Search Constraints
Search Results
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Journal article
Scientific investigation of the Minsterley Maidens’ crowns
25 samples were taken from seven eighteenth-century commemorative Maidens’ Garlands and Crowns from Minsterley, Shropshire. The samples were investigated by digital microscopy, macro-X-ray fluorescence scanning, Raman microscopy and scanning electron microscopy with energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy. The study intended to obtain as much information as possible on the making of the...Risdonne, Valentina ; Melita, Lucia Noor ; Burgio, Lucia ; Morris, Rosie
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Report
Printed Books Selection and Binding Preparation Section at the British Museum / British Library. History and procedures
Historically, the Trustees of the Library always ensured that there were funds to repair and rebind the books in their care. The sums given varied and increased as new preservation and conservation techniques were devised. The latter included deacidifcation and lamination. Treatments were applied by the bindery located at the...King, Ed
lamination, service evaluation report , deacidification, Department of Printed Books, binding contracts, technical report, rebinding, preservation, and British Library Bindery
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Dataset
Datasets for toponym recognition and disambiguation for nineteenth-century English newspapers
We present two datasets, one for the task of toponym recognition and one for the task of toponym disambiguation. The datasets are derived from the "Dataset for Toponym Resolution in Nineteenth-Century English Newspapers" (DOI: https://doi.org/10.23636/r7d4-kw08). The toponym recognition dataset consists of two JSON files (ner_fine_train.json and ner_fine_dev.json), whereas the toponym...Coll Ardanuy, Mariona ; Nanni, Federico
toponym disambiguation, nineteenth-century newspapers, named entity recognition, entity linking, toponym resolution, toponym recognition, and dataset
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Dataset
DeezyMatch training set for OCR
Optical character recognition (OCR) is the process of automatically transcribing text from images. The presence of OCR-induced errors in digitised text is a common problem in the digital humanities. OCR errors are usually due to the misrecognition of characters, such as "h" recognised as "b", or "c" recognised as "o".... -
Conference paper (unpublished)
(Re)investing in a national repository infrastructure for cultural heritage
Since 2018, the British Library (BL) has invested considerable resource in establishing the necessary infrastructure for a national repository service for cultural heritage organisations, using Samvera Hyku. This has entailed working closely with all known Hyku suppliers and developers, as well as collaborating with the University of Virginia on an...Basford, Jenny ; Holt, Ilkay ; Jevon, Graham ; Ramsey, Nora
open access, OR2023, and repository
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Dataset
Diachronic word embeddings from 19th-century newspapers digitised by the British Library (1800-1919)
Word vectors related to the paper "Machines in the media: semantic change in the lexicon of mechanization in 19th-century British newspapers" by Nilo Pedrazzini and Barbara McGillivray (2022). The embeddings were trained on a 4.2-billion-word corpus of 19th-century British newspapers using Word2Vec and specific parameters. The embeddings are divided into...Pedrazzini, Nilo ; McGillivray, Barbara
historical semantics, word-vectors, late-modern-english, newspapers, diachronic-embeddings, and word2vec
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Dataset
Decade-level Word2Vec models from automatically transcribed 19th-century newspapers digitised by the British Library (1800-1919)
Word embeddings trained on a 4.2-billion-word corpus of 19th-century British newspapers using Word2Vec and specific parameters. The embeddings are divided into periods of ten years each. Unlike those in this repository, these were not aligned and OCR errors skimmed from the vocabulary. See related GitHub repository for the full documentation:...Pedrazzini, Nilo
historical semantics, British newspapers, word embeddings, word vectors, word2vec, and Late Modern English
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Book chapter
The sociability of scientific knowledge exchange in British Farming, 1950-90
This is a single chapter from an edited collection that has the following abstract: In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, agricultural practices and rural livelihoods were challenged by changes such as commercialization, intensified global trade, and rapid urbanization. Planting Seeds of Knowledge studies the relationship between these agricultural...Horrocks, Sally ; Martin, John ; Merchant, Paul
