Menopause: The Anthology

I answered a call out last year by Arachne Press to submit a piece of writing about the menopause, and to my wonderment and delight my piece was chosen to sit alongside others in this amazing collection.

Like many before me I have shrunk from embracing this natural cycle within my life. Kept my mouth shut in public, perhaps even shuffled uneasily on the spot when it has come up in conversation. Although, from a position on the side lines I have supported efforts to make this topic less taboo, have attended workshops about menopause awareness, cheered on work place attempts to bring this subject out of the shadows, but when it came to myself I would slip back into those shadows, at least amongst colleagues.

Gradually an increasing amount of friends have owned up to problematic symptoms and privately I too have begun to acknowledge those ‘personal summers’ if nothing else. So what made me write a poem that is being published, my words in print for all the world to see? Because I am so much more comfortable with the written word, because my pen or my keyboard don’t mind if I stutter or blush, or ramble incoherently, and they positively welcome the silences, for it is within those periods of quiet and stillness that the muse comes forward.

I write what I know, and from the heart, and there is so much I cannot explain to your face, but if you are lucky I’ll share that story or poem I’ve typed.

Menopause – its something we share, but experience differently. It may glance off your shoulders with barely a whisper, or bring you to your knees for long excruciating years. The more it is talked about in public, the easier it will become for those who suffer to speak up, and gain the help and the space they need. If I stumble over shouting about it with my spoken voice then let my writing voice take its place.

This collection aims to break away from serious medical discussions and mainstream viewpoints and instead acts as a comet of the arts, blazing a trail of tales featuring a gamut of emotions from anger to humour. Perhaps you’ll see yourself here, perhaps you’ll write your own experience down, and perhaps you’ll share it, because people are now listening.

Menopause: The Anthology (2023) edited by Cherry Potts and Catherine Pestano will be officially launched on Wednesday 18th October, 7pm at a free online event.

Register on Eventbrite

Writing around Postcards for Perec

Special Collections & Archives, Cardiff University are currently (May- September 2022) hosting the Postcards for Perec exhibition. This was a project curated by Linda Parr based around Georges Perec’s Two Hundred and Forty-Three Postcards in Real Colour. These were postcard messages dedicated to Italo Calvino, which were published in 1978 as a long list and without any images. Artists were invited to respond to the texts, by making postcards and creating the missing images. The postcards have previously been exhibited at UWE Bower Ashton Library, Winchester School of Art library and on The Street Gallery of Bath Spa University. A full colour catalogue of the project containing images of all the postcards plus informational essays has been published and was launched at BABE – Bristol Artist’s Book Fair at Bower Ashton, Bristol in April 2022.

Whilst hosting this exhibition we also wanted to actively engage with it, and so as part of the Cardiff University PHEW (Positive Health, Environment & Wellbeing) fortnight I ran a creative writing workshop themed around the project. As a member of the French group OuLiPo (Ouvroir de littérature potentielle) Perec was renowned for his experimental word play, constrained writing techniques (including his 300 page lipogrammatic novel La Disparition (1969) which was written without using the letter ‘e’), and embracing of mathematical problems to trigger ideas. Due to this I wanted the group to experiment with different constrained writing techniques, as well as engaging with the postcard images.

Perec’s postcard messages were compiled using mathematical permutations, and Parr assigned the messages to contributing artists by using the knight’s tour of a chess-board, because of this I wanted to utilise a numerical technique to help the workshop participants pick postcards to work with. I decided on the use of dice, and told the participants to roll three times – the first number would decide the case they would look in, the second number the board (on which the cards were mounted in groups), and the third number they could count up (or down) along the board to find their card. I wasn’t too prescriptive about how they did this, and to be honest if they preferred a card next to the one their dice led them to I was happy for them to go with that instead. We used the dice rolling method for three of the four writing exercises completed. As well as being a nod to Perec’s numerical methods it also helped the participants to choose a card without spending too long looking at all the wonderful postcards. Each exercise was further constrained by time limits (generally only 7 minutes on a piece of prose or poetry).

The first exercise involved choosing a card via dice roll, then writing down 5 words that came to mind whilst looking at the card, these could be descriptive, impressionistic, emotive etc. Next participants had to write a paragraph/piece of prose about or inspired by the card incorporating their 5 words. Once this had been done they were then asked to see if they could turn their prose into poetry. Some participants found that by already having ‘source’ material in their prose the poetry came a bit easier.

The second exercise followed along the same lines as the first except participants had to choose whether to exclude the letter ‘e’ (and thus produce a lipogram) or for the only vowel used to be ‘e’ (a univocalism). Prose and poetry were both produced, and it was agreed by all that this was a difficult exercise. Although with the restrictions in place it was felt to be easier to create a poem, as for some the prose was almost poetry already.

With the third exercise we took a break from interacting with the postcard images and instead wrote a postcard message of our own. These were messages to/from/about a library, and participants were restricted to only using 50 words.

