Clicking on this opens up an email to the Copac helpdesk, with all the information we need to identify the item.

This makes it easier for the user to submit the report, and easier for us to find the error. It removes the need for the user to copy and paste the item url, or tell us what they searched for. And it means that we can quickly and reliably see which item the error is in, instead of having to go back to the user to ask for further details.

Before we introduced this feature, we would get reports of errors in Copac about once a month. We thought that the new button would make it easier for those users, and that we would maybe get around ten times as many reports. We were unprepared for what actually happened.

In a year, we have received over 1000 record error reports. 1054, to be precise, working out at just under 3 a day. For a while after launch, we were getting reports in the double figures every day. This has settled down now, and some days we don’t get any at all – but there’s still the occasional day when the trickle becomes a flood again, and there seems to be a new error report every time we open the inbox.

Because we weren’t expecting such a high volume of reports, we hadn’t planned how to deal with them. The Copac helpdesk is staffed on a rota, with staff answering queries a couple of days a week alongside their other work. I’m sure you can imagine the effect this sudden influx of extra queries had, especially as we were just figuring out how to deal with them. We also hadn’t warned the contributing libraries about them, and had to hastily email them to warn them to expect the error reports, and ask them to nominate an email address for us to send them to.

Not all record error reports are created equal. A report of a typo in a record held at a single library is quickly dealt with: we email the library, including the error report, and ask them to look at it. As Copac is deduplicated, there is often more than one library mentioned in each record – but each library might not have the error. For instance, where different subjects have been assigned, these are all incorporated into the consolidated record.

If there’s an error in one of these, we would need to look through all of the original MARC records to see where the error lies. Some records on Copac might have come from 20 or more MARC records, which can take quite a chunk of time out of your day.

Once we’ve contacted the library (or libraries), we reply to the reporter to thank them for letting us know, and telling them that we have passed the information on to the library, and any changes they make will be reflected on Copac the next time they send us an update.

This is crucial: the records on Copac remain the property of the contributing libraries, and we don’t make any changes to them ourselves. The library with the error will make the change in their local catalogue, and then send us an updated version of the record. This means that not only is Copac being improved, but the local library catalogue, too.

And often this improvement can be quite significant. Fixing a typo in a title can mean that a record which might have been undiscoverable before is now more visible to those who are interested. Copac users also report misattributions (my favourite recently being an anthropology PhD thesis, wrongly credited to Enid Blyton); information about pseudonymynous authors; extra biographical, historical or contextual information; translation or transliteration errors; and information about particular imprints or ownership of rare books.

At the moment we just send this information on to the libraries, where it will usually find its way into the catalogue in some form, but we’re definitely considering how we might be able to share some of this rich and valuable information with all Copac users, and the wider scholarly community.

Now that record error reports are an expected part of our workflow, they’ve become a source of amusement and enlightenment – though you might not believe it if you’ve heard me groan at the discovery of another ISBN that’s been assigned non-uniquely. We really are deeply grateful for users who take the time and make the effort to help improve this valuable bibliographic data for everyone. Just form an orderly queue behind the error button…

The Museum’s library exists primarily to support the curatorial staff at the National Museum’s seven sites throughout Wales, covering archaeology & numismatics, fine and decorative art, botany, geology, industrial and social history, and zoology. The Library contains a number of special collections, including books on early natural history, tours of Wales in the 18th and 19th centuries, and a selection of private press material, including the Gregynog and the Golden Cockerel presses.

In addition to purchasing material for the collections the Library has accepted several generous donations and loans since the 1920s when the first Librarian was appointed.

To browse, or limit your search to the holdings of the Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales library, go to the main tab on copac.ac.uk and choose ‘Library Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales library’ from the list of libraries.

The Henry Moore Institute Research Library is a specialist resource for the study of sculpture, open to all seven days a week. The library specialises in British sculpture post-1850, with collections spanning international and historical contexts, taking in monographs, exhibition catalogues and themed publications. The library holds around 20,000 titles, including rare publications, artists’ books, ephemera and a unique and growing audio-visual collection.

The catalogue has been added as part of the Copac Challenge Fund.

To browse, or limit your search to the holdings of the Henry Moore Institute Research Library, go to the main tab on copac.ac.uk and choose ‘Henry Moore’ from the list of libraries.

