Search Constraints
Search Results
-
Journal article
A memento of Napoleon
ON 5 May 1821 Napoleon died in exile on his island prison of St Helena. Amongst those Englishmen particularly affected by the news was John Cam Hobhouse, the eldest son of Sir Benjamin Hobhouse. His mother was a dissenter, and Hobhouse himself had attended a school run by a Unitarian...Daniels, Morna
-
Journal article
The authorship and date of HARL. MS. 6249, ff. 106V-110
HARL. MS. 6249 contains an anonymous and undated general history of the world. Part of this manuscript is printed in Memorials of the Empire of Japan in the XVI and XVII Centuries (Hakluyt Society: London, 1850), but the editor of this book, Thomas Rundall, failed to identify its author. Quoting...Shimada, Takau
-
Journal article
An autobiographical ballad by Matthew Prior
IN the most recent edition of Prior's works, the editors asserted their confidence that, while Prior was a parliamentary prisoner, he composed a poem reflecting some of the circumstances of his confinement and his first acquaintance with Elizabeth Cox, the mistress of his later years. However, the only vestige of...Wright, H. Bunker ; Wright, Deborah Kempf
-
Journal article
The great gun at Agra
IN 1974 there appeared on the London art market two bound volumes of watercolours entitled 'Views by Seeta Ram from Moorshedabad to Patna. Vol. V and 'Views by Seeta Ram from Secundra to Agra. Vol. IX'. Each of these volumes contained twenty-three large watercolours, normally on paper watermarked 'John Dickinson...Losty, J. P.
-
Journal article
A catalogue of Sir Robert Cotton's printed books?
THE inventory of the goods and chattels of Sir Robert Cotton taken on 20 May 1631, two weeks after his death, records that the upper study at Cotton House, Westminster, was furnished, inter alia, with 'i iron prese & ix presses with printed bookes'. This brief reference draws attention to...Daniels, Morna
-
Journal article
London, Bengal, the China trade and the unfrequented extremities of Asia: the East India Company's settlement in New Guinea, 1793-95
ON 25 October 1793 an Englishman, Captain John Hayes, hoisted the British flag at Dore Bay on the north-west coast of New Guinea, near present-day Manokwariin Irian Jaya. With appropriate ceremony a twenty-one gun salute was fired and Hayes, on behalf of the King and nation of Great Britain, took...Griffin, Andrew
-
Journal article
Isaac Bernard: Prague Jew, jeweller, mintmaster and spy
IN his 'Catalogus Brevior' (1709-24), the text of which now constitutes the first part of the existing Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts, Robert Harley's librarian, Humfrey Wanley hesitantly - and ambiguously - recorded that a Hebrew cabbalistic work, now Harleian MS. 1204, was 'ut accepi, a quodam Isaaco Bernard, Judaeo...Barber, Peter
-
Journal article
Guglielmo Libri and the British Museum: a case of scandal averted
IN December 1845 Antonio Panizzi, Keeper of Printed Books in the British Museum, sat down at his desk to answer a letter from his friend, the distinguished professor at the Sorbonne and the College de France, Guglielmo Libri. His fellow expatriate, a bibliophile of note, had informed him of his...Maccioni, P. Alessandra
-
Journal article
Camden, Cotton and the chronicles of the Norman Conquest of England
The collaboration between William Camden (1551-1623), the Clarenceux King of Arms, and his pupil Sir Robert Cotton (1571-1631) in antiquarian studies is well known. Whereas Camden developed the principles on which the study of history should be based. Cotton provided the raw material by gathering together what, judged by quality...Houts, Elisabeth M. C. van
-
Journal article
Two unrecorded incunables: Rouen, circa 1497, and Lyons, circa 1500
FOR a number of years, I have been re-examining the British Library's books printed in France between 1501 and 1520 for a typographical catalogue of the Library's French post-incunables. This catalogue is a revision of the unpublished manuscript of Col. Frank Isaac's Index to the British [Museum] Library's books printed...Shaw, David J.
