cls

Our colleague Bill Barker comments: The lost years Looking at the library pictures my first thought is why don’t they still do that? Those big group photos, class of ’74 or whenever. I suppose there are just too many of us now to get together at one time, departmental away-days capture us in fragments occasionally. But it is striking that the collection of individual library staff pictures ends in the early 90’s. It was once part of the staff routine for everyone to have their mugshot taken and for it to be put on public display. When I joined in the late 90’s you would receive a summons to the library office and be positioned sitting up straight in a chair while someone captured you on Polaroid. These were added to display cases for each section fully visible in the public area of the library. The display cases were one of the casualties of the library move to Southampton Buildings and back, I remember seeing the one for our section propped against a wall for a couple of years gradually becoming lost behind boxes of photocopy paper, colleagues moved on, new ones joined us but your old office companions would still be peering at you. Those Polaroids have long gone now, they didn’t make it to the archives, thankfully I suppose many would say, no chance of being caught frozen in dead fashions or outrageous hairstyles like our predecessors, no enormous glasses or loud shirts to be gawped and giggled at by future colleagues. Though I suppose there may be a tinge of regret as well, as if not being represented in the library pantheon is almost like being written out of history. No chance for a poignant moment with these lost years either when someone you worked with years ago and whom you had forgotten all about suddenly springs back into your memory. Where are they now? Dead maybe, cataloguing in SOAS perhaps, or doing something in software in New Zealand. Pictures will continue to be added, cameras are everywhere now and we can all have thousands of images on our mobiles and PC’s, more than anyone could have imagined back in the big hair-do days, hundreds of these must be lost every time a phone or computer is upgraded, but enough should make it through to flickr to keep the archive alive. But for those lost years? Fallible human memory will have to fill the gap. CLS

This photo was taking during our annual stockcheck week. For one week in the summer we closed and spent our time tidying the shelves and accessioning archive collections - which explains the fairly informal attire.

It would be good to complete the names of everyone in the photo and I can see two current Library Directors from elsewhere: Helen Workman of Oxford Brookes and Howard Nicholson of the University of Bath. It would be good for me as a new Library Director at LSE to have photos of everyone perhaps on Public Folders? Or somewhere less public? (Added on behalf of Liz Chapman)

I would guess that this is the summer of 1991, because Thalia is fairly heavily pregnant and her son was (I think) born that autumn.

My goodness. This brings back memories. I only ever posed for one library staff photograph and this must have been my first and last. This would have been in the middle of the summer recess or maybe right in the middle of June?? - I don't think it was as late as August - more like early summer, when the library still could shut down for one week to stocktake. My goodness... I was so young...

Looks like fun! Brian Hunter went on to work as editor of The Statesman's Yearbook from 1990-1997. I hope he was able to continue his cigar-smoking and cocktail-drinking there...

Brian was my boss for several years, in charge of the Slavonic collections. He had learnt Russian in the RAF. I recall warm summer days when he would take a draw of catalogue cards out to Lincoln's Inn Fields for checking! CLS

Thanks for uploading a picture of a librarian with such a personality! Just wanted to let you know I used it on my blog here: hiringlibrarians.wordpress.com/2012/03/13/were-hiring-a-p...

I wish I could read what the badge says. I do remember him though - he trained me to catalogue when I arrived in the Library in 1979. This was in the days before computers. (Added on behalf of Barbara Humphries)

I think the badge looks to me like an AUT (precursor to UCU) one which said "[something something] our Universities" Some of us in the 1980s had to march behind AUT banners which read: "Rectify the anomoly". I do wonder what Walter Hughes was like as a library user if he had already been a cataloguer, exacting I guess. Pin stripe suit not often visible on a cataloguer these days. (added on behalf of Liz Chapman)

How good to see Walter’s characteristic cheerful smile on here. One of the most endearing and humuorous members of the BLPES staff, who befriended everyone. His splendid example of the challenge to cataloguing consistency was the authorial entries for K R Popper; Walter would regularly enumerate strings of these to his and our great amusement. Donald Ross (IGO librarian 1979-1987)