will, and the Bishop of Ely, and includes some important letters about the dissolution of St John’s Hospital. One of the most interesting aspects of bringing the letters together in this way is that it’s possible to see some of the ‘behind the scenes’ machinations that lie behind the formal charters. A letter describing the remaining brethren of the Hospital being sent down the river to Ely is unintentionally moving; a letter of 1509 in which Fisher complains of problems in securing Henry VIII's signature in connection with causes affecting the Lady Margaret's estate is revealing.

One file contains a small number of letters from Bishop Fisher to others; a much larger file contains letters to him. Some of these concern the foundation of St John’s: of particular interest are two letters from John Fothed, Master of Michaelhouse, and one from Edmund Jackson, a Fellow of King’s Hall, partly about the boundary between the latter and St John’s. Other letters, however, do not concern St John’s at all. There are notes about arrangements to receive ambassadors into Britain, letters about plans for Fisher to attend the Lateran Council, and, intriguingly, a letter which, as well as telling Fisher that Catherine of Aragon will soon give birth, refers to ‘secret matters which cannot be written’.

SJLM/7/8/3/11: Letter to John Fisher from the King's Councillors, about arrangements to receive the Pope's ambassador.

1880s and 1890s. Nonetheless, their arrangement and description in the online searchable catalogue will greatly increase their chances of being discovered and accessed by researchers. Our cataloguing software allows for cross-referencing within the catalogue by linking descriptions in different areas, and the function has proved particularly useful here.

These letters, or certainly the more substantial ones, are not unknown to historians and some were printed in The Eagle in the

Lynsey Darby, Archivist

Recent additions to the Working Library collections

For comments on this issue, and contributions to future issues, please contact Janet Chow. Email: jc614@cam.ac.uk; Tel: (3)38662