agrciculture, food, and farming
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Dataset
Incunabula Printed Catalogue Dataset: Volumes 1-10 copy of github repository
This dataset includes the github repository used to derive catalogue entries from volumes 1-10 of the "Catalogue of books printed in the 15th century now at the British Museum" (know as BMC). The BMC was published between 1908-2007 and comprises detailed descriptions of the incunabula collection at the British Library....British Library
book history, metadata, catalogues, datasets, incunabula, early printed books, and early printing
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Dataset
Incunabula Printed Catalogue Dataset: Volumes 1-10
This dataset includes the catalogue entries derived from volumes 1-10 of the "Catalogue of books printed in the 15th century now at the British Museum" (know as BMC). The BMC was published between 1908-2007 and comprises detailed descriptions of the incunabula collection at the British Library. The dataset was created...British Library
datasets, catalogues, early printing, book history, early printed books, metadata, and incunabula
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Dataset
Incunabula Printed Catalogue Dataset Metadata: Volumes 1-10
This dataset includes the combined catalogue entries derived from volumes 1-10 of the "Catalogue of books printed in the 15th century now at the British Museum" (know as BMC). The BMC was published between 1908-2007 and comprises detailed descriptions of the incunabula collection at the British Library. The dataset was...British Library
datasets, catalogues, early printing, incunabula, early printed books, metadata, and book history
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Poster (published)
Datafication and reuse of the descriptions of the incunabula collections at the British Library
The poster discusses the AHRC-RLUK Professional Practice Fellowship project which investigates the legacies of curatorial voice in the descriptions of incunabula collections at the British Library and their future reuse.Atanassova, Rossitza
historical catalogues, computational analysis, incunabula, catalogue data, and practitioner research
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Book chapter
Blue Heritage Among Fishermen of Mafia Island, Tanzania
Off the South-East coast of Tanzania, at the mouth of the Rufiji River, lies the Mafia archipelago. This chapter explores the concept of blue heritage by showing how the fishermen of Mafia have altered their language, perception of time and sense of community to include the sea and its animals....de Haan, Mariam
ethnography, Rufiji River, Tanzania, whale sharks, fishing communities, fishing, Mafia archipelago, and fish
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Journal article
Challenging legacies at the British Library
The British Library established a corporate Anti-Racism Project (2020) designed to encourage participation via six subgroups, with staff recommendations incorporated into “Enacting Change”, the Library's Race Equality Action Plan (2022). The research and recommendations of the Cataloguing and Metadata subgroup fed into a pilot project proposed as a proof of...Danskin, Alan
Caribbean, anti-racism, South Asia, Cataloguing, and Metadata
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Journal article
FAST the Inside Track: Where We Are, Where Do We Want to Be, and How Do We Get There?
This is an overview of the development of FAST (Faceted Application of Subject Terminology) from its inception in the late 1990s, through its development and implementation to the work being undertaken by OCLC and the FAST Policy and Outreach Committee (FPOC) to develop and promote FAST. FPOC members explain how... -
Dataset
Diachronic and diatopic word embeddings from newspapers digitised by the British Library (1830-1889): North and South England
Diachronic word embeddings (decade-level) trained with Word2Vec (via Gensim) on different geographic subcorpora of the Heritage Made Digital British and the Living with Machines historical newspaper collections: - North England (north.zip) - South England (south.zip) At the moment, for each subcorpus, Word2Vec models are available for each decade in the...Pedrazzini, Nilo ; McGillivray, Barbara
historical semantics, diachronic embeddings, late modern English, word embeddings, word vectors, word2vec, and diatopic embeddings
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Journal article
Writing Milan and Turin in the Light of (Failed) Utopia: Luciano Bianciardi and Paolo Volponi
