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Conference paper (unpublished)
Research Data Management in 'GLAM': Managing Data for Cultural Heritage
A presentation given at the ‘Open Science Infrastructures for Big Cultural Data’ Masterclass, Dec. 13-15th, in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, looking at research data management in the context of open digital cultural collections, with a case study of the developments in data management and data management infrastructures at the British Library.Stewart, Sarah Anna
data management, museums, research data management, cultural heritage, data, digital collections, digital scholarship, archives, libraries, art galleries, and open research
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Conference paper (unpublished)
Towards a Networked Digital Cultural Heritage: Data Services and Persistent Identifiers at the British Library
Presentation given at the ‘Museums and Big Data’ Conference, April 30 - May 3rd, in Doha, Qatar. This presentation investigates the use of persistent identifiers in digital cultural heritage and digital collections.Stewart, Sarah Anna
museums, persistent identifiers, DOIs, cultural heritage, data, open research, digital scholarship, archives, DataCite, art galleries, digital collections, and libraries
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Presentation
Webs Of Life And Data: Impacts Of Open And Networked Data On Scientific Practices In Biodiversity Studies (Draft DPhil Research Proposal)
A presentation of my doctoral (DPhil) research topic at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, on Nov. 22, 2017. This is an early-stage presentation outlining the context of my research, which will investigate the impacts of open and networked data derived from digital natural history collections, on scientific practices...Stewart, Sarah A.
data management, museums, research data lifecycle, science and technology studies, biodiversity, digital collections, internet studies, DPhil, knowledge, and data
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Journal article
An “authentic" performance?: the cultural politics of "folk" in Bengal and Bangladesh
Kabigāna is a verse-duelling/song-theatre genre practiced in West Bengal (India) and Bangladesh. Often deemed as obsolete and extinct–following from urban perceptions and the canons of literary history–the genre is found to grapple with the questions of ‘authenticity’ across its multiple spaces of performances- rural rituals, urban fairs/festivals, cinematic representations as...Basu, Priyanka
Kabigāna, cultural politics, authenticity, ritual, and folk performances
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Conference paper (published)
Not just a British library: enabling a global discovery experience
Within the walls of the British Library lies one of the greatest collections in the world. However, the value of the British Library lies not only in the preservation of heritage items, but also in its determination to keep pace with the many changes in the global information environment. As...Flanagan, Dimity
open access; repositories; discovery; persistent identifiers; text and data mining; digitisation
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Learning object
The Opening of Crash in Slow Motion
Chris Beckett provides a close reading of the manuscript draft of Crash by J G Ballard, focussing on the novel's opening pages. In ‘Memories of Greeneland’ (1978), J G Ballard wrote that he had been ‘enormously influenced by [Graham] Greene's style, by his method of setting out the psychological ground...Beckett, Chris
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Blog post
J. G. Ballard: Streets in the Sky and the Secret Logic of the High-Rise
Hardly a day goes by without a news report about London’s social housing crisis. There are currently more than 260 high-rise buildings (of 20 floors or more) either under construction or in the pipeline that are set to dramatically change the London skyline. Yet the high prices of the apartments...Beckett, Chris
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Blog post
Archive of Joan Bakewell joins the British Library’s Contemporary Archives Collections
Joan Bakewell’s autobiography, The Centre of the Bed (2003), begins in a white room – a room as white as ‘a fresh sheet of paper’ – at the top of the house in which she has lived for many years. Boxes and packets of papers long-forgotten have been retrieved from...Beckett, Chris
literature, television, Contemporary Britain, manuscripts, and archival research
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Blog post
First report from the Will Self archive: family matters
Will Self’s review (for the New Statesman) of Peter Ackroyd’s Albion: The Origins of the English Imagination (2002) begins with the suggestion that his grandfather would have enjoyed the book. Before telling us why (Cockney visionaries both, with a tendency to compendiousness), we are treated to a pen-portrait of grandfather...Beckett, Chris
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Blog post
‘Post-it’ notes in the Will Self archive
'My books begin life in notebooks, then they move on to Post-it notes, the Post-its go up on the walls of the room […] short story ideas, tropes, metaphors, gags, characters, etc. When I'm working on a book, the Post-its come down off the wall and go into scrapbooks.’ (‘Writers'...Beckett, Chris
literature, Contemporary Britain, manuscripts, and new collection items
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Blog post
The writing of J. G. Ballard’s Crash: a look under the bonnet
Shock greeted the publication of J. G. Ballard’s Crash in 1973. Cult status quickly followed. Today, the novel is widely considered to be a modern classic, a novel that speaks both of its time – the darkening close of a decade of colourful liberation – and speaks dystopically to us...Beckett, Chris
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Blog post
