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Journal article
Islamic Manuscripts from Aceh in the British Library
Aceh has long been renowned as a centre of Islamic scholarship, and some of the most famous Malay texts were composed in this area of north Sumatra. However, despite an abundance of philological and literary studies of texts from Aceh, little attention has yet been paid to the materiality of...Acehnese, Aceh, manuscripts, binding, Malay, Arabic, illumination, and Southeast Asia
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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.
big data, Thomas Rowe Edmonds, Charles Babbage, public interest, and insurance
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Journal article
Dunhuang scrolls: Innovative storage solutions at the British Library
The British Library’s Stein collection contains about 14,000 scrolls, fragments and booklets in Chinese from a cave in the Buddhist Mogao Caves complex near Dunhuang in north-west China. This article describes storage and access solutions for the collection in the context of a busy research library and the currently ongoing...Kralka, Paulina ; Muzart, Marya
conservation, storage, paper, Central Asia, Dunhuang, and scroll
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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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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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Journal article
Buddhism and trade: interpreting the distribution of rock-cut monasteries in the Western Ghats mountains, India using least-cost paths
Trade is frequently cited as the primary influence on the florescence of rock-cut Buddhist monasteries in the Western Ghats mountains, India between 200 BCE and 400 CE. Yet the monasteries have been foci of art-historical scholarship without detailed investigation of archaeology and geography. The relationship between monasteries, trade routes, ports...Rees, Gethin
trade, rock-cut monasteries, early historic, Deccan, Buddhism, and Western Ghats
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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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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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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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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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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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Journal article
The Croatian Collections in the British Library
The paper discusses Croatian historic collections acquired by the British Museum Library in the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. The results of previous research into the collection are mentioned and the new findings are presented. The paper considers the growth of the Croatian collection to...Grba, Milan
Glagolitic, Slavic, academic publications, Croatia, Croatian books and collections, British Museum Library, manuscript, and Eastern European
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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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Journal article
Qur’an manuscripts from Mindanao: collecting histories, art and materiality
The study of the writing traditions of the Malay world of maritime South East Asia has been both shaped and distorted by the differing colonial experiences within the region. In particular, a chasmic disconnect can be discerned between the western swathe occupied by the modern nations of Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei...Gallop, Annabel Teh
Maranao, Islamic art, Qur'an manuscripts, manuscript illumination, Maguindanao, and Mindanao
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Journal article
‘How soon was now?’: A retrospective on the popularity of nouveau vintage
Fashion is a product and reflection of time and tantamount to modernity. The promise of which rests in the future, thus fashion is forever looking forward in the ambition to be ‘new’. Vintage fashion, namely clothes from past periods apprehend this perpetual cycle, often adopted by alternative groups of consumers...Brett, Rachel
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Journal article
Sovereign Signs: Titles of Kingship on Malay Seals
The recent publication of a new catalogue of over 2,000 Malay seals—defined as seals from Southeast Asia, with inscriptions in Arabic script—makes available for the first time a substantial corpus of primary source material from the Malay archipelago, dating from the sixteenth to the early twentieth century. The main function...Gallop, Annabel Teh
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Journal article
Collections Within Collections: An Analysis of Tipu Sultan’s Library
The library of Tipu Sultan of Mysore is one of the most important in the history of South Asian Islamic collections. Unlike many collections which can be regarded as dynastic libraries, Tipu’s was relatively newly-formed. Most of the books had not been acquired before the mid-eighteenth century but nevertheless came...Sims-Williams, Ursula
Tipu Sultan, Islamic seals, manuscript studies, and Deccan India
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Journal article
A Royal Manuscript of 1809 in the British Library
The Korean royal manuscript Gisa jinpyori jinchan uigwe (Record of the Presentation Ceremony and Banquet in the Gisa year), a single volume of 94 folios of illustrations and text, was acquired by the British Museum from a vendor in Paris in 1891, having apparently become separated from a group of... -
Journal article
Animals, Joseph Dalton Hooker and the Ross Expedition to Antarctica, 1839–1843