-
Journal article
Malay manuscript art: the British Library collections
MANUSCRIPTS written in the Malay language originate from throughout the Malay archipelago, the area occupied by the present-day nations of Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei, Singapore and the southern, ethnically Malay, regions of Thailand and the Philippines. Malay manuscripts are usually written on imported paper of European, Chinese or Indian manufacture in...Gallop, Annabel Teh
-
Journal article
An archive of the 1989 Chinese Pro-Democracy Movement
A collection of photocopies of leaflets relating to the Spring 1989 Pro-Democracy Movement in China has been assembled in Oriental and India Office Collections. Most of the original leaflets were collected in Peking by Robin Munro, who was working for Amnesty International at the time and is now a member...Bond, Sherry
-
Journal article
The 'Tregian' manuscripts: a study of their compilation
BETWEEN 1609 and 1619, during his confinement in the Fleet Prison, in London, Francis Tregian the younger, a Cornish Roman Catholic recusant, has hitherto been thought to have compiled an important group of music anthologies. These comprise the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book: Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum Mus. MS. 168; British Library, Egerton...Thompson, Ruby Reid
-
Journal article
Sir Robert Cotton's record of a royal bookshelf
OUR knowledge of the early history of the English royal library, conveniently sketched out by Warner and Gilson in 1921, has been considerably amplified in recent years. An edition of the vital Westminster library catalogue of 1542 is now in preparation and will be of major advantage to future students....Backhouse, Janet
-
Journal article
Books seen by Samuel Ward 'In Bibliotheca regia' circa 1614
As early as the 1530s the antiquary John Leland (1503?-1552) envisaged the establishment of some sort of royal library, designed as a repository for the manuscript collections being removed from their previous monastic homes. From the period in which Leland was gathering, there is one particularly valuable piece of evidence:...Carley, James P.
-
Journal article
The Royal Library as a source for Sir Robert Cotton's collection: a preliminary list of acquisitions
PUBLIC Record Office, Augmentation Office, Misc. Books 160 (E. 315/160), ff. 107v-120r, contains an alphabetical list of 910 books, printed and manuscript, found in the Upper Library at Westminster Palace in 1542. At approximately the same time the inventory was compiled, so it would appear, a number was entered into...Carley, James P.
-
Journal article
From copy to facsimile: a millennium of studying the Vatican Vergil
BOOKS do have their fate. When it was produced in Rome sometime around A.D. 400, presumably for a wealthy pagan aristocrat of the old school, the manuscript we know as the Vatican Vergil (Vat. lat. 3225) was a nice book for a gentleman's library, but not an extraordinary artistic accomplishment....Wright, David H.
-
Journal article
A glimpse above the clouds: the Japanese Court in 1859
THOSE of us seeing pictures of the recent enthronement of the 125th Emperor of Japan on television or in the newspapers might have been forgiven for thinking that we were seeing a Heian picture scroll come to life. The ceremonies serve to remind us of the great antiquity of the...Todd, Hamish
-
Journal article
English bookbindings: additions to the collections 1975-1985
DURING the ten years from 1975 to 1985, the Library has been fortunate in obtaining through purchase or gift several particularly interesting English bookbindings dating from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries.Marks, Philippa
-
Journal article
The role of the wax tablet in medieval literacy: a reconstruction in light of a recent find from York
MOST scholars are aware of the major role played by writing tablets as a vehicle for informal composition, learning exercises, note-taking, correspondence, accounting and document-production during Antiquity. Fewer, perhaps, are familiar with the extension and modification of their use throughout the Middle Ages (and indeed even until the nineteenth century...Brown, Michelle P.
-
Journal article
Twentieth century Italian imprints
PRINTING with movable type was introduced into Italy in 1465 by two Germans, Conrad Sweynheym and Arnold Pannartz, who printed the first Italian book, Lactantius's De Divinis Institutionibus at the Monastery of Subiaco near Rome. By the beginning of the sixteenth century, Italian printers had earned an unrivalled reputation for...Reidy, Denis
-
Journal article
The Apocalypse, British Library, Royal MS. 19 B. XV: a reassessment of its artistic context in early fourteenth century English manuscript illumination
THE Apocalypse, British Library, Royal MS. 19 B. XV, is traditionally attributed to the workshop which produced Queen Mary's Psalter, BL, Royal MS. 2 B. VII; indeed, the first sixteen folios have been assigned to the Queen Mary Artist himself. For example, Sandier has recently written that 'the gatherings by...Dennison, Lynda
-
Journal article
British foreign policy and international affairs during Sir William Trumbull's career
SIR William Trumbull served as envoy, and subsequently as Secretary of State, during a period of major change in Britain's international position. He was Ambassador Extraordinary to Louis XIV of France from 2 September 1685 to 12 October 1686, and then Resident Ambassador at Constantinople from November 1686 to October...Black, Jeremy
-
Journal article
Public revisions or private responses? The oddities of BL, Arundel MS. 197, with special reference to Contemplations of the Dread and Love of God
ARUNDEL 197 is a curious manuscript. Dating from the third quarter of the fifteenth century, it is a small volume of seventy-three folios, measuring 192 x 132 mm, very plain, without decoration, and showing no signs of ownership from the medieval period. The volume once belonged to Henry Howard, Duke...Connolly, Margaret
-
Journal article
The author portraits in the Bedford Psalter-Hours: Gower, Chaucer and Hoccleve
AN inscribed portrait of John Gower, literary champion of Lancastrian kingship, provides the key to the reading of the unique illustrative programme of the Duke of Bedford's Psalter-Hours, Add. MS. 42131, the only manuscript he is known to have commissioned in England. Two hundred and ninety of the 300 minor...Wright, Sylvia
-
Journal article
William Trumbull and art collecting in Jacobean England
THIS article is concerned with some of the papers of William Trumbull the Elder in the British Library, which relate to the visual arts in Jacobean England. As was suggested by Sonia Anderson and Leonard Forster in a recent issue of this journal, the Trumbull archive is remarkably rich for...Howarth, David
-
Journal article
Paine's Rights of Man, Swedenborgianism and freedom of the press in Sweden: a publishing enigma of 1792
A copy of the earliest Swedish translation of Thomas Paine's Rights of Man, recently acquired by the British Library, illustrates the old tag that 'books have their fates'. The item is a slim octavo volume in plain grey board covers entitled Menniskans rattigheter and bearing the imprint Stockholm, tryckte hos...Hogg, Peter C.
