The Book Collector team has felt for some time that we are regularly interviewing collectors and dealers, but librarians don't often get a chance to talk about themselves. The pandemic has only highlighted their importance when it comes to securing our bibliophilic heritage and we aim to publish an interview with a librarian once a month online.
Our first interviewee is Liam Sims, who joined the staff of the Cambridge University Library in 2010, where he has been a Rare Books Specialist since 2016. He is also working towards a PhD on the intellectual networks of the eighteenth-century Spalding Gentlemen’s Society in Lincolnshire, and can be found on Twitter.
At what point did you want to become a librarian?
I was – unsurprisingly – an odd child, and from my early teens spent my pocket money on battered eighteenth- and nineteenth-century books in the wonderful Eric T. Moore bookshop in Hitchin (the shop sadly now closed but operational by email). But it wasn’t until my undergraduate years in London that I considered librarianship. I volunteered in the library of the Egyptian Department at the British Museum and, uncertain about career paths, was advised by the Librarian of the options for professional qualification. After university I tested the waters by spending a fantastic year as a trainee at Trinity College Library in Cambridge, before doing an MA in Library & Information Studies at UCL.
What has been your most exciting discovery?
One of the greatest joys of working at Cambridge University Library, with around one million rare books amassed over six centuries, is that you have a sense of discovery almost every day. I might happen to come across a book given to us in the seventeenth century which hasn’t been handled for many years, noticing the inscription of a significant former owner, or an interesting binding, which no one else has thought worthy of attention before. Sometimes though there are genuine discoveries. A few months ago I found a book with endpapers covered in crude woodcuts, including the initials of an eighteenth-century Scottish publisher. I shared images on Twitter and the general consensus was that they were trials for decorating paper for wrapping books. Not valuable but a unique survival!
Tell us a little bit about your latest project
An exciting development at Cambridge is the awarding – by the AHRC's Capability for Collections Fund – of £3m to a consortium (including Cambridge University Library and the Fitzwilliam Museum) enabling new research into the University’s unparalleled heritage collections. I am looking forward to finding new ways to bring some of the Library’s extensive collections – not just printed books and medieval manuscripts but archives, photographs, objects and artwork – to the attention of all sorts of researchers.
What exciting plans are in the pipeline?
Pre-COVID I had expected to be involved in a major exhibition (since cancelled) to mark the 500th anniversary of printing in Cambridge (the German printer John Siberch arrived there in 1521). This would have told the story of five centuries of technological developments in printing, including recent research into the punches for John Baskerville’s type, which we look after, by a team lead by Caroline Archer-Parré at Birmingham. Hopefully we can still share some of these stories before the year is out.
Do you collect yourself?
Of course! I collect in several very different areas: bibliography (naturally), gay pulp fiction from the ‘60s and ‘70s, and for reasons of provenance (I’m keen on A. N. L. Munby and have an unhealthy number of books from his library). An area of growth in the last year has been Venice, which I love. Interesting additions include John Craig’s Venice (Whittington Press, 2015), with an extra set of Craig’s gorgeous engravings, and a 1794 Venice-printed grammar for Italians to learn English (annotated by an early owner focussed on the lower pleasures of life). But I can find myself interested in anything if it can tell a good story. In the first lockdown I commissioned my first bookplate, designed by local artist Mark Bury, who trained with David Kindersley, and printed in Scotland at the Piccolo Press.
If money was no object what book/manuscript would you like to add to your library?
If I may, I’ll turn this on its head. Cambridge University Library is lucky enough in its long history to have acquired many of the high spots in various fields and the acquisition of items for special collections today is naturally focussed on things which are rich in value for researchers, from undergraduates encountering rare books for the first time to international research projects. With this in mind the purchase price is irrelevant: a battered Victorian school book with notes made in the classroom might (as far as this can be said to be measurable) have just as much research potential as an incunable. But we have made some spectacular purchases in recent years, thanks to the generosity of bodies like the Friends of the National Libraries, Friends of the Library and individual donors. A highlight for me was being involved in our acquisition of a life of Catherine de Medici profusely annotated by Gabriel Harvey, now fully digitised on our Digital Library.
What is the greatest challenge facing rare book librarians in the next few years?
Many will have seen the recent publicity around the proposed sale of historic collections from the Royal College of Physicians, a sign of the worrying increase in sales of heritage assets as a short-term solution to cover financial losses. Every case is different and bodies like the Historic Libraries Forum (with which I’m involved) can offer advice in these situations. I was surprised to see the Headmaster of Rugby School noting in November that books from the school library were being sold to allow the school ‘to use its resources to benefit current and future students’, something I’m pretty sure could be done by allowing students to handle a medieval book of hours or a Shakespeare folio (both sold) as part of their teaching. To me, therefore, the biggest challenge for special collections librarians today is continuing to fight to prove the value of keeping our collections available for use and of the expert staff who care for and interpret them.
Has the pandemic brought some positives for librarians as well as negatives?
One of the great benefits of the Zoom era is the possibility of making connections which probably would never have come about before. I sit on the Council of The Bibliographical Society, and recently helped to organise a virtual tour of three libraries in Mexico for anyone who wanted to join us. Librarians like nothing better than pottering around other people’s libraries, and virtual visits aren’t quite the same as physically being there. But having nearly 100 people from across the world engage with colleagues 5000 miles away is something that would likely never have happened before.
Cambridge University Library’s Special Collections include the oldest and most valuable materials in the Library, in manuscript, printed and artefact form, as well as modern maps and music. The Library is committed to using its Special Collections to support research and teaching, and to developing digital services to make the collections accessible to the widest possible audience in new and innovative ways. At the same time, it recognises the enduring importance of the physical collections, and the need to preserve this unique cultural heritage for future generations.To find out more about the Library’s rich collections, see the Special Collections blog and Twitter pages.