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T’S that time of year again when we look back on the last 12 months and think about all we have achieved. Obviously this year has been hugely disrupted and Mediawatching, like many others, has seen huge changes to the way we work. The office replaced by the sofa; champagne-fuelled power lunches at La Gavroche replaced by a glass of Dettol and Pot Noodles on the sofa; hitting the gym before 7am replaced by hitting the snooze button until noon.


But one thing that has not changed


is Mediawatching’s desire to bring you the best and quirkiest library and information stories from around the world.


First up a tale that reminds us of our schools days and the clamour to take the class pet home for the holidays. The excitement when you are chosen and then the despair, worry and excuses when Benji the hamster escapes and heads for the hole in the floorboards, never to be seen again. The return to school is a day to dread as you explain that, although Benji has found his freedom you can still hear a faint scratching and the food you are putting down for him is being eaten every night – there is still hope. But as the piles of food grow ever bigger, untouched by hamster – slowly the truth dawns that Benji is gone forever and you have to confess that he is spinning eternally in the big hamster wheel in the sky. Substitute school for Cambridge University Library, and Benji for the handwritten notebooks of Charles Darwin and you have some idea of what is coming next. The notebooks, which include Darwin’s Tree of Life sketches that neatly explaining his theories of evolution, were taken from the library in 2000 to be photographed. However, a few months later it was discovered that the notebooks had not been returned to their rightful place – a small blue box that usually held the unique items was empty. At first this was put down to the books being misplaced, and hope lingered that they would eventually turn up somewhere in the stacks.


However, that hope has now been extinguished, and Dr Jessica Gardner, university librarian and director of


December 2020


Charles Darwin’s 1837 sketch, his first diagram of an evolutionary tree.


library services since 2017 has had to do the equivalent of admitting to the class that Benji is an ex-hamster. She told The Guardian that “My predecessors genuinely believed that what had happened was that these had been mis-shelved or misfiled and they took forward extensive searches over the years in that genuine belief. “Now we have completely reviewed as a new team what happened and come to a conclusion that that’s not a sufficient position or set of actions to take.”


Naturally, Dr Gardner and her team are devastated by the missing notebooks – you can read the full story here https://bit.ly/3qIiYNi. Looking forward to 2020 and there is one big story on the horizon – what will Donald Trump’s Presidential Library look like. Tradition dictates that outgoing Presidents create a lasting centre for public good in the form of a library. Barrack Obama plumped for a library in partnership with the University of Chicago, which will include outdoor space and a branch of Chicago Public Library. At the time of writing, President


Trump was still in the process of having multiple legal bids thrown out of court as he attempts to cling to power. With his energy expended elsewhere, it is no wonder that the President has not yet found time to think about his library legacy – and Mediatwatching is so far unable to confirm rumours that a plot has already been found in a garden centre parking lot, located between and adult bookstore and funeral parlour.


However, at least one person has given the project some thought, with an anonymous architect having drawn up plans on behalf of the President. A website has been created at www.djtrumplibrary.com, featuring areas such as the Covid Memorial, the Alt Right Auditorium and a presidential exhibition entitled Tax Evasion 101. As well as taking a virtual tour of the library, you can also read an interview with its unnamed creator in the LA Times (https://lat.ms/2JEvSeD). Here’s hoping 2021 is a slight improvement on 2020 – Happy New Year. IP


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