-
Journal article
The Weckherlin Papers
THE Weckherlin Papers are part of the vast archive of the Trumbull family, which passed through the female line to the Marquesses of Downshire. It was kept at Easthampstead Park in Berkshire until it was deposited on loan with the Berkshire County Record Office at Reading in 1954. A large...Forster, Leonard
-
Journal article
A 'catalogue of Hebrew printers'
FOR most of this century, an unbound manuscript of nearly a thousand leaves lay in the offices of the Hebrew Section of the Department of Oriental Manuscripts and Printed Books of the British Museum (later the Oriental Collections of the British Library). Despite its bulk, the manuscript remained unaccessioned, apparently...Hill, Brad Sabin
-
Journal article
A fragment of Ephraem the Syrian and the rare word asiantos vindicated
ADDITIONAL MS. 39583 is a miscellany of fragments collected by Robert Curzon, the writer of Travels to Monasteries in the Levant. One of the fragments, f. 14, is a single leaf written in Greek in about the tenth century in upright so-called 'Slavonic' uncials. On the facing page Curzon made...Pattie, T. S.
-
Journal article
Yiddish manuscripts in the British Library
FEW Yiddish manuscripts predating the age of printing have survived the storms of Jewish and general history. The oldest extant dated Yiddish document is a rhymed inscription of a dozen words in the Worms Mahzor ('festival liturgy') of 1272, now in the Jewish National and University Library, Jerusalem. By far...Prager, Leonard ; Hill, Brad Sabin
-
Journal article
Mátyás Seiber's collaboration in Adorno's jazz project, 1936
IN 1982 the British Library acquired the papers of the Hungarian-born composer Matyas Seiber (1905-60) through the generosity of his widow, Mrs Lilla Seiber. This large collection contains not only sketches and scores of Seiber's musical works but also scripts for lectures and broadcast talks on a variety of musical...Chadwick, Nick
-
Journal article
The works of Paolo Angelo
NOTHING seems to be recorded about the life of Paolo Angelo, except for the meagre scraps of information which his own books reveal. He was a humble priest of Venice, apparently a member of the Dominican Order, and he had a fanatical hatred of Luther and his doctrines, which he...Rhodes, Dennis E.
-
Journal article
A new English keyboard manuscript of the seventeenth century: autograph music by Draghi and Purcell
MILLENNIAL fever seems to have infected even the sober arena of musicology and music manuscripts. We have heard the cry of 'Musicological Event of the Century' too frequently in recent years, trumpeting everything from the discovery of the autograph of Mozart's Fantasy and Sonata in C minor (K. 457 and...Hogwood, Christopher
-
Journal article
Public relations, Panizzi-style
IN a collection of letters by and to Sir Anthony Panizzi, chiefly relating to the history of the British Museum, assembled and recently presented by the author to the British Library (Add. MSS. 70839-70854), are two letters written by Sir Anthony to the Irish essayist and politician John Wilson Croker...McCrimmon, Barbara
-
Journal article
A marginal sketch in BL, Additional Ms. 25690, the Cronica del Cid Campeador, and the legend of the 'Jura de Santa Gadea'
ADDITIONAL MS. 25690 is a copy of the Cronica del Cid, incomplete at the end and with some dislocation in the sequence of the text. This chronicle circulated in printed editions from 1512. The MS. is briefly described by Gayangos, who assigns it to the fifteenth century and is of...Hook, David
-
Journal article
Early printing from Africa in the British Library
ALTHOUGH the date of the introduction of printing to Africa south of the Sahara ranges across the continent from the late eighteenth to late nineteenth century, its development usually followed a similar pattern and in many cases can be traced to the arrival of Christian missionaries. Indigenous literature was predominantly...Holden, Carol
-
Journal article
From Purcell to Wardour Street: a brief account of music manuscripts from the Library of Vincent Novello now in the British Library
In 1986 and 1987 Novello and Company presented to the British Library a substantial collection of scores written or collected by Novello, which had remained in the possession of the company, perhaps since its foundation. These scores joined an already large collection of Novello's material which had found its way...Banks, Chris
-
Journal article
Consort and cupola: Prince Albert, Panizzi and the Reading Room of the British Museum
ON 25 October 1997 the round Reading Room of the British Museum closed its doors to readers for the last time. One hundred and forty years after it was opened Antonio Panizzi most visible achievement ceased to serve the function for which it was erected, as the chief means of...Wright, C. J.
