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2022
Journal article
AI training resources for GLAM: a snapshot
We take a snapshot of current resources available for teaching and learning AI with a focus on the Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums (GLAM) community. The review was carried out in 2021 and 2022. The review provides an overview of material we identified as being relevant, offers a description of... -
2022
Journal article
Discovering the local in national cultural heritage collections. How web maps can help the UK public engage with their ‘own places’
Identity is a critical influence on the public’s engagement with cultural heritage. This article emphasises the role of geographical scale in this relationship examining how the presentation of local heritage can foster meaningful engagement with collections. The geographical information embedded in digital collections – such as where objects were made... -
2022
Journal article
The New Media Writing Prize Special Collection
This article introduces the New Media Writing Prize (NMWP) special collection (https://www.webarchive.org.uk/en/ukwa/collection/2912) created on behalf of the six UK Legal Deposit Libraries and hosted by the UK Web Archive. It is divided into two sections, presenting the perspectives of the archivists and the organizers of the prize respectively. The first...Rossi, Giulia Carla ; Pyke, Tegan ; Pope, James ; Skains, R. Lyle ; Wisdom, Stella
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2022
Journal article
Facts, Fictions, and Fascism: A Life of Actor Mary Taviner (1909-1972)
Despite an acting career spanning both silent film and talkies, as well as London and regional theatre, Mary Taviner was not a household name. In fact she attracted more press coverage for her political views, being an active fascist from the 1930s to the 1960s. She fell in with, and...Michael, St John-McAlister
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2022
Journal article
Sir Hans Sloane’s Books: Seventy Years of Research
The library of Sir Hans Sloane (1660-1753), became one of the foundations of the British Museum, but was dispersed among other collections within the Museum, and for over 250 years it has not been possible to view it as a whole. The Sloane Printed Books Project aims to provide a...Walker, Alison
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2022
Journal article
A Dataset for Toponym Resolution in Nineteenth-Century English Newspapers
We present a new dataset for the task of toponym resolution in digitized historical newspapers in English. It consists of 343 annotated articles from newspapers based in four different locations in England (Manchester, Ashton-under-Lyne, Poole and Dorchester), published between 1780 and 1870. The articles have been manually annotated with mentions... -
2022
Journal article
Beethoven Exhibition at the British Library
Ridgewell, Rupert
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2022
Journal article
The International Standard Name Identifier: extending identity management across the global metadata supply chain
This article describes how ISNI is being adopted as a common identifier across disparate sectors of publishing. Whether publishing and distributing recorded music, film or text ISNI is making good identity management a staple element in the global metadata supply chain. As the content creation industries become more engaged with...MacEwan, Andrew
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2022
Journal article
Orwell’s Political Pamphlet ‘Solar System’: A Network Interpretation of a British Library Collection
This article examines the network of publishers, authors and topics included in George Orwell’s Collection of Political Pamphlets at the British Library (shelfmark 1899.ss.1-49.), some of which were catalogued as part of a Ph.D. placement in 2019. It explores how the pamphlets came to be held at the British Library,...Treacher, Claudia
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2022
Journal article
American Political Pamphlets 1917-1945 at the British Library
The twentieth century was a golden age of pamphleteering in America, especially during the period between the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the conclusion of the Second World War in 1945. Pamphlets were vital tools for radical organizations in educating and communicating with their own members and persuading the public...Collins, Jodie
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2022
Journal article
Selected English Masonic Bookbindings
Books as artefacts, as well as the texts that they contain, play a fundamental role in English freemasonry. The esteem in which they were held is shown in paintings. This detail comes from a portrait of freemason Dr Robert Crucefix (1797-1850) who is shown with significant items of regalia as...Marks, P. J. M.
