Day 6: Oxford

So after getting up at what felt like the crack of dawn (but it was obvious that the sun had been up for a while, weird), our intrepid group set out to find the coach stop for our bus to Oxford with some trepidation (see what I did there, intrepid/trepid come on). Why were we nervous about finding a bus station? Perhaps because these are the actual directions Anthony gave us:

Go straight out of the railway station through the exit marked Victoria Coach Station. You will see a number of red London buses in a rather seedy setting directly in front of you. Look ahead at to the left and you will see a very large pub called the Shakespeare. Go to the Shakespeare and just round the corner and you will be on Buckingham Palace Road with a crossing in front of you and a large equestrian statue of Marchal Foch on the other side of the road. Go round behind the statue and across a small garden past a black object standing on its hands. On the road at the other side of the garden (Grosvenor Gardens) there is bus stop 10a across the road.

These turned to be perfectly sound directions, but when you look at them at 6:45 in the morning it does tend to look like a Dan Brown esque riddle. But we cracked the code and manage to get to Oxford a-OK. We went immediately to the impressive, Neoclassical offices of Oxford University Press. We heard a great set of presentations, first on their robust online scholarly editions – something I wish I’d had when I was studying this stuff! – then on their marketing strategies, and finally on Open Access. The OA presentation was very helpful, since it gave an overview of the different types, green/gold, what the situation currently is in the UK, and also what’s happening in the US. I’ve noticed that the UK seems to be a bit further along in their legislation when it comes to digital information: they have real, concrete guidance for Open Access and a mandatory legal deposit for websites (both new this year). The discussion on the Online Scholarly Edition also included the user research OUP conducted before designing the site and what made them choose this type of work. It’s very helpful to see that behind-the-scenes decision-making: when you see something as great as the final product, all the features, content, search functions seem so obvious and natural. But there’s quite a lot of work that does into making those decisions, as we saw.

I also asked about the new OUP Tumblr, which I have been following with much delight. I wondered how OUP decides to add a new social media platform (e.g. Twitter, Google+, etc) and how they manage their content to fit those different platforms. If you look at the OUP Tumblr, it has done a really excellent job fitting into the well-established tumblarian community and the overall culture of Twitter (which LibraryJournal has also succeeded in). OUP has an entire department that handles social media, and when they decide to add a new platform they have to draw up a whole business plan for it. Posts, obviously, are vetted and curated to fit the brand before going online. This is a really fascinating area of marketing and outreach, and a big topic in the library community right now.

After lunch, we had a fabulous but sadly quick tour of some of the highlights in the Ashmolean. My personal favorites were the fantastically whimsical silverware objects from a new bequest. (If you scroll to the last picture in the slideshow you can see an awesome cup shaped like an owwwwwl.) We also went on a quick tour of Duke Humfrey’s Library and the Divinity School at the Bodleian Library, always beautiful. We did get shushed though. :/