For the fourth and final exercise we returned to using dice and the postcards, skipped the prose and went straight to composing a poem but this time experimenting with the concept of a tautogram. Participants were given the option of either doing the whole poem using the same letter to start every word, or to use a different letter for each line. This proved to be another difficult exercise with several people feeling that they were really just writing a list of words that began with the same letter rather than composing a poem. Although see the two shared examples here which did a good job.

All in all the participants bravely embraced the exercises and despite feeling unsure of themselves, and being additionally deliberately constrained by time, produced some wonderful writing. I asked to share some of their pieces and they have kindly agreed – this has been done anonymously as was the wish of most. Copyright remains with each individual author. Most include the number of the postcard with the piece so if you come to the exhibition (or buy the book) you will be able to see which image inspired which text. We have gone in a circle (or perhaps spiral?) from (Perec’s) TEXT to (the artists’) IMAGES and back to TEXT again, perhaps someone out there will be inspired to create more images from our texts…

(To better see the pictures of the poems please click on the images.)

Many thanks to Anna, Beverly, Kathleen, Markku, Milena, Sarah, Sue, and Zoe.

Talking at Tinkinswood

Tinkinswood Burial Chamber

On Sunday 8th May 2022 I stood by Tinkinswood burial chamber in the Vale of Glamorgan and spoke about its history and folklore to a group of walkers. My appearance was part of the Vale Trails – 10 Days in May event. This was a series of guided walks exploring the Vale, led by Welsh TV presenter Chris Jones and organised by the Vale of Glamorgan Council. I was part of the ‘Haunted Field Walk‘ and there is a downloadable guide if you want to follow the walk yourself.

So why was I speaking? The short version is that a friend asked me to do it! The long version is that for the past year I have been undertaking research into the folklore of burial chambers in Wales. I started off with a much wider remit – the folklore of ancient sites across the UK, this swiftly got narrowed to just Wales, and finally to just burial chambers in Wales. This was because I was finding out so much I wanted to write about than I just had to become more focussed. I had also become increasingly frustrated with basic books and websites that relate a folklore story for a particular site but give no context or references, or even acknowledge where they got the information from. Perhaps it doesn’t matter to most people but I always want to know more.

The first sites I began looking at in detail were Tinkinswood and St Lythans, they are situated within about a mile of each other, near to Dyffryn House & Gardens and about a half hour drive from where I live. My friend knew I had been undertaking this research and originally asked if I could share some information as she was due to give a talk at Tinkinswood. I happily shared my draft chapter and told her I’d be happy to help. A few weeks before the talk she asked if it was possible for me to do the whole thing myself as she needed to be elsewhere that weekend. With a large ‘gulp’ I said yes!

I was excited to get the chance to do this although I also became very nervous. I’ve given papers at a range of academic conferences over the years, and I always get nervous even though they usually turn out completely fine. There have been times when IT problems (out of my control) have interrupted proceedings and messed up my presentation, although the audience are usually forgiving and full of sympathy. In this case there would be no IT, all my visual props would be the chamber itself, so unless it poured with rain (and it didn’t) all would be fine. Just the small point of not relying on written notes and having to learn my spiel inside and out. Some people are great at talking off the cuff, but not me. I might know my subject really well, but explaining it in a coherent and entertaining way doesn’t always come naturally.

Talking to the walkers (with my green dress I fade into the background!)

Enough of my self-doubt – it went well on the day, and lots of questions were asked. I was cut a little bit short as they were only at the beginning of their walk and had lots more to fit in that day, and in retrospect if I was ever asked to do it again I would make some changes – not everyone is as fascinated by the “1849 cromlech question” as I am, and if I dropped that I could squeeze a bit more folklore in. But it was a great experience and I’m really glad I got chance to do it. I covered archaeology and history, the Cotswold Severn barrows and the cromlech question, the druid revival and the ghostly druids reputed to haunt the monument, women turned to stone and stones going down to water to drink and bathe, sadly I didn’t manage to fit in the antics of the local ceffyl dŵr.

Answering questions after the talk whilst the audience explore the site

Meanwhile I need to get back to writing that book all about the folklore of burial chambers in Wales so I can share these stories with a wider audience.

Photographs of the talk and of myself were taken by Ken Humphreys aka Pictures Without Film.

Bibliographic Control: International Conference 2021

During the week of 8-12th February 2021 the International Conference Bibliographic Control in the Digital Ecosystem was hosted by the Università degli studi di Firenze / University of Florence. I’ve never attended this conference before, and if it had indeed been held in Florence and not online I wouldn’t have done so this time. Partly because I doubt I would get funding to travel abroad, and partly because I would have felt that this conference wasn’t really for me.  Whilst the terrible Coronavirus situation rages around the world there are occasional benefits to our current change in lifestyle. Many conferences, seminars and training sessions have had to be moved to online platforms, and thus a new world of opportunities has opened up, literally global in its scope.

