Americas Collections Blog

Picturing the Great Alone: photography and the Antarctic

Robert Falcon Scott on the 'Terra Nova' expedition, by Herbert Ponting. Image from Wikipedia.

Last year was a busy one for Team Americas and one of the many things we managed to do was take on some responsibilities for materials relating to Antarctica, thus adding a whole extra continent to our domain. This being the case, when an opportunity to view 'The Heart of the Great Alone' at The Queen's Gallery came up a couple of us jumped at the chance.

'The Heart of the Great Alone' covers various early twentieth century expeditions to the Antarctic, including that of the 'Terra Nova' during which Scott and his team perished. The main exhibition focus is the photography of Frank Hurley, photographer for Shackleton's 'Endurance' expedition, and Herbert Ponting, who produced the official photographs for the 'Terra Nova' expedition. I could write a lot here about these photographers and the expedition but the best thing to do would be to recommend a visit the exhibition itself or the e-gallery.

 
'Midnight in the Antarctic Summer', by Herbert Ponting. Image from Wikipedia.

However, as always with these trips, I had a mind to mull over the Library's materials relating to the Antarctic when I got back. The Library's collections from this area are not the largest in the world, with institutions such as the Scott Polar Research Institute and the Royal Geographical Society (to name a few) holding a wealth of material, but there is a noteworthy body of material which is well supported by the wider collection of Official Publications and Newspapers (especially in the case of an expedition such as the 'Terra Nova').

That said, there are some stand out items and a notable collection of miscellaneous materials held here. Captain Scott's diary is one of the Library's star collection items and the journal 'The South Polar Times' (shelfmark: Tab.444.d.6.) was the first publication printed on the Antarctic continent. Publications by Frank Hurley and Herbert Ponting also feature, including Ponting's 'The Great White South' (1921, shelfmark: 010460.g.1). These items contribute to a wealth of published material relating to the Antarctic and explorers such as Scott and Roald Amundsen.

As well as holding materials relating to the initial exploration of Antarctica, the Library has a significant collection regarding the continent in the later twentieth century; where scientific progress and international co-operation become the order of the day. Materials arising from events such as the Antarctic Treaty or organisations such as the British Antarctic Survey, as well as many academic texts and articles regarding the continent, are insightful on their own but also suggest an evolving relationship between global society and the frozen continent.

[PJH]

War, Struggle and Equality: the Tuskegee Airmen

War bonds poster featuring an unnamed Tuskegee airman (displayed on Wikipedia's Tuskegee Airmen entry)

On January 10th the Institute for the Study of the Americas hosted a screening of the documentary, 'Double Victory', an account of the Tuskegee Airmen and their exploits in World War Two. These pilots of the 332nd Figther Group and 477th Bomber Group of the U. S. Army Air Corps were the first African American aviators of the U.S. Armed Forces but they faced a struggle against institutionalised racism in order to fly, fight and be treated as equals during and after the war.

'Double Victory' is a documentary account of this struggle, narrated by Cuba Gooding Jr. and produced to be viewed alongside the film 'Red Tails' (both productions are Lucas Film projects). The high point of the evening, however, was the attendence of two Tuskegee Airmen, Le Roy Gillead and Alexander Jefferson. Gillead and Jefferson's recollections added a great deal to the evening, with Jefferson talking about the struggle for African American men to be allowed to fly and his experiences as a German POW and Gillead highlighting the struggle for equality undertaken by officers who did not see front line service.

Both men also talked about their pride at being awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, along with roughly 300 other Tuskegee Airmen. During the award ceremony, President George W. Bush paid tribute to the airmen, saying, "The Tuskegee Airmen helped win a war, and you helped change our nation for the better. Yours is the story of the human spirit, and it ends like all great stories do – with wisdom and lessons and hope for tomorrow." A copy of the act bestowing the medals can be found here and Library holds a number of resources relating to the Tuskegee Airmen, their forces service and the relationship their actions had to the subsequent Civil Rights Movement.

