History Librarians Workshop

As part of the IHR’s role helping Research England to support UK higher education research infrastructure, the IHR are arranging a number of workshops exploring issues raised by the covid-19 crisis.  On the 18th June 2020 over 65 participants joined the IHR to examine the challenges posed by the current environment and share how as history librarians we are adapting and developing services and support in response.

Programme:
Welcome
- Matthew Shaw (IHR Librarian, School of Advanced Study)

Keeping historians reading: approaches to providing e-resources and alternatives to print during COVID-19
- Isabel Holowaty (Head of Humanities Libraries & History Librarian, Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford)

This brief talk outlined approaches taken at Oxford in providing history students and researchers remote access to digital content during COVID-19. It touched on accommodating rapid change, starting new services, sourcing content, communicating effectively with the Faculty and looking ahead to the next year.

Running heritage projects under lockdown
- Simon Dixon (Head of Special Collections and Archives, University of Leicester)

Throughout 2020 Archives and Special Collections at the University of Leicester are hosting two National Lottery Heritage Funded projects involving digitisation, cataloguing, volunteering and community outreach. Both projects are heavily dependent on access to physical collections and facilities on site. With no option to pause either project, this presentation reflected on how the project teams and volunteer participants have adapted to working remotely in order to deliver as many outcomes as possible.