I’m a cataloguer so ‘bibliographic control’ comes in the job description but previously I would have felt that the papers might have been too challenging for me, too theoretical, not applicable to my day to day job, albeit of interest.  This time round however because the conference was online and because it was free to attend I decided to give it a go, in part because I noticed that Gordon Dunsire was speaking.  I’ve served on the CILIP CIG (now MDG) committee with him, and I know he knows his stuff. He’s extremely knowledgeable and I’ve enjoyed hearing him speak in the past.  I thought I might dip in and out of the conference, pick out the most relevant papers, but not be too worried about missing things over the five days it was held.

I ended up surprising myself and attended all the sessions (admittedly I got on with other work during the papers that were presented in Italian). I got off to a shaky start by missing the first hour and introductory session of the conference by making a rooky mistake in not understanding what CET was (Central European Time) and that it differed to GMT. Once I’d worked that out I was happy to realise that for myself the conference would finish at 5.30pm each day and not 6.30pm.

I was delighted to discover, that despite my fears of being lost in technical jargon, I was able to get a good grasp on the majority of the papers. In fact many of them managed to fill in small gaps in my knowledge, and provided a basis, or an extra layer, in my understanding of topics.  Yes I vaguely knew what VIAF was, but here was a paper that gave me a short history about it; I’ve heard papers about Wikidata before, here was one giving me a different perspective; I’ve heard of ISNI, now I know how it is being applied, etc etc.  I really enjoyed hearing about a variety of projects taking places in countries such as Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Norway and the U.S. that included machine learning, national bibliographies, entity management, the book supply chain, and the use of oral histories for language comprehension.  Gordon Dunsire’s paper on ‘Bibliographic control in the fifth information age’ was also one of my favourites, being clear, accessible and thought provoking.

Takeaways from this experience:

1. I have a wider understanding of bibliographic control than I gave myself credit for
2. Relevant learning opportunities taking place online should be grasped whilst they are available
3. Sewing patchwork busies my hands and helps me to concentrate on speakers

I’m also hugely impressed that this fantastic five day international conference was free to attend – hats off to all the sponsors and promoters who enabled that to happen.

Videos of the conference can be accessed here: https://www.youtube.com/c/AIBAssociazioneItalianaBiblioteche/videos

Visiting a virtual Gregynog (part 2)

Gregynog Hall (2019)

We returned to the online conference after partaking in our own lunches at home (view Part 1 here).

The first session introduced by Lori Harvard (Swansea University) showcased how three institutions will be providing online library inductions for the academic year 20/21. Susan Glenn (Swansea University), Aimee Jones (Cardiff Metropolitan University) and Rebecca Mogg (Cardiff University) presented short lightning talks and their plans. There were slight differences between them but all three were embracing the technology and building on previously delivered online sessions.

Next up was Anita Saycell (Aberystwyth University) talking about MLA, Harvard, APA and More: Aberystwyth’s approach to reference support for all.  Originally the Business School at Aberystwyth had paid for the plagiarism course Epigeum which had proved very successful in reducing plagiarism levels.  However, as it uses the Harvard style of referencing it was not applicable to roll out across other schools in Aberystwyth which uses seven different referencing styles across the University.  The library service was tasked with creating an in-house system complete with an assessed quiz at the end.  This seemed like a large undertaking!  They have managed to create something using LibGuides.  They needed the quiz to encompass all the styles, and they have embedded it in Blackboard.  Because it was produce in-house it will be easy to adapt and modify when needed.  So far it has been rolled out to staff who have provided feedback and they are looking to launch at the end of June/beginning of July.

Following on was Naomi Prady (Swansea University) talking about Diversifying Reading List: feedback from academics and students. Naomi talked about an event organised for staff and students to discuss diversifying reading lists.  Originally hoped to be a physical event it ended up being online because of the current crisis.  Part of the bigger picture of universities across the UK looking to decolonise their collections and reading lists, a lot of this work has been driven by students.  A BAME student talked to a librarian at Swansea asking them to decolonise the library.  Not having a huge budget the library worked with the Students Union to get student suggestions and added a selection of books.  They are now working on the reading lists after acknowledging that the burden shouldn’t fall on students to drive diversification but should come from academics and librarians via the reading lists. The event they held over Zoom attracted over 50 participants which was probably more than would have attended if it had been a physical session.  Academics and students gave lightning talks and their were discussions and feedback.

Some problems to overcome – it is hard to diversify content for STEM subjects – but if it is difficult to diversify the curricula, one can find other authors to supplement.  Leading to discussion and dialogue about the discourse too. All products of a system we are trying to change.  Students can be asked to critically dissect texts.  Discussions about avoiding tokenism, appropriate language, making assumptions – these topics can also be emotionally and personally draining for participants.

