It would be remiss of me not to point out that Routledge’s Black Friday sale makes the e-book version of my book very affordable! (Maybe someone might even buy you it for Christmas?).
Those preferring to read a hard copy might point out to their library that there’s no time like the present…
Its forerunner, Our Ancient National Airs, is also in the sale.
There! Your Christmas reading is sorted.
Earlier this year, IASH blogged about an exciting book that Ben Fletcher-Watson and Jo Shaw would soon be releasing. And yesterday, I attended its launch – the third book of the Dangerous Women project:-
The Art of Being Dangerous: Exploring Women and Danger through Creative Expression (Leuven University Press, 2021) edited by Jo Shaw and Ben Fletcher-Watson
Dangerous Women: fifty reflections on women, power and identity (Unbound, 2022) edited by Jo Shaw, Ben Fletcher-Watson and Abrisham Ahmadzadeh
Women Who Dared: From the Infamous to the Forgotten (Edinburgh University Press, 2025) edited by Ben Fletcher-Watson and Jo Shaw
It was a lovely book launch, and we had excellent speakers, who had all contributed to the book: Jo Shaw, Sara Sheridan, Ruth Boreham and Jo Spiller.
Women who Dared is an anthology of short biographies – all of them historical ‘women who dared’. I chatted with the speakers afterwards, and enjoyed hearing more about their work. There are so very many women of note, whom history has entirely forgotten about, so books like this are both very welcome, and very necessary.
Edinburgh University Press link
Yes, I’m afraid I have been distracted in my archival search for the editor of some teaching materials. I identified a run of box files for the right years, but it turns out not to be from the editorial team. The sales department was obviously crucial, once the books were ready to market and sell, but if my present quarry had only had any evident input into one solitary published title, then frankly those boxes probably don’t concern me in my present research.
Nonetheless, I inspected four boxes fairly closely, before deciding to stop looking at the boxes from 1953.
In passing, in the ‘Nelson Juniors’ series, I encountered some careers-related books from the 1950s. The choices – apart from that of journalist – are rather stereotyped! On the other hand, the girls seem to have more choices … curious, that! Maybe they meant to publish more titles, before the series rolled to a halt with the ‘engine driver’ in 1960.
The first and last of these seem to have attracted some interest! The ballet book was reviewed in an American dance magazine – Dancing Star, by the editor of a British magazine called Ballet Today. The Ballet Annual wanted to review it. (A lot of announcements were sent to relevant organisations and individuals.) Moreover, The Psychologist Magazine wanted to review both the ballet book and How I became a Nursing Sister. (Nursing, I can understand. But reviewing a children’s book about the career of ballet dancer? Was it to gain insight into a young ballerina’s mind …?)
And even if nowadays, it looks pretty mundane, Meccano Magazine and The Model Engineer both requested review copies of How I became an Engine Driver. The Stephenson Locomotive Society were also sent a review copy, along with 2750: Legend of a Locomotive, and they promised to publish a review in the Society’s Journal. Indeed, Thomas Nelson sent a presentation copy of the book to the Lord Reay Maharashtra Industrial Museum in Bombay in response to a request for books for the museum library being set up there – just that one book!
Image by Alana Jordan from Pixabay
Our talented son, Scott McAulay, has just shared with us an image of his latest triumph – a foreword in another Routledge book. (He’s less than half my age, so who knows how much he’ll have published by the time he reaches my advanced years!)
So, this year, between us we’ve had a hand in three Routledge books, or four if you include the paperback edition of one I contributed to earlier:-
Scott McAulay (foreword), in Mike McEvoy, Street-by-Street Retrofit: A Future for Architecture (2024)
Karen E. McAulay, A Social History of Amateur Music-Making and Scottish National Identity: Scotland’s Printed Music, 1880-1951 (2024)
Scott McAulay (chapter and a co-authored chapter) in The Pedagogies of Re-Use: The International School of Re-Construction (2024), ed. Duncan Baker-Brown, Graeme Brooker
Karen E. McAulay (chapter) in new paperback edition of Music by Subscription: Composers and their Networks in the British Music-Publishing Trade, 1676–1820 (2024, hardback 2022)
The book I’m getting published later this year is not my first.
