10 April 2013
New EAP Cataloguer, new collections now online!
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 20th 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.
15 August 2012
Images of indigenous lives in Southern Siberia
Images from five Collections were recently added to the EAP WebPages. These come from the successful project EAP016 Digitising the photographic archive of southern Siberian indigenous peoples.
The project copied over 3500 glass plate negatives. In addition to helping preserve the originals by providing digital surrogates, the project provided suitable storage for the original fragile negatives by placing them in acid-free envelopes and boxes.
These images document the lives of indigenous peoples during the late 19th and early 20th century. The scope of the Collections is vast. They include images of individuals and family groups, habitations including towns, villages, isolated homes and domestic farms, and transportation in the form of boats, sleds, automobiles, camels and horses. They also show the landscape of southern Siberia: immense open spaces, craggy hills, high mountains and lots of snow. Against this background you can see activities such as farming, fishing, hunting, boat construction, trading and travelling.
The images themselves are fantastic. They can be browsed using the EAP WebPages.
It was difficult to decide which images to include in this post, and just as difficult to limit the number! In the end I was captivated by the different places people lived, from yurts and mobile tents to small farmsteads to modern cities. It was the variety of homes that seemed most interesting. That, and the activities you can see in the background. For example, the images presented here show herds of deer, a pack of Siberian puppies and preparations for a fishing trip. When the pictures include people they also show clothing and fashion.
The pictures here all come from EAP016/1 Selection of Ethnographic Images from the Arkhiv Pisateli Urala (Archive of the Writers of the Ural).
Lynda
20 December 2011
Highlighting Indonesian Manuscripts
Today's post is written by Annabel Gallop, the British Library's Lead Curator for Southeast Asian Studies.
When the EAP was launched in 2005 I was delighted when a project to digitise manuscripts from three pesantren (Islamic boarding schools) in East Java was amongst the first to be funded, and to date 12 projects from Indonesia have been successfully completed. I always knew that the long-term aim was to make the digitised images available online, but first many technological obstacles had to be overcome. Now, at last, the results from two projects in Sumatra have been mounted online by the EAP: manuscripts from Sufi brotherhoods in West Sumatra, in a project led by Irina Katkova, and manuscripts from private collections in Aceh, led by Fakhriati.
It is stunning to be able to browse through manuscripts which are still held in remote locations in Indonesia, and the research value of these collections for scholars all over the world is immediately obvious. To take just one example, a few years ago Jan van der Putten of the National University of Singapore had noted in a 17th century manuscript from Ambon, Hikayat Tanah Hitu, the regular presence of an Arabic word, balagha, used as a reading or editorial mark. Henri Chambert-Loir of EFEO had also noted this mark in a Malay poem, but no other examples had been documented. However, to these rare occurrances can now be added a manuscript on Arabic grammar held in the Surau Tuo Taram in Kecamatan Harau, Kabupaten Lima Puluh Kota, West Sumatra, which has balagha marked in red in the margins (EAP205/4/2: Nahwu).
Annabel Gallop, Southeast Asia Section
25 November 2011
Making dongjing records available
This week images from EAP209 Survey on surviving dongjing archives in Jianshui, Tonghai and Mengzi were added to the EAP WebPages. The project visited three counties in South Yunnan and gathered information about surviving dongjing records in the area. It also copied 33 manuscripts from the collections of Li Chun and Kaichao Wang. These have made a substantial and important addition to the dongjing archives copied by an earlier EAP project: EAP012 Salvage and preservation of dongjing archives in Yunnan, China: transcript, score, ritual and performance.
Together these projects copied 100 dongjing manuscripts and approximately 36 hours of recorded material. The printed sources include music scores and lyrics, correspondence, a charter for the Dali dongjing society, guides and rules for conducting rituals and even seating arrangements for performances. The recordings are of performances and interviews. They provide an amazing amount of original material for students of dongjing culture, practices and belief and should be of particular interest to students studying dongjing music.
Interestingly, most of the original manuscripts digitally copied by EAP012 and EAP209 are themselves copies of earlier manuscripts. The texts and musical scores have been passed down, transcribed and re-copied by members of dongjing societies. In this way they have survived through centuries of political turmoil and social transitions. They contain the traditions of generations of dongjing practitioners.