In 1839 the Ross Expedition to locate the Southern Magnetic pole was launched from Chatham. Over the next four years, this voyage of discovery would bring into sharper focus the land and seas surrounding the Antarctic region. Official reports and modern accounts of this voyage invariably situate the humans on...Sharp Jones, Cam
animals, HMS Erebus, Ross Expedition, Antarctica, zoology, and Joseph Dalton Hooker
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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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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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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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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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Journal article
My way: Interview with Neil Fitzgerald
Working with Microsoft, the British Library is embarking upon a massive programme to digitise its unmatched collection of books, manuscripts and other items. It's a daunting challenge, even using semi-automated systems that scan thousands of pages per month, as the project's manager Neil Fitzgerald explains. Interview by Keri Allan.Allan, Keri ; Fitzgerald, Neil
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Journal article
Dilemmas in archiving contemporary material: the example of the British Library
The dilemmas faced by institutions in archiving contemporary materials are exemplified by current practices at the British Library. With a growing collection aiming to be comprehensive and of use to researchers, tensions between selectivity and universality in acquisition are soon brought to the fore. Similarly, a sensible collection strategy must...England, Jude ; Bacchini, Simone
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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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Journal article
Some Unexpected Sources for Paintings by the Artist Mihr Chand (fl.c.1759–86), Son of Ganga Ram
Scholars have acknowledged that Mihr Chand, son of Ganga Ram (flourished c. 1759–86) is one of the finest artists to have flourished in the Mughal province of Awadh, at Faizabad and Lucknow, during the second half of the eighteenth century. Whilst it has been known that Mihr Chand received patronage...Roy, Malini
Antoine Polier, Jean Baptiste Gentil, later Mughal painting, Lucknow, Faizabad, and Mihr Chand
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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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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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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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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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Journal article
Biographical Myth and the Publication of Mozart's Piano Quartets
The story that Mozart was commissioned to write three piano quartets for publication in Franz Anton Hoffmeister's subscription series has proved to be remarkably resilient in the Mozart literature. According to the account that first appeared in Georg Nikolaus von Nissen's biography (1828), Hoffmeister gave Mozart an advance payment for...Ridgewell, Rupert
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Journal article
The Concert Programmes Project: History, progress and future directions
The Concert Programmes Project (CPP) was formally established in 2003, following discussions concerning the need for an inventory of programmes initiated by a IAML symposium in Cambridge in 1981.The preliminary work of the Project was to create a collection-level approach towards improving programme access with the final goal of creating...Ridgewell, Rupert
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Journal article
Mozart's Publishing Plans With Artaria in 1787: New Archival Evidence
A previously unknown document witnessing a transaction between Mozart and his principal Viennese publisher, Artaria, appears in an inventory ledger compiled by the firm in 1787. The documentary, financial, and bibliographical contexts suggest that Mozart was paid in advance for six piano trios and twelve songs, but failed to complete...Ridgewell, Rupert
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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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Journal article
‘An ‘authentic’ performance?: The cultural politics of ‘folk’ in Bengal and Bangladesh’ (part 2)
Folk performance genres have long been adapted to shorter formats for festivals, films, television and the new media. Contemporary practices of Kobigaan (a verse-duelling/song theatre genre) reveal how it functions differently for different communities relying on their cultural/collective memory of the genre. This section of the article first engages with...Basu, Priyanka
cultural memory, souvenir, festivals, sound chronotope, and Bengali cinema
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Journal article
Turkic Typologies: Ideology and Indigenous Linguistic Knowledge in the Work of Bekir Çobanzade
The current work is an exploration of the life and linguistic scholarship of the Crimean Tatar linguist Bekir Çobanzade. In it, I pay particular attention to the impact of the author's socio-political environment, especially the rise of Stalinism, on his works relating to the history and classification of the Turkic...Erdman, Michael
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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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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