(see Senate House Library, University of London, ed. by Christopher Pressler and Karen Attar (London: Scala, 2012) View on Copac)

In November 2012 Senate House Library, University of London, produced a treasures volume featuring a brief history of the Library and sixty highlights from its special collections. The publication is a landmark. The treasures volume is by no means the first publication to appear about Senate House Library. Its first catalogue was published in 1876, the year before the Library opened. Numerous catalogues have followed, culminating in the five-volume short-title Catalogue of the Goldsmiths’ Library of Economic Literature (1970-1995), which has provided a standard for economic completeness (viz. “Not in Goldsmiths’” in booksellers’ catalogues). Articles about specific collections or groups of collections have appeared in various academic journals. But the treasures volume published by Scala is the first large-scale publication with lavish illustrations intended for a general audience.

Senate House Library opened as the University of London Library in 1877. Donations had dribbled in from 1838 onwards. The impetus for a University Library came with the acquisition of the University’s first purpose-built accommodation in Burlington Gardens, Piccadilly, in 1870, with a large ground-floor room to double as an examination hall and library. No sooner had the Chancellor appealed for books to fill its empty shelves than Samuel Loyd, Baron Overstone, purchased and gave the library of the recently deceased mathematician and mathematical historian Augustus De Morgan (1806-1871). This comprised over 3,500 titles, mainly to do with the various branches of mathematics (including astronomy) and its history: a collection which was praised at the time and which, over 120 years later in 1996, Adrian Rice called ‘one of the finest accumulations of books on the history of mathematics in the country’.

Obvious treasures included the first five printed editions of Euclid, first editions of Newton’s Principia and Opticks, and the first edition of Copernicus’s  De Revolutionibus, this last individualised by De Mogan’s annotations; also noteworthy were runs of popular textbooks, such as Cocker’s Arithmetic and Francis Walkingame’s The Tutor’s Assistant. De Morgan’s notes, often humorous and sometimes shedding light on the history of mathematics, enhanced a significant minority of the books: a feature noted as adding to their value even at the time of De Morgan’s death, and one which has gained significance in recent years with the general boom in the history of reading and provenance research. The collection was catalogued online, with help from the Vice-Chancellor’s Development Fund of the University of London, in 2004-6. The iconic 1482 editio princeps of Euclid’s Elements is by no means a rare book, with 41 copies recorded on the ISTC for the British Isles alone and many more across the world; and De Morgan’s copy of the first edition of Copernicus has received prominence elsewhere, as in David Pearson’s Books as History (2008). For the treasures volume, we therefore regarded these as out of bounds. De Morgan’s own extensive writings included an article ‘On the Earliest Printed Almanacs’ in The Companion to the Almanac for 1845 and a separate monograph The Book of Almanacs (1851), and we represented this area of his interest with the first of several early almanacs from his library, the Lunarium ab Anno 1491 ad Annum 1550 by Bernardus de Granollachs (ISTC ig00340700). An added attraction to featuring this work is that De Morgan’s is the only complete copy known.  We featured De Morgan’s copy of his Formal Logic(1847): interleaved and bound in two volumes, it is full of scribbled notes, newspaper articles and personal letters, with some unpublished diagrams which show his mind at work.

One of Augustus De Morgan’s insertions in his Formal Logic (1847)

Arithmetic was a major focus of his collecting and there would have been numerous early printed books from which to choose. Ultimately we selected a late edition of John Bonnycastle’s The Scholar’s Guide to Arithmetic, edited by retired schoolmaster Edwin Colman Tyson (1828). This is a prime example of how small, common textbooks are prone to disappear: the Senate House Library copy is one of only two on Copac. De Morgan’s copy includes his note from 1857: “This book was sent to me by the publisher, meaning to call my attention to it as a class book. It convinced me that a work on demonstrative arithmetic was wanting – and was the book which suggested the existence of the deficiency to supply which I wrote my own arithmetic in 1830” – what a devastating verdict by an experienced and dismissive reviewer!