Lynda
02 September 2011
EAP and Digitised Manuscripts
In my last post I announced that the eight Collections copied by EAP012 Salvage and preservation of dongjing archives in Yunnan, China: transcript, score, ritual and performance have been catalogued. Four manuscripts from three of these Collections have now been added to The British Library's Digitised Manuscripts pages. From here, they can be viewed along side early medieval volumes dating back to the sixth century - some of the treasures of the Library. The Medieval and Earlier Manuscripts Blog provides updates on the Library's digitised manuscripts, information on the manuscripts themselves and the cultures and contexts from which they came, and images from some of the already-digitised items. Well worth a look.
The four manuscripts we have added are:
EAP012/2/1 [Dong jing pu], an anonymous music score from Qilin District, Qujing City
EAP012/5/1 Luliang dong jing yin yue zheng li chu gao, a booklet of Dongjing music scores from Luliang County
EAP012/7/15 Chuxiong Yi zhou dong jing gu yue, a score of archaic Dongjing music from Chuxiong in jianpu notation
EAP012/7/16 Min zu min jian gu yue-gong chi pu yi jian pu ben, a transcript of an archaic Dongjing music score written in gongche notation.
The Digitised Manuscripts viewer has easy to use navigation tools that allow you to move around the items, choose pages, view two pages at once, rotate the images, zoom in and zoom out etc.
Lynda
29 November 2010
Early Records of the Natural History of the Malay World
This week's post is written by Nicholas Martland, the British Library's Australia & New Zealand Curator.
The Institute of the Malay World & Civilisation (ATMA) at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (National University of Malaysia) is holding a conference on science and technology in the Malay world - what is now known as insular or maritime Southeast Asia.
One of my interests is in the history of natural history of Australia and Southeast Asia, and I am presenting a paper at the conference, titled "Early records of the natural history of the Malay world: resources in the British Library's India Office Records."
After the conference I have been asked to run a workshop about locating, accessing and researching material of Malaysian/Indonesian interest found in UK institutions.
Although the Malay manuscripts in the British Library's Oriental Collections and material at the SOAS Library are relatively well known by Malay studies researchers, other collections within the British Library with a Malaysian or Indonesian connection (such as material deposited with the Endangered Archives Programme) and small collections on Malaysia and Indonesia hidden away in specialist collections such as the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew; the National Maritime Museum and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, are less well-known. The workshop is being run to alert Malaysian academics, post-graduate researchers, librarians and archivists to the breadth of Malaysian -and Indonesian- related material held in UK institutions.
The workshop will also be an opportunity to alert researchers to the work of the EAP. A wide selection of Malay and Indonesian materials have been digitised across a variety of EAP projects, such as: EAP144 The digitisation of Minamgkabau's manuscript collections in Suraus;
EAP144 Image from Nahwu Sarf, The Arabic Grammar.
EAP153 Riau manuscripts: the gateway to the Malay intellectual world;
EAP153 Image from Kitab Sifat Dua Puluh dan Panjelasannya
and EAP276 Documentation and preservation of Ambon manuscripts.
Nicholas Martland, the British Library's Australia & New Zealand Curator, has worked in libraries in Southeast Asia and in UK libraries with Southeast Asian collections, and maintains an interest in the region, particularly in Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei.
22 November 2010
More faces and places in Iran
Work continues on cataloguing EAP001: Faces and Places in Iran, and as promised here are some more photographs from the project:
Woman spinning. Photographer unknown, late 19th-early 20th century. Taken from the Tahami collection, Arak.
Image taken from the Morad Salimi collection, Kordestan. We do not have any information about this photograph - can you help?
Image taken from the Parisa Damandan collection, Esfahan. Again, nothing is known about this photograph's provenance, context or subject.
Alex
02 November 2010
More faces and places in Iran
Work continues on cataloguing EAP001 Faces and Places in Iran: Iranian Photography, and as promised here are some more photographs from the project:
Child at the Javid Carpet Weaving Company Ltd, Isfahan. Glass plate negative, photographer Minas Patkerhanian Machertich, [n.d]
Imported industrial machinery for use in textile factories, Isfahan. Glass plate negative, photographer Abolghasem Jala [1940s]
Rooftops of Mashad, Iran. Photographer M. Khan, 1300 AH [1882/1883]
Alex
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