No Longer in the Garage: The Archive of Galloping Dog Press, Poetry Information and Not Poetry
The small press publisher Peter Hodgkiss begins his memoir essay ‘It’s All in the Garage’ contemplating ‘a tatty cardboard box’ with ‘GDP’ written in fading red felt-tip pen on the side: ‘It has moved from landing to attic to garage 1 to garage 2 in two houses in Newcastle to...Beckett, Chris
literature, poetry, Contemporary Britain, manuscripts, and new collection items
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Blog post
The Lives of Typewriters and Large Data-sets: The Will Self Archive
Chris Beckett, Manuscripts Cataloguer at the British Library is currently working on the Will Self archive. The archive, which was acquired by the Library in 2016, consists of 24 large boxes of papers along with artwork, audio-visual material and the author’s computer hard drive. The first tranche is now discoverable...Beckett, Chris
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Journal article
An Englishman and a Scotsman in Vienna. ‘Tom’ and Tom Leonard in ‘The Tom Poems’ by Bob Cobbing
The Tom Poems’ originates in the chance discovery by Cobbing of a book of theoretical linguistics in a bookshop in Vienna, during a visit to the city in the company of Tom Leonard, in 1983, to perform at a sound poetry festival. Written with Leonard (implicitly) in mind, the language...Beckett, Chris
found poetry, grammar, vernacular, sound poetry, Tom Leonard, derived poetry, Bob Cobbing, and phonetic transcription
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Conference paper (published)
Considerations on the acquisition and preservation of ebook mobile apps
In 2018 and 2019, as part of the UK Legal Deposit Libraries’ sponsored ‘Emerging Formats’ project, the British Library’s digital preservation team undertook a program of research into the preservation of new forms of content. One of these content types was eBooks published as Mobile Apps. Research considered a relatively...Pennock, Maureen ; May, Peter ; Day, Michael
access, mobile apps, acquisition, digital preservation, and preservation
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Conference paper (published)
Are you ready? Assessing whether organisations are prepared for digital preservation
In the last few years digital preservation has started to transition from a theoretical discipline to one where real solutions are beginning to be used. The Planets project has analyzed the readiness of libraries, archives and related organizations to begin to use the outputs of various digital preservation initiatives (and,...Sinclair, Pauline ; Billenness, Clive ; Duckworth, James ; Farquhar, Adam ; Humphreys, Jane …
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Presentation
The Integrated Preservation Suite: Demonstrating a scalable preservation planning toolset for diverse digital collections (demonstration)
The Integrated Preservation Suite is an internally funded project at the British Library to develop automated and scalable preservation planning capability for a highly diverse and growing digital collection. Core components include a technical knowledge base, a software repository, a policy and planning repository, and a preservation watch function, all...May, Peter ; Pennock, Maureen ; Russo, David
software preservation, preservation planning, preservation watch, digital preservation strategies, and knowledge base
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Conference paper (published)
People mashing: Agile digital preservation and the AQuA Project
Manual quality assurance (QA) of digitised content is typically fallible and can result in collections that are marred by a variety of quality and access issues. Poor storage conditions, technology obsolescence and other unforeseen problems can also leave digital objects in an unusable state. Detecting, identifying and ultimately fixing these...Wheatley, Paul ; Middleton, Bo ; Double, Jodie ; Jackson, Andrew ; McGuinness, Rebecca
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Conference paper (published)
Practical analysis of TIFF file size reductions achievable through compression
This paper presents results of a practical analysis into the effects of three main lossless TIFF compression algorithms – LZW, ZIP and Group 4 – on the storage requirements for a small set of digitized materials. In particular we are interested in understanding which algorithm achieves a greater reduction in...May, Peter ; Davies, Kevin
LZW, Group 4, LibTiff, TIFF, ZIP, compression, and ImageMagick
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Conference paper (published)
ArchivePress: A Really Simple Solution to Archiving Blog Content
Blog archiving and preservation is not a new challenge. Current solutions are commonly based on typical web archiving activities, whereby a crawler is configured to harvest a copy of the blog and return the copy to a web archive. Yet this is not the only solution, nor is it always...Pennock, Maureen ; Davis, Richard
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Conference paper (published)
Deal with conflict, capture the relationship: the case of digital object properties
Properties of digital objects play a central role in digital preservation. All key preservation services are linked via a common understanding of the properties which describe the digital objects in a repository's care. Unfortunately, different services deal with properties on sometimes different levels of description. While, for example, a preservation...Dappert, Angela
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Conference paper (published)
A METS based information package for long term accessibility of web archives
The British Library’s web archive comprises several terabyte of harvested websites. Like other content streams this data should be ingested into the library’s central preservation repository. The repository requires a standardized Submission- and Archival Information Package. Harvested Websites are stored in Archival Information Packages (AIP). Each AIP is described by...Enders, Markus