The Library's collection of American newspapers contain a number of insights, with articles such as the Chicago Defender's, '332nd Flies Its 200th Mission Without a Loss' and many accounts of how the Freedman Field Mutiny and other incidents regarding racial equality were reported. There are also published service accounts, Alexander Jefferson's, 'Red Tail Captured, Red Tail Free' (shelfmark: YC.2005.a.5960) is a good example, and various journal articles on the exploits and legacy of the Tuskegee Airmen in Europe and the US.

[JJ and PJH]

Team Americas in Space

The International Space Station, May 2011

 Last night the Quebec Government Office in London hosted the event, 'An Evening in Space with Canadian astronaut, Julie Payette', at the Science Museum's Imax cinema, and Carole and I were invited along. The evening started with a screening of the rather awe-inspiring 'Space Station 3D'. Photographs and videos of space have been part of our visual heritage for a long time and have perhaps lost some of their early impact but the 3D effect and immersive screen reinvigorates the wonder of seeing the Earth from space.

The film is worth seeing, and Julie Payette's short lecture that followed was a treat for anyone who has even fleetingly wanted to be an astronaut. The emphasis of the talk was on how being in space opens up questions about how we relate to land on Earth and our own cultural differences. This was driven home by a great piece of 'it's Earth, but not as we know it' where photographs of parts of the world were shown in a different orientation from that which we would normally see and without any borders or human mapping. The effect of this re-imagining of familiar places was thought provoking and gave an insight into how being an astronaut must drastically change your world view.

One other thing that was mentioned which you may want to know: apparently, you can't see the Great Wall of China from space but you can see the Pyramids and the wake of ferries in the English Channel. It seems the contrast between light and dark is the main way of perceiving things from such an altitude, with the Wall not providing much contrast to its environment while the Pyramids and the bow wakes of ships do.

Finally, the evening drove home to me just how much of a presence Canada has in space, whether it be in the form of astronauts such as Julie Payette or equipment such as the 'Canadarm', a robotic arm used to manipulate loads from the Space Shuttles. You can find out more about Canada's activities in space via the Canadian Space Agency website and more about the International Space Station via the NASA site, or even through the British Library's own resources. I've just been bowled over by the amount of results returned by typing 'International Space Station' into Primo, with everything from books on building the station, to journal articles on experiments run there being available.

[PJH]

HIGHRISE at the British Library

 
HIGHRISE logo, courtesy of the NFB 

Two weeks ago, the Library was pleased to welcome Kat Cizek as part of the Eccles Centre sponsored Summer Scholars programme. Kat has made a number of documentaries in partnership with the National Film Board of Canada, including previous work Filmmaker-in-Residence (documenting life at St. Michael's Hospital, Toronto).

The subject of Kat's Summer Scholars lecture was the project HIGHRISE, an online documentary charting life in these structures which are, to quote Kat, 'the most ubiquitous built form in the world'. The project does not limit its view to Canada or even the Americas but instead looks at life in these buildings and neighbourhoods across the world, illustrating their diversity and questioning the way the structures are often stereotyped. During the talk Kat discussed the development of the project, the NFB's unique structure and way of working, the technologies involved (including a camera which provided viewers with a 360 degree view of a scene) and gave a guided tour of the work itself.

I would like to say thank you to Kat for the presentation and the audience, who were a wonderful mix of curators, film makers, geographers, social scientists, and more, for coming along and making the afternoon such an engaging one. It's worth noting that it was also rather fitting having a presentation on an NFB project at the British Library, given that we have collected so much material about and from the instituion over the years.

As the NFB is a Canadian government institution the British Library acquires much of its official material, including annual reports which can be found at BL Shelfmark C. S. E. 74. There are also NFB publications such as, Canada: A Year of the Land (Shelfmark: Cup.1256.ff.2), Contemporary Canadian Photography (Shelfmark: L42/3846) and many others. It is also worth mentioning that we have an extensive collection of the secondary literatures about the NFB and the wider Canadian media, so the collection is well worth a look - as is HIGHRISE and the work of the NFB more generally.

[PJH]

Mounties, Music, Hockey: Canada Day in Trafalgar Square

 
Canada Day 2010, Trafalgar Square

1 July is here again, which means it’s time to wish Canada happy birthday. I wrote last year about the significance of the day and what the Library’s collections can tell us about it, so I won’t go over that again today.  What I will do is let you know how you can go and experience a little bit of Canada in London during the course of the day.

