Category: image

National Portrait Gallery images

This blog post from the Scottish Visual Arts Group alerted me to the fact that it was possible to use images from the National Portrait Gallery for non-commercial purposes.

Going to the Advanced Search area of the website, it’s possible to perform a search for the profession of the sitter/subject of the portrait. So, of course, I decided to have a look and see what the librarians of the past look  like. After all, today, we’re apparently all female, frumpy, and middle aged.

Of the 72 people whose profession was described as “librarian”, only 7 were female librarians*. The rest were be-whiskered, elderly white gentlemen of a certain class, with some amazing names: Arundell James Kennedy Esdaile; Luxmoore Newcombe; Harry Tapley Tapley-Soper; Charles Talbut Onions…

Of the 7 female librarians, only one is actually the sole subject of the portrait: the rest are group photographs of National Portrait Gallery staff from various eras, staff of other bodies, or a painting of a group.

So here you go: the rare sight of a portrait of a female librarian! I give you…Alda von Anrep!

Record page at NPG

Yes, it’s not exactly a stereotype-busting look, but hey, she’s all we’ve got!

*The full list is: Adla von Anrep; Rosemary Evison; Emma Floyd; Nicole Mendelsohn; Constance-Anne Parker; Lousa Fentham Todd, and Valeria Vaughan Batson.

Playing catch-up

Ok, going on holiday for a month sounded like a fabulous plan, but the reality is, you get the best part of a months work backlogged for when you come back, and spend all your time trying to get that done while also keeping on top of the current stuff.

I’m aiming high – by the end of this week, the mail pile should be gone….hopefully.

In the meantime, a link to a story the lovely Hedgehog Librarian sent me while I was off bungee jumping in New Zealand…

The Digital Repository of the National Library of Scotland (which has its very own lovely blog here) has made a choice of technical partner for its ongoing project of creating a Digital Repository of many of the important documents from their massive (and always increasing!) collection.

Also, I just realised that the NLS also has a Flickr account, uploading lots of interesting photos from their photograph collections. A great way to be able to see some of the things you wouldn’t always expect a library to have. After all, libraries just hold books…don’t they? 😉

What’s with the image?

So, I was following the debate over the last few weeks on whether that New York Sun article and various others are a good thing or a bad thing for librarians.

Now, I don’t quite gets the fuss. We’re librarians, and we have a stereotype about us. Everyone knows stereotypes aren’t totally true…as a Scot, the stereotype is that I should be ginger haired, pasty-skinned, and unhappy about having to spend money…and in reality, only the money one’s true! 😉

Here’s a few more more:
Lawyers are evil, doctors are noble, firemen are brave.

We know stereotypes aren’t true, so why bother fighting them? Will it really make the world a better place if people know that librarians aren’t actually all old ladies who wear tweed, half moon glasses, pearls, and sit behind big intimidating desks in dusty libraries and say ‘shhh’ a lot? That sometimes we have a drink, act a bit silly

And what the hell is a guybrarian? Is librarianship such a female dominated world that they’re a rarity, and need a special description, based on their sex? Do female welders want to be called welderettes because they’re female, and their gender is essential in their job title? People, the profession is librarianship, making youmale librarians just plain librarians, not guybrarians. But if you insist on it, I’m going to start calling myself a librarianette!

But seriously, yes, it’s nice that librarians are in the papers, that they’re young and having fun…but wouldn’t it be nicer if they were in the papers because they’re doing innovative things with technology, giving access to learning, doing fabulous things in their jobs…not because they’re playing drinking games based on Dewey Decimal…..