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Journal article
Negotiating the ‘Ghanaian’ way of schooling: transnational mobility and the educational strategies of British-Ghanaian families
While scholars are increasingly interested in migrants in the Global North educating their children in their homelands, ethnographic studies of how ideas about being educated are shaped, and young people’s accounts of these transnational educational practices, remain under-researched. This paper attends to these gaps by drawing on the ethnographic cases...Abotsi, Emma
education, Ghana, children and youth, West Africa, and transnational migration
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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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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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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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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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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
in vitro fertilization, developmental biologist, women in science, IVF, and laboratory notebook
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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'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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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.
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Eight Twelfth-Century Charters from the Norman Abbey of Saint-Étienne de Caen, c.1120–1204 (London, British Library, Add. Chs. 67574–67581) – A Catalogue and Commentary
This article provides the first comprehensive study and edition of eight original charters from the Abbey of Saint-Étienne de Caen in Lower Normandy (founded by William the Conqueror in 1063), kept today in the British Library (Add. Chs. 67574–67581). These charters form part of a larger diplomatic corpus that once...Pohl, Benjamin
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Journal article
Willie King: One of Angus Wilson's 'Old Men at the Zoo'
From 1937 until 1955, when he left to write full-time, Angus Wilson worked in the Department of Printed Books at the British Museum. His 1961 novel, The Old Men at the Zoo, was a roman à clef based on many of the people he had known there. The character of...Wright, C. J.
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Journal article
The Letters of Shen Fuzong to Thomas Hyde, 1687-88
The earliest surviving direct correspondence of a learned nature between a Chinese person and an Englishman comprises several letters sent between May 1687 and February 1688 by a young Christian convert from Nanjing, Michael Shen Fuzong (c. 1658-1691), to the Oxonian oriental scholar and librarian Thomas Hyde (1636-1704). This correspondence...Poole, William
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Forewarned and Forearmed: Contents of BL, Cotton MS. Titus A. XXV, ff. 94-105
Cotton MS. Titus A. XXV is a composite codex of several unrelated booklets, one of which has gone largely unnoticed and unexplored. The single gathering of ff. 94-105, preserves a fifteenth-century copy of political prophecy, five short pieces of prophetic and devotional material, and one of the three surviving examples...Geldof, M R
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Journal article
Black English in Britain in the Eighteenth Century
In eighteenth-century Britain, several works of imaginative literature by white authors included black characters speaking the form of English, largely a British West Indian creole, which would have been heard in everyday real life from members of the growing black population; samples are presented in chronological order.Paisey, David
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Journal article
Embedded Marginalia in the Psalter and Hours of Humphrey de Bohun (British Library, Egerton MS. 3277)
The phrase 'embedded marginalia' refers to images on the pages of medieval manuscripts that are beyond the text block in both a physical and conceptual sense but integrated nevertheless in the form and meaning of the page as a whole. This study is focused on the many examples of embedded...Sandler, Lucy Freeman
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The 'Continuation' of the Thomason Tracts? The British Museum's 'Political Tracts' Series of Pamphlets Relating to English Political History, 1542–1807
This article examines the history, scope and provenance of the 'Political Tracts' series of 3000 early modern pamphlets that was assembled by the British Museum c. 1790-1807, during the so-called 'synthetical arrangement', when the library of printed books was reorganized along subject-based lines. The series was designed as a repository...Taylor, Edward
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Journal article
Samuel Doody and his Books
The title page inscriptions 'J. Doody' or 'John Doody' in several volumes held in the Sloane Printed Books collection, have typically been taken as indicating ownership by either John Doody (1616-1680) or John Doody (1687-1753), his grandson. In fact, I suggest that these items found their way to Sloane from...Thorley, David
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Sir Robert Knolles and the Patronage of the Carmelite Missal (Add. MSS.29704-5, 44892): Assessing the Visual Evidence
This article reviews the question of who patronized the London 'reconstructed' Carmelite Missal (Add. MSS. 29704-5, 44892). This has been raised before, and Sir Robert Knolles (d. 1407), a major patron of London Whitefriars, suggested. However, his connection to the Missal has not been examined in any detail. Through consideration...Collins, Alexander