This article examines a series of novels by Italian writers, Luciano Bianciardi and Paolo Volponi, that capture the transformations brought about by the post-World War II economic growth in the urban-industrial society of Northern Italy. The analysis draws on utopia as, in Ruth Levitas’s words, a ‘desire for a better...Brecciaroli, Giulia
Paolo Volponi, Utopia/dystopia, Turin, Luciano Bianciardi, Literary Urban Studies, Milan, and post-war Italian literature
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Dataset
Living with Machines Zooniverse Participant Survey
Summary results from a survey of contributors to Living with Machines Zooniverse crowdsourcing projects. Responses were received between 24 May and 13 June 2022. We designed the survey so that we could align our reporting with two other audience / participant research groups. Firstly, we used the demographic categories that...British Library
online volunteering, digital participation, citizen science, citizen history, questionnaire, crowdsourcing, survey, and audience research
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Poster (unpublished)
Changing Nature of the Visual Depiction of the Levant in the Early Printed Maps
This poster is part of a wider research project which demonstrates the transformation of topography, toponyms, and the hydrographic network of Cyprus and the Levant region represented in the maps, from the earliest printed map of the region (printed in 1477) up to the mid-19th century.Peszko, Magdalena
maps, toponyms, Middle East, cartography, early printed maps, and Levant
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Journal article
Kaitiakitanga: Utilising Māori Holistic Conservation in Heritage Institutions
It is imperative that heritage institutions deal with the legacies of colonialism within their collections, the way this material is retained, preserved, displayed and interpreted, and the impact that this will have on local and global audiences. Failing to do so risks such organisations being perceived as the beneficiaries of...Nolan, Scott Ratima
empowerment, Māori, collections, custodianship, inclusion, and Kaitiakitanga
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Journal article
Vehicularizing the vernacular: using the periodical press to popularize vernacular languages in Soviet Turkic communities
The study of language and script change among the Turkic communities of the Soviet Union often focuses on the switch from Arabic to Latin scripts. Less attention is paid to adaptations of the Arabic script to Turkic vernaculars, and to attempts aimed at convincing the literate masses of their usefulness....Erdman, Michael J.
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Book chapter
Hunting for Treasure: Living with Machines and the British Library Newspaper Collection
This chapter discusses the open access digitisation programme undertaken by Living with Machines, exploring the range of constraints that inform digitisation strategies and selection priorities. Because the landscape of digitised newspaper collections is so complex, and research and digitisation processes operate on different timelines, we have focused on opportunities to...Tolfo, Giorgia ; Vane, Olivia ; Beelen, Kaspar ; Hosseini, Kasra ; Lawrence, Jon …
interdisciplinarity, digitised newspaper collections, digital corpus, research workflows, and digitisation strategy
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Dataset
UK Doctoral Thesis Metadata from EThOS
This dataset has been superseded by a more recent version: https://doi.org/10.23636/rcm4-zk44. If you require access to an earlier version, please email openaccess@bl.uk, including the dataset title, date, and DOI in your request. The data in this collection comprises the bibliographic metadata for all UK doctoral theses listed in EThOS, the...British Library ; Rosie, Heather
higher education, dissertations, PhD, doctoral, and EThOS
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Book
Making Miracles in Medieval England
The cult of the saints was central to medieval Christianity largely due to the miraculous. Saints were members of the elect of heaven and could intercede with God on the behalf of supplicants. Whilst people visited shrines and prayed to the saints for many reasons it was the hope of...Lynch, Tom
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Journal article
The British Library – rethinking physical storage
Purpose The British Library (BL) faces a significant challenge with storage space predicted to run out within the next three years. However, alongside a plan to create additional capacity, the BL also intends to take the opportunity to rethink the integration of storage and workflows in order to implement a...Appleyard, Andrew H.
