I’m taking part in the following event organised by Unit 3 Poetry Group (specifically Maggie Kellie and Gill Butler-Orli):
Poets for Peace – Fundraiser for Medecins sans Frontieres
Come along and show your suport for peace, Medecins sans Frontieres and local poets!
A wonderful variety of local poets including members of Unit 3 Poetry Group, Beltie Poets and Dove Tales will be reading.
Medecins sans Frontieres provide medical care for victims of war regardless of nationality, race, religion or political affiliation. They are active in 70 regions, across the globe including Iran, Lebanon, Gaza and Ukraine. Given the ever-increasing number of wars, their work needs more support than ever. They are entirely independent and rely upon individual donations.
The entry to the Baptist Church is via the EV Car/lorry park off South Main Street, Wigtown.
The venue is wheelchair accessible
Entrance by donation on the door – please give generously (if you cannot afford to donate anything, entrance is free).All event costs are being met by Unit 3 Poetry Group, so 100% of donations will go to Medecins sans Frontieres.
Personification of Governance overseeing our discussions
On 21st April 2026 at Cardiff University, the second World Café event on subject analysis took place. The event was organised by the CILIP Metadata & Discovery Group, following on from a previous one held in London in November, and prior to a third one taking place in Liverpool. The idea was to provide a space for participants to discuss the use of Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) as a viable controlled vocabulary for subject headings in UK library catalogues.
There have been rumblings for a while as library staff became increasingly aware of the legacy problems of language, representation and inclusivity within some LCSH, and other vocabularies such as MeSH. There are a range of issues, but for example with LCSH for people the assumption is that the ‘norm’ is white, male, Christian, heterosexual, non-disabled, and cis-gendered. There are other problems, and some of these are slowly being addressed, but what really prompted some action in this case was the controversial changes to the headings for Mount Denali and the Gulf of Mexico in February 2025. Will Peaden, Chair of MDG has published an article in Catalogue & Index summarising the push behind setting up the World Cafés and the discussions that took place at the initial London event.
Following on from the successful discussions in November it was decided to open up more opportunities across the UK for interested parties to join the conversation. We want to build on these discussions and turn talk into practical solutions, whether they be small quick wins, or larger longer term initiatives.
Topics discussed have included: 1. The sector-wide implications of using LCSH as a subject index. 2. Proposing principles around which a broad coalition of interested parties could model an alternative system. 3. Exploring the technical and financial issues around temporary or long term solutions. 4. Exploring scalable alternatives to LCSH within the UK and global metadata ecosystems. 5. Considering partnerships with sector bodies both in the UK and internationally. 6. Connecting interested parties together with a view to forming working groups around themes or topic areas.
I managed to attend both the London and Cardiff events and they gave me a lot of food for thought. If nothing else it was great to be in a room of people who understood the issues, who could come up with ideas, who could talk about what they are doing in their own institution, and who knew that it mattered. I’m looking forward to seeing how we can take this forward.
If you are interested but have been unable to come along to one of the World Café events keep a look out for further information from MDG. We’ll be looking for active participants, whether that be in forming a Steering Group, being involved in a Task & Finish Working Group, conducting some research, or sharing details of work you’ve already done in this area. There will be plenty of opportunities to join in the conversation and keep the momentum going.
Why joy? Because I have a short story included in it!
For the last few years Northern Gravy have been publishing an online periodical every quarter, featuring poetry and stories for children and adults – and paying the writers. Yes that’s right – paying authors – something sadly lacking from many literary periodicals. If you want to get your work out there you sort of get used to not being paid for your efforts, I even had to buy my own copy of one publication that I had a story in – yep, no payment and not even a free copy (it wasn’t online). But Northern Gravy are different.
My story was originally published in September 2022, I won’t post the link here as I’d rather you went and discovered all the other fab stuff on the site whilst looking for it, or, you know, buy the book 😉 (or ask your local library to get a copy!)
My story is called Greenbooth Boggart, and unsurprisingly features a boggart. If you don’t know, a boggart is a supernatural being found predominantly in the north of England, they are engrained in folklore, and immortalised in place names, such as Boggart Hole Clough (Blackley, Manchester), and numerous Boggart Lanes (such as the one in Sowerby Bridge). I’m really interested in all kinds of folklore and I often imbue my fiction writing with folkloric elements.
The setting for my story is a reservoir, it is semi-fictional; imaginary but based on the dim faded memories of a real place. I had chance to visit there in recent months, after several decades had passed since my feet last walked beside those waters. I hadn’t realised (or had forgotten) that the reservoir is built over a submerged village, and that it is part of a string of reservoirs with only the bottom one bearing the name Greenbooth (the name of the drowned village). Perhaps something to remember if I carry on writing about Joe’s adventures…
If you’d like to read a detailed study about boggarts I recommend:
Young, Simon (2022) The Boggart: Folklore, History, Place-Names and Dialect. Exeter: University of Exeter Press. ISBN 9781905816903
21st June 2025 – I greeted the morning sun at Cairnholy (or Cairn Holy) in Dumfries & Galloway, Scotland. My husband and I had driven up from south Wales to Wigtown the previous day so it was touch and go whether we’d get up in time, but after 4 hours sleep we dragged ourselves from our bed and drove over to the site arriving about 3.30am. There was a lightness in the eastern sky even at 2.30am; friends in Orkney celebrated sunset and sunrise at the same time, never losing the light, but we were much further south at the bottom of Scotland. On arrival at Cairnholy we found three campervans parked up, but the occupants still asleep, so we sat by the stones for about 40 minutes on our own. Watching as the sky lightened further, listening to the birds and the inevitable dawn chorus, and admiring the crescent moon on its own course across the heavens. It was peaceful, the gentle breeze still held some heat from the day before, and those moments were just ours.