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Conference paper (published)
Using Automated Dependency Analysis to generate representation information
To preserve access to digital content, we must preserve the representation information that captures the intended interpretation of the data. In particular, we must be able to capture performance dependency requirements, i.e. to identify the other resources that are required in order for the intended interpretation to be constructed successfully....Jackson, Andrew
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Poster (published)
Malware threats in digital preservation: Extending the evidence base (poster)
Virus checking is an established process in most pre-ingest digital preservation workflows. It is typically included as part of a general threat model response and there has to date been relatively little research into the virus checking function specifically within a long term context. The British Library recently began a...Pennock, Maureen ; Day, Michael ; Samaras, Evanthia
malware, Flashback, virus checking, and digital preservation
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Conference paper (published)
A framework for distributed preservation workflows
The Planets project is developing a service-oriented environment for the definition and evaluation of preservation strategies for human-centric data. It focuses on the question of logically preserving digital materials, as opposed to the physical preservation of content bit-streams. This includes the development of preservation tools for the automated characterization, migration,...Schmidt, Rainer ; King, Ross ; Steeg, Fabian ; Melms, Peter ; Jackson, Andrew …
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Conference paper (published)
LIFE3: A predictive costing tool for digital collections
Predicting the costs of long-term digital preservation is a crucial yet complex task for even the largest repositories and institutions. For smaller projects and individual researchers faced with preservation requirements, the problem is even more overwhelming, as they lack the accumulated experience of the former. Yet being able to estimate...Hole, Brian ; Lin, Li ; McCann, Patrick ; Wheatley, Paul
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Conference paper (published)
LIFE3: Predicting Long Term Digital Preservation Costs
As we develop our ability to preserve digital collections through techniques such as migration and emulation, the decision process of what action to take and when to take it becomes increasingly complex. Cost is a crucial factor to consider but the financial implications of preservation planning decisions are not typically...Wheatley, Paul ; Hole, Brian
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Conference paper (published)
Implementing metadata that guides digital preservation services
Effective digital preservation depends on a set of preservation services that work together to ensure that digital objects can be preserved for the long-term. These services need digital preservation metadata, in particular, descriptions of the properties that digital objects may have and descriptions of the requirements that guide digital preservation...Dappert, Angela ; Farquhar, Adam
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Conference paper (published)
Capturing and replaying streaming media in a web archive – a British Library case study
A prerequisite for digital preservation is to be able to capture and retain the content which is considered worth preserving. This has been a significant challenge or web archiving, especially for websites with embedded streaming media content, which cannot be copied via a simple HTTP request to a URL. This...Hockx-Yu, Helen ; Crawford, Lewis ; Coram, Roger ; Johnson, Stephen
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Conference paper (published)
Developing a robust migration workflow for preserving and curating hand-held media
Many memory institutions hold large collections of hand-held media, which can comprise hundreds of terabytes of data spread over many thousands of data-carriers. Many of these carriers are at risk of significant physical degradation over time, depending on their composition. Unfortunately, handling them manually is enormously time consuming and so...Dappert, Angela ; Jackson, Andrew ; Kimura, Akiko
disk-copying robot, iPRES, data-carrier stabilization, auto loader, and digital preservation
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Conference paper (published)
An analysis of contemporary JPEG2000 codecs for image format migration
This paper presents results of an analysis of different implementations of the JPEG2000 standard, specifically part 1: JP2, an image format that is currently popular within the digital preservation community. In particular we are interested in the effect different JPEG2000 codecs (encoders and decoders) have on image quality in response...Palmer, William ; May, Peter ; Cliff, Peter
TIFF, image quality, generational loss, JPEG2000, migration, codec, and PSNR
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Conference paper (published)
Quality assured image file format migration in large digital object repositories
This article gives an overview on how different components developed by the SCAPE project are intended to be used in composite file format migration workflows; it will explain how the SCAPE platform can be employed to make sure that the workflows can be used to migrate very large image collections...Schlarb, Sven ; Cliff, Peter ; May, Peter ; Palmer, William ; Hahn, Matthias …
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Conference paper (published)
The Integrated Preservation Suite: Scaled and automated preservation planning for highly diverse digital collections (long paper)
