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Title: LIVE A LIBRARIAN: Sheila Craik

Reference number: 13704

Date: 2019

Director: d. Yushin Toda

Production company: Japan Desk Scotland

Sound: sound

Original format: unknown

Colour: col

Fiction: non-fiction

Running time: 18.00 mins

Description: An interview with Sheila Craik, who worked in Glasgow University Library for 37 years, about her involvement with the collection of Henry Farmer, “the first English-speaking scholar on Arab music”.

Credits: p. Fumi Nakabachi and Yushin Toda, Japan Desk Scotland
comm. w. Yushin Toda
ph. Fumi Nakabachi
ed. Yushin Toda

Shotlist: Filmmaker's synopsis:

What is it like to work as a librarian, and to live a librarian’s life? Sheila Craik worked at Glasgow University Library for 37 years. She worked firstly at the issue desk, and then she was made responsible for music recollections, including the Henry Farmer collection. Farmer was “the first English-speaking scholar on Arab music”, and his collection attracted scholars, for whom she provided assistance. Her support was sometimes beyond what was usually expected for a librarian. “I was just interested in Farmer and his work, and in the researchers.”

She started to help the compiling of a bibliography of Farmer’s work in 1983, and continued this after her retirement in 1992. Finally, “Henry George Farmer: a bibliography” was published in 1999, and it was credited to Carl Cowl, who had died two years earlier, and Sheila M. Craik. Another book, “Henry George Farmer and the First International Congress of Arab Music (Cairo 1932)” was published in 2015. It was credited to Israel J. Katz “with the collaboration of Sheila M. Craik.” A librarian’s work on Farmer's collection seems to have enriched her life.

The interview was carried out in April 2019 in her flat in Glasgow.