Heythrop Library

I volunteered at the Heythrop Library, mostly because I was interested in librarianship and the unique approach to classmarking that they had because of their position as so closely connected to the Jesuit Society.

The time I spent in the library prepared me both for some of the more manual tasks in librarianship, such as labelling, covering and shelving books, but also some of the more conceptual. One of the most interesting points was the classification system , due to the use of a hybrid of the often updated Library of Congress Classification system and the mildly archaic, Catholic specific, Lynn-Peterson system, which led to some strange quirks – for example, the classmark for “Buddhism” under the Library of Congress is used instead for “Christian Writers” under the Lynn-Peterson. Correctly classmarking books and learning some of the many intricacies of their system therefore took up a large part of my week, something I doubt I could’ve begun to master with a lot more time spent working alongside the wonderful library staff. Similarly, while cataloguing journals and serials seems quite opaque, I managed to get at least a foothold in the working process via the welcome oversight of Sophia.

Some of the more involved and technical work I helped with ended up being with the different branches of recalling and sending items to both storage facilites. Because the vast majority of the library’s collection is stored off-site, and due to the specific demands of various academics using the library, requests of books from the storage spaces are multiple times a week, leading me to be quite familiar with the fairly intricate system of requesting and sending books off into storage, as well as how the databases of each system kept track of said books.

One of the most interesting tasks I had for the week was checking the shelved books against what the catalogue assumed we had in the reading room. Surprisingly, due to the fact that the catalogue had moved from Sierra to Koha recently, there were a number of records that needed correcting, as some of the data entries were not properly transferred between the two systems. Therefore, it ended up being an interesting engagement in the interlinking sections of record management, and the various pitfalls one must be aware of.

My favourite part of the week, but also perhaps the part I was most invested in, was collection development; due to my philosophy background, I was asked to find lists for both logic and women philosophers to broaden the areas of collection. This ended up being a struggle due to the difficulties I had with appraising what exactly would be a good fit for the collection, and what was important enough to recommend in the first place. This ended up with a fair amount of digging through academic reviews of books on subjects I barely understood, but it was also a very rewarding process to know that I had meaningfully contributed to the growth of the collection.

Overall, I found my time at the Heythrop a delight, especially because of how welcome Clemens, Amelia and Sophia made me feel. I hope to continue on as a volunteer into the future, as I broaden my understanding of library management.

Katherine Vinten, Heythrop Library Volunteer September 2025