Classical historian and University of London Vice-Chancellor George Grote died on 18 June 1871, just four months after De Morgan. Grote bequeathed his books to the University. Unlike De Morgan, Grote had not been a conscious collector. But he had been a voracious reader, with money from 1830 onwards to satisfy his wide-ranging literary interests, and his library contained about five thousand titles. Director’s Choice, by Christopher Pressler – our Director’s selection of thirty favourite items from the collections –had come out a few months earlier and snaffled Grote’s collection of French Revolutionary pamphlets, comprising some items which were not only very rare (again, because they were ephemeral) but which epitomised an area of Grote’s interest: according to his 1962 biographer, Martin Lowther Clarke, he was thought to have read everything there was to read about the French Revolution. We made do with the French translation (rare in Britian; the only other copy on Copac is at the British Library) of Grote’s History of Greece and with the second-oldest item in his collection, Gregor Reisch’s Margarita Philosophica (1504), in a copy including some hand-colouring and in a contemporary blind-tooled calf binding.

G. Reisch, Margarita Philosophica (1504)

It was the gift of the Goldsmiths’ Library of Economic Literature in 1903 – some 30,000 items – which doubled library holdings and transformed the University Library into a major academic institution. Director’s Choice had already claimed the Collection’s most outstanding item in terms of provenance, a copy of Das Kapital (1872) inscribed by Marx to Peter Imandt (1823-1897), a fellow political émigré and German teacher in Dundee who worked with Marx and Engels for many years after having arrived in London, via Switzerland, in 1852. In the treasures volume we highlighted the founding item of the Goldsmiths’ Library, Dionyius Lardner’s Railway Economy (1850), annotated by the founder of the library, Herbert Somerton Foxwell: “I bought this volume from a bookstall in Great Portland Street at Jevons’ suggestion, one afternoon as I was going to Hampstead with him, for 6d.!  He urged me to buy it, partly on account of the low price, partly because it was a book of great intrinsic value, from which had suggested to him the mathematical treatment of economic theory. [cf. ch xiii] This purchase was the first step in the formation of my economic collection.” In addition to buying Foxwell’s collection and presenting it to the University of London, the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths financed the extension of the collection, such that it is now more than twice the size of the original gift. Our choice of other items from the Goldsmiths’ Library of Economic Literature honoured collection building, with the first printed work on economics (Franciscus de Platea, Opus Restitutionum Usurarum, Excommunicationum, 1472; ISTC ip00751000), and a professional diary of the energetic railway engineer John Urpeth Rastrick (1780-1856).

On the whole the treasures volume follows and acknowledges the receipt of other major special collections to the University, from the Durning-Lawrence Library based around Sir Francis Bacon and the Quick Memorial Library of works on education, both given in 1929, to the M.S. Anderson Collection of Writings on Russia Printed between 1525 and 1917 and editions of Walter de la Mare’s work (given in 2008 and 2009 respectively). But it is important to acknowledge that not all the noteworthy works in a library are held in named special collections, and the treasures volume does this, for example with single purchases or gifts. The most valuable item featured falls into both these categories. It is an illuminated manuscript produced around 1385 chronicling the exploits of Edward, the Black Prince, during the Hundred Years War. Purchased by the University to present to the Prince of Wales (later Edward VIII) in 1921, it was subsequently placed by him on permanent loan to the University Library. Occasionally the means of acquisition is unknown, as for the short-running journal of the Healthy & Artistic Dress Union Aglaia (recorded on Copac only for Senate House Library and the National Art Library).

Editing a treasures volume is not conducive to cherishing favourite items, as one’s energies are focused on searching for errors and inconsistencies in drafts. Yet certain items do stand out for particular features. For sheer beauty, my preferred item is a small (110 x 72 mm), apparently unique book of hours printed on vellum in Paris for Germain Hardouyn in about 1516: the book is rubricated and illuminated, with a half-page coloured illustration for each of the hours.

Heures a l’usaige de Rome tout au Long sans riens requerir (ca 1516)

The book I am most curious to read is The Greatest Plague in Life or The Adventures of a Lady in Search of a Good Servant, by the brothers Henry and Augustus Mayhew (1847) – a book reprinted at least three times in the Victorian era, as copies on Copac testify, but which has since sunk into obscurity.The first edition of the book is by no means rare, with copies from twelve libraries on Copac, but Senate House Library is the only library to have recorded ownership of the six original parts, complete with advertisements for pens and ink, iron fenders, lingerie, wigs, and hair dye.

Henry and Augustus Mayhew, The Greatest Plague in Life, ot 3 (1847).

