The close of my master's year

With my dissertation now submitted and my university library card now out of date, my year of study at City, University of London is behind me. It seems a good point to look back at the experience and recall points along the way.

It was when I was visiting potential universities for my elder daughter a few years ago that it hit me again what inspiring places they are. I admit I felt a pang of envy seeing students and lecturers going about their business. I had done an undergraduate degree in a small art school in my twenties, so the atmosphere wasn't entirely new to me, but it hadn't felt like a time of academic rigour. When this chance came for me to go to City, I knew it was one I must grab.

Starting my master's in library science coincided with the election of Donald Trump in the US. Truth seemed to have become merely something that you could persuade somebody was true. Libraries, on the other hand, continue to stand as places of research, study and truth; they are broadminded, welcoming and even radical, and more vital than ever.

Northampton Square Library at City, University of London

We were a wonderfully diverse cohort – and it was great to go through this year with them. Lots of them have travelled back to their homes and jobs around the world now. I am accustomed to working with deadlines and word counts, but I was less sure about writing in an academic way, which I'd never done. This went better than I had expected. I particularly enjoyed the extracurricular events, the talks at the British Library, the visits to the National Archives, the symposiums. If you are doing the same course, I'd encourage you to get involved with them. But the lectures each week were totally engaging, too.

Many on the course came from roles within libraries and other information environments: as someone changing tack in my working career, it was for me a new realm with a new vocabulary. My background in fine art still fitted well with it, but I was reading (and reading and reading) about subjects that were new, challenging and sometimes exciting. I am very happy to be volunteering now at Iniva's Stuart Hall Library, a fine art library with a focus on contemporary art from Africa, Asia and Latin America, and the work of British artists from diverse cultural backgrounds.

My dissertation, about how sketchbooks are collected and accessed, was the subject I knew I had to write about. My thanks go to my interview subjects and all those institutions that found time to complete the survey. But I had not envisaged having to ask for an extension following the death of my mother-in-law at the end of the summer. This put things into perspective. I'm grateful to the university and my supervisor, Lyn Robinson, for allowing me the extension on the submission date.

As I write, I am sending out my CV to potential employers and planning the next stage. It is a year that has led me to think in a more critical way, and feel differently about my abilities and my future career. My daughter is still a student at a university in the north of England, now in her second year of doing mathematics, and the odd thing is, I'm still envious of what she's doing. And that's because this year has been such a good one for me.

When librarians and archivists get radical

senatehouselibrary.ac.uk/radicalvoices
#radicalvoices

Radicalism and the drive for change can take on many forms in the world of libraries and archives, and the packed room for the Radical Collections: Radicalism and Libraries and Archives conference, which took place at the Institute of Historical Research at Senate House Library on 3 March, heard arguments that covered some ground.

Across four panels, the themes tackled included how collections are being developed, catalogued and organised, and who works in them and uses them. These were interspersed with not one, but two fire alarms to keep us on our toes, which led to impromptu networking sessions on the street outside, resumed at the end of the day with wine and nibbles in the Institute of Historical Research common room.

Starting out, Wendy Russell from the British Film Institute archive explored the barriers faced by the director Ken Loach in the 1980s when his TV series for the new Channel 4 about trade unionism, Questions of Leadership, was commissioned and then scrapped, and considered the archive's significance beyond the fields of TV and film. Lisa Redlinski and John Wrighton of the University of Brighton spoke about the remit of HE libraries with particular relation to the library's digitisation of Brighton's rich history of underground and alternative press. And historian Lucas Richert (University of Strathclyde), in his paper about radical psychiatry, LSD and MDMA, raised issues (among others) about how funding from private and public sources can affect the consumption and "selling" of archives.

Panel 1: Chair Richard Espley, Lucas Richert,
Lisa Redlinski, John Wrighton and Wendy Russell

Julio Cazzasa talked about the problems faced by the Senate House Library's collection (the Heisler collection of 50,000 items tracing labour and progressive political movements, for instance, is a mixed library and archive collection). Alycia Sellie (CUNY) raised questions of the whiteness of librarians and how collection practices should strive to be radical in relation to the Wisconsin Historical Society's newspaper and periodicals collection. And the discriminative nature of library classifications (it took the Library of Congress 18 years to remove the subject heading "yellow peril") and the need for a focus on critical theory in LIS studies were just some of the issues picked up by Gregory Toth of the Senate House Library.

