Dr Colin Higgins

Colin Higgins has been Librarian of St Catharine’s since 2010. 

He holds a BA in Philosophy from Trinity College Dublin, an MSc in Librarianship from the University of Wales, and an MPhil and PhD in Ancient Philosophy from King’s College London. His doctoral thesis examined the ways Plato’s representation of the trial and execution of Socrates suggested that the philosopher’s death was self-inflicted, and the implications this reading might have on the Platonic corpus. 

Colin’s main research interests are now in the history of bibliographic description, and the socio-cultural assumptions embedded in cataloguing standards and classification schemes. His book, Cataloging and Managing Film and Video Collections, was published by the American Library Association in 2015.

‘“Seeing sights that don’t exist” – Karl Marx in the British Museum Round Reading Room’, Journal of Library and Information History, Vol. 33, No. 2 (May 2017) DOI: 10.1080/17583489.2017.1298892

‘The Library of Alexandria as myth and metaphor’, What Do We Lose When We Lose a Library, pp. 69-75 (Leuven University Press, 2016). ISBN: 9789461651990

‘“The guttural sorrow of the refugees” – Constance Garnett and Felix Volkhovsky in the British Museum’, Материалы X Международного Семинара Переводчиков (Музей-усадьба Л.Н. Толстого “Ясная Поляна”, 2016).

Cataloging & Managing Film and Video Collections: A Guide to using RDA and MARC21 (Chicago: American Library Association, 2015). ISBN: 9780838912997

‘Library of Congress Classification: Teddy Roosevelt’s world in numbers?’, Cataloging and Classification Quarterly, Vol. 50, No. 4 (May 2012). DOI: 10.1080/01639374.2012.658989