-
Journal article
The printing history of the Constantinople Hebrew incunable of 1493: a mediterranean voyage of discovery
THE place is Constantinople, capital of the Ottoman Empire; the date December 1493. Elia (Elijah), son of Benjamin ha-Levi, is writing the concluding lines to the almost complete edition of Jacob ben Asher's great early fourteenth-century religious compendium Arba'ah Turim ('The Four Rows'), a title referring to the four rows...Offenberg, Adri K.
-
Journal article
John Field: the 'hidden manuscripts' and other sources in the British Library
JOHN Field's manuscripts, both epistolary and musical, are rare, a dozen letters, of which two are in the British Library, and twenty-two autograph manuscripts, of which only the Pastorale in A H.14, Nocturnes nos. 5, 6, and 14, and Concerto no. 7, are complete.Langley, Robin
-
Journal article
The dating of Seiber/Adorno papers held by the British Library
THE welcome publication by Nick Chadwick of Matyas Seiber's comments on Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno's jazz research proposal (the 'Expose') of January 1936 and their correspondence during the subsequent writing of Adorno's essay 'On Jazz' ('Uber Jazz') provides valuable insight into their co-operation. Seiber's assistance was publicly acknowledged by Adorno both...Wilcock, Evelyn
-
Journal article
Notes on the bibliography of Rainerius de Pisis
THE Pantheologia of Rainerius de Pisis, the Dominican who died in 1351, must be one of the longest books ever composed in the Middle Ages. Although the author was an Italian, it is noticeable that of the six editions printed in the fifteenth century the first five appeared in Germany,...Rhodes, Dennis E.
-
Journal article
The Edwards of Halifax Bindery
THE story of the Edwards family of Halifax is the stuff of a Victorian three volume novel. William Edwards (baptized in 1722, died in 1808), a provincial publisher and bookseller, built up a firm which became influential in the book trade in England and abroad. William (1753-86), his first son,...Marks, P. J. M.
-
Journal article
English plague regulations and Italian models: printed and manuscript items in the Yelverton Collection
AMONG the papers of Robert Beale, Clerk to the Privy Council during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, which form the nucleus of the Yelverton collection at the British Library, is a group of printed proclamations and orders of the Governor and other officials of Milan issued at the time...Basing, Patricia ; Rhodes, Dennis E.
-
Journal article
The book cover designs of John Leighton, F.S.A.
THE chief aim of this article is to identify and describe the signed cover designs by John Leighton on books in the British Library. What follows is a summary of work in progress. This reveals the enormous creativity and versatility of Leighton's cover designs, of which over four hundred have...King, Edmund M. B.
-
Journal article
A supplementary list of Judaeo-Persian manuscripts
THE field of Judaeo-Persian studies is still underdeveloped, as most Judaeo-Persian texts continue to lie buried in uncatalogued collections of manuscripts scattered throughout the world. Although their importance was already recognized at the end of the nineteenth century, and despite the fact that they constitute one of the largest untapped...Moreen, Vera Basch
-
Journal article
Panizzi, Grenville and the Grenville Library
ANTONIO PANIZZI arrived in England in May 1823 'with not quite a sovereign in his pocket, knowing no one, nor a word of the language' as he was later to write. The liberal attitudes of the English especially regarding political, intellectual and religious tolerance and freedom, so much appreciated by...Reidy, Denis V.
