Murder and Mayhem in the Library!

Well, perhaps not actual murder and mayhem, but in researching different types of library collections, I never expected to run across any devoted to criminology! However, there is an entire organization (the World Criminal Justice Library Network) whose membership includes dozens of these libraries in 26 countries.

I also discovered a paper written by Stuart Stone, the head librarian at the foremost criminology library in the UK, named after Leon Radzinowicz. The Radzinowicz Library is part of the Institute of Criminology at the University of Cambridge.

The Radzinowicz Library of Criminology.

Interestingly,  this library actively collaborates with the Koestler Trust,  a charity that works with prisoners and holds an exhibition of their artwork each year. The library always purchases and displays a few pieces. Funding for these acquisitions comes from overdue fines. As Mr. Stone so elegantly put it,  “the delinquency of our own readers helps to contribute to the rehabilitation of others.” (Stone, 2016, p. 4).

After reading Mr. Stone’s paper, I wrote to him and, to my delight, he was kind enough to answer a few questions in a detailed email. Enjoy!

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Q1. What path did you take to work in this field and in the library?

Having previously worked in the private, public and voluntary sectors, my path to library work wasn’t a straightforward one. Before working here, I ran an IT training centre in the city’s central public library, and then, immediately after, I became a management consultant for the local authority and worked on a range of projects with public libraries. When that contract ended, a friend of mine who worked here in the University pointed me towards a vacancy for a library assistant in the Institute of Criminology. That was in 1999, when IT skills were comparatively rare among library workers, but the necessity of them was starting to be felt. I’ve been here ever since, becoming Deputy Librarian a few years later then taking over the running of the library at the beginning of 2013.

Q2. What education is necessary, i.e., what classes might be most helpful to working in this library?

The continuing professionalisation of librarianship has brought with it a change in the qualifications needed. When I started working in the Radzinowicz Library, the Librarian was a former criminology researcher with no previous library experience, as some of her predecessors had also been. In a print-only culture, subject expertise was critical, especially in a research library like ours. These days, the complexity of the information environment demands different specialisms. My university requires a professional librarianship qualification to run a library here — a Master’s degree or at least a Postgraduate Diploma — and I would expect the same of applicants for any permanent position in my own library.

Q3. Specifically, what skill set do you look for in candidates, particularly in light of your area of responsibilities?

Qualifications aside, it’s all about the right professional attitude and personal qualities. An understanding of criminology as a subject is useful but by no means necessary. A clear grasp of the changing environment in libraries is basic, as is an understanding of how that affects higher education and research. An ability to build relationships is vital in a postgraduate research library like ours: we work closely with a core group of people, supporting their research as it evolves, often over many years. A history of initiative, tied to a lively imagination, is also a huge recommendation. New ideas don’t just refresh the service for readers, they replenish our motivation as workers. And that includes ideas that take us beyond the traditional boundaries of an academic library: our Deputy Librarian organises a weekly yoga session for staff and students of the department.

Finally, self-awareness is a key attribute. Reflective practice is fundamental to how we work here and it requires flexibility and self-knowledge to succeed. One of the questions I always ask when interviewing candidates is, What can you bring to this job that no-one else can? Think very carefully when you hear that question because it is deceptive. It is asking about your uniqueness, not about your skill set: I already know about that from your application. Your answer will tell me everything I need to know about your self-knowledge, your self-confidence, and the creativity of your approach. An imaginative answer could easily land you the job.

Q4. What is the diversity of jobs in the criminology library field? Are there many opportunities?

There isn’t an academic criminology library field, as such; ours is a decidedly niche operation. Most universities that teach criminology hold a small collection as part of a social sciences collection, usually in a central university library. They may have subject specialist librarians but rarely in something as specific as criminology: usually, it would be social sciences. In Cambridge, we’re lucky to have around 40 subject specialist libraries embedded in academic departments.

The Radzinowicz Library is, however, part of two groups in the wider library landscape. First, we are an academic library and that field, whilst undergoing constant change, is productive and rewarding. There are still opportunities for new professionals, although the profile of the work, and therefore the workers, is changing. There are fewer jobs in traditional discrete functions like cataloguing and more emphasis on broader fields like scholarly communication and digital collection management.

The other group to which we belong is that of criminal justice libraries. These generally serve practitioners in the course of their work and/or training, and they’re mostly part of government agencies. Here in the UK, examples would be the library at the College of Policing, the Prison Service College library, and the Ministry of Justice library. Other countries and territories have equivalent resources and there are a few research organisations, like the Australian Institute of Criminology, with their JV Barry Library. All of these are very specialised libraries and, because of that, are few and far between. Opportunities are therefore rare but, for those with a particular interest, well worth pursuing.

Q5. How does the Radzinowicz Library collection differ from other libraries in this field?

The Radzinowicz Library differs principally in the size and nature of its collection. It is one of the most comprehensive criminal justice libraries in the world and is internationally recognised as a world-class resource. Along with academic criminology texts, we have important collections of grey literature and pamphlets, and cover a range of related subjects: psychology, sociology, ethnography, philosophy, and certain specialisms in politics and law. Although some parts of our collection overlap with the practitioner-focused criminal justice libraries, we have a different collecting profile: they need to collect practice and training manuals, for example, whereas we concentrate on theoretical and research publications.

This is a distinctive library in a lot of ways and we are particularly proud of our collection of prisoner art. We have around 40 pieces, collected over a number of years, and we add new works each year, all bought from our library fines. In this, we work with the Koestler Trust, a UK charity that helps offenders, secure patients, and detainees lead more positive lives by motivating them to participate and achieve in the arts.

The Trust organises a public exhibition and an awards scheme every year, and we source most of our pieces through them. The artworks bring a different dimension to the library, and not just an aesthetic one. They testify to the extraordinary talents of many people in prisons and the more complex aspects of their humanity. In a space filled with anonymised and aggregated information on the lives of offenders, it’s important to have these individual and direct visions as a different kind of criminological document.

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For more on the Cambridge Institute of Criminology and the Radzinowicz Library, here is another paper that was written on the topic: Bottoms, A. (1998). Crime institute profile: The Cambridge Institute of Criminology. European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research, 6(1), 143-151. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/A:1008655103599

I found it by using ProQuest® Dialog’s excellent search engine. (Note, if you can, I highly recommend you take INFO 244—Online Searching—with Professor Jean Bedord–and you will be given a login of your own.)