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2022
Journal article
British Library Additional Manuscript 8537 as a Source for Florentine/Pisan University History
British Library Additional Manuscript 8537 contains a selection of statutes related to the university of Florence and Pisa from the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. The manuscript was originally produced to specifically document rulings between the institution and Florentine government, suggesting it may have been a personal vademecum of...Rossi, Elena
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2022
Journal article
A Sense of Place: The ‘London’ Cityscapes of BL, Royal MS. 13 A. III
The British Library, Royal MS. 13 A. III, containing a copy of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia regum Britannie, was likely produced in southeast England in or around London between the late thirteenth century and the first quarter of the fourteenth century. The only manuscript with an extended series of illustrations,...Chunko-Dominguez, Betsy
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2021
Journal article
‘The Great Bowyer Bible’: Robert Bowyer and the Macklin Bible
This article examines an iconic example of grangerizing: the Macklin Bible extra-illustrated in 45 volumes by London artist and bookseller Robert Bowyer (1758‐1834) in the first quarter of the nineteenth century (Bolton Libraries and Museums, Bolton, United Kingdom). The principal focus is on the Bowyer Bible as an example of...Billingsley, Naomi
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2021
Journal article
Covid-19 and the Future of the Digital Shift amongst Research Libraries: An RLUK Perspective in Context
Research Libraries UK is a consortium of 37 of the UK and Ireland’s largest research libraries with the purpose of convening its members around the key issues that affect them, to represent their collective voice, to support them as they face shared challenges, and to be an effective advocate on...Baxter, Guy ; Beard, Lorraine ; Beattie, Gavin ; Blake, Michelle ; Greenhall, Matthew …
library services, library space, academic libraries, Covid-19 pandemic, and digital shift
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2021
Journal article
MapReader: A Computer Vision Pipeline for the Semantic Exploration of Maps at Scale
We present MapReader, a free, open-source software library written in Python for analyzing large map collections (scanned or born-digital). This library transforms the way historians can use maps by turning extensive, homogeneous map sets into searchable primary sources. MapReader allows users with little or no computer vision expertise to i)...Hosseini, Kasra ; Wilson, Daniel C.S. ; Beelen, Kaspar ; McDonough, Katherine
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2018
Journal article
Babbage among the insurers: Big 19th-century data and the public interest
This article examines life assurance and the politics of ‘big data’ in mid-19th-century Britain. The datasets generated by life assurance companies were vast archives of information about human longevity. Actuaries distilled these archives into mortality tables – immensely valuable tools for predicting mortality and so pricing risk. The status of...Wilson, Daniel C.S.
public interest, Thomas Rowe Edmonds, big data, Charles Babbage, and insurance
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2021
Journal article
The Spiral-Locked Letters of Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots
This article presents evidence about the use of the ‘spiral lock’, a highly secure letterlocking mechanism used by Elizabeth I, Mary, Queen of Scots, and other letter-writers in early modern Europe, to secure their correspondence shut. After explaining the concept of letterlocking, a centuries-old communication security technique, we demonstrate how...Dambrogio, Jana ; Smith, Daniel Starza ; Pellecchia, Jennifer ; Wiggins, Alison ; Clarke, Andrea …
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2021
Journal article
A Transcription and Translation of Sloane MS. 2131, Robert Ashley’s (1561-1641) Vita: with Additional Biographical Details
British Library Sloane MS. 2131, Vita, is an autobiography written in Latin by Robert Ashley (1565-1641), bibliophile, lawyer, and translator. Ashley bequeathed his collection of approximately 5000 books to establish a library at Middle Temple, one of the four Inns of Court. This is the first full transcription and translation...Kelser, Astrid ; Nelson, Jennifer K. ; Satterley, Renae
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2021
Journal article
The Alice N. Hays Notebook: A Tour of Early Twentieth-Century Library Methods in the UK and Europe
In the summer of 1909, Stanford librarian Alice Newman Hays embarked on a journey to visit libraries across England and Europe, compiling a record of cataloguing practices to share with her colleagues back in California. Among the stops on Alice's journey were prestigious institutions like the Bodleian Library and British...Jordan, Jessica Camille
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2021
Journal article
Hans Sloane, Samuel Pepys, and the Evidence of a Lost Pepys Library Catalogue
This article examines the relationship between Hans Sloane (1660–1753) and Samuel Pepys (1633–1703), two celebrated book collectors of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Pepys's and Sloane's connection is traced back to the mid 1680s and to their attendance at the Royal Society. A mysterious leaf in Sloane's papers...Loveman, Kate
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2021
Journal article
The Formation, development and curation of the Tapling Collection at the British Museum Library in the Nineteenth Century
In 1891 Thomas Keay Tapling bequeathed his near complete, worldwide collection of stamps and postal stationery to the British Museum Library. To celebrate the 130th anniversary of this event which created the British Library's Philatelic Collections, this article provides an overview of the Tapling Collection's formation, development and early curation...Morel, Richard Scott
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2021
Journal article
From popular to rare: Acquisition and preservation policies at the British Museum Library in Panizzi’s time
Large quantities of Italian early modern books were dispersed on a vast scale mainly from the 1760s onwards as a consequence of the decline of the local aristocracy, the French Revolution and the suppressions of religious libraries. Increasing interest in the Italian Renaissance and its historical importance strongly influenced the...Carnelos, Laura
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2021
Journal article
The Papers of Edward Scott, Keeper of Manuscripts at the British Museum 1888-1904
Edward Scott (1840-1918) was a member of the Department of Manuscripts, British Museum for just over forty years, 1863-1904. From 1888 until his retirement he was Keeper of Manuscripts and yet he is not as well remembered as his predecessors or successors. In 2014 the British Library acquired a small...Wright, C.J.
