Today, in 1602, our esteemed forebear The Bodleian Library opened its doors to the public. Effectively the national library for England until the opening of the British Library, the Bod holds many valuable and thrilling manuscripts including a Gutenberg bible, Shakespeare's first folio and Richard James' A Description of Poland, Shetland and Orkney which is the first recorded description of Orkney in English.
The language (and spelling) are fantastic. Orkney is described as being 'manie Ilands' with a capital 'Kircwawe' and the Pentland Firth, or 'Penthland Frith' is 'dangerous with manie whirlinge tides and currents which will sucke in sheepes and botes in the passadge.'
The Orkney Archive hold a photocopy which has the reference D68/7/5 and is available to view as well as Evan MacGillivray's 1953 introduction and transcription which appeared in the first Orkney Miscellany.
Today we shall celebrate our Oxford cousin by trashing the Orkney Room with a raucous Bullingdon club-style feast whilst dressed up as Sebastian Flyte and/or Inspector Morse
We have also been serenading each other with this fab Minnie Ripperton (for she was born today in 1947) hit over and over again and, instead of gratitude, we have received only surly looks, complaints to the managers and downright grumpiness from the readers.
Today in 1911, the New York City Main Library building was dedicated and opened to the public. Orkney was a couple of years earlier as you can see here on our handy history page.
The New York building cost $9 million to build and from laying of first stone to stamping of first book took 9 years to build. It was the largest marble structure in America at the time.
Incidentally, a precursor to the building was the Astor library. The First President of the board of that library was none other than Washington Irving, son of Orkney lad William Irving. The Irving family came from Quholm on the island of Shapinsay.
We shall be celebrating our sister library's birthday today by eating enormous pastrami sandwiches, blasting Frank Sinatra's 'New York New York and shouting "HEY! What are you lookin' at? You talkin' to ME?" every time a customer catches our eye.
Today is save our libraries day and I had planned to post scans of our collection of old library cards, application forms and stamps etc. but the computer connected to my scanner has died! Booooooooooooooooooo.
I expect that downstairs is a heaving throng of sweaty activists who are emptying the shelves of books, using the computers and picking the brains of our gorgeous and impossibly well-informed library assistants.
You can keep up to date with the various events taking place across the country here and there is still over an hour left to pay us a visit.
Anyone who thinks that libraries are not relevant in the digital age should remember that it is not just the books on offer but a sense of community, a quiet place to study, a shelter from the rain, free internet access as well as free computer/internet tuition, expert advice on books/archives/local knowledge, the occasional home bake, an excellent opportunity to ogle comely librarians, magazines, cds, dvds and space to explore your interests and stumble upon new culture.
We are lucky in Orkney that our wonderful, hard-working, nice-smelling, intellectually awe-inspiring, well-dressed, kind, sparkling-witted and drop dead gorgeous council are not threatening to do away with our libraries, but sadly this is not the case in many counties.
This speech by Philip Pullman is all over the internet at the moment and is well worth a read.
A Press Release has just arrived from the council saying that Orkney Library and Archive are basically completely brilliant.
Although visits to libraries have increased slightly over the years, levels of borrowing have declined all over the country except for in Orkney.
Check out these stats, fact fans:
We had 11,000 more visitors this year than the year before, that's an 8.5% increase
31.1% of Orkney's inhabitants borrowed something from us in 2009/10 compared with 30.9% in 2008/9. This may not seem like a massive leap, but when you consider that other authority's borrowing statistics are falling, then any increase is great news.
The number if items issued has increased by 8,000 ! (That's 5%!)
The number of visitors to the archive has been increasing by 10% each year, but last year the increase was 15% !
And last, but not least, visits to the website have increased by 7,000, which is 50%!!
This increase dates from the implementation of the twitter page, the facebook page and this blog. Hoorah. Having these three extra avenues of communication with our visitors has been very useful and has allowed us to convey information and reply to queries.
I've been saving the picture below for a special occasion and, I think you'll agree that that time is now:
A lot of Orkney dwellers dislike boats and are bad sailors. The Northlink ferries are often filled with recumbent blanket dwellers whose low chorus of groans make a trip South complete.
Sometimes, when one is meeting friends from a North-bound boat, they emerge green gilled and spattered, the unmistakable whiff of vomit enveloping them like a cape.
The ferries can be trying. But look! You can now read Orkney Archive's blog whilst aboard which can only improve your ferry experience:
Onboard internet access now available
People travelling on the Aberdeen-Lerwick-Kirkwall route can now surf the internet and check their e-mails while onboard, after the two vessels serving the route were fitted with satellite communication equipment enabling the ships to provide internet facilities in all public areas.