The Integrated Preservation Suite is an internally funded project at the British Library to develop and enhance the Library's preservation planning capabilities, largely focussed on automation and addressing the Library's heterogeneous collections. Through agile development practices, the project is iteratively designing and implementing the technical infrastructure for the suite as...May, Peter ; Pennock, Maureen ; Russo, David
software preservation, knowledge base, preservation watch, and preservation planning
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Journal article
Silsilah Raja-Raja Brunei: The Manuscript of Pengiran Kesuma Muhammad Hasyim
This article presents an edition of a manuscript of the Silsilah Raja-Raja Brunei, “Descent of the rulers of Brunei,” from the collection of Muzium Negara, Kuala Lumpur. The transliterated Malay text is accompanied by an English translation and a complete photographic record of the 14-page manuscript, with an introductory essay....Gallop, Annabel Teh
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Blog post
Open and Engaged: Open Access Week at the British Library
One of the key arguments in favour of open access to research is that the public should have the right to read the results of publicly funded research. While much effort is put into creating policies, workflows and business models to enable openness, are we succeeding in engaging the public...Flanagan, Dimity
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Conference paper (unpublished)
Is there a role for ILL in an open access world – a British Library perspective
The 2017 UUK report on the transition to open access reported that 54% of UK-authored articles in 2016 were accessible within 12 months of publication. This is compared to 32% of articles authored in 2014. Over the past five years, open access research has flourished in an environment of funding...Flanagan, Dimity
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Blog post
Open Access Discovery Workshop at the British Library
The solid foundation of the open access movement is the importance of public access to research, but it is clear that discovery of this open research remains one of the barriers to fulfilling this goal. There are many organisations making progress in this space and it is not always easy...Flanagan, Dimity
workshop; collaboration; open access; discovery; user experience; metadata; repositories
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Other
Open Access Discovery Roadmap 2018
The solid foundation of the open access movement is the importance of public access to research, but it is clear that discovery of this open research remains one of the barriers to fulfilling this goal. There are many organisations making progress in this space and it is not always easy...Flanagan, Dimity ; Pieper, Dirk ; Piowowar, Heather ; Priem, Jason ; Bailey, Jefferson …
workshop; collaboration; open access; discovery; user experience; metadata; repositories
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Journal article
Appraising, processing, and providing access to email in contemporary literary archives
The email of contemporary literary figures is ripe for research by scholars, and of broad interest to the general public, but can also present many challenges to cultural memory institutions that seek to appraise, process and provide access to this rich archival material. This article explores how five institutions across...Schneider, J. ; Adams, C. ; DeBauche, S. ; Echols, R. ; McKean, C. …
contemporary literary archives, machine learning, archival processing, natural language processing, and email preservation
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Conference paper (published)
Costing the Digital Preservation Lifecycle More Effectively
Having confidence in the permanence of a digital resource requires a deep understanding of the preservation activities that will need to be performed throughout its lifetime and an ability to plan and resource for those activities. The LIFE (Lifecycle Information For E-Literature) and LIFE2 Projects have advanced understanding of the...Wheatley, Paul
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Conference paper (published)
Adapting Existing Technologies for Digitally Archiving Personal Lives. Digital Forensics, Ancestral Computing, and Evolutionary Perspectives and Tools
The adoption of existing technologies for digital curation, most especially digital capture, is outlined in the context of personal digital archives and the Digital Manuscripts Project at the British Library. Technologies derived from computer forensics, data conversion and classic computing, and evolutionary computing are considered. The practical imperative of moving...John, Jeremy Leighton
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Conference paper (published)
Modeling Organizational Preservation Goals to Guide Digital Preservation
Digital preservation activities can only succeed if they go beyond the technical properties of digital objects. They must consider the strategy, policy, goals, and constraints of the institution that undertakes them and take into account the cultural and institutional framework in which data, documents and records are preserved. Furthermore, because...Dappert, Angela ; Farquhar, Adam
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Conference paper (published)
Risk Assessment; using a risk based approach to prioritise handheld digital information
The British Library (BL) Digital Library Programme (DLP) has a broad set of objectives to achieve over the next few years, from web-archiving to the ingest of e-journals through to mass digitisation of newspapers and books. These projects are decided by the DLP programme board and are managed by the...McLeod, Rory
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Conference paper (published)
Using METS, PREMIS and MODS for Archiving eJournals: Paper - iPRES 2008 - London