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2021
Journal article
Trusting in God: Religious Inscriptions on Malay Seals
Malay seals – which can be defined as seals from Southeast Asia with inscriptions in Arabic script – date from the 16th to the 20th centuries, and originate from all parts of Nusantara. The inscriptions on Malay seals serve to identify the seal owner through his (or her) name or...Gallop, Annabel Teh
Malay seals, sigillography, Islamic seals, and religious inscriptions
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2020
Journal article
Information School academics and the value of their personal digital archives
Introduction: This paper explores the value that academics in an information school assign to their digital files and how this relates to their personal information management and personal digital archiving practices. Method: An interpretivist qualitative approach was adopted with data from in-depth interviews and participant-led tours of their digital storage...Drosopoulou, Loukia ; Cox, Andrew M.
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2020
Journal article
In Consideration of Our Mutual Relationship with Cats
Felis catus, the only domesticated species of cat in the family Felidae, flourishes on every continent except Antarctica. Able to thrive in almost any climate and habitat, it is among the world's most invasive species. Current estimates of the global cat population, including pet, stray, and feral cats, range from...Breedlove, Byron ; Igunma, Jana
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2021
Journal article
Archival strategies for contemporary collecting in a world of big data: Challenges and opportunities with curating the UK web archive
In this contribution, we will discuss the opportunities and challenges arising from memory institutions' need to redefine their archival strategies for contemporary collecting in a world of big data. We will reflect on this topic by critically examining the case study of the UK Web Archive, which is made up...Bingham, Nicola Jayne ; Byrne, Helena
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2021
Journal article
Can I believe what I see? Data visualisation and trust in the humanities
Questions of trust are increasingly important in relation to data and its use. The authors focus on humanities data and its visualisation, through analysis of their own recent projects with museums, archives and libraries internationally. Their account connects the specifics of hands-on digital humanities work to larger epistemological questions. They...Boyd Davis, Stephen ; Vane, Olivia ; Kräutli, Florian
scepticism, critical design, interdisciplinarity, ethics, digital humanities, interrogability, data visualisation, and GLAM
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2020
Journal article
A Silent Minority, unheard and unseen? A reflective account of methodological and linguistic challenges in research with older people ageing with Deafblindness
With reference to a specific, ongoing doctoral research project on the lived experience of vulnerability among older deafblind people (DBV), this paper aims to present and discuss some of the unique challenges, as well as opportunities, that investigators are likely to encounter when conducting research with older deafblind people, as...Bacchini, Simone ; Simcock, Peter
deafblindness, qualitative research, older people, communication
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2018
Journal article
Re-viewing William Blake’s Paradise Regained (c. 1816–1820)
This article presents a revisionist reading of William Blake’s (1757–1827) twelve watercolor designs for John Milton’s “Paradise Regained” (c. 1816–1820). The designs have previously been dismissed in critical commentary as of little interest to Blake scholarship, or regarded as a narrative merely about Christ’s human nature. This article argues that they...Billingsley, Naomi
Baptism of Christ, cosmology, Temptations of Christ, William Blake, Satan, Paradise Regained, and John Milton
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2018
Journal article
An ‘Apostle of Futurity’: William Blake as Herald of a Universal Religious Worldview
This article examines a strand of William Blake criticism from the second quarter of the twentieth century that styled his work as an embodiment of a universal religious worldview. In particular, it focuses on the writings of Max Plowman and John Middleton Murry from the mid 1920s to the early...Billingsley, Naomi
vision, pacifism, William Blake, Max Plowman, John Middleton Murry, and religion
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2020
Journal article
‘No Mercenary Views’? Constable’s English Landscape
Constable’s English Landscape 1830–2, a set of twenty-two mezzotints by David Lucas after paintings by the artist, has generally been viewed from art historical and biographical perspectives that connect its irregular production, aesthetic character and commercial failure to the artist’s creative and personal life or the development of Romanticism. This...Myrone, Felicity
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2021
Journal article
Consul Joseph Smith’s Gold-Tooled Leather Bookbindings
To some researchers Consul Joseph Smith's (1682-1770) favoured binding style would comprise plain white/cream parchment covers and coloured spine pieces. There are many examples in the library of George III. This tells only part of the whole story, however, as more elaborate styles exist. As a bibliophile Smith would at...Marks, P. J. M.
