About Anabel Marsh

At Glasgow Women's Library
At Glasgow Women’s Library

NB this blog is no longer current. Find me at The Glasgow Gallivanter which (occasionally) has book or library related posts.

I’m a sixty-something librarian who stepped off the “official” job treadmill in 2012 and branched out into the unknown. I started in public libraries (10 years) but moved to the academic sector in 1990, specialising in early and primary education. However, throughout, there were elements in common, such as running a service point and managing staff, and using my role in libraries to encourage literacy and the love of reading. In public libraries the latter was more direct – including 18 months in a School Library Service – whereas in the academic library I dealt with student teachers and worked hard to encourage them to find out about new books and authors, and to provide them with other material for the classroom, both physical and online.

In my first post, I described how the library I worked in was closing and I decided to take early retirement. I wanted to keep up my links with libraries, and initially set up this blog in May 2012 to tackle the cpd23 programme as one way of doing that. I deliberately called it  A New Library World? and said that when I was more sure of the future I might take that question mark off. When I completed cpd23 in November 2012 I’d already had one other library job and was hopeful of finding new library and book related things to do and to write about. At that point the question mark was firmly removed.

I’ve certainly been better at finding things to do than at writing about them. I volunteer regularly (though not, I hasten to add, in a capacity which replaces paid jobs) with the Glasgow Women’s Library and Maryhill Burgh Halls and have organised several tweetups and Library Camps, while below is a list of the talks given and articles / guest posts written during the life of this blog. As none of this is very new any more, I changed the blog’s title in January 2014 to Adventures of a Retired Librarian and closed it in 2016 when I was having too many adventures to maintain more than one blog!

Talks / Media / Performances

June 2012
February 2013
  • Glasgow University School of Engineering Admin Staff. Using Twitter to engage with students.
March 2013
  • Glasgow Women’s Library. Top tips for Twitter.
April 2013
  • Amina Muslim Women’s Resource Centre. Top tips for Twitter.
May 2013
June 2013
October 2013
December 2013
  • Glasgow Women’s Library. Top tips for Twitter.
March 2014
May 2014
  • Glasgow Women’s Library “Who we are” session. Volunteering with Glasgow Women’s Library.
June 2014
  • CILIPS 14. Session Chair. #uklibchat: instant ideas and collaboration. Ka-Ming Pang.
November 2014
December 2014
January 2015
  • Strathclyde University Tour Guides. Talk on the GWL Women’s History walks.
March 2015
  • Played Isabella Elder in GWL / RCS March of Women. Interviewed in the subsequent film March (September 2015).
September 2015
  • Talked (on behalf of GWL) about the Suffragette Oak on BBC Radio Scotland.
November 2015
  • CILIPS Autumn Gathering. Session Chair. All Together Now! Scran: sharing digital heritage to enhance community engagement. Helen Foster.
March 2016
  • Discovering Maryhill. Presentation on Women of Maryhill.
October 2016
July 2017
  • The Zombie Ward. (See articles section.)
September 2017
  • The Doors Open Glasgow Women’s Library Barnstorm. Talk on Women’s Heritage Walks.
February 2018
  • Maryhill Burgh Halls. What about the women? Two talks as part of the Lost Glasgow exhibition.
December 2018
  • Mitchell Library. Jessie Stephen : Suffrage Pioneer. Part of an afternoon of suffrage talks.
March 2019
  • Govanhill Suffrage Project. Jessie Stephen : Suffrage Pioneer. Part of an afternoon of suffrage talks.
April 2019
  • Glasgow Women’s Library Drama Queens. The Abbess of Crewe. Sister Walburga.
September 2019
  • Glasgow and West of Scotland Family History Society. Jessie Stephen : Scottish Suffragette.
November 2019
  • Maryhill Burgh Halls. What about the women? (Talk took place at Maryhill Central Community Hall).
December 2019
  • Scottish Labour History Society. Jessie Stephen : Scottish  activist. Part of book launch for: Schwartz, L. (2019) Feminism and the servant problem : class and domestic labour in the women’s suffrage movement. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
March 2020
  • Drymen Lunch Club. Jessie Stephen : Scottish Suffragette.
June 2020
July 2020
September 2020
February 2021
  • Maryhill Burgh Halls. Remembering Maria Fyfe. Short appreciation of the former MP for Maryhill who died in December 2020.
April 2022
October 2022
  • u3a Glasgow West End Local History Group (Zoom). Jessie Stephen.
January 2023
  • 3Ls (Strathclyde University Lifelong Learners – Zoom). What about the women?
March 2023
  • The No. 1 Befriending Agency. Women of Maryhill. (International Women’s Day event).
May 2023
  • Glasgow City Heritage Trust: If Glasgow’s Walls Could Talk Podcast, Series 2, Episode 8 Women Make History.
March 2024
  • 3Ls (Strathclyde University Lifelong Learners – Zoom). Jessie Stephen.

Articles / guest posts

Winter 2012:
December 2012
February 2013
March 2013:
  • Glasgow Women’s Library Book of the Month: Anne of Green Gables.
  • Information Scotland News 4(1): NLD: a snapshot of Scotland’s libraries. (Not online.)
April 2013:
May 2013
June 2013
August 2013
November 2013
May 2014
August 2014
November 2014
Dec/Jan 2014/15
March 2015
April 2015
September 2015
March 2017
  • Glasgow Women’s Library Book reviews: Shadow behind the sun by Remzije Sherifi.
  • Glasgow Women’s Library Book reviews: Run by Ann Patchett.
July 2017
  • The Zombie Ward in Glasgow Women’s Library: Voices from the Belvidere: monologues from a fever hospital. (pp. 34-5). Also presented at the library 04/07/17.
October 2017
January 2018
February 2018
March 2018
January 2019
March 2020
  • GALLUS: Journal of the Glasgow & West of Scotland Family History Society, 117, 5-12. Jessie Stephen : Scottish Suffragette. (Transcript of September 2019 talk: not online).
April 2020
December 2020
  • Scottish Labour History, 55, 56-54. Jessie Stephen : Scottish socialist and suffragette. (Expansion of December 2019 talk: not online).
March 2021
February – October 2023
  • Gallus Pedals: Trailblazers. (Series of mini-bios of historic women after whom the cycle tour company’s bikes are named: Mary Barbour, Isabella Elder, Marion Gilchrist, Muriel Robertson, Winnie Drinkwater, Jessie Stephen, Dorothea Chalmers Smith, Rachel Hamilton, Beatrice Clugston, and Annie Oakley).
November 2023

2 thoughts on “About Anabel Marsh”

  1. Pingback: Adventures of a retired librarian: 2014 | Adventures of a Retired Librarian

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