As institutions turn towards developing archival digital repositories, many decisions on the use of metadata have to be made. In addition to deciding on the more traditional descriptive and administrative metadata, particular care needs to be given to the choice of structural and preservation metadata, as well as to integrating...Dappert, Angela ; Enders, Marcus
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Conference paper (published)
Multi-spectral Imaging at the British Library
The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and holds over 150 million items with an additional three million new items added each year. The 625 km of shelving contains manuscripts, maps, newspapers, magazines, prints, drawings, music scores and patents. The fundamental purpose of the Library is...Duffy, Christina
multi-spectral imaging, text-recovery, iron gall ink, digital, digitization, reagent, data, library, fire-damage, imaging, and erasure
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Journal article
A manuscript of poems by Robert Sidney: some early impressions
IN January of this year the British Library, with the aid of generous grants from the Pilgrim Trust and the Radcliffe Trust, purchased from an unrevealed source through Messrs. Sotheby's an autograph manuscript, now numbered Additional MS. 58435, comprising sonnets, pastorals, songs, and epigrams composed by Robert Sidney (1563-1626), Earl...Kelliher, Hilton ; Duncan-Jones, Katherine
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Journal article
The von Siebold Collection from Tokugawa Japan: 1. Dr Philipp Franz von Siebold's career in the Orient
BY 1867 the collection of Japanese printed books and manuscripts in the British Museum Numbered barely three hundred items whereas, for example, that of printed books alone in Hebrew ran to well over ten thousand. This relatively small collection of Japanese Materials in what were then two sections of the...Brown, Yu-Ying
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Journal article
Department of Oriental Manuscripts and Printed Books: select manuscript acquisitions January 1970 to June 1973
Department of Oriental Manuscripts and Printed Books: select manuscript acquisitions January 1970 to June 1973 -
Journal article
Some occasional aspects of Johann Hermann Schein
IN 1973 the Department of Printed Books of the British Library, Reference Division, acquired a collection of some ninety separate pieces of occasional verse in Latin and German, mainly epithalamia, published in Leipzig between 1608 and 1630. Amongst these are four relating to the composer Johann Hermann Schein (born 1586,...Paisey, David
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Journal article
Newton in the timberyard: the device of Frans Houttuyn, Amsterdam
THE use of printers' and publishers' devices is as old as the printed book. Their origin goes back even further to heraldry and medieval shop signs. Few collections of devices used in the Netherlands have been published; there is one by Nielson on those in Latin which, though quite useful...Simoni, Anna E. C.
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Editorial
Foreword
SCHOLARLY YET READABLE' was the editor's prescription for The British Library Journal, for the first issue of which I am glad to write a foreword. Do not let us underestimate the skill required to make a publication of this kind both scholarly and readable, if by this we mean that...Eccles, Viscount
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Journal article
Hendrik Nicolaas Werkman and the Werkmaniana in the British Library
THE city of Groningen, capital of the Dutch province of the same name, lies in the far north-east corner of the country, separated from its main cultural centres by the IJsselmeer and being reached, before the advent of air travel, only by a long journey by road or rail. Before...Simoni, Anna E. C.
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Journal article
The original reconnaissance map for the Battle of Quebec
THE original reconnaissance report prepared by Major, later Colonel, Patrick Mackellar for General Wolfe prior to the battle of Quebec on Abrahams Heights has been known to historians since it was printed by Lieut.-Col. C.V.F. Townshend in 1901 in the Military Life of Field-Marshal George First Marquess Townshend from Townshend...Hudson, J. P.
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Journal article
What became of Magna Carta?
THE loan of one of the British Library's two exemplars of King John's Magna Carta to the United States to mark the bicentenary of their independence is an historic event in itself, clearly deserving a commemorative note of some kind in this Journal. But what kind? The loan has, however,...Borrie, Michael
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Journal article
An illuminator's sketchbook
ONLY a handful of the sketch- and model books compiled by artists during the Middle Ages have survived to the present day. In those which have come to light pictorial subject matter predominates, and it is often far from clear whether the book contains models for miniatures or whether it...Backhouse, Janet
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Journal article
The Codex Sinaiticus
THE Codex Sinaiticus of the Greek Bible, even though it has lost over 300 leaves, is still the earliest complete New Testament, and is the earliest and best witness for some of the books of the Old Testament. It was written in the first half of the fourth century, when...Pattie, T. S.
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Journal article
The Awag Vank ͤ Armenian Gospels A.D. 1200
IN 1975 the British Library acquired the Awag Vank ͤ Armenian Gospels formerly belonging to the Collection of the late Mr. Hagop Kevorkian of New York, a work of both artistic and historical interest.This illuminated manuscript, now Or. 13654, comprises the Four Gospels in Classical Armenian, with the Letter of...Dowsett, C. J. F.
