Janet Ashton

Position: West European Languages Cataloguing Team Manager
Specialism: Library of Congress Subject Headings and subject access; modern European history and culture, focussing in particular on central Europe and Russia
Department: Collections

Janet leads the team which catalogues the Library’s purchased West European Language collections (excluding English).

She is also responsible for training staff to apply some of the standards used for subject access, and has participated in or led several associated projects, inside and outside the Library.

She is a historian by education, specialising in 19th and 20th-century European history, and in the sources the Library holds in these areas.

Publications

Book

A Life for the Tsar: Triumph and Tragedy at the Coronation of Tsar Nicholas II (Oakland, Ca: Kensington Books, 2016) [with Greg King]
The German Woman (Huddersfield: Belgarun, 2008)

Articles

'Working on the edge: the role of the West European cataloguers at the British Library', German Studies Library Group Newsletter, 45 (2013)
'Losing battles but winning a war: Alexander of Serbia's defeat and exile', European Royal History Journal, 18.6 (2015)
''Perfect Liar': the extraordinary life of Catherine Radziwill', European Royal History Journal, 18.3-5 (2015) [with Greg King]
''Our ally has shamefully betrayed us': Italy joins the Great War', European Royal History Journal, 18.1-2 (February-April 2015)
''Some damn silly thing in the Balkans': Montenegro, Serbia, Italy and the outbreak of war in 1914', European Royal History Journal, 17.5 (2014)

Chapters

Five chapters in The Grand Dukes: sons and grandsons of Russia’s Tsars since Paul I, ed. by Arturo E. Beéche (San Francisco: Kensington House Books, 2010)
'Grand Duke Nikolai Mikhailovich', in The other Grand Dukes: sons and grandsons of Russia’s Grand Dukes, ed. by Arturo E. Beéche (San Francisco: Kensington House Books, 2013)

Electronic publications

British Library European Studies Blog
British Library DACH blog
'New approaches to subject indexing in the British Library', Cataloging and Classification Quarterly, 55, (2017) [with Caroline Kent]
'Resource Description and Access (RDA) at the British Library: implementing a new standard for resource description and discovery', French Studies Library Group Annual Review, 9 (2012-13) [with Annick Mann]
'A Programme for the Reign': Press, Propaganda and Public Opinion at Russia's Last Coronation', Electronic British Library Journal, 9 (2012) [with Greg King]
'’God in All Things’: The Religious Outlook of Russia's Last Empress', Electronic British Library Journal, 4 (2006)