Helen Barrow

I spent most of my career as a librarian at the Bodleian and I still cannot walk past the Radcliffe Camera without noticing something about the stonework I had missed before. On camera I like lingering in the Old Schools Quadrangle rather than rushing to the famous reading room, since the quadrangle tells you more about how the library actually grew over centuries. I answer questions about the collections in as much detail as anyone wants, since thirty years there gave me more stories than any single walk can hold. Retirement has mostly meant swapping one set of readers for another, and I am glad of it.