But our son Scott McAulay has beaten me to it, in being the first to see a Routledge publication this year – two chapters in this essay collection. And I understand he’s in another collection, too. Scott has an architectural background – we have very different specialisms! I’m a proud mum.
One of Scott’s illustrations is by his older brother, by the way!
He went on holiday, and all he brought me back was this measly chest infection. Well, I’m back at work now, but not entirely 100% yet. Take today. On my agenda is the intention to re-read both versions of my how-to-index-a-book guidelines, and make a start. But that couldn’t happen before a telephone GP-appointment, followed by an actual one …
Then my home desk needed decluttering, after a week’s indisposition. Finally, I remembered that I’d wanted to check a 1951 exhibition catalogue for something that had occurred to me between coughing fits. It was, I thought, only viewable in a handful of Scottish libraries – which would be problematical if I was keeping my intermittently-coughing self away from places where I’d be undesirable. (It’s definitely not Covid, but I can hardly wear a placard saying so.)
And then ….
I can’t tell you how much better I suddenly feel. I’m like a child whose mum has just bought them a wee treat to help them feel better! Now I can look closely at the catalogue without embarrassing myself by coughing in a public place. I’ve wanted to get my hands on this item for ages – since I saw a library copy a year or two ago. Even though I have already written a book essay about what I found then, I now have another question to ask it, so owning my own copy will be very exciting. Hurry up, postie!
Okay. It’s lunch-time. Here’s hoping I manage to avoid distractions this afternoon!
Image (pile of catalogues) by Lutz Peter from Pixabay
How could I resist this event?! After all my efforts a few years ago, researching the borrowing of legal deposit music at the University of St Andrews in the early 19th century, I simply HAVE to attend this. It’s somewhat ‘meta’ for a scholar librarian to take a research interest in the borrowing habits of readers who ‘checked out’ centuries ago, isn’t it?
I’ve rearranged my research hours accordingly, so I can finish the week on a research rather than a librarianly note:-
Books and Borrowing Database Launch Date: Fri, Apr 26 • 16:00 BST Location: University Avenue, Glasgow, G12 8QQ https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/books-and-borrowing-database-launch-tickets-879501281007?aff=ebdsshother&utm_share_source=listing_android
There was a time long ago, whilst I was doing a postgraduate librarianship diploma in Aberystwyth, when we all had to go on a week’s study tour. I went to Sheffield, staying with friends, and visiting various libraries with my classmates.
A visit to some archives enchanted me. I can’t remember if they were regional archives or university ones, but those heavy bindings, scrolls, and all the modern accoutrements of white tapes, book cushions and weighted ‘snakes’ – not to mention the questions of conservation and restoration – certainly seemed irresistible in that moment. I would love to have known that conservation was in itself a career. I didn’t know.
On the other hand, I was forced to acknowledge that more legal conveyancing and inheritance documents survive than mediaeval music manuscripts. And some materials looked unmistakably grubby when they reached the archive. Besides, I was already on track for librarianship rather than archives.
I was half-amused, half-annoyed by a pearl of parental wisdom:-
You don’t want to be an archivist, dear. All you’ll meet is Dusty Old Deans.
Admittedly, I had not so long before been researching mediaeval music and visiting cathedral libraries. I hadn’t encountered a Dean, dusty or otherwise, whom I hadn’t found charming.
Anyway, I had no reason to visit archives for a couple of decades, until I recommenced researching. I’m no longer a mediaevalist. But Victorian and early 20th century archival materials have turned out to hold their own appeal. Archival correspondence is intriguing, even when it’s conveniently in legible typescript. The biggest attraction of retirement from librarianship is the opportunity of far more research, and hopefully many more hours in archives.Â
I wonder if there’s anywhere I could learn to do conservation …. ?
I accepted a generous donation of old books to the Library a couple of weeks ago. This presented me, personally, with a bit of a problem because our offices, furniture and contents are being moved around, and I had proudly emptied most of my shelves in readiness. There will be fewer shelves in the other office. And now I had two shelves full of old Scottish music – right up my street – which needed cataloguing.
