Find of the Week (10)

This find of the week came from a tweet; angefitzpatrick sent links to two articles on trident, a reflection of life on board and the future of trident under a coalition government . The Trident home, Faslane Naval Base, Gare Loch, is just outside my boundary line but these are interesting article, which I'll pass on to the  reference librarian in Helensburgh. The tweet led me to ask, had any of the Dumbarton shipbuilders built submarines? I know of famous boats built down this end of the water, The Cutty Sark, The Shamrock II & III, The Rob Roy. However, I’d never had cause to wonder if they built submarines. A seach of resources held in the library resulted in an answer.

Submarines were built by Denny during the First World War, the order being placed verbally. Denny’s were new to submarine building so the admiralty aided in the plans and rough castings for the hulls. They were known as ‘E’ type submarines and were the standard design at the outbreak of the war. The first two completed by Denny’s were the E.55 and E.56 built in 1916. The final cost of the submarines was £144,600 with Denny &Co’s profit being £2,314. The price per ton was £10.98. They remained navy vessels until 1922 and 1923 respectively when they were sold. The last E type that Denny’s built was the E.52 in 1917, it left Denny’s March 1917. The final price was £70,500 with Denny & Co profiting by £876. The E.52 submarine was sold for scrapping in 1921 and used to fill a mud bank on the River Dart in 1923.
The final submarine that the Denny yard built was the ‘L’ class, L.54. This submarine replaced the older ‘E’ class due to design and armament changes. Its original deliver date was March 1918, however work came to a stop during the build and she was completed circa 1919. The total cost of the build was £124,911 with Denny receiving about a 10% profit. She was sold for scrap in 1939 just before the outbreak of war.

©West Dunbartonshire Libaries

Shaving, remember the adverts in the 80's for Remington fronted by Victor Kiam ? Or Gillette  using the silky smooth, Federer, Henry and Woods. It's all come a long way since this little advert, no million dollar stars just 'four good points'.

Move

I've moved. I haven't moved far, but the views are different and the air is fresh. I've taken five days to move fifty feet, its been a slow process and I'm still not finished. I started the move on Tuesday at 9.01am, I didn't even have my morning coffee.  I had a plan, a visual one in my head, I could tweak and adjust as I went along. I piled books on and under tables, the bookcases being easier to move empty! I even had a dedicated removals volunteer who helped me move cases and place books back on shelves. By 11am I had moved the bookcases and identified some new map tables. Coffee. Placed the remainder of the books back on the bookcases, taking a little longer than necessary when two piles fell over, scattering dewey all over the floor. The afternoon meant moving the heavy equipment, a 2 person job. We moved the microfiche and microfilm machines form one room to another and rejoiced that they fit in their allocated spot. First day of move complete.
Wednesday, day off. So, Thursday morning, time to move the desks and navigate the stairs from the basement. It looked really easy, wrong!  We got stuck twice, jammed fingers once, swore several times. It's amazing how many positions the human body can achieve when trying to squeeze a desk up through a narrowing turning stairwell. Desks done. Publications group meeting, short. Friday, my mantra for the day was, 'email Irene', should have worn an elastic band or wrote it on my hand, forgot to email. So, not sure when my PC can be moved. Saturday, managed to enjoy the view from the window. Oh, my view, a roundabout, the sheriff court and some lovely green trees. After working in a basement with artifical light and no air, I'm enjoying the change.

Find of the Week (9)

This ‘find of the week’ deals with the library itself, well the 1922 catalogue. I had spent an afternoon looking for some old photographs and came across a set of the library interior from the 1950’s. The first photograph that caught my eye was one of the large indicator panels. The panels were located where our learning suite and reference sections are now situated. The large panels held records for each book in the library, they had blue and red indicators to inform customers which books were in stock or on loan. The boards made it look more like a ticket office than a library, due to the fact that all of the stock was located behind the counter on stacks.

©West Dunbartonshire Libraries

I don’t have the actual catalogues from the 1950’s but I do have the 1922 edition where the arrangement of the catalogue was known as the ‘dictionary catalogue’. This edition of the catalogue had 7,987 entries. Each book was entered in alphabetical sequence under the author’s name, its subject, and, where distinctive its title. Fiction however was only added under the author.

An example from the catalogue;

Austen (Jane) – Persuasion …….E.W……F2277
Australia. Hill (R. and F.) What we saw in Australia, 1875……B1979
The E.W. after the Austen title is an abbreviation for Eminent Women Series and the number before each book number is one of the seven main classes;


A – Philosophy and Theology
B – History, Travel and Biography
C – Law, Politics and Economics
D – Science and Art
E – Poetry & Drama
F – Prose Fiction
G- Language and Literary Miscellany

The catalogue also had 25 abbreviations listed and a separate section at the back for the local collection. The actual book itself is bound in hardback and fits the hand, a little like a modern e-reader, nice size. The interest for me though isn’t the actual arrangement of the catalogue but the ‘local studies’ collection mentioned within. I’m sure some of the local studies books I use as reference tools, are the ones mentioned in this catalogue. Thankfully due to these titles being closed access they have been preserved well.