storage, library, automated, sustainability, and repository
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Book chapter
Library partnerships in an age of openness
Librarians are strong collaborators. As we move toward the “next normal,” partnerships and collaboration will play an even larger role. In our post-pandemic world, what does “open” mean in terms of access to libraries, their staff, and their services? National libraries, for example, are still, to some extent, fixed in...Jolly, Liz
public libraries, collaboration, hybrid digital, open libraries, COVID-19 and libraries, library partnerships, national libraries, British Library, library mission, and access
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Dataset
Review of Information Studies Courses in Higher Education for Web Archive Provision
This project reviewed the curriculum of information studies postgraduate courses in a number of countries across Europe. The curriculum for Library Studies, Archival Studies, Record Management and Digital Curation/Preservation and Digital Humanities were reviewed to see if there was any reference to web archiving. As these web pages were reviewed... -
Conference paper (published)
“Webcomics Archive? Now I'm Interested”: Comics Readers Seeking Information in Web Archives
There is a longstanding tradition of understanding information needs and interaction behavior across different user groups to inform the design of digital products and services. There is a gap in such research of comics readers, specifically how they seek and interact with the information and interfaces of web-based archives provided...Berube, Linda ; Makri, Stephann ; Cooke, Ian ; Priego, Ernesto ; Wisdom, Stella
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Presentation
Copyright and rights management
Focussing on UK copyright law this talk discusses the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 and how different types of copyright cover different types of output e.g. literary, artistic, dramatic and musical. The complex area of copyright clearance and the different layers of rights within one item is outlined. Who...Davidson, Alison
UK copyright, copyright exceptions, rights management, copyright clearance, and GLAM
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Presentation
Introduction
The presentations from this first webinar address some of the topics that attendees at the first in person event for the Repository Training Programme for Cultural Heritage Professionals raised. The topics covered in this webinar included: research activities in GLAM, benefits of research repositories, persistent identifiers, research data management, and...Holt, Ilkay
copyright, repository, persistent identifiers, rights management, GLAM, and research data management
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Presentation
Research and practice in heritage
The British Library is an example of an independent research organisation and the types of research that is undertaken in GLAM institutions is outlined. Research within GLAM institutions will feed into things like exhibitions, access, assessment and interpretation of the collections. Activities can include providing the metadata for collection items, preservation, conservation, development of...Kotarski, Rachael
PR Voices, SPARKLE, Practice based research, Independent Research Organisation, and GLAM
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Presentation
Research Data Management
Research Data Management (RDM) is an active process and should be considered throughout the research lifecycle. Ethical principles such as FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reproducible) data sharing and the CARE principles are outlined. Data Management Plans and where to store research data are also addressed.Holt, Ilkay
ethical research data management, GLAM, data management plans, and research data management
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Presentation
Persistent identifiers
This talk outlines the basics of persistent identifiers and some of the activity the British Library is doing around persistent identifiers. How persistent identifiers such as DOIs and ORCiDs are used within research systems is described.Kotarski, Rachael
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Presentation
Repositories to facilitate open research
Description of the British Library's research repository service, how it works, what you can find there and the range of research undertaken at the British Library.Basford, Jenny
research, GLAM, and repository
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Presentation
British Library Shared Repository Service: Research Showcase. Royal Botanic Gardens Kew.
This talk outlines the experience of Royal Botanic Gardens Kew with the British Library's shared repository service. The range of research undertaken at Kew is outlined. The reasons Kew was interested in establishing a repository included needing a mechanism to publicly share all its research outputs, to be able to meet their future obligations...Griffin, Anne
research, independent research organisation, Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, repository service, and GLAM
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Blog post
Mapping Caribbean Diasporic Networks through the Correspondence of Andrew Salkey
This is a guest post by Natalie Lucy, a PhD student at University College London, who recently undertook a British Library placement to work on a project Mapping Caribbean Diasporic Networks through the correspondence of Andrew Salkey.Lucy, Natalie
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Dataset
Dataset mapping the movement of Salkey's correspondents across the globe
Microsoft CSV file dataset created for Kepler to map the movement of Salkey's correspondents across the globeBritish Library
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Dataset
Gephi Dataset for "Mapping Caribbean Diasporic Networks through Correspondence"
Microsoft CSV file dataset created in Gephi that can be uploaded in Gephi to create the visualisation of the network.British Library
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Dataset
Spatial network dataset for "Mapping the Caribbean Diaspora through Andrew Salkey"
Microsoft csv. file dataset created for Kepler mapping the geographical movement of correspondentsBritish Library
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Workflow
Mapping the Caribbean Diaspora through Andrew Salkey's Correspondence
A British Library PhD Placement project to map the Caribbean Diasporic Network evident in the correspondence files of the Andrew Salkey Archive using data visualisation platforms Gephi and Kepler. The aim of the project was to map the movement of the correspondents across the globe overtime and create visualisations of...British Library
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Dataset
Kepler Dataset for "Mapping the Caribbean Diaspora through Andrew Salkey's Correspondence"
Dataset created in Kepler to map the movement of the Caribbean diasporic network present in Andrew Salkey's correspondence files.British Library
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Dataset
All Data for "Mapping the Caribbean Diaspora through Andrew Salkey's Correspondence"
Microsoft excel of all of the metadata created by the project.British Library
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Journal article
Current Issues with Cataloging Printed Music: Challenges Facing Staff and Systems
This paper explores the challenges currently faced by music cataloguers, with particular regard to their training and the systems they work with. It asks whether music catalogers feel they have enough support and training to do their work; it investigates the skills they require, and how they might be taught....Fisher, Meg ; Rafferty, Pauline
cataloging printed music, cataloging training, and Cataloging research
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Book
Catalogue of Burmese Printed Books in the India Office Library
The India Office Library’s Burmese printed books, numbering some 2,800 works, constitute one the largest collections in the West and include many representative examples of Burmese writing from the early nineteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth century. They are thus of special value and interest for students, scholars,...Whitbread, Kenneth
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Book
Catalogue of the Pāli printed books in the India Office Library
The present catalogue includes all the Pali texts and translations from the Pali, whether in Sinhalese, Burmese, Devanagari, Thai, Bengali or romanised scripts, held by the India Office Library. (Burmese nissaya books, Pali texts in which each phrase is followed by its Burmese translation, are included in a separate catalogue...Raper, T. C. H.