Coffee and tea making facilities are also shortly to be installed in most cabins.
Regular readers will know how strongly we approve of coffee and tea-making facilities in all areas of life.
We are currently cataloguing a large collection of books which was gifted to the library and found this copy of Patrick Neill's A Tour Through Some of the Islands of Orkney and Shetland published in 1806. As you can see, it is very overdue to be returned to Darlington Circulation Library whose lending period was two weeks with a fine of tuppence per day thereafter. If we assume that the book was borrowed around its publication date, then the fine would amount to £1489.20. In today's money that would be £50,574,93.
Not too shabby. Perhaps this retrospective fining is the answer for library budgets in these cash-strapped times. Sadly, our library does not exercise a fine system. Yes, you read that correctly, no fines at Orkney Library and Archive. Aren't we good?
Our Library and Archive Manager, Gary, travelled to Wales yesterday to the CILIP Cymru Conference for libraries, archive and museums. His mission was to explain how brilliant Orkney Library and Archive are. The theme for this year's conference was Hard Times and the focus was on the survival of these extremely important institutions in these financially delicate times.
Gary talked about our strong relationships with groups such as the Orkney Family History Society and the Talking Newspaper. He showed photos of our wonderful volunteers who work in both the library and archive departments. There were also examples of our website, the blog and Stewart's hilarious tweets (which were mentioned on Simon Mayo's drive time show!)
Through the magic of twitter, we were able to follow the talk in real time. " In hard times, lead by example!", Gary called, " be creative - innovate - but be prepared for things not going as successfully as you'd like!" It was at this point that Gary fell to his knees, his arms raised to the heavens. His assistants hurried over with his cloak and began to lead him off the stage. He was almost at the wings when he flung it off, ran back to the apron of the stage and grabbed the microphone again "Our users are our allies, our users are our allies!!!" he shouted.
The audience went wild as he gave the librarian's salute ( make an L with your right hand and hold it against your forehead.) and blew kisses to the crowd. He then led everyone in a rousing rendition of James Brown's 'I Feel Good - I Got You' (So good, so good, 'cos I got books...) and everyone got hyperglycemic on Orkney fudge.
I'm sure that Gary will be thrilled to learn that we were staring at a twitter page when we were supposed to be doing work. His presentation was very well received and his breakdancing encore has already become the stuff of legend.
We like to keep things topical for you and so quite often use our good friend Wikipedia to see if there are any interesting Birthdays, Festivals or events that we can celebrate on the days that we post.
At approximately 2.55pm yesterday, if the wind was blowing in the right direction and your windows were open, you may have heard a high pitched screech coming from the general direction of Junction Road.
Today, in 1986, a fire broke out in Los Angeles Library and they lost 20% of their stock. That is 400,000 books! To put this into perspective, Orkney Library has about 80,000 items, the photographic archive holds about 60,000 original photographs and the archives hold about 30,000 documents. The thought of an entire Orkney Library and Archive's worth of material, doubled, going up in flames was too much to bear and the final two hours of the day were spent stroking books and whispering consolingly to glass negatives and maps.
Archivists spend an awful lot of time thinking about worst case scenarios simply because of the priceless nature of most deposits. Part of our Assistant Archivist's job is to maintain an up-to-date 'Disaster Plan' which details our course of action should there, shudder, be a fire, flood or infestation of some kind.
Bearing in mind the possibility that we may have to save an archive from fire, water or vermin, we spend any downtime holding our breath in buckets of water, thrusting our hands into flames and thinking up cutting insults to shout at beasties. You're welcome Orkney.
Disclaimer: After posting this yesterday afternoon, I was accosted by members of staff from both Library and Archive and told that I had gotten the estimates of our stock levels wrong. They were totally hassling me! They were all up in my grill!
Apparently the Library holds nearer 145,000 items, but this includes Stromness and the Mobile Libraries. I suppose it is possible for a fire to consume Kirkwall library, spread across the West Mainland, gobbling up Mobile 1 as it goes, ravaging the whole of Stromness' main street on it's way to set the Stromness library ablaze, before leaping across the water and catching Mobile 2 on Hoy. Not
I took my number of archives from those catalogued on the database, but we do have entire room full of uncatalogued items which I forgot about. What-ever.
A bit of a worrying article from Guardian today on the future of British libraries. I know that we'll soon be able to carry every bit of information in the world around in a gizmo the size of a stamp in our pockets, and that's ace; but you can't use the internet or an i-pod as a safe haven from bustling shops, to get human contact if you live alone or as a quiet place to study when you're a teenager from a large, noisy family.
It's the building that's important, not just the stuff inside.