There are also unfortunately people who are opposed to this work, and you might find them voicing racist comments. Naomi said when this happened she was quite shocked, but it was also a wake up call to herself to realise this is the normality some people have to face all the time.

It can take time and be difficult to identify diverse resources, and it is important that students should be involved.  Diverse reading lists should be core and not an add on to help to develop well rounded graduates.

Adam Barry (European Sales Executive) spoke about Lean Library: delivery instead of recovery.  Lean Library is a browser plug in that makes it easier for your library users to log in to electronic resources when they are researching outside of the library environment (which we know is how a lot of people operate).  It can be frustrating as a library user trying to work out whether they have access to something, where and how they log in, knowing whether it is Shibboleth or Athens, or if they need their own account etc.  Lean Library gives prominent branding of their library and acts as an intermediate between domain and authentification log in.  This all sounded really helpful and useful, and then I discovered that Cardiff University was already using it, but the fact had somehow passed me by!

Next up to my delight was another paper on decolonisation this time José López Blanco (University of South Wales) talking about The Decolonised Searcher: an activity with history students. Having contributed to decolonised reading lists at his previous institution (Bournemouth University), José is now working on decolonised pedagogies as well as reading lists at USW and talked about the work he has done with students. In his former role the project at Bournemouth “Why is my curriculum white?” he felt that students weren’t involved much with the library creating guides. So at USW he wanted to involve them more and created a session which was supposed to have been delivered live but ended up online because of the current situation. It involved activities whereby participants explored USW resources by looking up terms such as ‘race’  and ‘nation’ – but this is reliant on just what the library has, so then the students were encouraged to look elsewhere such as the British Library – but also national libraries for other countries, such as the National Library of South Africa. Students were encouraged to look at primary resources and to look up references to ‘slaves’ or ’empire’.  One good resource mentioned was the Frederick Douglass newspaper collection held at the Library of Congress. Douglas was “the African American abolitionist who escaped slavery and became one of the most famous orators, authors, and journalists of the 19th century.” This digitised content provides a wealth of opportunity for research. José is hoping to do some ‘face to face’ test sessions to help improve the online session for when he next delivers it.

The next session by Julie Elsden and James Carr (both from Cambridge University Press) looked at a digital accessibility case study between the publisher and a student. They are now incorporating accessibility into everyday practice and have a checklist when planning new work. One thing they highlighted was the importance of having a good heading structure on websites and online resources.  They are also working on a different version of CAPTCHA which is an obstacle in the user journey. They tried removing it altogether but the increase in spam traffic was too great, so now they are working on a version where only potential spam bots get challenged and not everyday users.

The final session of the day was from Joy Cadwallader (Aberystwyth University) and Allison Zink (subscriptions executive, Gale) talking about Design in Reading & Welsh Content in Gale Reference Complete.  Gale have been working with Aberystwyth University to not only increase Welsh content (including archive collections) in Gale Reference Complete but also to improve accessibility and the user experience.  There are a range of visualization tools such as with the Topic Finder and Term Frequency.  When you look up an author or a topic, such as Dylan Thomas (the example we were shown) there are a range of tabs covering full text, literary criticism, biographies, primary sources, reviews etc.

Overall I enjoyed attending the conference, even though one’s attention does slip a little for such an extended Zoom session (well, mine does!). My favourite sessions were Amy Staniforth’s right at the start, and the decolonising reading lists talks by both Naomi Prady and José López Blanco. I spotted a twitter thread the other day where a library announced it was going to be decolonising its stock, and it was shocking to see all the negative comments where people were accusing them of throwing away texts and ‘burning books’!  Such ignorance and misunderstanding.  However, the highlighting of reading list decolonisations has lead me to look at my own book shelves and reading habits, which is never a bad thing!

This Gregynog event did have an evening session including a quiz.  I didn’t attend but heard that it went well.  Fingers crossed next year we will be back in person, enjoying cakes, checking out the antique toilet, early morning walks, and wondering whether we’ve got the haunted bedroom!

 

 

Visiting a virtual Gregynog (part 1)

Every year WHELF (Wales Higher Education Libraries Forum) and HEWIT (Higher Education Wales Information Technology) organise a conference at Gregynog Hall near Newtown, Powys. The programme for the first half of the week is for libraries, and the second half for IT.  This year (obviously) the physical conference had to be cancelled due to the Coronavirus crisis; instead the organisers managed to arrange for two one day online sessions to be held (one for library staff (10th June 2020), one for IT).

I love attending events at Gregynog it is such a wonderful and unique place.  I have gone as an undergraduate, a postgraduate, as a speaker at a Classics conference, and as a librarian.  Even though this is an annual library conference I don’t go every year, as a cataloguer there is rarely a pertinent session I can legitimately claim I need to attend. Not that that matters to me hugely as I enjoy hearing about the wider higher education library sector in general as it keeps me up to date with what is going on, but sometimes there are questions of priority over CPD funding.