For us there is also a local interest, as the narrator is based in Guildford Street, Russell Square, whence she complains that she has been driven “through a pack of ungrateful, good-for-nothing things called servants, who really do not know when they are well off”. This book promises to rate highly for amusement value, although for the top position in that category it vies with Thomas Carlyle’s acerbic marginalia on the first edition of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Aurora Leigh (for example, “don’t!” when the protagonist says it is “too easy to go mad”).

“What and where is the University of London?” is a query which vexed University officials before the central University moved from South Kensington to its current home in Bloomsbury in the 1930s.  “What and where is Senate House Library, University of London” albeit not asked so explicitly, has often been implicit. A document from 1946 claimed that the University of London Library was not as well known as it deserved to be, even within the University of London; and half a century later we still encounter researchers who are surprised by the richness of the Library’s holdings. We hope that the treasures volume will stop such a question from being asked at all.

All images copyright Senate House Library, University of London, and reproduced with the kind permission of the copyright holder.

The Wolfson Reading Room at the Wiener Library

Founded in 1933, the Wiener Library is Britain’s largest archive on the Holocaust and Nazi era. The Library holds an exceptional collection of over one million items including published and unpublished works, press cuttings, photographs, press cuttings and eyewitness testimonies. As much of the collection was amassed during the years of the Holocaust, the Library contains material of great rarity and continues to actively collect books, unique documents, photographs and personal archives.

To browse, or limit your search to the holdings of the Wiener Library, go to the main tab on copac.ac.uk and choose ‘Wiener Library’ from the list of libraries.

The Queen Mary Library operates across three sites, with holdings approaching half a million volumes. The Mile End Library is the largest site and provides services for all Schools. The other libraries are the Whitechapel Library (covers medicine and dentistry) and the West Smithfield Library (covers medicine).

Mile End Library, Queen Mary, University of London

The current Mile End Library was built in the late 1980s and opened by the Queen in 1988. It was designed by Colin St John Wilson, who also designed the British Library. Following the merger with Westfield College in 1989 the College operated a library on two sites; the library of the former Westfield College in Hampstead, and the Mile End Library. In 1992, following a building extension, the library in Hampstead was closed and all stock moved and integrated on the Mile End site.

The West Smithfield Library was made available to readers in 1880; it was originally part of St Bartholomew’s Hospital Medical College. The Whitechapel Library is in the Church of St Augustine with St Philip (grade II* listed building), and was the former library of the London Hospital Medical College. In 1992 the London Hospital joined with St Barts to become Barts and the London NHS Trust. In 1995, St Barts and the London Medical Colleges merged with Queen Mary College.

The Mile End Library houses the Queen Mary Archives, which hold institutional and personal archives, dating from the 17th century to the present day. Among its varied collections, the Archives hold: the institutional records of Queen Mary and Westfield College 1882 to present; private papers of individuals, and the records of several organizations, dating from the 18th century to the 1990s; rare prints dating from 17th century to the 1960s. The Archives Catalogue contains collection, file and item level descriptions of the collections.

To browse, or limit your search to the holdings of QMUL, go to the main tab on copac.ac.uk and choose ‘Queen Mary, University of London’ from the list of libraries.

Last month The Royal College of Surgeons (RCS) was delighted to announce that our combined library, archives and museum collections had been awarded Designated status by Arts Council England. The Designation award based on their quality and significance, distinguishes the library, archive and Hunterian museum at the RCS as unique collections of national and international importance.

The Designation application process is, quite rightly, a rigorous and searching exercise to undertake – as anyone who has attempted it would confirm!  We learned a great deal more than we expected about the collections and their inter-relationships in the course of our journey. There is so much we could talk about – all we do here is give some highlights and hope our readers will be moved to visit the RCS website, perhaps come in person to see us and think about referring potential researchers to our collections.

With 4.2 million surgical operations carried out every year in England alone, there are few whose lives have not been touched in some way by surgery. There were more than 70,000 visitors to the Hunterian Museum in 2012, testifying to the enduring interest of the public in understanding the evolution of surgery right up to the present day.