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Book
Catalogue of the Burney Parabaiks in the India Office Library with an appendix by Evans Lewin, Patricia Herbert and D. K. Wyatt listing the Burney Papers in the Library of the Royal Commonwealth Society
This is the third volume in the British Academy’s Oriental Documents Series dealing with documents preserved in the India Office Library and Records, and the first to be published on the Committee’s behalf by the British Library. Responsibility for the administration and management of the India Office Library and Records...Blackmore, Thaung
Myanmar, Henry Burney, folding books, and Burma
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Journal article
A literature review of palm leaf manuscript conservation—Part 2: historic and current conservation treatments, boxing and storage, religious and ethical issues, recommendations for best practice
Abstract The closure of the British Library during the 2020–2021 COVID-19 pandemic allowed the conservation department to undertake a treatment review of the conservation of palm leaf manuscripts in order to make better-informed decisions about the treatment of these complex objects. As part of the review a questionnaire was posted...Wiland, Julia ; Brown, Rick ; Fuller, Lizzie ; Havelock, Lea ; Johnson, Jackie …
traditional preservation methods, palm leaf, ethical conservation, boxing, and long-term storage
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Journal article
A literature review of palm leaf manuscript conservation—Part 1: a historic overview, leaf preparation, materials and media, palm leaf manuscripts at the British Library and the common types of damage
Abstract The closure of the British Library during the 2020–2021 COVID-19 pandemic allowed the conservation department to undertake a treatment review of the conservation of palm leaf manuscripts in order to make better-informed decisions about the treatment of these complex objects. As part of the review a questionnaire was posted... -
Journal article
Deconstruction and ‘Re-Volumization’: The Thomason Collection in the Past, Present, and Future
The Thomason Tracts that arrived at the British Museum as the gift of George III were in a rigorous chronological order, which was mirrored by Thomason’s own twelve-volume manuscript catalogue. Though Thomason boasted that by means of the catalogue even a single sheet could be found ‘instantly’, even more important...Mendle, Michael
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Journal article
From The Queen’s College to Montagu House: The History of the Thomason Tracts after the Restoration
Although the Thomason collection is rightly regarded as one of the treasures of the British Library, its survival was by no means inevitable. This chapter revisits the convoluted history of its fortunes after Thomason ceased collecting in 1661, shedding new light upon his own hopes and expectations regarding its fate,...Stoker, David
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Journal article
Scattered about the Streets: George Thomason’s Annotations and Ephemeral Print during the English Revolution
Thomason is rightly famous for his tendency to annotate individual pamphlets, and his notes have long been exploited by scholars in order to trace his connections with various authors, to contextualise individual items, and to enhance our appreciation of writers and the debates in which they participated. This chapter subjects...Peacey, Jason
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Journal article
Milton’s Sonnet XIV and the poetry of George Thomason
It has long been recognised that Thomason was well connected, and that his friends included men like John Milton. This essay uses the sonnet that Milton wrote in honour of Thomason’s wife as the springboard for a discussion of a neglected aspect of the Thomason tracts: its poetry. It thus...Nevitt, Marcus
Thomason Tracts, George Thomason, Catharine Thomason, and John Milton
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Journal article
The Politics and Meaning of Thomason’s Tracts
This article takes as its starting point the reputation of Thomason's collection as royalist in orientation. It examines whether Thomason’s collection reflects 1640s and 1650s press output more broadly - offering a quantitative account of this - and whether the items he chose to purchase, and those he did not,...Raymond, Joad
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Journal article
The Thomason Tracts and Presbyterian Mobilization
This chapter uses the Thomason Tracts as a collection, as well as the partisan attitudes of Thomason himself, to assess the use of print in the bitter conflicts that divided parliamentarians in the 1640s. It compares the stress on division revealed in printed accounts of two particularly fraught episodes in...Hughes, Anne
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Journal article
Search and Seize: Partisan Publishers and Press Controls in Thomason’s London
The Thomason collection is recognised as being vital for exploring the dramatic developments in print culture that accompanied the English Revolution, not least those that were made possible by the collapse of press censorship in 1641. Less widely appreciated is that it also sheds valuable light upon the attempts that...Como, David R.