This year I probably wouldn’t have gone. Last year I cheekily managed to attend part of it due to being at another conference in Llandrindod Wells which is about 30 miles away. My first conference ended at lunchtime and I hopped on a bus and a taxi to turn up at Gregynog Hall ready to take part in the Murder Mystery that evening.  Sadly this years online event did not include mysterious murderous mayhem.  I also had to provide my own snacks, but at least there wasn’t a queue for the toilet 😉

The first talk was by Amy Staniforth (Aberyswyth University) on Futureproofing Me: how to help HE by helping yourself first, which I thought was an excellent way to start the conference as we were directed to think about ourselves, our professional identity, professional voice, professional standards as well as our professional expertise. We were then led to expand this view to encompass the organization we work for. Do our colleagues understand what we do, and what kind of professional do they think we are?  How visible are we, and is our expertise called upon?  These reflections were then extended out even further to our sector.  Who speaks on behalf of your specialism at sector level, where is your voice heard in Wales, the UK, further afield? Who is developing the standards you work with, how are you involved in your community? We were given plenty to think about, but also reminded to remember those small moments of joy or achievement that can occur within your working day – helping someone, solving a query, cataloguing an item from scratch, etc.

Steve Williams (Swansea University) spoke about Being Agile in a Novel World.

“Libraries are not closed, but they are different” – Something that all library staff know, but that the rest of the world doesn’t always realise!

He also provided us with a timely reminder of why we (library staff) are here:

He also gave some advice on working in these unusual times, and suggested that with so much happening day by day, that even if one has planned for the week it can all fall apart, so we need to step back and reflect, and remember that we are all going through challenges.

Recommendations included Tim Harford’s book Messy, and the Ted Talk, Panic Monster.

Jenny McNally talked us through the WHELF Shared LMS Update: Benefits and Future Plans, and pointed us towards the ‘Shared benefits’ report and infographic on the WHELF site.  Our contract for Alma will be up for review in December 2021, with an option for a 5 year extension.  Looking to the future, we have Primo VE which will provide near real time catalogue updates; Reciprocal borrowing with the NHS libraries and the National Museum Wales as a partner; Reciprocal membership scheme, being piloted with Cardiff institutes.  In the longer term WHELF are looking to UX studies, and Collection Management.

Following on from this Anna Vernon and Helen Dobson talked about Jisc Collections and the Transition to Open Access, looking at Jisc’s use of transitional agreements in their move to open access.

The last talk before lunch was from Chris Sherwood (Swansea University) and his Accessibility journey. Chris works with UX but has come to take on a Accessibility Specialist role, and he talked us through his journey. He pointed out that there are 13.9 million people with disabilities in the UK, that these are not always visible, and they can be permanent or temporary.  From a UX standpoint there is a need to understand these users and not just use the cop out of “disproportionate burden”.  He reminded us that it isn’t just about legal compliance but about enabling people, and by embracing this point of view you are making improvements for everybody.

At Swansea there were no dedicated staff for online accessibility, and with a backlog of projects, also an accessibility skills deficit.  With compliance deadlines looming he looked for solutions.  With a good team around him, and good training available he addressed the skills gap.  He took the opportunity to understand users and build empathy, and recommends ‘owning’ the problem, building it into the process, rather than outsourcing at a later point. There are no easy wins or workarounds, but good supportive tools are available.

(Conference write up will continue in part 2)

Classical reception & children’s culture

I’ve recently watched some of the excellent talks from this year’s Hay Festival which took place for the first time ever online, due to the Coronavirus crisis. I saw three on a classical theme, Stephen Fry on his new book Troy, Natalie Haynes & Chris Riddell with a live telling and drawing of the Iliad (plus other stuff), and Daisy Dunn on her new book Of Gods and Men. I enjoyed all three immensely, especially the live drawing of the Trojan cycle which was amazing.  As someone who has studied the classics, to me the majority of this material is familiar, and that gives the talks an added meaning or layer of understanding.  I did begin to wonder about what if these talks were someone’s first introduction to classical material, especially if they were a young person or child. In years to come as they embark on a Classics degree or further along, a PhD, will they look back to this time when their interest was first piqued? I can imagine Dunn’s book, which is a collection of 100 stories from Ancient Greece, being perhaps dipped into, or read aloud, and that being one of the tipping points, a first step in a journey of mythical exploration.  Thinking about all this reminded me that I had never actually written up a blog post about the ‘Show and Tell’ on Classical Reception and Children’s Culture that was held in Cardiff at the end of last July.  This seemed an opportune moment to do so, although my notes are scrappy, and over 10 months on my memory is a bit dusty!  So I will apologise in advance to the participants about this brief foray into describing the event, those I miss out, and any errors I will make.