As ever the heart of things will be Trafalgar Square which will be covered in a celebration of Canadian culture. For interest, the relationship between Canada and the Square is a long one, with the High Commission being based at Canada House since 1923 and various other Canadian institutions calling it home at one point or another.  If you make it down there you will find an entertaining mix of live music, hockey and Mounties, as well as a number of opportunities to learn about living, studying and working in Canada. For those interested, there is more information here.  

This year the opportunity to learn about Canadian culture in the round extends beyond Canada day, as the London-Québec Culture Festival is running until 21 July. The Quebec festival will be part of the Trafalgar Square celebrations too, so if you are interested it's a convenient place to start. To be honest, it’s a good time to find out more about Canadian culture in general, what with the great online presence of many Canadian cultural institutions (such as the NFB), events like Canadian Bookshelf and even the Royal Tour happening.

Given that there’s so much going on I’ve resolved to get more involved in all things ‘CanLit’ myself this year (quite an undertaking as I’m usually buried in a history book rather than the latest fiction), but more on that another time. For now, see if you can find your way to Trafalgar Square today or even just curl up at home, put Scott Pilgrim on and wish Canada ‘many happy returns’.

[PJH]

Friday

More battles with the CMS for the online gallery for most of today (but we're getting there, thanks to the ever-helpful web services team), and a short outing to the music team's open day.

 
I pop over to the Foyle Room with Jamie (from English and Performance), and we are both made to feel old by looking at recent re-releases of 90s indie records.  There is also a smorgasbord of formats, from Kylie Minogue USB 'dolls', via eight tracks, mini-discs, and what looks to be a recent revival of vinyl.  On the next table are the earliest known manuscripts of Tallis's Spem in Alium (again, I'm reminded of Janet Cardiff's installation at MOMA a couple of years ago) and compositions connected to Henry VIII.  We are intrigued by Kenny Everett's Capital FM scripts (all highligher pens, notes to self, and doodles); they would make a great facsimile for BL publications.  We spend a bit of time looking at the Vaughan Williams collections, and then Nicolas points out the origins of the melody for the 'Star Spangled Banner'; he offers to bring it along to a show and tell on Monday. 

Now back to working on the Civil War Exhibition; the text is getting there, so it's now a matter of finding the best images.  So far, the Penny Illustrated News is proving to be the most useful.  And it's online via the 19th Century British Newspapers site.

[MJS]

Interconnected worlds: thinking across the Library's collections

 
“Exterior of the Boiling House, Antigua” from William Clark (1823), Ten Views from the Island of Antigua (Shelfmark: 1786.c.9)

Tuesday 13th October saw various members of British Library staff come together to produce a public display of the Library’s African, Caribbean and South Asian materials. The event sought to mark Black History Month and highlight the cross-connections that exist between the Library’s collection areas. In doing this the event also aimed to assert the interconnectedness of Africa, Britain, the Caribbean and South Asia over a long historical period, with display items covering the early 1600’s until the mid twentieth century.

The Caribbean materials on display articulated how these interconnections were expressed through knowledge transfer, individual biographies, the development of industrial processes and the growth of globalised transport networks. The arrangement of African and South Asian materials around those from the Caribbean provided further details and nuance to the narratives on display, illustrating how cause and effect operated on a global level, in particular as a result of the slave trade. The display of account books from slave traders based in Africa (some of which can be found at Shelfmark: Add ms 43841) and letters detailing the kidnap, sale and enslavement of individuals (an example is John Toogood’s 1720 account, held at: India Office Records/E/1/11 ff. 326-328v) added depth to the displayed illustrations of slavery in operation in the Caribbean, represented in part by William Clark’s idealised depiction above. Further, the display of India Office records regarding the transportation of indentured labour from South Asia to the Caribbean (for example: India Office Records:L/PJ/1/86), one of the responses to the ending of the slave trade, again illustrated how developments in one area could have marked effects on another.