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Journal article
An unexpected effect of the change of calendar in 1752
IN 1752 in the backward country of Great Britain the calendar was eleven days out of phase with the sun. Midsummer Day (for the purpose of this article 22 June) fell on 11 June. That day could be described as 11/22 June. What happened in 1752 was that Britain caught...Pattie, T. S.
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Journal article
The Wyndham Payne Crucifixion
IT is to an American that we owe the only comprehensive study of English medieval painting. Margaret Rickert's Painting in Britain: the Middle Ages saw its first edition in 1954, and a second eleven years later, in the series The Pelican History of Art. The first edition made public for...Turner, D. H.
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Journal article
Notes: An Italian imprint identified; Work in progress: Catalogue of German Books,1601-1700, in the British Library, Reference Division; Work in progress: Catalogue of Polish Books to 1800 in the Slavonic and East European Branch of the Reference Division of the British Library
It is hoped in this section to include notes on items of interest which members of the staff and readers have come across in the course of their work in the Library, but which either do not warrant a full-length article or are peripheral to their discoverer's interests.Rhodes, D. E. ; Paisey, D.L. ; Swiderska, Hanna
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Journal article
Recent acquisitions: Department of Printed Books: English books 1501-1640 concluded
Recent acquisitions: Department of Printed Books: English books 1501-1640 concludedJannetta, M. J.
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Journal article
More light on sixteenth-century printing at Salamanca
No history of printing at Salamanca has yet been written. This may be partly due to the difficulties surrounding two of the principal incunable presses in the city, both of which are anonymous. In the first half of the sixteenth century, however, there are some extremely interesting links between one...Rhodes, Dennis E.
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Journal article
Recent acquisitions: Department of Manuscripts: acquisitions, January 1973 to December 1974
Department of Manuscripts Acquisitions, January 1973 to December 1974. The following list includes manuscripts incorporated into the collections between January 1973 and December 1974. The inclusion of a manuscript in this list does not necessarily imply that it is available for study. -
Journal article
Recent acquisitions: Department of Printed Books: acquisitions 1965-1975: English books 1501-1640
The custom of providing each year a brief descriptive survey of some of the more interesting and important books acquired by the Department of Printed Books, has been discontinued for a number of years. The ensuing article marks its revival by listing in all a little over one hundred items...Jannetta, M. J.
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Journal article
Recent acquisitions: Department of Printed Books
Recent acquisitions: Department of Printed Books.Dethan, L. Le R.
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Journal article
Recent acquisitions: Department of Printed Books
List of recent acquisitions for the Department of Printed Books.Brown, Sandra
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Journal article
Some illustrated Jain manuscripts
THE Department of Oriental Manuscripts and Printed Books has recently acquired several illustrated Jain manuscripts of great interest. The earliest is the Uttarddhyayanasutra, one of the four Mulasutras of the Svetambara Canon. The scribe provided no colophon: but the miniatures, in the Early Western Indian style, fix the date of...Losty, Jeremiah P.
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Journal article
Notes on the 1503 edition of Petrarch
THE first collected edition of Petrarch's Latin works to appear in Italy was printed at Venice by Simon de Luere for the publisher Andrea Torresano de Asula with two colophons dated respectively 27 March and 17 June 1501. There is no comment to be made on this edition, except to...Rhodes, Dennis E.
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Journal article
The Malory manuscript
IN March 1976 the British Library purchased from the Warden and Fellows of Winchester College the famous manuscript of Sir Thomas Malory's English cycle of Arthurian tales, now numbered Additional MS. 59678. Almost immediately upon transfer to its new home the manuscript went on display in the Caxton quincentenary exhibition,...Hellinga, Lotte ; Kelliher, Hilton
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Journal article
Patrick Cary and his Italian poems
INVESTIGATION of the provenance of a seventeenth-century music manuscript recently acquired from Richard Macnutt led into some unexpected by-ways of literature and history, both English and Italian. At first sight, apart from a fine binding, there is little to distinguish this manuscript from other collections of contemporary Italian music. It...Willetts, Pamela
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Journal article
The ruling as a clue to the make-up of a medieval manuscript
ADDITIONAL MS. 47678,' acquired by the British Museum in 1952, is an early ninth century Cicero manuscript written at Tours in Carolingian minuscules. It was still complete when it was at the Abbey of Cluny but only 39 leaves survive out of the 140 or 150 that it probably once...Pattie, T. S.