Much like the previous event held at Roehampton in 2017 as part of the Our Mythical Childhood project we gathered to share items relevant to ‘Classical Reception and Children’s Culture’.  These were either items from our own childhood, our research, or teaching practices. We met in the Cardiff University Special Collections and Archives Seminar Room, within the Arts and Social Studies Library on 31st July 2019.

Prof Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones shared something one of his students had made for their independent study module (apologies I don’t have the student’s name).  This was a Fuzzy Felt set for the Babylonian Creation myth Enûma Eliš. Those of us of a certain age were delighted at this, and everyone had a go creating their own scene.

The description of the independent study module and the inventive things students were creating was a credit to the Ancient History Department at Cardiff University.  It is a far cry from my student days and options, but really demonstrated the commitment students had to their study.

Lloyd also discussed films, and it was raised that Troy and Gladiator (for instance) were gateways for classics students but that there was a lack of tie-ins.  Why isn’t the Ancient World a marketing or selling opportunity?  There tends to need to be a fantasy element to be involved.

Also discussed were elements of play in antiquity, such as dolls and puppets, and playing at war. Conversely, we also looked at elements of classics and myth that have been utilised within play in historical times. Recommended reading were works by Rachel Bryant Davies (who spoke at the original ‘show & tell’ in Roehampton), such as her Victorian Epic Burlesques: A Critical Anthology of Nineteenth-Century Theatrical Entertainments after Homer, and I notice that she is co-editing a volume due out in September that might also be relevant: Pasts at Play: Childhood Encounters with History in British Culture, 1750-1914 (Interventions: Rethinking the Nineteenth Century).

We noted the concept of the ‘invisible adult’ the person who might be making the decisions about what a child might see or read.

Moving on to Dr Kate Gilliver we were treated to a box of Roman soldiers, of differing sizes and makes that Kate utilises to help teach different aspects of Roman warfare.

Some of her soldiers were very accurate in their dress, and other less so. The soldiers had been used in lectures, seminars, and individual sessions in her office where they were helpful to de-stress students, or distract the children of mature students.  In seminar settings they were used in multiple ways such as tasking students to think about typology and sort them  – they might think about types of armour, types of soldiers (infantry, cavalry citizen, non-citizen, Punic war, Trojan war etc). In a siege warfare class students were challenged to hit the siege tower, thinking about range and distance. Active hands-on learning in a fun way!

Most of us were familiar with the Playmobil figures (last time we had seen Athena and my version of Helen), as Kate described them ‘Happy smiley people!’. These figures don’t generally get used for war-gaming (unlike the others) but plenty of people have made short videos using them to illustrate Roman campaigns etc.  Just take a look on YouTube for examples.

Next Dr Juliette Wood talked us through her ‘Valentine’ figure. A little Cupid figurine that she described as a ‘Weirdly non-Classical, Classical image’. The figure of Valentine had been changed by a Victorian commercial card company into this kind of image.

She also showed us her copy of Stories of Gods and Heroes published in 1960 and filled with some wonderful vintage illustrations by Art Seiden (1923-2004).

 

Gina Bevan talked to us about her research on ‘Pop-Medusa’:

The Queer, Black Medusa: Medusa in popular culture from the 1980s to present day

Discussing the ubiquity of the Medusa figure in popular culture and discovering how an image from antiquity has been utilized by people of different backgrounds (race, gender, sexual orientation) from the 1980s to the present day. Medusa is a figure that has been re-mythologized for a number of different reasons, manifesting in popular culture as a black pop star on magazine covers, adorning clothes and jewellery as a Versace fashion logo or being decapitated by the heroic Perseus onscreen in Clash of the Titans (1981) and (2010) in the most popular retelling of the ancient Greek myth.

Gina illustrated her discussion with a variety of pictures shared via her laptop. These included instances of musicians such as Beyoncé and Lady Gaga reclaiming and using the Medusa image.

 

As the morning session began to draw to a close Prof Susan Deacy, who has conducted research on autistic children and classical myth, and especially Hercules, talked about the book Helping Hercules which she blogs about here. See also her review of this event too.

Whilst I talked about some of the Playmobil Greek Gods figures I have acquired since constructing my Helen figure last time. I brought along Demeter – who soon made friends with some Roman soldiers.

In the afternoon we had a look at some books held by Cardiff University’s Special Collections which had classical themes. These included illustrated versions of texts by Homer, Virgil, and Aesop, and Latin primers which students had written over.  There was a copy of the Iliad where all the semi-naked female figures had been torn out, and another book with a rather sweet doodle of a peacock chariot in the front.

I regret not taking more detailed notes on the day, or in having actually written this up whilst it was still fresh in my memory, but I hope I have managed to give at least a flavour of the session.