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2020
Journal article
Reviewing football history through the UK Web Archive
The UK Web Archive aims to archive, preserve and give access to the UK webspace. This aim is achieved through an annual domain crawl, in addition to frequent crawls of selected websites and specially curated collections. These collections reflect important aspects of British culture and events that shape society. Sport...Byrne, Helena
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2021
Journal article
James McNeill Whistler to Richard D’Oyly Carte: A Letter Comes to Light at the British Library
Recently catalogued papers of the Doyly Carte family held at the British Library have brought to light a ‘lost’ letter from the American artist James McNeill Whistler to theatrical impresario and hotelier Richard D’Oyly Carte. The letter refers to Whistler’s decoration scheme for Carte’s home at No. 4 Adelphi Terrace...Beckett, Chris
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2021
Journal article
Edward Spencer Dodgson, the Basque language, and the British Museum Library
Edward Spencer Dodgson (1857-1922) studied Classics at Oxford University, but there is no evidence that he sat his Finals. A visit to the Basque Country in 1886 began a life-long, passionate devotion to the Basque language and bibliography. He published new editions of important early texts and a series of...West, Geoffrey
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2014
Journal article
Using Archaeological Information to Promote Peaceful Co-existence in Israel/Palestine
The issue of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and role of archaeology in helping sustain it has been thoroughly discussed, especially in the last decade. The social, ideological, religious and cultural dissonances present in today’s Israel/Palestine are important contributing factors behind this intractable conflict. Some of these disparities are closely linked with...Keinan-Schoonbaert, Adi
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2014
Journal article
Citizen archaeologists. Online collaborative research about the human past
Archaeology has a long tradition of volunteer involvement but also faces considerable challenges in protecting and understanding a geographically widespread, rapidly dwindling and ever threatened cultural resource. This paper considers a newly launched, multi-application crowdsourcing project called MicroPasts that enables both community-led and massive online contributions to high quality research...Bevan, Andrew ; Pett, Daniel ; Bonacchi, Chiara ; Keinan-Schoonbaert, Adi ; Lombraña González, Daniel …
MicroPasts, citizen science, crowd-sourcing, archaeology, and heritage
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2015
Journal article
Collective Re-Excavation and Lost Media from the Last Century of British Prehistoric Studies
There are thousands of forgotten archaeological archives hidden away in repositories all over the world, lost worlds where many scholars have toiled away for years, trying to record every detail and bit of information available about rare and precious archaeological objects in an attempt to bring order and understanding to...Wexler, Jennifer ; Bevan, Andrew ; Bonacchi, Chiara ; Keinan-Schoonbaert, Adi ; Pett, Daniel …
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2015
Journal article
Experiments in Crowd-funding Community Archaeology
This article reviews existing case studies in the ‘crowd-funding’ of community archaeology, as well as offering preliminary results from a small-scale experiment conducted alongside the wider crowd-sourcing efforts of the MicroPasts project (http://micropasts.org). In so-doing, it also considers the possible role of a hybrid reward- and donation-based model for micro-financing... -
2016
Journal article
Digitising the British Library’s collection of Hebrew manuscripts: Challenges and insights
The British Library’s collection of Hebrew manuscripts is one of the most significant in the world. Funded by The Polonsky Foundation, the Hebrew Manuscripts Digitisation Project has been digitising 1,250 manuscripts since 2013, in line with the Library’s commitment to digitisation and opening up access to its collections. The main...Keinan-Schoonbaert, Adi ; Lewis, Miriam
British Library, the Polonsky Foundation, digitisation, project workflow, Hebrew manuscripts, and digital scholarship
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2020
Journal article
Popular History in the Black British Press: Edward Scobie’s Tropic and Flamingo, 1960-64
This article uses Edward Scobie, the Dominican-born journalist and historian, as an entry point for recovering histories of the Black British press and popular history. Examining two commercial Black magazines from the early 1960s, Tropic and Flamingo, it identifies the political utility of Black British history. Reflecting on presentist and...Oppenheim, Naomi
Caribbean, Black history, post-war Britain, 1960s, magazines, temporalities, and reparative
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2020
Journal article
From Print to Digital: First Steps in Collecting Digital Music Publications in UK Legal Deposit Libraries