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Journal article
An unrecorded German periodical from the time of the Napoleonic Wars: Beyträge zur Geschichte des Krieges der Jahre 1812 und 1813
GERMAN resistance to Napoleon, fostered by exiles such as Clausewitz and Stein in St. Petersburg as well as by local patriots, burst into renewed life at the retreat from Moscow and gathered strength throughout the year or so of struggle which followed, called in German the Freiheitskriege, wars of liberation...Paisey, David
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Journal article
English Bookbindings added to the Department of Printed Books 1963 to 1974
THE most important acquisition of bookbindings during this period has unquestionably been that of the Henry Davis Collection. It is, indeed, far the most important gift of this nature that the Department has ever received, being almost the whole of one of the three great collections of bookbindings made in...Nixon, Howard M.
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Journal article
A Shakespeare allusion of 1605 and its author
SURPRISINGLY few critical notices of Shakespeare have so far been recovered from sources dating from his own lifetime; fewer than a dozen are known to survive, and all of these originate from more or less professional literary circles. The most famous is the schoolmaster Francis Meres's comment in Palladis Tamia...Kelliher, Hilton
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Journal article
Two missals printed for Wynkyn de Worde
The British Library has recently acquired two important and exceedingly rare editions of the Sarum Missal. These were produced in Paris in 1497 and 1511 for Wynkyn de Worde and others, and are fully described in the second and third sections of this article. The first section gives a brief...Rhodes, George D. ; Painter, Dennis E. ; Nixon, Howard M.
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Journal article
Note: Rosichino and Pietro da Cortona: a correction with notes on the printer Fabio de Falco
Note: Rosichino and Pietro da Cortona: a correction with notes on the printer Fabio de Falco.Rhodes, Dennis E.
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Journal article
An illustrated Persian text of Kalila and Dimna dated 707/1307-8
A MANUSCRIPT (Or. 13506) of Kalila and Dimna recently acquired by the Department of Oriental Manuscripts and Printed Books (with the valuable assistance of the National Art Collections Fund, the Pilgrim Trust, and the Mark Fitch Fund) is of the highest importance as providing for study a unique example of...Waley, P. ; Titley, Norah M.
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Journal article
Note: A hitherto unattributed German elegy on the death of Simon Dach, 1659
BY 1878, Sir Anthony Panizzi was dying. His biographer Edward Miller paints an affecting picture of his condition at that time: "Almost a complete cripple, half blind, he was but the wreck of the magnificent man he had once been. All he could manage was a short drive in the...Prescott, Andrew
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Journal article
The guest papers, Add.Mss.57934-57941
MONTAGUE JOHN GUEST (1839-1909), Liberal M.P. for Youghal 1869-74, and for Wareham 1880-5, presented his papers to the British Museum in 1906; they were transferred to the Department of Manuscripts from the Department of Prints and Drawings in 1973. Guest was the third son of Sir Josiah John Guest, Bart.,...Smith, Robert A. H.
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Journal article
A collection of German religious songs of the mid-sixteenth century
THE British Library has recently acquired a notable collection of texts of German religious songs of the mid-sixteenth century, contained in seventy-two separate contemporary publications bound in one volume (pressmark C. 175. i. 31 (1-72)). The Reformation in Germany gave a great impetus to vernacular literature and was a period...Paisey, D. L.
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Journal article
The Napier papers
IN 1956 the Department of Manuscripts incorporated in its collections a series of papers of various members of the Napier family which had been bequeathed by Miss Violet Bunbury Napier, youngest daughter of General William Craig Emilius Napier. They commence with those of the Hon. George Napier, 6th son of...Blake-Hill, Philip V.
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Journal article
Recent acquisitions: Department of Manuscripts: acquisitions, January-December 1975
Recent acquisitions: Department of Manuscripts: acquisitions, January-December 1975.British Library
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Journal article
The Sir Arthur Phayre Collection of Burmese manuscripts
IN 1886 the British Museum acquired approximately eighty Burmese manuscripts, now located at Or. 3403-80. These manuscripts formed part of the collection of Sir Arthur Purves Phayre, one of the most distinguished of Burma's early administrators. Phayre's life spanned the formative years of British colonial rule in Burma. He left...Herbert, Patricia M.
