St Cross College, Oxford

2002–2003

One of the benefits of the computerised lending system, which has not been mentioned as much as the benefits to the users, is the fact that the Librarian can get management information easily. For example on Saturday 1st February I was able to get a "snapshot" of the books on loan, 83, and the number of books overdue, 16 (of which 14 are on loan to a student who is ill). This information is as valuable as the regular weekly statistics of how many books have been borrowed.

Another very useful report is the "hot list" of the most borrowed books. This is not synonymous with a list of the most popular books as it is produced by the number of times a book has been borrowed, and if one person keeps renewing a book, it "counts" the same as if several different people have chosen it. With this caveat it can be quite interesting and useful information.

Last term the "top five" titles were:

• The global covenant: human conduct in a world of states
• Numerical recipes in C
• A dictionary of geography
• The place of geography
• Research methods in Anthropology

And for the academic year 2001–2002, probably more valid as over a longer period:

• Numerical recipes in C (22 loans)
• Finance against poverty (14 loans)
• The ethnographer’s toolkit (13 loans)
• Bayesian theory (11 loans)
• The enchanted world of sleep (11 loans)

Although some people are making excellent and regular use of the library, I am aware from emails I receive that there are still some members of the College who don't even know how to borrow or return books, let alone how to renew them or request items on loan. This is a great pity and I have sent out an email referring people once again to the Library website and its users' guide. Meanwhile, those who have "cracked" the (very simple) system are probably quite content not to have competition for the books they're interested in.

The display of biographies did not arouse as much interest as the previous display of books about "How to get a degree", "How to write essays" etc, but we are continuing to highlight various sections of the library and at present the topic is Tudor England to which various Senior Members have contributed books, and in April the topic will be Shakespeare.

I now return to the perennial question of space. The new shelves, installed last summer, are full and there is again a backlog of catalogued books in my office. I suggested last summer that double-sided shelving in the Lange room would be necessary and in the absence of any other solution I will recommend that again.

2003–2004

The academic year 2003–2004 started well with a large amount of new shelving being installed in the Lange Room. This meant that the books could be stored on the shelves in a much more attractive manner and made the whole room itself look more congenial for private study. The only drawback was that the shelves were completed very late in the Long Vacation and I was working to reorganise the shelves, with the help of a student volunteer, on the Saturday and Sunday before Noughth Week.

I gave my usual induction sessions to new students on "An introduction to Oxford Library Services and Electronic Resources". Students do not just use resources physically available in Oxford, but more and more rely on the "virtual" or "digital" library resources. Surprisingly, students seem to be very confident in using these virtual sources, but get confused by the simple matter of where to return books!

During the year the Library received nine donations to the Alumnus Collection. I would like to thank all these people for their generous donations to the Collection, and encourage others to do likewise when they have a book published. As well as contributing to the Library’s holdings it helps your colleagues in St Cross to appreciate and understand your work.

Interestingly, the annual statistics of new accessions show that roughly three-quarters of new books were obtained via donation (304 out of a total of 409 new books). These donations, of course, are very helpful for the Library budget, but represent only a few individuals who are very generous.

There were 1,073 loans to members of St Cross during the year. 230 people were registered to use the Library, but only 102 were "active users", i.e. borrowed at least one book during the year. The opportunity to renew books online was much appreciated as the figure of 491 renewals during the year indicates.

The stocktaking during the Christmas vacation was quite disappointing, but the list of missing books (about 120) included those missing during previous years. These have now been given the status "Missing" on the catalogue to save people from wasting time looking for them. It is gratifying to be able to report that from time to time they creep back!

We organised a display of fiction books during Hilary Term in response to a request from the Common Room Committee, but the number of books borrowed from this display was no higher that those borrowed from non-fiction displays. The most popular is the one in Michaelmas Term on study techniques.

I have been working on some of the older material housed in Sara Dickson's office, so that it is catalogued with a class number, which enables it to be found. (Some of these books are on OLIS, but with no location given). I had hoped to have completed this work by the beginning of MT 2004, but this has not proved possible.

Much of the routine work of processing new books and re-shelving returned books is carried out by Angela Davis, who has been a very reliable and helpful student representative/library assistant during the year. I would like to publicly record my appreciation of her work, especially for "holding the fort" when I’ve been away. She has also been responsible for the special displays in the Library – at the moment we are displaying guides to getting higher degrees and how to write essays etc.

Sheila Allcock