As a result of the 2013 Non-Print Legal Deposit Regulations, the UK’s legal deposit libraries acquired two large collections of digital music publications in PDF format: 43,165 from Music Sales and 13,167 from Faber Music. These constitute their back catalogues for the period 2013 to 2018. This paper considers the...Roper, Amelie
digital music publications, Faber Music, Music Sales, and legal deposit
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2020
Journal article
MPs on the Subject of STEMM: What Can Oral History Tell Us?
A growing collection of archived oral history interviews with former MPs offers historians new opportunities to study the influences that have directed MPs’ routes into elected office and their behaviour in the House of Commons. This article draws on evidence in the interviews to consider the extent to which an...Ledgerwood, Emmeline
science, maths, medicine, committee, occupation, technology, engineering, oral history, and MP
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2020
Journal article
Understanding multispectral imaging of cultural heritage: Determining best practice in MSI analysis of historical artefacts
Although multispectral imaging (MSI) of cultural heritage, such as manuscripts, documents and artwork, is becoming more popular, a variety of approaches are taken and methods are often inconsistently documented. Furthermore, no overview of the process of MSI capture and analysis with current technology has previously been published. This research was...Jones, Cerys ; Duffy, Christina ; Gibson, Adam ; Terras, Melissa
workflow, best practice, digitization, cultural heritage imaging, advanced imaging analysis, and multispectral imaging
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2020
Journal article
Knowledge management and information management: A tale of two siblings
Confusion has long existed between knowledge management (KM) and information management (IM). To the uninitiated, the difference between KM and IM is unclear – largely because there are no universally accepted definitions of ‘knowledge’ and ‘information’. But the confusion is not limited to the uninitiated. KM and IM specialists argue...Payne, Judy ; Fryer, Jonathan
knowledge and information management confusion, KM, IM, information management, and knowledge management
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2021
Journal article
A Survey of the Art Works Connected to Adam Gumpelzhaimer with Revelations about his Compendium musicae
This study contains the first detailed survey of the art works connected to the influential Augsburg Kantor, composer, teacher and music theorist Adam Gumpelzhaimer (1559–1625) and demonstrates that they are much more plentiful and widespread than previously realized. For instance, this survey examines nineteen portraits of Gumpelzhaimer whereas only four...Charteris, Richard
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2020
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 …
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2020
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
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2020
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
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2013
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
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2020
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
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2020
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
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2019
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
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2019
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
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2009
Journal article
The European Documentation Centre at the British Library: An Appraisal of the Last Year
Since July 2007 the British Library (BL) has housed a European Documentation Centre (EDC). Now, on its second anniversary it is possible to take a moment and reflect on the successes of the last year for one of the newer EDCs in the Europe Direct network. The basic purpose of...Jenkins, Jeremy
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2001
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 …
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2012
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
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2006
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
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2019
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
children and youth, education, transnational migration, Ghana, and West Africa
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2017
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
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2019
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
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2019
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
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2019
Journal article
Henry of Blois's Gift Lists in Add. MS. 29436: Why the Discrepancies?