-
Journal article
Three modern American acquisitions
THE British Library has recently acquired three rare American items, Mark Twain's Memory Builder, Ezra Pound's A Lume Spento (Cup.410.f918) and John Ashbery's Turandot and Other Poems (YA.1997.b.3915).Digby, Andrew
-
Journal article
A further note on 'asiantos' in Ephraem the Syrian
As a devotee of Ephraem the Syrian I recently read with great interest T. S. Pattie's welcome edition and translation of a tenth-century Greek fragment of the 'Sermo Compunctorius' (CPG 3908) which has traditionally, though probably erroneously, been attributed to St Ephraem. Whilst editing this fragment Pattie noticed that it...Taylor, David G. K.
-
Journal article
Slavery and antislavery in the United States of America
SLAVERY existed on American soil from the colonial period until the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865. Contemporary sources of information about this 'peculiar institution' include slave narratives, journals and tracts published by abolitionist societies, travellers' reports, political speeches, religious sermons, newspaper articles and advertisements, and works of fiction....Kemble, Jean
-
Journal article
Two manuscript maps of Nuevo Santander in Northern new Spain from the eighteenth century
IN the eighteenth century, through the occupation of Texas and Alta California and for a time parts of Louisiana and even the western side of Vancouver Island on Nootka Sound, the Spanish Empire in North America and with it Spain's imperial expansion globally attained its greatest geographical extent. After a...Reinhartz, Dennis
-
Journal article
Under the censor's eye: printed almanacs and censorship in ninth-century China
SEVERAL fragmentary printed almanacs dating from the ninth century were among the documents discovered in 1900 in Cave 17 at the 'Thousand Buddha' cave temple site near Dunhuang, north-west China. One fragment, now in the British Library, bears an inscription stating that it was printed in the East Market of...Whitfield, Susan
-
Journal article
A rare Wyndham Lewis pamphlet
IN January 1994 the British Library purchased at auction a copy of Wyndham Lewis's political pamphlet Anglosaxony: A League that Works (shelfmark: Cup.410.f.419.). Published 30 June 1941 in Toronto by the Ryerson Press in an edition of 1500 and priced at 75 cents, 310 copies were sold by February 1944....Egles, James
-
Journal article
Gandhi and the Indian women's movement
THE acquisition of publications from India in English is the responsibility of the British Library's Overseas English Section, together with the Oriental and India Office Collections (OIOC), the Science Reference and Information Service (SRIS) and Official Publications and Social Sciences (OP&SS), and over the years material relating to Gandhi's influence...Norvell, Lyn
-
Journal article
Origins and characteristics of the Japanese Collection in the British Library
THE British Library's antiquarian Japanese collection has long been regarded as one of the finest outside Japan. Its quality and quantity are such that the descriptive catalogue compiled by my predecessor, the late Kenneth Gardner, had to be limited to pre-1700 printed books. Even then, it included 637 items of...Brown, Yu-Ying
-
Journal article
The Garendon cartularies in BL, Landsowne 415
THE period of maximum productivity of extant cartularies occurred in the second half of the thirteenth century, so that part of the interest of the Garendon texts in the Lansdowne volume lies in their compilation in the late twelfth and early thirteenth century. Their broadly topographical arrangement conforms to the...Postles, David
-
Journal article
Kenneth B. Gardner (1924-1995)
It is fitting that this issue of the British Library Journal, devoted to the East Asian collections, should open with an appreciation of the late Kenneth Gardner. Prior to his retirement in 1986, Ken had held distinguished posts for thirty-one years in the British Museum and British Library, including the...Brown, Yu-Ying
-
Journal article
The photographs from Stein's fourth expedition: a footnote
WHEN Wang Jiqing prepared his report on the photographs of the missing artefacts from Sir Aurel Stein's Fourth Central Asian Expedition, it was generally believed that the original negatives, from which the 'improved' versions were made at the Thomason College at Roorkee, had been lost. By coincidence, the recent detailed...Falconer, John
-
Journal article
James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps and the British Museum Library
IN an address on the Halliwell-Phillipps collection delivered before the Pennsylvania Library Club, at the Friends' Library, Philadelphia, on Monday, 14 January 1895, Albert H. Smyth, Professor of the English Language and Literature, Central High School, Philadelphia, no librarian and therefore 'rather reminiscent than doctrinaire', raised the curtain thus: "For...Spevack, Marvin
-
Journal article
The Tyson Collection
IN 1961 an article appeared in a musical journal proving that two piano trios usually accepted without question as Haydn's were in fact by Ignaz Pleyel. The author was Alan Tyson, who for the next thirty years was to play a leading role in scholarly research into music of the...Neighbour, O. W.