After a lunch interrupted by the fire alarm, Mairéad Mooney (University College Cork) looked at British imperialist influences on libraries in the early days of the Irish Free State, and Amy Todman (National Library of Scotland) spoke about the archiving of Engender, the Scottish feminist organisation, since the 1990s. Siobhan Britton (University of Brighton) explored issues surrounding the collection, preservation and accessibility of zines in libraries. (My thanks to her about a lightbulb moment I had midway through her talk when I had an idea regarding my own dissertation.)

Tamsin Bookey (Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives), who navigated the rude interruption mid-presentation by the second fire alarm, described moves in Tower Hamlets to widen participation and attract hard-to-reach potential users (respect people who are hostile, use marketing, get non-gender specific toilets). Katherine Quinn (University of Warwick) spoke about the challenge of radical librarianship in the HE context (the audit culture, and how LIS is drawing on management culture), and, finally, Kirsty Fife (National Media Museum) and Hannah Henthorn (University of Dundee) described the issues they, as marginalised people, faced as they negotiated their way into the archive sector and how the expense of qualifications restrict diversification.

Just how radical some of the ideas discussed really are is debatable. In a point raised by our own Thomas Ash, the non-discriminatory nature of classification terminology, for instance, is evolutionary rather than revolutionary. It's simply how things should be. A theme running through the day, it seems to me, was that obstacles put in the way of opening up access and information to all – and that really does mean people who currently wouldn't dream of setting foot in a library or archive – need dismantling, and that means they won't be the quiet, safe places they are generally perceived to be now. White western patriarchy has had its day. That change seems more sensible and representative of the UK as it is than radical. But the conference provided a great variety of voices that asked questions and offered solutions that deserve deeper and longer consideration – and action.

You can track Radical Voices on Storify for much more insight and detail on the day's events than I can manage here. And for more about the Radical Voices series of events at the Senate House Library, see www.senatehouselibrary.ac.uk/radicalvoices.

Left in Sehgal's darkness

When the Berlin-based artist Tino Sehgal has a new exhibition, it can be hard to find out what is going to take place. He forbids any of the normal digital or paper trails of exhibition marketing and publicity: there are no videos of the work, no catalogues or wall texts. Even contracts with the exhibition organisers are verbal only.

Sehgal's name came was mentioned in The Future of Documents: Documenting Performance, a symposium at City, University of London on 31 October 2016. Yaron Shyldkrot, who is working on a PhD at the University of Surrey, was talking about documenting darkness in theatre and dance, and the disorientation and uncertainty it creates for viewers. "You can't be in the same picture as the dark," as the writer and performer Chris Goode puts it. Sehgal has used darkness in some past works, which usually involve performers interacting spontaneously with spectators, leaving no physical residue once they are finished.

The darkness of Sehgal's non-documentary approach shone out for me during the day. It is an approach that "minimises discourse to maximise the experience", the curator of his new show at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris says. The question of just who performances are being documented for was a recurring question through the day of the symposium. While many performers, choreographers and archivists recognise the importance of retaining at least some tangible form of memory of a fleeting moment, Sehgal turns that on its head, leaving us, metaphorically and sometimes literally, in the dark.

This way of working, it seems to me, is less about the artist leaving documented legacy (his approach is very well documented, if not his work), and more about his anti-market views and myth constructing. (Would he be as well known if he did allow his work to be documented?) But even in our age of the ubiquitous camera, he encourages us to focus on the moment of the performance rather than see it through a lens or discuss it to oblivion. And it certainly frees up time for archivists to get on with other things.

It was a great thought-provoking day – thanks to Lyn Robinson and Joseph Dunne for organising it.

A bit about me...

I don't think I ever expected to find myself studying information and library science at university, but as our recent induction and introductions to our modules have made all too clear, events in the world of information are moving at such a rapid pace it is hard to make firm predictions for even next week.

My journey to #citylis has been via a first degree in fine art, a career in arts journalism and publishing – magazines, newspapers and books – while selling the odd painting and drawing along the way. I have been volunteering at St Bride Library, just off Fleet Street, which is home to a collection covering printing, typography and graphic design, and more recently at the Stuart Hall Library at Iniva (Institute of International Visual Arts) in Shoreditch, which focuses on contemporary art from Africa, Asia, Latin America and the work of British artists from diverse cultural backgrounds.

I am, I'm sure, the oldest in our cohort (I have a daughter at university, for goodness sake), so it's great to be part of such a diverse and inclusive group. I'm looking forward to working with you all for the next year.