Folios 46v-48r of Add. MS. 29436 contain two lists of the gifts donated by Henry of Blois, bishop of Winchester (1129 – 71) to his cathedral church. The shorter list post-dates Bishop Henry's death, the longer list probably belongs to the last decade of his life. This article examines the...Munns, John
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2019
Journal article
Navigating Brave New Worlds: A Close Analysis of Anne McLaren's Laboratory Notebook
Dr Anne McLaren (1927–2007) was a leading developmental biologist with a decorated career that spanned more than fifty years. In particular, McLaren was interested in the ways in which an individual is always connected to, and a part of, its many environments. This interest led her to the study of...Moynihan, Bridget
developmental biologist, IVF, women in science, in vitro fertilization, and laboratory notebook
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2019
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
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2019
Journal article
Philip Harris: Accomplished Librarian and Acclaimed Historian of the British Museum Library
An appreciation of the life and work of the author of A History of the British Museum Library, 1753-1973 (London, 1998).Phillips, Andrew
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2019
Journal article
The Reading Room in Literature
A survey of references to the Reading Rooms of the British Museum Library from its foundation in 1753 to the 1960s, with some personal memories.Harris, P. R.
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2017
Journal article
An Overlooked Connection of Anne Boleyn's Maid of Honour, Elizabeth Holland, with BL, King's MS. 9
BL, King's MS. 9 is one of only three Books of Hours with a connection to Henry VIII's second wife, the controversial Anne Boleyn. This prayer book provides an intimate insight into Henry VIII's courtship of Anne, but its historical significance does not end here. It has been hitherto overlooked...Zupanec, Sylwia Sobczak
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2019
Journal article
Scribes, Kings, and a Roll Chronicle: Dating and Provenance of British Library, Add. MS. 30029
Created in a period of political transition, as England moved from the end of Henry III’s reign towards that of Edward I, British Library Add. MS. 30079 is an important witness to the historical events of the late thirteenth century. This manuscript was one of the first chronicle rolls written...Bellato, Giulia
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2018
Journal article
A Fragmentary Draft as the Groundwork for Bloodthirsty 'Sir Cauline' in Thomas Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry: British Library, Add. MS. 39547, f. 157v
This article takes a novel approach to Thomas Percy's draft on 'Sir Cauline' in his ballad collection Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, which is stored in the British Library (Add. MS. 39547, f. 157v). Very little attention has heretofore been paid to the conflation of the draft with the romance...Mihara, Minoru
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2017
Journal article
I am sending herewith' – First World War Ephemera at the British Library
This article explores two guard books containing First World War ephemera (shelfmark Tab.11748.aa.4) held at the British Library that were catalogued as part of a PhD placement during the summer of 2016. It examines the acquisition of ephemera during the war, what the collection held at the British Library comprises...Foster, Ann-Marie
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2019
Journal article
A New Witness to Henry of Avranches's Vita Sancti Oswaldi in London, British Library, Cotton MS. Faustina B. VII
Cotton MS. Faustina B. VII. contains a previously unexamined piece of parchment inscribed with several verses taken from Henry of Avranches’ Vita Sancti Oswaldi, composed c. 1230. The article highlights the value of this textual witness in relation to the transmission of the Vita and discusses the function of the...Ispir, Cristian N.
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2019
Journal article
The Bibliographical History of The Spectator
The bibliographical history of The Spectator 1712-2016 is a list of all complete editions and extracts in English (published in England, Scotland, Ireland, and the American colonies – later the United States of America) and French. It is intended to be comprehensive, but it may be that some extracts have...Bernard, Stephen
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2016
Journal article
The Catholicon Anglicum (British Library, Add. MS. 89074): An Analysis of the Physical Evidence of its Production and Binding
On 27 February 2014, the British Library acquired the only known complete surviving copy of the Catholicon Anglicum, one of the earliest Middle English-Latin dictionaries, and thereby secured for the nation a key source for the study of English language and lexicography. The manuscript had been in the possession of...Freeman, James
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2017
Journal article
A Collection of Georg Rhau's Music Editions and Some Previously Unnoticed Works
Georg Rhau (1488–1548) was an important figure in the Reformation, the beginning of which is celebrated in this quincentenary year. Rhau published for the famous German theologian, author and teacher Martin Luther (1483–1546) and his circle a substantial body of works, many of which enjoyed considerable popularity. A close friend...Charteris, Richard
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2017
Journal article
The Theodore Psalter and the Rebuilding of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem
The Byzantine decorated psalters form a particularly rich source of knowledge about cultural life. One such manuscript is the Theodore Psalter (London, BL Add. MS 19352), which was made in Constantinople in 1066. It is one of a group of psalters that have been studied in various contexts, including that...Hennessy, Cecily
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2018
Journal article
The Watermarks on the Northumberland Manuscript and Hand D: Research Findings and Reflections on the Shakespeare Authorship Question
Key manuscript documents relevant to the Shakespeare Authorship Question are examined for the watermarks on the paper. Manuscripts of ten contemporaries are examined, revealing that variations of a generic watermark of a pot were used by the paper manufacturers. Elements of this watermark are analysed and examples compared. This process...Casson, John
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2019
Journal article
'The Most Bogus Ideas': Science, Religion and Creationism in the John Maynard Smith Archive
The science and religion question is one of continued interest in academia and in the non-academic public. In terms of biology, discussions almost inevitably revolve around evolution and (human) origins, contrasting Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by means of natural selection to the Biblical account of creation and origins in...Piel, Helen
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2016
Journal article
Tambimuttu: Re-Inventing the Art of Poetry Illustration
M. J. T. Tambimuttu, the much maligned Ceylonese editor of Poetry London and Editions Poetry London, was in fact consistently admired at home and abroad during the Second World War. Both his periodical and books were held in high esteem by his peers for their aesthetic innovations: his judicious commissions...Boselli, Sandra
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2018
Journal article
Disembodied: Additional MS. 8785 and the Tradition of Human Organ Depictions in Medieval Art and Medicine
While Bartholomaeus Anglicus’s De proprietatibus rerum – a popular medieval encyclopaedia describing the properties of ‘things’ – has attracted the attention of scholars for centuries, far less well known is the British Library’s unique copy in the Mantuan dialect. This manuscript, Additional MS. 8785, was translated by Vivaldo Belcalzer, an...McCall, Taylor
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2019
Journal article
From West Country Farmers to W. H. Ireland, the Shakespeare Forger: The Previous Owners of Thomas Tusser's Five Hundreth Pointes of Good Husbandrie (1599), BL, C.122.bb.40
This article examines the provenance of a rare sixteenth-century copy of Thomas Tusser’s Five Hundreth Pointes of Good Husbandrie (Edinburgh, 1599), an agricultural manual that, unlike previous guides, was aimed at tenant farmers at the lower end of the social order. These rural farmers had relatively modest levels of literacy...Smith, Maddy
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2017
Journal article
Nautical Charts, Texts, and Transmission: The Case of Conte di Ottomano Freducci and Fra Mauro
The article addresses an unstudied nautical chart made by Conte di Ottomano Freducci in 1529 (British Library Add. MS. 11548) which is unusual for its long and non-traditional legends (descriptive texts). Following a discussion of what we know about Freducci and a survey of all his surviving works, I supply...Duzer, Chet Van
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2016
Journal article
The Annotated Amleth: Belleforest in the British Library
The account of Amleth in François de Belleforest’s Le Cinquiesme Livre des Histoires Tragiques is a recognized source for Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The British Library copy of the Lyon 1576 edition (C.8.a.5) bears various manuscript annotations which reveal an early reader’s approach to Belleforest’s text: one possible author of these annotations...Casson, John
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2015
Journal article
J. G. Ballard's 'Elaborately Signalled Landscape': The Drafting of Concrete Island
The archive of J. G. Ballard at the British Library contains two very different draft texts for 'Concrete Island': an undated typescript substantially revised by hand, and a 'first draft screenplay' dated 20 September 1972. The screenplay is, in the author’s words on the title page, 'from the novel of...Beckett, Chris
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2018
Journal article
The Shorthand of Robert Willis, Physician-in-Extraordinary to King George III
The shorthand used by Robert Willis in documents within the Library’s Willis Papers collection is identified as a system similar to William Fordyce Mavor’s late eighteenth-century Universal Stenography but departing from it in some key respects. Transcriptions are provided of BL, Add. MS. 41734 – Willis’s memorandum of events between...Underhill, Timothy ; Peters, Timothy
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2018
Journal article
Provenance Confirmed for the Dismembered Breviary of the Cathedral of Agen (1297-1313): Add. MS. 42132
The Breviary of the cathedral of Agen, one of the most monumental witnesses of illumination in the South-West of France around 1300, has been dismembered and is currently preserved in four different places. The Southern French origin of these fragments is beyond doubt, but the recent history of the manuscript...Nadal, Émilie
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2017
Journal article
The Riverside Mansions and Tombs of Agra: New Evidence from a Panoramic Scroll Recently Acquired by The British Library
The riverfront at Agra once formed one of the great sights of Mughal India. As well as the fort and the Taj Mahal, both banks of the River Yamuna were lined with great mansions, palatial garden houses and imperial gardens. When the Mughal capital was moved the Delhi in 1648,...Koch, Ebba ; Losty, J. P.