In terms of holdings statistics, the museum collections contain c. 54,000 items including specimens, instruments and art works. The archive collections consist of 2,274 boxes of material plus 542 unboxed items across 445 linear metres of shelving. The library holds approximately 100,000 volumes of books, pamphlets, and periodicals across 4.7 linear kilometres of shelving. Since 2002 the library and archives have been fortunate to receive support from The Wellcome Trust’s Research Resources in Medical History grants scheme to enable cataloguing and conservation of our collections. Most of the 19^th Century monographs have been catalogued online and we are currently working on the pre-1800 monographs. Our collection of 17^th and 18^th century journals including rare European and British periodicals are not yet catalogued online. Approximately 90% of the deposited archives have been catalogued online at collection level.

Where is the Royal College of Surgeons of England and how did it start?

The pleasant, green square of Lincoln’s Inn Fields near Holborn in central London has been home to the College since 1796. Famous as a legal quarter, the various Inns of Court are within walking distance, as is the Sir John Soane Museum across the Fields.

The origins of the College lie in two City livery companies, the Company of Barbers and Guild of Surgeons, which combined in 1540 establishing the Company of Barber-Surgeons by Royal Charter. The Barber-Surgeons apprenticed and examined surgical trainees within the city of London. In 1745, the two professions separated again and the Company of Surgeons was formed. The Company built a new hall near Newgate Gaol with an anatomy theatre to teach students and dissect the bodies of executed criminals.

Sketch of head from "Record of the Bodies of Murderers, delivered to the College for Dissection.”, by William Clift. Image copyright the Royal College of Surgeons of England.

In the College‘s deposited archive collections there are many oddities but also some that provide great insights into the life of the College. William Clift, curator of the museum 1799-1842, left a varied collection of archives (ref. MS0007). Amongst his papers is a “Record of the Bodies of Murderers, delivered to the College for Dissection.” This manuscript volume by Clift lists bodies received by the college and describes the cases of executions and dissections from 1800-1820 (Ref. MS0007/1/6/1/1). He also made sketches of some of the heads to accompany his notes.

In 1799 the government purchased the collection of the eminent surgeon and anatomist John Hunter FRS (1728-1793) giving custody to the Company on condition it was open to medical professionals and students. In 1800 the Company received its first Royal Charter, becoming the Royal College of Surgeons in London. The Lincoln’s Inn property purchased in 1796 was prepared and the Hunterian Museum opened there in 1813.  In May this year we therefore celebrate the bicentenary of the opening of the Hunterian Museum.

When was the Library founded?

The first act of the College, beginning its new life in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, was to accept from the Government the charge of John Hunter’s Museum.  It was decided to form a library and books were bought for the use of the museum curators; from 1807 serious collecting on a large scale began.  There were many generous gifts of valuable books and manuscripts. The Library was publicly opened in 1828.  Library development was helped by early donations and purchases from important surgeons including the pathologist Matthew Baillie, surgeon and past Master of the College Sir Charles Blicke, and the surgeon Sir Anthony Carlisle.

What is in the library and archive collections?

As a result these significant donations, the library collections contain many rare editions, imprints and variants. There are 57 incunabula containing some rare items from the early printing presses of France, Germany and the Low Countries and some beautiful Italian books including Johannes de Ketham’s “Anatomy”, with its handsome woodcut illustrations printed at Venice in 1495. Of the 637 English books printed before 1701, 38 are unrecorded or variant editions, for example an unrecorded French translation of Aristotle’s Secreta Secretorum, possibly printed at Lyon in 1490. We hold a number of rare first editions including Celsus (1478), Galen’s Therpeuticorum libri xiv, Venetiis 1500, and Hippocrates Opera Omnia (Graece) Venetiis, 1526. We also have a scarce first edition of Aselli’s De lactibus, 1627 which includes four coloured woodcuts, known as the earliest anatomical coloured illustrations.  The collection of anatomical books is particularly significant and includes one of the finest known copies of Vesalius’s De Humani Corporis Fabrica, a second edition printed at Basel in 1555 and bound in contemporary pigskin stamped with allegorical designs.

Items from the pre 1800 collections demonstrate developments in early anatomical and surgical studies including surgical procedures such as bloodletting, amputation and trepanation.

Claude-Nicolas Le Cat (1700-1768). Traité des sens. Rouen, 1740. Image copyright the Royal College of Surgeons of England.

This plate (see above) shows a section of the head made into a detailed plate. The RCS Library copy of this work has a manuscript note in the preliminary leaves that indicates that it was a ‘Gift of the author, 1744’.