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Journal article
John Hammond and the Explosion of Print in 1641: Commercial and Political Opportunities
One of the great values of Thomason’s collection of civil war tracts and newsbooks is the opportunity that it affords for analysing the nature of the print trade during a key phase of the so-called ‘print revolution’. Given the so-called ‘explosion’ of cheap print that accompanied the descent into civil...Braddick, Michael J.
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Journal article
George Thomason and London in the 1650s
Thomason’s involvement in public politics, which had been extensive during the 1640s, brought him considerable personal trouble following the execution of Charles I, an event that he clearly opposed. Like many others who had been active Presbyterians before 1649, he became an opponent of the republican regime, and this chapter...Vernon, Elliot
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Journal article
‘Honest George’: George Thomason and London during the Civil War and Revolution
Part of the fascination with Thomason is that he was more than merely a prominent bookseller who collected a vast collection of civil war pamphlets and newspapers. He was also an active participant in public life, in terms of the workings of the Stationers’ Company and in terms of political...Lindley, Keith ; Peacey, Jason
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Dataset
The Newspaper Press Directory (1846-1920) - enriched and structured version
Mitchell's Newspaper Press Directories contained an almost complete list of newspapers published in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. It was published regularly from 1846 onwards and provided a detailed description of the newspaper landscape over time. This version contains a structured, tabular representation of the directories (as CSV or Excel...C. Mitchell and Co. ; British Library
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Exhibition object labels
Living with Machines: Human stories from the industrial age (exhibition board text)
‘Living with Machines: Human stories from the industrial age’ was a free exhibition at Leeds City Museum from July 2022-January 2023. It explored how machines and mechanisation changed life and work in Leeds and the surrounding regions. A collaboration between the British Library and Leeds City Museum, the exhibition was...Ridge, Mia ; McGoldrick, John
history of science, mechanisation, data science, industrialisation, history of technology, and information visualisation
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Dataset
Stockton Herald, South Durham and Cleveland Advertiser
Stockton Herald, South Durham and Cleveland Advertiser. (1858 - 1918) was a weekly newspaper which has been digitised by the British Library for the Living with Machines projectBritish Library
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Journal article
Cretaceous gnetalean yields first preserved plant gum
Some liquid plant exudates (e.g. resin) can be found preserved in the fossil record. However, due to their high solubility, gums have been assumed to dissolve before fossilisation. The visual appearance of gums (water-soluble polysaccharides) is so similar to other plant exudates, particularly resin, that chemical testing is essential to...Roberts, Emily A. ; Seyfullah, Leyla J. ; Loveridge, Robert F. ; Garside, Paul ; Martill, David M.
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Journal article
The Use of Risk Management to Support Preventive Conservation
Risk management approaches have been increasingly used at the British Library to inform and support collection care decisions. This paper addresses the ways in which these methods have been used to address specific preservation issues at the Library, using appropriate case studies: rehousing the microfilm collection, adapting pest management protocols,...Garside, Paul ; Bradford, Karen ; Hamlyn, Sarah
collection care, preservation, risk management, and risk assessment