-
Journal article
The Covenant of the League of Nations
1995 saw the fiftieth anniversary celebrations of the founding of the United Nations. Those in attendance had much with which to congratulate themselves: despite the inevitable controversies, the successes of the United Nations, and particularly those of its humanitarian agencies, represented a significant improvement on the work of its predecessor,...Ridgley, Gillian
-
Journal article
Further Sources for the Swiss Civil War of 1712 in the British Library's Collections
The British Library's early collections are extremely rich in ephemeral, popular and small-scale printed works from many parts of the German-speaking world, not least from Switzerland, a point illustrated by an article by the present author which appeared in the Spring 1993 issue under the title 'The Swiss Civil War...Nattrass, Graham
-
Journal article
New light on Richard Steele
Richard Steele (1672-1729) has been studied so extensively that new factual information on the essayist and playwright is generally a consequence of accidental discovery. The following evidence was unearthed in the course of unrelated research amongst the archival records of Augustan and Georgian Britain.Alsop, J. D.
-
Journal article
Tyrwhitt's Urry's Chaucer's Works: the Tracks of Editorial History
The British Library owns six copies of John Urry's 1721 edition of Chaucer's Works, three of which are catalogued as containing manuscript notes. Of these three catalogue entries, two ascribe annotations to particular people, and one, 642.m.i (the second copy listed in the British Library catalogue), is described as containing...Kelen, Sarah A.
-
Journal article
Jacobites under the Beds: Bishop Francis Atterbury, the Earl of Sunderland and the Westminster School Dormitory case of 1721
In British Library, Harleian MS. 7190 there is a list of names which at first glance seems puzzling, even to an historian of early eighteenth-century Britain. The initial clue to its identification comes from the words 'For the Bp of Rochester' and ' Ag[ain]st' at the foot of the two...Jones, Clyve
-
Journal article
Four unpublished paintings from Dunhuang in the Oriental Collections of the British Library
THE Stein collection in the British Library is essentially a manuscript collection numbering thousands of scrolls of Buddhist sutra texts and other documents, the great majority originating from Cave 17 at the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas at Mogao near Dunhuang in Gansu Province, built in the mid-ninth century as...Whitfield, Roderick
-
Journal article
Sir Robert Kennaway Douglas and his contemporaries
SIR Robert Kennaway Douglas (1838-1913) was the first Keeper of the British Museum's new Department of Oriental Printed Books and Manuscripts when it was created in 1892. Despite his fame as the compiler of the first published catalogues of the Museum's Chinese as well as Japanese collections, memories of the...Brown, Yu-Ying
-
Journal article
Francisco Muñoz y San Clemente and his 'Reflections on the English Settlements on New Holland'
The significance of Francisco Muñoz y San Clemente's 'Reflexiones sobre los establecimientos Ingleses de la Nueva-Holanda' lies in the influence it had in causing the politico-scientific expedition to the Pacific led by Alexandro Malaspina to include in its itinerary a visit to the new English colony in New South Wales...King, Robert J.
-
Journal article
Cuttings from an unknown copy of the Magna Glossatura in a Wycliffite Bible (British Library, Arundel MS. 104)
Three historiated initials from a Latin manuscript have been pasted as marginal illustrations in the Psalter section of an early fifteenth-century English Bible which is now Arundel MS. 104 in the British Library. The manuscript, to which the initials belonged originally, is unknown or lost. On the basis of stylistic...Panayotova, Stella
-
Journal article
'A Flute of Arcady': autograph poems of Tennyson's friend, Arthur Henry Hallam
Although Arthur Henry Hallam is granted a column and a half in the pages of the Dictionary of National Biography, he remains a tenuous shade in the national memory. He achieved no conventional academic distinction or position of political or social prominence, he left little that may be called ground-breaking...Evans, Roger
-
Journal article
French newspapers and ephemera from the 1848 revolution
THE British Library has exceptionally fine holdings relating to the French Revolution of 1789. The three collections purchased from or on the recommendation of John Wilson Croker comprise 48,579 pieces and have been briefly listed with some indication of subject, but not all have been catalogued. The 'R' set, the...Daniels, Morna
-
Journal article
A History of Edward Gibbon's Six Autobiographical Manuscripts
Edward Gibbon finished writing the last page of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and added his colophon, 'Lausanne, 27 June 1787'. After laying down his pen, he walked among his acacias, and 'a sober melancholy' was spread over his mind by the idea that,...Gawthrop, John
-
Journal article
The Codex Alexandrinus and the Alexandrian Greek Types
THE Codex Alexandrinus is one of the three great Greek manuscripts of the Bible, and was probably written during the first half of the fifth century. Apart from some minor imperfections where damage or loss has occurred, it contains the complete text of the Greek Bible, including the Apocrypha, and...Bowman, J. H.