Anatomical progress before the eighteenth century is illustrated comprehensively by our collections of significant anatomical works by the pre-eminent authors of the period such as Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564), Thomas Willis (1621-1675) and Govard Bidloo (1649-1713), who were actively challenging standard knowledge laid down by Galen.

During the eighteenth century John Hunter and his contemporaries were extending anatomical knowledge and advancing surgical practice. In addition to our collection of Hunter’s printed and manuscript works, we also have an especially comprehensive collection of the works of Bernhard Siegfried Albinus (1697-1770), and excellent coverage of William Cheselden’s work and research such as his work on lithotomy (cutting for the stone) including examples of his lithotomy knives and his signed 1723 treatise on the procedure.

A major medical advance of this period was the discovery of vaccination. Edward Jenner was a pupil of Hunter, who encouraged him to test his theories using Hunter’s scientific experimental approach. Jenner was inspired to test the protective properties of cowpox against smallpox. In the archives we hold Hunter’s letters to Jenner, other Jenner correspondence, a manuscript draft of the original cowpox vaccination publication, and a selection of his published works including a first edition of his cowpox treatise in 1798.

Claude Bernard and Charles Huette. A text book of operative surgery and surgical anatomy. Translated from the French and edited by Arthur Trehern Norton. London,1878. Image copyright the Royal College of Surgeons of England.

Major surgical advances were to revolutionise surgical practice in the 19th century. The most fundamental of these discoveries were pain relief and antisepsis, both of which are clearly illustrated by our wide-ranging collections. The collections are outstanding in their coverage of Lord Lister’s research and work, containing Lister’s manuscript research papers, the majority of his published works (some of which are annotated and given to the library by Lister himself), a number of carbolic spray devices, his microscope, samples of catgut ligatures that he developed, and surgical instruments he owned and used.

The collection of Sir Astley Paston Cooper (1768-1841) include fascinating notes and drawings of his experiments and research, specimens of anatomy and pathology collected or prepared by him, as well as case notes of his treatment of patients.

We hold a rare first edition of one of the greatest anatomical textbooks, Henry Gray’s Anatomy, Descriptive and Surgical (Parker, 1858), in its original binding, as well as the first proofs of the engravings by Butterworth and Heath, for which Henry Vandyke Carter did the beautiful illustrations. Gray’s Anatomy is now the longest running anatomical textbook in the world.

Henry Vandyke Carter (1831-1897). India Proofs for Anatomy, Descriptive and Surgical by Henry Gray (1858). Image copyright the Royal College of Surgeons of London.

Henry Gray and Henry Vandyke Carter worked together at St George’s Hospital. They began to collaborate to create a practical and affordable textbook to aid anatomy students and trainee surgeons. As research for the textbook, Gray and Carter carried out many dissections together. Gray was responsible for describing the dissections for the text in the publication, and Carter was responsible for illustrating the textbook.

Throughout the 19th century College employed museum conservators who were experts in their respective fields. Examples include the palaeontologist Sir Richard Owen (1804-1892), the microscopist John Thomas Quekett (1815-1861), and the zoologist William Henry Flower (1831-1899). The work and research of these important scholars is reflected in the collections through the specimens they prepared, books they wrote, collections they catalogued, and archive papers of the research they carried out.

Conflict had a profound influence on developments in plastic surgery, demonstrated by our Harold Gillies (1882-1960) collection. Gillies developed new procedures to reconstruct the faces of soldiers injured during the First World War, including vastly improving the success of skin grafting procedures. The Gillies material includes extensive patient files with photographs detailing treatment and procedures, a wax teaching model and casts of life masks illustrating facial reconstructive surgical procedures, and surgical instruments owned or used by Gillies. Additionally we hold the Henry Tonks (1862-1937) collection of beautiful pastel portraits of soldiers treated by Gillies which are highly regarded and have been exhibited worldwide.

The College library and archive collections were developed to support the world-leading research into natural history and comparative anatomy that were being carried out in the museum. This can come as a surprise to those who assume that our collections are purely medical or surgical. Zoology, evolutionary theory and palaeontology are supported by works by Charles Darwin, Jean Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829), Georges Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (1707-1788), Gideon Mantell (1790-1852) and William Buckland (1784-1856). Research into comparative anatomy is supported by works by Edward Tyson (1650-1708), Georges Baron Cuvier (1769-1832) and Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895).