As time ticked by gradually others emerged from their vans, or drove up in cars, and in the end there were about 15 of us there to witness sun rise. Far fewer than the 25,000 who converged on Stonehenge!
As the sun had to get over the nearby hill it emerged into view a fair while after getting over the horizon, and there was quite an air of anticipation in the minutes before it finally peeked over the crest. It was a chilled and magical morning, a group of (mostly) strangers drawn to an ancient site to witness the summer solstice sun rise, all quietly respectful of one another, several interesting conversations ensuing.
Despite my interest in folklore of ancient sites, I admit to not having done any proper ‘homework’ on Cairnholy yet, but a quick look doesn’t reveal much, just that Cairnholy II (another chambered tomb just up the lane form Cairnholy I) is claimed to be the tomb of Galdus, a mythical Scottish king. A similar claim is made for Torhouse stone circle (located a few miles east of Wigtown).
According to Alan G. James the name Cairnholy represents Gaelic*Càrn na h-ulaidhe ‘cairn of the stone tomb’. He also notes that “Awareness that ancient burial-places sometimes contained valuable goods led ulaidh to acquire a secondary sense, ‘treasure, hoard’, its usual meaning in modern Scottish Gaelic, but whether any precious items were ever found at Cairnholy before modern archaeologists investigated is not recorded.“
Image from Richard Fenton’s (1811) A historical tour through Pembrokeshire.
On a miserable rainy Saturday in June I’ve been looking at Welsh fairies, particularly those associated with the Neolithic monument Pentre Ifan that is located in Pembrokeshire.
“My mother used to tell about seeing the ” fair-folk ” dancing in the fields near Cardigan ; and other people have seen them round the cromlech up there on the hill (the Pentre Evan Cromlech). They appeared as little children in clothes like soldiers’ clothes, and with red caps, according to some accounts.” Evans-Wentz (1911: 155)
This account by a 60 year old Welsh woman related by W. Y. Evans Wentz is a story that gets repeated over the next century and makes it into collections of folklore and fairy stories (see for e.g. a modern retelling in Willison 2013: 52). The description of the clothing the fairies are enrobed in seems to be particular to the Cardigan area as it appears in other local 19th century tales.
Fairies, or as they are known in Welsh – the Tylwyth Teg – are ubiquitous throughout Wales although they might take on different appearances depending where they are found. Sometimes they are small and pale, at other times tall and strong. Many of the stories match those found across the rest of Britain; babies will be stolen and replaced, individuals will join a dance and only return a year or more later, treasure might be revealed, and many seem to reside beneath lakes or in caves.
I’m curious though about their associations with ancient monuments, and whether Pentre Ifan is unique in Wales as a cromlech (dolmen or quoit) with dancing fairies. It is common to find the fair folk linked to mounds, especially in Ireland where fairy forts abound and can be found in their thousands. Round barrows in Dorset, such as that at Bottlebrush Down, are places where it is said you will hear fairy music emanating from within at midday. The chambered long barrow known as Fairy’s Toot at Nempnett Thrubwell, Somerset was described thus by Thomas Bere in 1789 (although his excavations more or less destroyed it):
“It has been immemorially known by the name of Fairy’s Toote, and considered still, by our sagacious provincials, as the haunts of ghosts, goblins, and fairies. This may be deemed the electrical tremblings of very remote superstition. The idle tale travelled down through many an age, long, long after the cadavers from which it originated had ceased to be had in remembrance.“
These few examples are from England though, so what about Wales? Well, there was Bryn-yr-Ellyllon (Hill of Elves) near Mold, a Bronze Age burial mound where a ceremonial gold cape was found by workmen in 1833. There are various tales, which are supposed to predate the discovery, which tell of a shining figure wearing golden armour appearing from the woods by the mound. The field in which the mound was located was supposed to be known as Cae’r Yspryd (Field of the Ghost). These are ghost stories though, not fairies. As with the bwci (or bogey) of Llwyn Mawr, a spirit attracted to the supposed treasure of Crug-y-Dryn chambered cairn which formerly had a large capstone. This entity may be a fairy or a ghost.
Mounds may contain treasure, mounds can be haunted, mounds may be the entrance to a fairy realm or the underworld. Cromlechs though, are the bare bones of mounds (it is not even definite that all of them were actually covered by mounds). As the skeletal structure of long forgotten monuments perhaps they lend themselves more to spectres than to fairies. I’ll keep on digging though, surely Pentre Ifan can’t be unique, can it?
Evans-Wentz, W. Y. (1911) The fairy-faith in Celtic countries. London: H. Froude.
Jones, T. Gwynn (2020, [reprinted from 1930]) Welsh folklore and folk-custom. Cockatrice Books.
Kruse, John (2017) British fairies. Street: Green Magic.
Kruse, John (2023) Welsh fairies: The Tylwyth Teg. Langport: Green Magic.
Owen, Elias (1887) Welsh folk-lore: A collection of the folk-tales and legends of North Wales; being the prize essay of the national Eisteddfod, 1887. Oswestry: Woodall, Minshall, & Co.
Rhys, John (1891) Celtic folklore: Welsh and Manx(2 vols.). Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Willison, Christine (2013) Pembrokeshire folk tales. Stroud: The History Press.
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.
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.
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.
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:
I have a wider understanding of bibliographic control than I gave myself credit for
Relevant learning opportunities taking place online should be grasped whilst they are available
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.
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!
dark-side-of-the-catalogue 