-
Journal article
The British Library's Sado mining scrolls
AMONG the nearly eleven hundred works acquired by the British Museum from the collection of Philipp Franz von Siebold in 1868 were three hand-painted scrolls depicting mining activities on the Japanese island of Sado. The scrolls belong to a genre of manuscripts known as Kinzan emaki (Illustrated scrolls of gold...Todd, Hamish
-
Journal article
Robert Fulton: A Letter to Lord Nelson
Among the thousands of documents preserved in the British Library's holdings of the papers of Horatio Nelson is a brief note, dated 4 September 1805, from one Robert Francis, writing from 13 Sackville Street, Piccadilly; the writer sought an interview with Lord Nelson concerning the former's naval inventions, while the...Smith, R. A. H.
-
Journal article
The Development of the Pre-1801 Scandinavian Printed Collections in the British Library
Early in 1770 a Swedish journal published a brief account by a visitor of the public galleries of the British Museum. Describing the Harley rooms, he remarked that copies of the Harleian manuscript catalogue published by the Museum in 1759 had been sent to Uppsala University Library and to the...Hogg, Peter C.
-
Journal article
What oral historians and historians of science can learn from each other
This paper is concerned with the use of interviews with scientists by members of two disciplinary communities: oral historians and historians of science. It examines the disparity between the way in which historians of science approach autobiographies and biographies of scientists on the one hand, and the way in which...Merchant, Paul
-
-
-
Journal article
Automated Language Identification of Bibliographic Resources
This article describes experiments in the use of machine learning techniques at the British Library to assign language codes to catalog records, in order to provide information about the language of content of the resources described. In the first phase of the project, language codes were assigned to 1.15 million...Morris, Victoria
machine learning, automatic metadata generation, legacy record enhancement, metadata, and language identification
-
Journal article
The Anglo-American Authority File: A PCC Story
This article examines the motivations for the collaboration between the British Library and Library of Congress to develop a joint (Anglo-American) authority file. It describes the obstacles that had to be overcome for the British Library to become a Name Authority Cooperative (NACO) “copy holder”, or node. It considers the...Danskin, Alan
cataloging standards, interoperability, MARC 21 formats, cooperative cataloging, authority control, and cataloging administration/management
-
Journal article
New Approaches to Subject Indexing at the British Library
The constantly changing metadata landscape means that libraries need to re-think their approach to standards and subject analysis, to enable the discovery of vast areas of both print and digital content. This article presents a case study from the British Library that assesses the feasibility of adopting FAST (Faceted Application...Ashton, Janet ; Kent, Caroline
-
Journal article
Negotiating the ‘Ghanaian’ way of schooling: transnational mobility and the educational strategies of British-Ghanaian families
While scholars are increasingly interested in migrants in the Global North educating their children in their homelands, ethnographic studies of how ideas about being educated are shaped, and young people’s accounts of these transnational educational practices, remain under-researched. This paper attends to these gaps by drawing on the ethnographic cases...Abotsi, Emma
education, Ghana, children and youth, West Africa, and transnational migration
-
Journal article
Grey literature at The British Library: revealing a hidden resource
Purpose: To explore the changing nature of grey literature, the British Library collections of grey literature and the future challenges of collecting and supplying this type of material. Design/methodology/approach: This article provides an informal description of the British Library grey literature collection and views on challenges in acquiring and supplying...Tillett, Samantha ; Newbold, Elizabeth
-
Journal article
Online Georeferencing for Libraries: The British Library Implementation of Georeferencer for Spatial Metadata Enhancement and Public Engagement
The British Library partnered with Klokan Technologies to customise the Georeferencer application for crowdsourcing of spatial metadata capture for two of its most important collections of historic mapping of Britain. This effort built upon previous work in online georeferencing and developments in metadata uses with geographical interfaces in libraries. The...Kowal, Kimberly C. ; Přidal, Petr
scanned maps, georeferencing, Georeferencer, spatial metadata, web tools, and crowdsourcing
-
Journal article
E-journals at the British Library: from selection to access
The British Library is embracing e-technology across all aspects of its work and this article concentrates on e-journals. The Library is facing some real challenges in use of the medium from licensing issues to the question of legal deposit of electronic material, both of which are outlined in the article....Burden, Christine ; Reid, Andrea ; Sweeney, John ; Bennett, Richard ; Braid, Andrew …
-
Journal article
Exploring Models for Shared Identity Management at a Global Scale: The Work of the PCC Task Group on Identity Management in NACO
The paper discusses the efforts of the PCC Task Group on Identity Management in NACO to explore and advance identity management activities. The Task Group’s work serves as a recent example of how the Program for Cooperative Cataloging has engaged the metadata community to incubate practical solutions to the perennial...Stalberg, Erin ; Riemer, John ; MacEwan, Andrew ; Liss, Jennifer A. ; Ilik, Violeta …
identity management, authority control, linked library data, and bibliographic maintenance
-
Journal article
The 28th International Conference on the History of Cartography, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 14–19 July 2019
After 30 years the International Conference on the History of Cartography (ICHC) returned to Amsterdam for the 28th meeting entitled ‘Early Maps, Modern Perspectives. Understanding Early Maps in the Twenty-First Century’. In fact, there was no better time for the ICHC to come back to this city renowned for its...Peszko, Magdalena ; Doll, Andrew
-
Journal article
Libraries and the REF: how do librarians contribute to research excellence?
