This is the first of a new series of monthly blog posts which will highlight the collections that have become available to view online on the EAP website over the past month. 

 Four collections went up last month, the first of which was EAP375, this project digitised over 25,000 images of archives from the Haynes Publishing Company of Argentina.

EAP375/1/1/1 – Image 25

The Haynes publishing company was created by Albert M. Haynes, a British citizen who went to Argentina to work for the Buenos Aires Western Railway. After his retirement he founded the Haynes Publishing Company in 1904, it remained active until its closure in 1968. The company produced several publications including the magazine El Hogar and the daily newspaper El Mundo. The company was active during some important periods of Argentine history. In particular it covers the period of the presidencies of José Félix Uriburu, Agustín Pedro Justo, Roberto María Ortiz and Ramón Castillo during the Infamous Decade (1930-1943) as well as the first presidency of Juan Perón (1946-1955)

EAP375/1/1/59 – Image 82

Another collection now available is EAP368, this contains some fascinating images depicting the indigenous peoples of Western Siberia.

EAP368/1/1/1 – Image 9

The project identified glass plate negatives and photographic material depicting Western Siberian life during the early 20^th century. These were then catalogued and digitised. The images present a fascinating window into this society before it was affected by modernisation.

EAP368/1/1/1 Image 155

EAP368/1/1/1 – Image 319

The final two collections are EAP340 and EAP365. EAP340 digitised a selection of manuscript collections in the monastic church of Ewostatewos at Däbrä Särabi in Tigray, Ethopia.

EAP340/1/2 – Image 4

EAP365 was a pilot project which aimed to discover collections of lontara’ manuscripts in the Makassarese language of South Sulawesi, Indonesia. Lontara’ manuscripts consist largely of chronicles or histories of local kingdoms, collections of rules relating to customary law, or court diaries/daybooks. The project was successful in collecting representative images from several lontara' in Makassar, and in a number of villages in Kecamatan Galesong south of the city.

EAP365/1/2 – Image 7

 Check back next month to see what else has been added!

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My name is Paul Young and I am the new EAP Cataloguer. I was very excited about starting work for the EAP, as I would get to deal with such fascinating collections from around the world.

I was however a little unsure about what to expect, what exactly the post would entail and whether I would have to brush up on my language skills. Now that I have been in post for just over a month I thought I would share with you what I have been up to. Giving you a brief outline of the processes which I go through to make the collections available and updating you on the new collections now online.

Once a project is completed the project holder will send copies of the digital images, usually on an external hard drive, along with a descriptive list which has been completed using the EAP template. The project holders are asked to provide the lists in English so there is no language barrier to overcome. Once they have been received the descriptive lists are prepared to be made available on the British Library's ‘Integrated Archival and Manuscript Search’ (IAMS). I work with the IAMS migration team, converting the lists so that they match the standards set by the British Library. After this has been achieved I will also add the lists to the EAP website.

At the same time I will be getting the images ready, this involves copying them over to the EAP servers and then checking them against the descriptive list ensuring all images are present. EAP asks the projects to provide the images in TIFF format, as this is an archival friendly format which will help ensure the long term preservation of the collection. These generally create large image sizes of around 30-40 megabytes, which are unsuitable for display on the EAP website. Therefore JPEG versions of a much smaller size are created for use on the website.

Once both of these processes are complete the collection is then ready to go online. So far I have uploaded five collections with over 20,000 images onto the EAP website. These collections include EAP485, images of the Nigerian newspaper Gaskiya ta fi Kwabo; the first newspaper entirely written in the Hausa language. It played an important part in providing information about World War II to Nigerians. 

EAP485/1/1/8 image 2

EAP500, a collection of photographs from the 20^th century showing minority groups in Bulgaria. These include images which survived the ‘Revival Process’, the forceful assimilation of Muslims in Bulgaria which lasted from 1985-1989 and included the destruction of documents.

EAP500/3/1 image 31

EAP432, a collection of monastic records from East Goğğam in Ethiopia

EAP432/1/13 page 67

The final two collections are EAP474, pre-colonial and colonial documents from the Regional Archive at Cape Coast, Ghana and EAP524, a survey of the East India Company and Colonial archives of Jamestown, St Helena.

EAP474/2/1/2 image 37

EAP524/1/1/1 image 9

 

The Endangered Archives Programme has been without a cataloguer since September so there are plenty of collections waiting to be made available online. We hope to share many more collections with you in the near future.