George Shaw and Frederick Polydor Nodder. Vivarium Naturae ... The Naturalist's Miscellany: or Coloured Figures of Natural Objects; drawn and described immediately from nature. London, 1789-c.1813. Image copyright the Royal College of Surgeons of England.

George Shaw and Frederick Polydor Nodder. Vivarium Naturae … The Naturalist’s Miscellany: or Coloured Figures of Natural Objects; drawn and described immediately from nature. London, 1789-c.1813.

The Naturalist’s Miscellany is a collaboration between author and draughtsman-engraver devoted to zoological subjects. Complete sets are rare, since the work was published in 287 monthly parts over some 24 years. In 1814 a sequel, The Zoological Miscellany, was begun by William Elford Leach, with Nodder continuing to do the plates. This was completed in 1817, and comprises three volumes. Of this work only 50 copies were printed, and it is one of the rarest known to the ornithologist. Before our rediscovery of a set in the Library there were only two copies believed to exist in England, one in the British Library, the other in a private collection.

Finally, there is also important material that provides insight in unexpected subject areas. John Hunter and his wife, the poet Anne Home Hunter, were friends with many of London’s artists and musicians and many important paintings arrived with his museum. In the 19th and 20th centuries the College continued to collect paintings and drawings of new species or unusual medical collections as well as portraits and sculptures commemorating distinguished members, fellows and benefactors of the College.

Our archive collections contain poetry and a libretto for Haydn’s “Creation”, by Anne Home Hunter; papers and correspondence of the poet and dramatist Joanna Baillie including letters exchanged with literary acquaintances such as Sir Walter Scott, William Wordsworth, and Maria Edgeworth; a manuscript fragment of Mozart’s Rondo in A Major; two unpublished works by Rudyard Kipling and correspondence with Sir John and Lady Edith Bland-Sutton and his uncle Edward Burne-Jones with accompanying illustrations.  The drawing below is one of our favourites and is an apt note to end on!

Edward Burne-Jones (in letter to Kipling). Image copyright the Royal College of Surgeons of England

The drawing was probably sent in 1897 when Kipling’s son, John, was born.  In the letter Burne-Jones explains that he is sending “a design intended to illustrate a poem I hear you are writing, on the subject of your cook dancing a jig of joy at the birth of your heir”.  [MS0019]

Images reproduced by kind permission of the President and Council of The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

See the Royal College of Surgeons of England’s holdings on Copac.

“Accessibility, spread, helpfulness. I remember when there was no Copac- IT WAS SO DIFFICULT!”

You can get a copy of the full survey results. But in summary…

Most Copac users are from within the UK (76%) but we have users from elsewhere in Europe and across the world. Many users are from within Higher Education (58%), but Copac is also useful to a diverse community including other educational groups, publishers, booksellers, people from museums and galleries, as well as many independent researchers. Our largest user group is academic staff, researchers and students (44%), followed by library staff (38%) and the main subject focus is within the humanities and social sciences, but subjects right across the spectrum were mentioned.

Many respondents use Copac at least weekly (74%) and they are, overall very positive about the service, with 91% finding Copac easy to use, whilst 91% agreed that their work would take more time without it. We are also very pleased to see that 97% of UK respondents would recommend Copac.

An important element of the survey is finding out what people most like about the Copac service and, conversely, would most like to change. Many responses included comments on multiple issues, so the percentages represent comments rather than users. In terms of what is most valued, 51% of comments related to database coverage/holdings-data/location finding; this is clearly an important element of the service, bringing together disparate and, in some cases, less well know collections of importance to researchers. A further 24% of comments were appreciative of the ease of use of the interface or focussed on particular facilities valued by the user, whilst 18% related to the quality of the data including the table-of-contents and reviews etc. that we add to the records.

The requests for changes are really valuable for helping us assess where we need to focus development effort to provide the best support for researchers and we had much valuable input here. Of those 46% of respondents that made suggestions the largest group of comments related to requests for changes or additions to the facilities available (22%) which is very helpful – but in some cases emphasises the need to support, as far as possible, those who are positive about particular aspects of the service as well as those who dislike the same things. Requests for improvements to data quality and content are not easy for us to address, but we do a certain amount in this area and this is something we can explore further. We have done some work on the number of duplicate records in the database and we are pleased to see this reflected in the reduced number of comments (6%) on this issue and it is an area that will improve further as we continue to develop the service.