Librarians support research in a wide variety of ways. However, librarians may not always receive recognition for the valuable contributions they make to the research life cycle or research environments. In higher education institutions (HEIs), librarians face competition from other professional support services in addition to external organizations and suppliers....Walker, Dominic
research impact, REF, library, leadership, open research, and research assessment
-
Journal article
Innovations in Learning and Teaching in Academic Libraries: Alignment, Collaboration, and the Social Turn
Academic libraries are central to the learning, teaching and research enterprise of their institutions. As emphasised by Brophy (2005, p. 216) “Academic libraries are here to enable and enhance learning in all its forms – whether it be the learning of a first year undergraduate coming to terms with what...Corrall, Sheila ; Jolly, Liz
-
Journal article
Feasibility Study Into the Reporting of Research Information at a National Level Within the UK Higher Education Sector
This article presents the key findings of feasibility and scoping study into the reporting of research information at a national level within the United Kingdom, based on Common European Research Information Format (CERIF). The study was carried out by the Jisc-funded UK Research Information Shared Service (UKRISS) project. The reporting...Waddington, Simon ; Sudlow, Allan ; Walshe, Karen ; Scoble, Rosa ; Mitchell, Lorna …
CRIS, UKRISS, CERIF, research information, feasibility study, and Jisc
-
Journal article
‘And since that time has never been heard of…’ The forgotten boys of the sea: Marine Society merchant sea apprentices, 1772–1873
The supply of child labour during Britain’s industrial revolution conjures mental imagery of destitute children toiling in mines and mills, but in recent years, historians have demonstrated that children worked in many nooks and crannies of the economy, not just the highly visible new industries. The shipping industry was a...Withall, Caroline
maritime apprenticeship, Marine Society, indentures, child labour, merchant shipping, apprenticeship, and merchant seamen
-
Journal article
A Season of Place: Teaching Digital Mapping at the British Library
One of the British Library Digital Scholarship team’s core purposes is to deliver training to Library staff. Running since 2012, the main aim of the Digital Scholarship Training Program (DSTP) is to create opportunities for staff to develop the necessary skills and knowledge to support emerging areas of scholarship. Recently,...Keinan-Schoonbaert, Adi ; Rees, Gethin
training, access, British Library, Digital Scholarship, and digital mapping
-
Journal article
UK theses and the British Library EThOS service: from supply on demand to repository linking
This paper aims to describe the transition of EThOS, the British Library’s E-Theses Online service, from its original role as a transactional document supply service to the service seen today where it forms part of the UK’s network of institutional repositories, open access and still-developing research funder mandates.Gould, Sara
Doctoral research, Theses, Open access, and PhD
-
Journal article
MARC transformed: MARC and XML – the perfect partnership?
I first met a very British version of MARC (Machine Readable Cataloguing) in 1983, straight out of university. I didn't know anything about cataloguing, indexing, classification, or data. MARC made sense of it all. AACR2 (Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, 2nd Edition) was impenetrable without MARC as a framework. LCSH (Library of...Rosie, Heather
MarcEdit, LCSH, EThOS, Dublin Core, TDM, XML, MARC Report, metadata, MARC 21, MARC, OAI-PMH, and AACR2
-
Journal article
Development and mining of a database of historic European paper properties
A database of historic paper properties was developed using 729 samples of European origin (1350–1990), analysed for acidity, degree or polymerisation (DP), molecular weight of cellulose, grammage, tensile strength, as well as contents of ash, aluminium, carbonyl groups, rosin, protein, lignin and fibre furnish. Using Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient and...Strlič, Matija ; Liu, Yun ; Lichtblau, Dirk Andreas ; De Bruin, Gerrit ; Knight, Barry …