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2018
Journal article
The British Library, Europeana 1914-1918 and the Memorialization of the Great War
Europeana 1914-1918 digitised a wealth of material in various formats (stories, films and historical material, manuscripts and printed items), all of which are directly related to World War I. A feature of the collection is that it brings together the holdings of cultural institutions (among them the British Library) and...Jenkins, Jeremy
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2014
Journal article
The First Manuals of English History: Two Late Thirteenth-Century Genealogical Rolls of the Kings of England in the Royal Collection
The reign of Edward I (1272-1307) witnessed the creation of numerous genealogical rolls of the kings of England from Egbert to the reigning king, initially in Latin (for instance BL, Add. MS. 30079), but then more often in Anglo-Norman. As Thomas Wright first intuited in 1872, these much innovative aide-mémoire...Laborderie, Olivier de
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2015
Journal article
Sloane's Portuguese Books
This article aims to systematize and briefly analyse the collection of books printed at Portuguese presses which once belonged to Sir Hans Sloane (1660-1753). Portuguese books (or Portuguese printing) are here defined as early books and other materials printed in Portugal (including overseas territories during the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth...Costa, Júlio
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2016
Journal article
'Handsomely bound in cloth': UK Book Cover Designs 1840-1880
A review of the many varied cover designs made for cloth trade bindings, with reference to signed cover designs, together with a review of online resources for the further study of these.King, Edmund M. B.
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2015
Journal article
Henry VIII and British Library, Royal MS. 2 A. XVI: Marginalia in King Henry's Psalter
The book which Henry VIII most heavily annotated is the manuscript Psalter Royal MS 2 A XVI held in the British Library. This note records and comments on one previously overlooked feature - the omission of numerous verses from Psalm 77. It also records the findings of a more detailed...Christie-Miller, Ian
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2016
Journal article
The Only Early English Translation of Giovanni Botero's Della ragion di stato: Richard Etherington and Sloane MS. 1065
Giovanni Botero (1544–1617) was an extremely popular Italian author of the late 16th and early 17th centuries. His works were translated into a number of languages and saw many editions. One of his most famous works, the Della Ragion di Stato (1589), was particularly popular in Europe. This response to...Trace, Jamie
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2015
Journal article
I Have Neither Interest nor Eloquence Sufficient to Prevaile': The Duke of Shrewsbury and the Politics of Succession during the Reign of Anne
On 13 April 1710 Queen Anne deprived the marquess of Kent of the office of lord chamberlain and appointed in his stead Charles Talbot, duke of Shrewsbury. Many have seen in this event the opening salvo in Robert Harley's assault on the ministry of the duumvirs, Godolphin and Marlborough, which...Eagles, Robin
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2014
Journal article
The Royal Image and Diplomacy: Henry VII’s Book of Astrology (British Library, Arundel MS. 66)
One of the most intriguing manuscripts associated with Henry VII of England, British Library, MS. Arundel 66 combines astronomical tables and works of so-called judicial astrology with a short collection of political prophecies. As an informal note added at the end of one of its texts suggests, the volume was...Frońska, Joanna
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2018
Journal article
Reading Between the Lines: Sir George Smart's Annotated Programmes for Manchester's 1836 Musical Festival
Among the papers of the distinguished conductor Sir George Thomas Smart, held by the British Library in the George Smart collection, are numerous concert programmes covered in his handwritten annotations. Reflecting his punctilious approach, these document in great detail aspects including timings, planned encores, and changes to programme and personnel....Johnson, Rachel
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2016
Journal article
The Charles G. Leland Collection of Romani Books and Manuscripts
The American writer Charles G. Leland (1824-1903) is primarily known for his comic verses. He was, however, also a pioneering linguist who published widely on the languages of the Roma (Gypsy) people of Britain, Ireland and continental Europe. Archival collections in the American north-east hold a range of Leland's literary...Edwards, Adrian S.