Remembering Chris Penney
Staff at Special Collections were very sorry to hear of the death of Christine (Chris) Penney, on 19 November 2023. Chris spent most of her career at the University of Birmingham, and in retirement remained a friend and advocate of the Special Collections department and a supporter of the University.
Chris was educated at Stratford Grammar School for Girls and graduated from Bristol University with an English degree in 1965. She worked for a year at Warwick County Library to gain experience before studying for the diploma in librarianship at UCL 1966-1967. During her studies at UCL she had a placement at the Shakespeare Centre Library, part of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, and was then offered a position there as Assistant Librarian. She worked there from 1967 to 1971 when she was appointed to the post of ‘Archivist’ in what was then the Rare Books Department in the Main Library at the University of Birmingham. Chris spent most of her time working with the rare books, but she also built up knowledge of the University Archives, which had attracted little interest before, and catalogued some of the other archive collections. Chris curated the large exhibition of University archives and artefacts which was on display in the Main Library for the Mason Science College centenary in 1975 and met Queen Elizabeth II when she visited campus for the celebrations and viewed the exhibition.
From 1973 to 1995 Chris worked with Ben Benedikz and on his retirement she was appointed Head of Special Collections and University Archivist. Throughout her time at Birmingham Chris was a mentor to the graduate trainee library assistants working in Special Collections, and will be remembered for the kindness and compassion she showed towards colleagues, and for her good advice. Chris did a lot of work to build up the archive collections and to improve archives collection management. She was instrumental in the appointment of qualified archivists for the first time and was involved in a number of regional archive cataloguing projects and in the development and launch of an archive management system and online archive catalogue in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
After her retirement from the University in 2005 she took on a number of roles working with rare books and archives, including cataloguing rare books for the National Trust at Baddesley Clinton, becoming Honorary Librarian of the Hurd Library at Hartlebury Castle in 2009, and serving as Treasurer to the Historic Libraries Forum. She also continued to serve as Treasurer of the Religious Archives Group, a position she had held since 1993. Chris was also a member of the Hereford Cathedral Library committee, and was honorary consultant for the staff at Worcester and Lichfield Cathedral libraries. She was appointed Foundation Fellow of the University of Birmingham in 2006 and was a Life member of the University Court of Governors.
Chris remained interested in the work of Special Collections, and was always generous with her time and happy to help answer staff questions. Earlier this year she spent hours sharing memories of her working life for an oral history interview to be deposited in the University Archive, and offering advice and support to staff working with the rare book collections. We will miss her.