CILIP Cymru Wales Members Day & AGM 2019

If an AGM and members day doesn’t sound too exciting an exciting an event, in this case you’d be wrong.  Last week I was in Aberystwyth for a conference on the History of Medicine in Wales at the National Library, and having noticed that the CILIP Cymru Wales event was taking place the day before I thought I might as well travel up a day earlier and attend both events.  If nothing else the chocolate brownie at lunch time made it worth it 😉

The day included a selection of talks in the morning and a workshop in the afternoon (which I will talk about in a different post).  The overall impression I gained of the talks was of the importance of images and of good metadata.

The morning began with Jason Evans (@Wiki_NLW )from the National Library of Wales talking about “Libraries and Wikipedia: an unlikely partnership”.  He noted that the mission statement for the National Library included “Giving access” – but it didn’t state where this had to be.  As we are probably all aware (and are all guilty of) Wikipedia is the place where people tend to go for information.  Libraries have a responsibility for helping to provide information, and therefore should engage with Wipipedia to help ensure this information is accurate.

Jason Evans

The National Library have shared 17,000 digital images to Wikipedia Commons, and when last checked this had lead to 720 million views of NLW pages.  These images have been used for presentations, blogs, websites, and also in books, exhibitions, and articles.  As they are freely available there is no obligation to ask for permission but people often do resulting in communication and further visits to the NLW site.

National Library of Wales [Public domain] – example from their contributions to Wikipedia Commons

Sharing of images has had a great impact, and added value to the collections, it has also raised issues of discoverability – would any of these images have been found otherwise?

But it is not just about images, there has been involvement with Wikidata : Wikidata acts as central storage for the structured data of its Wikimedia sister projects including Wikipedia, Wikivoyage, Wiktionary, Wikisource, and others.

A machine readable linked database, with opportunities to enrich data. To understand how it works check out the introductory page. 

Linked data and images in action (from Jason Evans’ slides)

It can be used to act as a central hub for cultural institutions, joining them and their collections together.  For example the timeline on the Dictionary of Welsh Biography is based on Wikidata, and once completed it will be possible to perform queries without using SPARQL.  In addition the Welsh Libraries Wikimap is built using Wikidata.

As Jason emphasised we should engage with the places that people go for information, and Wikipedia is where they go!

Next up was Juanita Foster-Jones: “Professional registration – what’s changed” basically providing an update on changes to CILIP’s professional registration procedures.  I felt slightly guilty listening to Juanita as a year ago I attended a workshop she ran on professional registration, and it has been on my mind for a couple of years that I should move towards taking Chartership.  Still haven’t started!  She advised me to start writing up reflective pieces about the cpd I was doing in preparation for when I did register (hence this blogpost), and warned she would be checking up on me next time she saw me! 😉

Next up were three colleagues from the People’s Collection Wales talking about “Digitisation & libraries at People’s Collection Wales”. PCW is a platform funded by the Welsh Government run in collaboration by the National Library of Wales, the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales, and National Museum Wales.  Their pages state: We provide a website for you to upload photographs, recordings and documents that hold stories about Wales and its people.

They also help libraries and communities digitise large collections of photos, and they talked today about one project based in Newtown.  This was about a collection of photos taken by David Pugh, a historian who was very active in local groups and activities in Newtown.  His photographic collection was given to the local library and the project involved firstly digitising the images and then crowdsourcing descriptions.  Although basic metadata could be included at the start (place, time, creator) they needed a lot of local knowledge to get more specific details added. Training was given to volunteers.

It is possible for anyone to add metadata to images on the People’s Collection Wales, and to add further photos; they welcome everyone’s involvement.

After a break we were back to hear from Hywel Lloyd on “Materiality in special collections: a day at CILIP’s Rare Books study conference”.  Hywel received a bursary from CILIP Cymru Wales to attend this conference (do look out for when they offer bursaries!).  He reflected on several of the sessions he had attended and how interesting he had found it.  I myself attended the conference – although only one day of it as I became ill and had to miss the rest, so it was good to hear about some of the other sessions.  A practical workshop on constructing cardboard supports for books and exhibits sounded extremely useful.

The morning finished with Gwyneth Davies talking about “The living memory scheme”. Whilst working with older volunteers at the National Library she realised that photos would often bring back memories from the childhood or younger lives which they would then talk about.  It was decided to run a pilot to consider the effectiveness of photos and archive films to help people with Dementia.  Together with the volunteers who looked for suitable images they created packs consisting of three items – hard copies of photos in a folder, a DVD containing a photo show, and images on an ipad for people to scroll through.  These packs were tried out at two institutions and different feedback was received.  One institution thought that playing music alongside the DVD was helpful but the other institution preferred not to have music in order to have more chance to chat.  It seemed that the different formats suited different people and situations so having a combination in the packages was useful.

As the project was a success it has been rolled out with workshops held across Wales introducing the concept.  92 organisations have been involved so far.  The packages are a starting point for conversations and memories; over 200 packages have so far been distributed.  The workshops have also enabled staff to find images online to create packages tailored specifically to individuals in their care.

