Week 3: A Proper Job

This is the fourth in a series of posts about my Humfrey Wanley Fellowship project, in which I am exploring the Bodleian libraries' unofficial research department in the early twentieth century through the letters of the Parker family, found in the Library Records collection. The first post, which explains the scope and background of the project, is here; there are also posts for week 1 and week 2.

'Well,' said Harriet, 'for one thing, writers can't pick and choose until they've made money. If you've made your name for one kind of book and then switch over to another, your sales are apt to go down, and that's the brutal fact.' She paused. 'I know what you're thinking--that anybody with proper sensitive feeling would rather scrub floors for a living. But I should scrub floors very badly, and I write detective stories rather well. I don't see why proper feeling should prevent me from doing my proper job.' ~Dorothy Sayers, Gaudy Night 

What exactly was George Parker's 'proper job'? On the surface of things, this is easy to answer: he was a senior library assistant (sometimes also described as senior assistant librarian) from 1854 until his death in 1906, an extraordinarily long tenure. But he had another job: from at least at 1896 onward, he somehow managed to fit a full schedule of answering research inquiries around his full-time work. Which did he regard as his proper job? And equally important, how did he do it all?

Part of the answer to this last question was that Parker often wasn't doing the work himself--it might be done by his wife, Angelina, a noted scholar of Oxfordshire dialect; or his daughters Angelina Frances (Annie) and Evaline. The letters they received show that the Parker family worked as a team, passing inquiries among themselves as interest or availability dictated. Additionally, those who wrote to George Parker for help knew that he might ask 'some member of your family' (in the words of a Mr Clark, who wrote on 4 August 1904), to do the copying, transcribing, translation, or reference-checking they required.

Some of these services are still ones libraries provide today: a scan and deliver service is a direct descendant of the work done by professional copyists; and some of the research support we provide is analogous to the reference-checking of the late nineteenth century. There are differences too: few librarians today would provide translation services, and while we would help readers with strategies for proof-reading and checking their references, we would not do it for them.

In the Parker's day, none of the services he and his family provided were an official part of library work, but they still had an acknowledged place within what the library thought its users might need. A fascinating library form from 1901 speaks of the 'private time' of Bodleian staff being used to answer more involved or complicated queries.

Bodleian library, Oxford

20. 4. 1901

The Librarian presents his compliments and has to express his regret that the heavy work of the library does not give its very limited staff time during official hours to comply with requests similar to yours. What you wish can, however, be done in private time at a cost of 2s 6d per hour, and you can limit the time as you like. If you wish it done, the librarian asks you to write to Mr G. Parker at the above address. You need not repeat the inquiry, as your letter will be kept.

Letter from Rev. Canon Houblon, 29 April 1901, Library Records, d. 401. Photo: Hope Williard, Courtesy of Bodleian Libraries.

A few thrifty letter writers reused the Bodleian form in writing to the Parkers about their requirements, which is how these forms made their way into the archives. The transition between 'official hours' and 'private time' seems to have been fairly efficient, judging by the speed with which researchers received replies. One can't help but wonder how this was in practice, and also how someone like George Parker felt about it. Librarians often like to stay with a problem until it is solved--was this an experience Parker shared?

 

On the face of it, the difference between 'private time' and 'official hours' seems pretty clear-cut. As Parker was full-time, his official hours would have presumably been his Monday to Saturday work schedule, and private time would have been any point at which he was of the clock. In practice, was it really so easy to switch between the two? One can imagine Parker at his usual desk, off the clock for the afternoon, preparing to sit down and dig into a nice juicy question, when a reader he helped earlier in the day spots him and hurries over to ask for help...

And what was George Parker doing in his official hours if not assisting readers with remote access to the library and its collections? Fascinatingly, this is a question that can be answered--the Bodleian possesses Parker's staff diaries from 1878-1907, as well as those of other assistants, including Frances Underhill, the first female library assistant. The staff diary was a kind of account book, showing how members of library staff spent their workdays, and each person's diary was inspected annually by library management.

Library Records, f. 21. Photo: Hope Williard, Courtesy of Bodleian Libraries.

As an example, here is what George Parker was up to in early April 1883:

Wednesday, April 4th

Cataloged Books

Checked Invoices.

Looked out books in Catalogue.

Altered headings under Lexicon, 95.

Enter adds. on Acc. Lists, I.

Thursday, April 5th

Catalogued Books.

Searching for a Book.

Revised Slips.

Assisted Readers.

Entered References.

Friday, April 6th

Copied Gal. notes in Greek Canon Ms.

Assisted Readers.

Catalogued Books.

Altered headings under Lexicon, 130.

Saturday, April 7th

Catalogued Foreign Books.

Assisted Readers.

Altered headings under Lexicon, 50.

Entered Adds. on For. Acc. Lists.

 

Updating lists of new accessions, cataloguing, sorted out invoices, helping patrons--many of the tasks Parker lists in his work diary would be familiar to librarians today, even if the emphasis is different. To see how priorities have shifted, let's take a sample page of the diary from August 1880:

Library Records, f. 21. Photo: Hope Williard, Courtesy of Bodleian Libraries.

Tuesday, August 3

Copying the Index to 'Aristophanes' for each copy of the Catalogue. Classified 200 slips.

Wednesday, August 4

Classified 290 slips.

Thursday, August 5

Studying the British Museum Rules of Cataloguing and Arranging titles. Classified 320 slips.

Friday, August 6

Classified 410 slips.

Saturday, August 7

and assisting Dr. Neubauer. Classified 300 slips.

Monday, August 9

and attending to Readers. Classified 380 slips.

Tuesday, August 10

and attending to Readers. Classified 250 slips.

A number of details stand out: the careful attention to the number of slips classified per day as part of a running total of slips classified during the year, and also the contrast between the details of Thursday, 5th August 1880 ('studying the British Museum Rules for Cataloging and Arranging titles') and the afterthought of 'and attending to Readers' on Monday 9 August and Tuesday 10 August. The names of people admitted to the library was recorded elsewhere; so it is perhaps not surprising that Parker's staff diary contains so little detail about who was in the library and what they were doing there. Still, the focus on cataloguing and classification versus reader services suggests the former would be more highly valued when it came time for the diary to be inspected.

Over the next few weeks I look forward to reading more about the history of the Bodleian in order to learn more about what assisting and attending to readers involved, and how this contrasted with the sort of help George Parker and his family were providing in their 'private time'. The difference between private and official hours, on the face of it a simple question, might tell a more complex story whether research work was considered to be a 'proper job' in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Further Reading

Barbara B. Moran, “E. W. B. Nicholson and the ‘Bodleian Library Staff-Kalendar.’” Libraries & the Cultural Record, 45, no. 3 (2010): 297–319. My thanks to Oliver House for recommending this fascinating article.