Heythrop Library

Welcome to 2026! I hope that you had a good non-festering season. Unless you did not engage with any form of media you will also have noticed many reviews of the last 12 months. If you haven’t had enough of those, and need lots of details, please go to https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2025/specials/year-in-pictures/index.html, or if you want to have my Heythrop Library-related review of 2025, please read on.

January 2025: 

• Assistant Librarian Naomi resigns, and her position is advertised with a tight deadline of 4 February 2025.
• The Professor CSP Hunter scholarships are advertised for 2025; this year there will be 7 scholarships on offer.
• Yours truly collects 60 books formerly owned by Kathleen Walsh (1949-2022), in two trips. Naomi and Amelia had taken photographs, so that we could search for the books from the whole collection.

February:

• Naomi’s last working day with us, and Julian starts as our part-time, temporary Assistant Librarian; his primary job is to keep the Library open longer on weekdays and on Saturdays during LJC term times.
• The first stage of the selection process for the permanent, full-time Assistant Librarian takes place in form of an online cataloguing test. Luckily, there are a good number of people who know their Marc21 from their Marc Jacobs.
• The second stage of the selection process happens (a traditional interview), and there is a clear preferred candidate: Sophia

March: 

• We start our journey to a new library management system (Koha), with an initial planning meeting.
• We move away from the platform formerly called Twitter to Bluesky: Heythrop Library (@heythroplib.bsky.social) — Bluesky
• Amelia marks IWD2025 with a blog post: Cataloguing update : International Women’s Day – Heythrop Library

April:

• We continue to prepare for migration from the old library management system to Koha: a data mapping workshop helps us to get a glimpse of how the old data will work in the new LMS.
• The first of The Professor CSP Hunter scholarships (2025) is awarded, to: Dr Alinda Damsa.
• 30 April 2025: the Library stops delivering materials to the Senate House Library, this is in preparation of the SHL and us moving to separate library management systems.
• Our temporary colleague, Julian, ends his assignment to us.
• Like every year, we offer a work placement to an UCL Masters’ student, see her report at Placement report: April 2025 – Heythrop Library.

May:

• Pope Leo XIV is elected, and on the very day we get an anonymous donation of a book titled ‘The election of Pope Francis : an inside account of the Conclave that changed history” / Gerard O’Connell book (see https://hey.koha.openfifth.net/cgi-bin/koha/opac-detail.pl?biblionumber=98545 for our catalogue record).
• Most of the 7 (seven!) training sessions for Koha happen this month!
• The second and third of The Professor CSP Hunter scholarships are awarded: Dr Sarah Pawlett Jackson and Dr Michael Hahn.

June: 

• We receive 3 card catalogue cabinets and deal with this. Sounds like easy work. Read Heythrop College Library Card Catalogue transfer Process Explained to learn more.
• We go “live” with Koha, and try to keep our library users in the loop, see Changing the system (summer 2025) – Heythrop Library

July:

• We start the Heythrop Library You Tube channel, primarily to share how-to videos, so that our members can see how to do some tasks with the new system.
• The Library team visits one of our off-site stores; read Amelia’s blog post Library team outing : Deepstore – Heythrop Library

August:

• The fourth The Professor CSP Hunter scholarships gets awarded: Dr Michael Tang
• The Library team has managed to catalogue over 2,800 books in the last 11 months (in the end over 3,000 books will have been catalogued!).
• Our colleague Massimo takes over 150 photos of the Library; with and without people in them. We will use even more of them in the coming months!

September: 

• London Tube Strike affects our opening hours.
• Fifth The Professor CSP Hunter scholarship awarded: Dr Kathryn Wills
• Katherine starts volunteering with us, after a 1 week of full-time training.

October: 

• We introduce 3 new things to the Library, for the beginning of the LJC term; see our news item at New for 2025-26 – Heythrop Library.
• The sixth 2025 Professor CSP Hunter scholarship is awarded: Dr Suki Finn.
• The Library reaches over 450 members (a high since the end of the Heythrop College), but read the blog post on Who are our users in October 2025? – Heythrop Library.

November:

• The seventh 2025 Professor CSP Hunter scholarship is awarded: Dr Stephen Dolan.
• A day of no internet access teaches the library team how we rely so much on access to servers: see Captain’s log #6 – Heythrop Library
• Two books returned after being overdue for 7 years, see the post https://bsky.app/profile/heythroplib.bsky.social/post/3m6hgan6br42d
• Sophia attends the Open Fifth’s customer day, see Connecting with other Librarians in London – Heythrop Library

December:  

• The Winter 2025 issue of Jesuits & Friends features a short reflection of yours truly, on being 4 years in the post, see Jesuits & Friends – Winter 2025 | Jesuits in Britain
• Wishing you all a great 2026!

CG