While the event attempted to illustrate through the Library’s collections that the global interconnectedness we perceive as being a modern phenomena is not, in fact, new, it should still remind us of the myriad connections people and places maintain across the globe today. Indeed, this is part of a theme of an event being held at the Library next week, on the 25th October. Entitled "Our Memories of the Uprisings: the 1980's revisited", the event seeks to discuss the unrest of the 1980’s, its causes and contexts, and highlight the continuing significance of these years to multicultural, globalised contemporary Britain. Here too we can perceive how the Library’s collections of interconnected materials, from newspapers, to oral histories, to music and printed books provide opportunities for detailed research into the subject.

[P.J.H.]

Mark Twain's Autobiography

[M.S. writes] Last week, Carole and I were pleased to be invited to a reading and discussion at the English Speaking Union, thanks to the U.S. Embassy.  The event marked Granta magazine's publication of a long excerpt from Samuel Clemens' reminiscences, which are due to be published in full this autumn after a century-long embargo.

[10604.i.18, plate XXI]

Bonnie Greer and Robert McCrum gave a U.S. (and Southern) and U.K. perspective, the audience provided some Southern context, and Kerry Shale channelled Huck and Clemens perfectly.  John Freeman(modestly introduced himself as 'just a guy', but also a guy who currently edits Granta) graciously kept the discussion moving along.  We also learnt that 'Mark Twain' echoes the call of safety made as ships reached the second fathom.  The only problem was that the power of Clemen's writing (which sounded powerfully modern, perhaps one reason for the emargo, as if Twain's literary ability could not be recognised in his own time because of his popularfame) summoned up such mouthwatering images of food and home-style cooking, our stomachs were rumbling.

We look forward to the full publication of the autobiography, and swear to revisit Twain's oeuvre.  Meanwhile, here's a rather grainy picture:

 
  

The Future of the Polar regions

 

Mounted Police Barracks, Churchill (Geraldine Moodie, 1907): Building Arctic Canada

Recently the British Library was host to a panel discussion on ‘The Future of Antarctica.' Chaired by Dr Gabrielle Walker, with Professor Klaus Dodds, Robert Culshaw and Sara Wheeler contributing, the event focused on what the 21st century might hold for Antarctica.

The panellists discussed the significance of the Antarctic as a wilderness, site of science and exemplar of international co-operation. They also highlighted the potential threats facing the continent, from global warming to resource exploitation and tourism, as well as the challenge of maintaining international co-operation, and the high standard of science done there in the 50 years since the Antarctic Treaty of 1959.

My thoughts were inevitably turned to how the Arctic can provide clues as to how things may turn out in Antarctica, since it has been explored and used by humans for much longer. Accounts such as William Baffin's journal of a search for the North West Passage, which is to be found, along with many other accounts, in Purchas' Pilgrimes (1625, Shelfmark 679.h.13), or John Barrow's Chronological History of Voyages into the Arctic Regions (1818, shelfmark 303.i.4) illustrate just how much probing has been done of the Arctic in the last 400 years.

One need only look at how the massive 20th-century developments in geo-mapping and submarine technologies have affected access to the Arctic to envisage how further advances could begin to affect a Pole considered more inaccessible. The increasing exploitation of the Arctic (not to mention flag planting), facilitated by environmental and technological change, is a persistent reminder of how even the most remote of places are inexorably drawn under human influence.

With this in mind, historical collections on the Arctic, such as those at the British Library, provide insight and even warning about how dramatically humans can impact on these most inhuman of environments. Over the coming months, the Library will host ESRC-supported discussions of the 'New Geopolitics of the Polar Regions'  and this interaction of thinkers and relevant historical materials will continue to be invaluable.   

[P.J.H.]

Politics and Bookstore diversions

We have a General Election today in the UK, and this means that there are certain rules about what can be discussed on blogs by public servants.  But, I think I'm safe to say that in order to get into political zone, I watched a couple of episodes of West Wing, that great liberal fantasy, last night while bashing out a few stationary miles on the cycle trainer.

During the second episode ('In Excelsis Deo', series 1), President Bartlett visited a bookstore to pick up a few presents for Christmas.  Needless to say, his staff were not much amused by this scholarly expedition.

Would it be possible to recreate this scene at the BL?

1. BARTLET: Oooh! 'The Fables of Phaedrus,' 1886, first edition, red leather label, gilt lettering, engraved frontice. Phaedrus, you know, who was a slave, but later granted his freedom by Augustus, wrote his animal fables in iambic verse.