Of course, the lovely thing is that they’re books I’ve encountered in various research contexts … the PhD; the Bass Culture project (https://HMS.Scot); the book chapter on subscriptions; and my own forthcoming monograph.
I catalogued like crazy on Thursday and Friday. I’ve catalogued Sammelbande (personal bound volumes) of songs, piano music and fiddle tunes. I’ve shown colleagues books signed by George Thomson. I’ve indexed Gow’s strathspeys and reels. And yesterday I blogged about James Davie and his Caledonian Repository.
But I’ve also just enjoyed handling the music, because sometimes one finds some endearingly human evidence of the scores being used, even to the point of needing mending. It’s quite touching to ponder how much a piece had been used, before it actually needed stitching – here, along a line where the edge of the printer’s block had originally left a dent in the paper:-
I’ve smiled at Georgian ladies’ stitched repairs to much-loved pieces, noticed with amusement a handful of early Mozart Allan books (yes, including some strathspeys and reels) in a fin-de-siecle Sammelband which had seen better days; spotted piano fingerings pencilled in; and best of all, found a tartan ribbon in a volume dedicated to the Duke of Sussex – his personal copy, which was first sold out of the family’s possession in 1844. His library was dispersed after he died in straitened financial circumstances:-
Nine Scots Songs and three Duetts, newly arranged with a harp or piano forte accompaniment / by P. Anthony Corri
Whittaker Library catalogue entry
This book has the Duke’s family crest on a label pasted inside, and the outer cover is embossed with ‘A F’ (Augustus Frederick), reflecting the monogram on the title page.
The tartan endpapers and tartan ribbon between pp.30-31 are a perfect illustration of what I have written about in a chapter on tartanry in my forthcoming monograph. Everyone – whether nobility or commoner – liked a bit of tartan on or inside their Scottish song books, and here, someone even found a bit of tartan ribbon to use as a bookmark.
I have just a few of those books left to catalogue now. There’s an intriguing one without a cover or title page, waiting for 9 am on Monday …! Hopefully, I’ll end up with an empty bookcase again.
Audible, in its infinite wisdom and comparatively brief acquaintance with me, suggested I might enjoy this Penguin novel by Michiko Aoyama.
What You are looking for is in the Library (Penguin, 2023)
Was it because I enjoyed, The Premonition, by Banana Yoshimoto? Or does Audible (Amazon) somehow know I’m a librarian? I don’t buy books on librarianship…
In any case, it’s not surprising that when this title came up as a new suggestion, I’d be drawn to it! Haven’t I spent 42 years hoping people would find what they were looking for in the library?
It’s an interesting idea: a series of individuals are drawn to visit a community library. It’s staffed by a nervous but friendly trainee and a mysterious, large, middle-aged former special-needs teacher turned librarian (with a penchant for Japanese honey dome cookies, and a felting obsession). We encounter each library visitor at a crisis point in their lives. A girl wanting a more challenging job; a woman demoted during maternity leave; a man dissatisfied with his work; an unemployed artist; and a newly-retired man each consult the librarian for book recommendations, receiving a couple of perfect choices, and an apparently random children’s book, along with a bonus gift.
In each case, the random book and felted object help them to realise three truths: that there is always more than one way of looking at a situation; there are always other choices of direction; and that everyone draws their own message from any particular book.
Whilst the characters seem unlinked apart from these common threads, the final chapter does gather them together loosely. It’s a gentle, thoughtful, sequential book rather than one with a grand denouement.
As such, the reader is left feeling less that it all came together in the end, than that each character had found a way to resolve something that had been troubling them. Less of a ‘Wow!’, more of a quietly satisfied, ‘Yes, I enjoyed that.’
Aoyama’s choice of characters is ingenious. The librarian and her trainee are deftly and likeably characterised as a bit oddball, but happy in their environment, whilst their searching patrons – all new library users – are defined in such a way that the reader is sure to relate to some aspect of their collective predicaments.
And the three truths that I mentioned? Well, as I said, the third was that everyone takes their own message from a book. You’ll have to read it!
Karen McAulay, Musicologist 