The talks in this morning session showed me a great interaction between libraries and people via images.  Whether through specifically curated packages to aid memory, interaction with community images, or the utilisation of images for personal use.  Once again demonstrating that libraries aren’t just about books, but about communities and so much more.

Thank you @CILIPinWales for this informative day.

If nothing else I’ll be looking out for a chance to join in an editathon at some point in the future.

Cake from Aberystwyth Arts Centre

Classical themed show & tell in Cardiff

Coming soon!

The Wooden Horse: my show & tell item

My previous blog posts have shared the experience of attending the Our Mythical Childhood show and tell at the University of Roehampton, but whilst I talked about other people’s contributions I didn’t discuss mine.  The book I chose to share with everyone was The Wooden Horse retold by Russell Punter, and illustrated by Matteo Pincelli.  It is an Usborne Young Reading (series 1) book, and was first published in 2011.  Unlike some of the contributors to the event, this book was not one from my childhood, I had only come across it about about a year ago when I had started looking at Helen of Troy in comics, graphic novels, and children’s illustrated/picture books.

It is a very simplified version of the story, but what I like (in books like this one) is how the author has to make certain choices and decisions about which bits of myths to use, and how best to distil the essence of the story, and in doing so decide what aspect they are going to portray.

Although this book is about the Wooden Horse, to give context the narrative is framed by Helen’s story.  Within the book there are only five named characters – Helen, Menelaus, Paris, Odysseus and Sinon.  The book begins with Helen – her name is actually the first word in the story, and ends with her being taken back to Sparta.  She is a very passive character, and the only time she is given a voice it is internal, when she thinks about what will happen when Menelaus reclaims her.  Despite this being a very simple version we can see how she is portrayed very much as an object – Menelaus is ‘proud’ of having a ‘lovely wife’, and we see her as a possession of his.  Once Troy has been defeated Helen is taken back alongside Trojan treasure – the implication being that she too is a piece of ‘treasure’, an object to be shipped back.  Probably the most interesting sentence in the book (for me), occurs on the final page : “Helen may not have wanted to go back to Greece, but she had no choice.” (p. 47)  Which speaks volumes.

In the afternoon of the ‘show & tell’ we chose books from the University of Roehampton’s special collections and, as I told in a previous post, I picked a book called The Trojan Horse, by James Reeves and illustrated by Krystyna Turska as I thought it would prove to be an ideal counter part to the book I had brought with me.  The episode of the wooden horse is framed in quite a different way and is told through the character of Ilias, a grown man (at the time of telling) but who was aged ten when Troy fell.  He and his younger sister, Ida, escaped and now live far from their ruined former home.  In The Wooden Horse Paris and Helen fell in love, but in this version Ilias describes how Paris stole Helen and kept her prisoner in Troy.  Most of the war is glossed over, and it is really only the episode of how the horse appeared and was brought into Troy and the terrible consequences, that is told.  It is Ilias’ life that frames the episode rather than Helen’s and we are given an insider’s view on events.  As mentioned above I enjoy seeing how writers will encapsulate a particular myth, and particularly liked how these two books, which on the outside might lead one to thinking they would be similar, provide very different aspects of the story.  Incidentally neither of them include the episode related in The Odyssey (IV: 265-289) about Helen calling out to men within the horse using the voices of their wives.

Whilst many of the contributor’s shared books or items that they remembered being influences from their childhood, I realised that I don’t actually recall any particular book with a classical theme from when I was a child.  I feel a bit bereft!  I’m sure there must have been books on mythology, but I can’t pinpoint when my interest in the classical world began to emerge.  What I do remember well was in sixth form we were allowed to take Classical Studies (which we couldn’t do before then), so in the lower sixth we did the O level, and in the upper sixth the A level (only one year each).  We had the most wonderful teacher, Mrs Janet Cox, whom I found very inspiring.  I had obviously discovered the classical world before this point, but this was where I really started learning about it.  Having a teacher who loved her subject made it come alive for all of us.  She would also play music and bring in biscuits for us at break time, and there were classically themed posters on the walls of the classroom.

Incidentally, I also remember that she kept bees in her garden, and it is because of her that I joined The Green Party when still a teenager!

She taught Latin to a mere handful of students at lunchtimes (when I was doing O levels), sadly I never took this option!  It was probably not suggested to me as I wasn’t particularly good at French (the one language we all had to do), and at the time it never really occurred to me to request joining the class.  Grown up Karen is very sad that teenage Karen did not do this!!!!

I enjoyed the ‘show & tell’ and having the opportunity to hear about other people’s formative experiences and books, and have also relished having the opportunity to reflect on my own journey within Classics.  I am also keenly looking out for children’s books that retell Helen’s story, and also that of the Trojan Horse.