If you have any comments about Copac or requests for new facilities etc. you can get in touch at any time via the Copac Helpdesk. We are always pleased to get feedback.

The Copac office will be closed on the 24th December and will reopen on the 2nd January.

The Copac service will be available over Christmas and New Year, but there will be no helpdesk support. Any queries sent over this period will be dealt with when we return.

[Photo by Ashley Sanders]

Where do you work? Tell us a bit about what you do.

I (Ophélie Ramonatxo) am the head-librarian of La Médiathèque of the French Institute in the United Kingdom. We are currently based in South Kensington, London.

My aim is to manage a team of 6 librarians, 3 part-time librarians and 3 interns of whom I work with to ensure the proper use of our budget and the quality of public reception, our library collection and services which we offer.

As the head-librarian, I convey our needs to the Directing board of the French Institute and I also try to negotiate public and private grants from external factors.

Our next big project for La Médiathèque will be a complete renovation of our premises in the next two years. Find out more about the project here: http://www.institut-francais.org.uk/about/support-us/renovation-of-la-mediatheque/

What collections do you have? What does your library specialise in?

La Médiathèque specialises in all that is related to France. For instance, if you want to re-visit a classic piece of literature, we offer a wide selection of books. From Camus to Zola and poetry to contemporary fiction- it’s all wrapped up in our library with copies in French and English. Our wide selection of factual books ranges from cinema, to arts and history. For Kids and Adults we offer the largest selection of French comic books in London.

La Médiathèque

Those of you who are starting up with the French language, we offer an ‘Easy French’ section full of CDs, audiobooks and grammar books. Our media section provides you with the latest releases on DVD and CD; sometimes even before they hit the UK screens. Our ‘press’ section is for those who want to catch up with the latest news from Le Monde, Le Figaro and magazines such as Le Point or Elle, amongst many others. Last but not least, you can search for French recipes in our cooking section or hop over the Children’s library to entertain your kids. Our bi-lingual librarians are always on hand to help you choose the right document that you are looking for. For those of you who cannot make it all the way to London, we provide a free online library called culturetheque which offers videos, documentaries and eBooks galore: better yet, it’s all for FREE!

What’s your favourite item from the collections? Why? Tell us a bit about it.

Les mille et une nuits. Contes arabes, traduits en français par Monsieur Galland. Tome III, as viewed on the Culturethèque platform

My favourite item is one of our most precious books from our archives, which unfortunately the general public has little opportunity to consult: the first French edition of the “Contes des Mille et Une nuits” (One Thousand and One Nights). This edition is very antique and is deeply tucked away archives of the French Institute. It cannot be generally consulted for reasons of conservation. Fortunately, the French Institute decided to digitalise most of our valuable documents and put them on our digital platform. Feel free to browse our collection here: www.culturetheque.org.uk/read/rare-books?mode=all. This little piece of gold dust is now available to everyone! After all, what could be more French than a beautifully illustrated book which evokes love and seduction?

What’s new and exciting in your library? What have you got coming up?

Our library hosts events a plenty in our listed building full of French resistance history. For the bookworms, we hold a Reading Group in a relaxed setting with academic guests from prestigious universities. We invite French and English people alike to mull over the chosen book and contribute to an informal discussion. We have recently analysed the likes of Perec’s ‘Life: A User’s Manual’ and Bauby’s ‘Diving Bell and the Butterfly’.

Event in la Médiathèque

For Kids, we organise Baby and Kids tales with our professional storyteller. This is for all parents who wish to accustom their children to the French language in a fun and interactive way. We also offer a bi-lingual theatre show for children of all ages which magically entices the audience to learn French à la française! For the first time ever, this show will be held in our Ciné Lumière to enlarge the experience and watch out for the Christmas special with the help of Charles Dickens. Finally, our schools events invites teachers to bring along their students for a day at the Médiathèque. We will take care of your students with our themed tours, presentations, reading time and test their knowledge with a quiz at the end.

We hope to welcome you to our French library, à bientôt !

For more information, please check our website: http://www.institut-francais.org.uk/la-mediatheque/
Or keep up to date with French culture with our Culturethèque Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/Culturetheque

You can browse the holdings of the French Institute on Copac.