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Journal article
Oriental material in the reference division of the British Library
THE Oriental material housed in the three Library Departments of the old British Museum and the Science Reference Library which now constitute the Reference Division of the British Library is much larger and more comprehensive than is generally realized.It is by no means limited to printed books only but includes...Gaur, Albertine
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Journal article
The von Siebold Collection from Tokugawa, Japan: 2. certain features of the Collection
IN December 1867, fourteen months after the death of Dr. Philipp Franz von Siebold, his eldest son Alexander approached the British Museum about the sale of an extensive range of Japanese materials which his father had acquired during the extraordinary career described in the previous article. Negotiations went on for...Brown, Yu-Ying
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Journal article
The British bindings in the Henry Davis gift
WHEN Henry Davis, C.B.E. died on 10 January 1977 the majority of his magnificent collection of bookbindings joined those already on exhibition in the British Library. The Gift, which comprises approximately 800 decorated bookbindings and 260 reference books is too extensive and too varied to receive proper justice in a...Foot, Mirjam M.
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Journal article
Illustrated German broadsides of the seventeenth century
THE seventeenth century was the great age of the illustrated broadside in Germany, where its suitability as an instrument of propaganda was exploited to the full. Engravings, varying in quality from crude to excellent, with images sometimes simple and direct, sometimes of the complex symbolism which is a Baroque commonplace,...Paisey, D. L.
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Journal article
The French Revolution collections in the British Library
IN 1899 there was printed 'by order of the Trustees of the British Museum' a small edition of a modest guide entitled List of the contents of the three collections of books, pamphlets and journals in the British Museum relating to the French Revolution. Its compiler was G. K. Fortescue,...Brodhurst, Audrey C.
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Journal article
Two Stanley Spencer letters from Salonika
THE most memorable experience which twentieth-century British painting can provide is a visit to Stanley Spencer's masterpiece, the Sandham Memorial Chapel at Burghclere, Hampshire. An inscription in the chapel explains that the paintings 'are the fulfilment of a design which he conceived whilst on active service' and these scenes of...Waley, D. P.
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Journal article
Cowley and 'Orinda' autograph fair copies
ABRAHAM COWLEY'S elegy 'On the Death of Mr. Crashaw' was his tribute to a fellow poet with whom he had exchanged verses at Cambridge and whom he had later befriended in exile at Paris where, according to Anthony Wood, he presented the destitute Crashaw to Henrietta Maria. The elegy has...Kelliher, Hilton
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Journal article
Recent acquisitions: Department of Printed Books: acquisitions, Slavonic Division
Recent acquisitions: Department of Printed Books: acquisitions, Slavonic Division.Swiderska, H.
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Journal article
Correspondence from The Principal and Vice-Chancellor, University of St. Andrews
Correspondence from The Principal and Vice-Chancellor, University of St. Andrews.Watson, J. Steven
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Journal article
Caxton in the British Library
IN 1877 the four hundredth anniversary of the establishment of the first printing press in England was celebrated with, among other things, a staggering exhibition in the National Art Library, South Kensington (now the Library of the Victoria and Albert Museum). Inspired by William Blades, a practical printer, whose biography...Nixon, Howard M.
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Journal article
Two sixteenth-century Italian devices
THE two devices here discussed have nothing in common except that they are both Italian of the sixteenth century, occur in books in the British Library, and have not been satisfactorily explained or identified hitherto. Much work remains to be done on Italian printers' and publishers' devices, and indeed there...Rhodes, Dennis E.
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Journal article
Letters of Robert Briffault
ROBERT BRIFFAULT (1873-1948) was a prolific and influential writer in the years between the two world wars. He achieved international fame as a novelist, with the publication of Europa in 1935. It was a first novel, portraying the decadence of western European society. In its sequel, Europa in Limbo (1937),...Searle, Arthur
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Journal article
The paved court theatre at Somerset House
B.L. LANSDOWNE MS. 1171 is a collection of careful drawings of early English stages equipped with various kinds of scenery. All but one have been identified, however tentatively, and among them are what have hitherto been accepted as the earliest detailed designs for an English scenic stage - that erected...Orrell, John
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Journal article
The Cuttack Mission Press and Early Oriya printing
REFERENCES to early printing in the distinctive script of Oriya, the Indo-Aryan vernacular of Orissa, the region of India to the south-west of Bengal, are very scarce indeed.The attention of scholars has naturally enough tended to focus upon Bengal in the context of early printing in northern India, especially in...Shaw, Graham W.
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Journal article
Deterioration in leather bookbindings - our present state of knowledge
DETERIORATION in leather and the mechanism by which deterioration proceeds has been a subject for investigation by the British Leather Manufacturers' Research Association over a number of years. Leather is widely used, not only for clothing, upholstery, and bookbinding, but in industry for machinery drive belts, hydraulic seals, etc. and...Haines, Betty M.