Not sure what is meant by first edition here, but there was a grammar school edition of Phaedrus published by Longman in New York and London, 1887 ([shelfmark 11306.aaa.33])

2. JOSH:A book which if I was stuck with it on a desert island, I still wouldn't read it, 'The Adventures of James Capen Adams, Mountaineer and Grizzly Bear Hunter of California.' I believe I would eat this book before I read it.

Conservation may have something to say about that. Published in San Francisco in 1860 at at 10882.bb.4. (Adams named one of his bears Ben Franklin, something Josh could surely have, ahem, joshed about).

3. BARTLET:All right. You know Zoey is starting Georgetown in two weeks, I was thinking about getting this for her. 'The Nature of Things. A Viviscalic Poem Translated from the Latin of Titus Lucrecius Carus.' Leo looks to Charlie with a disbelieving look.

Trickier.  It looks like Viviscalic is a transcription error, so that leads us to possibly this edition: 

Watson, John Selby. Lucretius on the nature of things : a philosophical poem in six books / (London : Henry G. Bohn, 1851.) [X3/2479]

Later, Josh presents Donna with a gift: 3. DONNA: Skis would have killed you? I assume Heimlich Beckengruber on The Art and Artistry of Alpine Skiing is as fictitious as Bartlett himself. A survey of 'In the Thick of It', may, of course, have come up with some different results. Anyway, go vote. [M.S.]

Communication Tools, and A Little Bit of Fry and Twitter

As Coolidge put it, 'the chief business of the American people is business', but what is now business is sometimes hard to understand.  Silicon Valley is the engine of an online economy that is now the size of a medium country, but a lot of what it does is free, or at least appears to be be done for nothing.  Twitter is perhaps the most famous current U.S. innovation that, at the moment, is not 'monetised' (this, though, will surely not be long - it's already valued at $1 billion).

  Americas Collections is, of course, interested in the business of the U.S., and not just from a cultural or historical perspective - colleagues in Business and IP Centre  in particular make great efforts to make information available to entrepreneurs, lawyers, NGOs, and so on.  So, I was pleased to get an invitation to a talk at NESTA on Social Media - a force for good as part of the Silicon Valley comes to the UK programme (it also ties into some of my work on 'C21st curatorship').  Not only could we hear Biz Stone, the founder of Twitter and Reid Hoffman, co-founder of Linkedin, but also on offer was Stephen Fry, who, as the NESTA chair said, needs no introduction.

There were some of the usual venture capital types and web startups doing their delicate courtship dance, but also a mix of politicians, journalists and think tankers.  The talk itself was unusually interesting - and should be available online, if NESTA's servers take the strain.  Fry, in particular, responding with charm, elegance, placed these new communication tools in a broader context, alluding to the changes wrought by the printing press, and reminding us that the titles we remember from the eighteenth century are the Tatler, the Idler, the Spectator - magazines and journals that offered a human, amusing, interesting, and quite often apparently trivial view on the human carousel.  For Fry, the joyous thing about Twitter is that it makes communication personal and human; it invests work with emotion.  The internet, he argued passionately, is at heart a deeply literary thing.

There were also questions about the 'road map' for Twitter, privacy, 'deadwood' news, mob rule, and the intersection between politics and  international relations; again, they should be on the NESTA stream.  Matthew Taylor of the RSA asked two very important questions about the lack of real sociological and orthographical research on social media, and the extent to which powerful organisation and governments were able to manipulate or exploit sites such as Twitter.  I wanted to ask about how this stuff might be accessed by future historians.  Next time...

Americas Collections also has its own Twitter stream (the term 'feed' sounds too much like Reuters, it seems).  It's turning out to be a useful way to communicate with scholars, publishers and others libraries, so feel free to join in.

In some ways, though, it's not so much about the tools, as the communication and the contacts that make up this new 'Republic of Letters'.  And sometimes the old ones are the best.  I brought a pencil with me to make some notes, but not a sharpener.  So, thanks are due to Basheera Khan of the Telegraph (@bash) who lent me a very nice pen.

[@_MattShaw]