Do you know of any collections that are currently at risk and need preserving? The Endangered Archives Programme is now accepting preliminary applications for the next annual funding round – the deadline for submission of preliminary applications is 12 noon 19 November 2018 and full details of the application procedures and documentation are available on the EAP website.

Digitising in Cuba

The Endangered Archives Programme (EAP) has been running at the British Library since 2004 through funding by Arcadia, a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin, with the aim of preserving rare vulnerable archival material around the world. The Programme awards grants to relocate the material to a safe local archival home where possible, to digitise it, and to deposit copies with local archival partners and with the British Library. These digital collections are then available for researchers to access freely through the British Library website or by visiting the local archives. The Programme has funded over 350 projects in 90 countries world-wide and has helped to preserve manuscripts, rare printed books, newspapers and periodicals, audio and audio-visual materials, photographs and temple murals.

There three main types of grant:

• Pilot projects investigate the potential for and/or feasibility of a major grant. A pilot can also be a small digitisation project. They should last for no more than 12 months and have a budget limit of £15,000.

• Major projects gather and copy material. This type of grant may also relocate the material to a more secure location/institution within the country. These projects usually last 12 months, or up to 24 months and have a budget limit of £60,000.

• Area grants will be awarded for larger scale projects. They are similar to a major grant, but larger in scale and ambition. Applicants must demonstrate an outstanding track record of archival preservation work and be associated with an institution that has the capacity to facilitate a large-scale project. The EAP will only award a maximum of two area grants in each funding round. They can last for up to 24 months and have a budget limit of £150,000.

A further type of grant will be introduced in 2019:

• Rapid-response grants can be used to safeguard an archive which is in immediate and severe danger. These grants are intended for the most urgent situations where a delay in the decision process could result in extensive damage to the material. These grants are not subject to the time restrictions of the yearly EAP funding cycle and can be applied for at any time. They must last for less than 12 months and have a budget limit of £15,000.

If you know of an archive in a region of the world were resources are limited, we really hope you will apply. If you have any questions regarding the conditions of award or the application process, do email us at [email protected]

As the English football season has just begun, I thought I would have a look to see what we have in the collections that was football related. When you have a collection of over 6.5 million images it's hard to keep track of what's actually in the archive. With the old EAP online platform, it would have been quite a frustrating experience. You would have had to search the Library’s Archives and Manuscripts catalogue first and then try to find the relevant image on our website, sometimes having to scroll through hundreds of other images first before finding the desired one. With the ability to now search directly from our website, you can easily find related images, however it does highlight the need for good quality metadata. These images are only discoverable if someone has been able to describe them properly, adding keywords and other relevant information that researchers may look for.

With this in mind, I searched for football, soccer, futbol etc., and was pleasantly surprised to find many great photographs I thought were worth sharing. Most of the images come from the Haynes Publishing Company Archive in Argentina, with others from Bulgaria, Cameroon, Guatemala, India, and Mali, truly showing the global appeal of the sport. The Argentinian ones in particular are quite spectacular and give an idea of the popularity of the game in the country! There are images of spectators crammed into stadiums, and others show fans being dangerously hoisted up the outer wall of the stadium in a desperate attempt to watch the game. As always, follow the links to see the full size versions and discover what else is in the archive.

EAP375 - Crowds watching games in Argentina

 

 

EAP375 - Supporters trying to get a better view

EAP375/1/1/110 - Sneaking in to watch Argentina play Uruguay. Argentina won 3-0. 15 August 1935

  EAP054/1/89 - Mid-action shot. Jacques Touselle photographs. Cameroon

EAP054/1/138. Jacques Touselle photographs. Cameroon

EAP165/1/9. Guatemala

  EAP165/1/9. Guatemala

EAP166/2/1/11 - HMS Renown football team, 1921-1922. Visit to India, Nepal and the far east of HRH the Prince of Wales

EAP449/2/22 - Photographic Archives of Abdourahmane Sakaly. Mali.

EAP737/4/3/1 - Alagappa College of Physical Education football team, 1958. Karaikudi

EAP675/4/1 - Football team from Vlach (Romanian speaking) community in the town of Belene, North Bulgaria

EAP375/1/1/110 - No description provided. Possibly an Argentinian ultra leader rallying the crowds

Posted by Rob Miles

This week we have a guest blog post from Amalia Levi who is currently working on the EAP1086 project to preserve and digitise The Barbados Mercury Gazette.

In late 2017, the Barbados Department of Archives was awarded an Endangered Archives Programme grant for the digitisation of The Barbados Mercury Gazette, the first EAP grant that Barbados has received. The grant application process was the result of an international collaboration through the efforts of Barbados Archives Director Ingrid Thompson, Brock University Professor Lissa Paul; archivist Amalia S. Levi, and University of Florida Digital Scholarship Librarian Laurie Taylor.

        Participants engaging with The Mercury Gazette during the collaborative workshop on December 12, 2017.

The Barbados Mercury Gazette is an important primary source that sheds light on a tumultuous period in the history of this former British colony. The volumes housed in the Archives (1783-1839) cover the years leading up to the 1816 slave revolt on the island, the first of such large-scale slave revolts in the West Indies that eventually led to the abolition of slavery in the British Empire. The grant will facilitate different kinds of research into the island’s past.

The grant has funded the purchase of equipment that after the completion of this project will remain at the Archives and will be used for other digitisation initiatives, and work by the digitisation team, consisting of project leader, Amalia S. Levi; project assistant, Lenora Williams; and Archives assistant, Jennifer Breedy.

We have organised two workshops during the planning phase of the project. In December 2017, the first workshop brought together scholars of literature and history, and practitioners in archives, libraries, and museums in a brainstorming session. The goal was to better contextualize and define the significance of The Gazette to populate its finding aid. You can read more information about the workshop here.  Through interaction and discussion, workshop participants added valuable context to The Mercury Gazette and its potential as a primary source for research on slavery. Discussions aimed to go behind colonial narratives and unpack questions of power, authority, and the silences of the archival record. Furthermore, participants explored opportunities for future research and scholarship through this grant. You can find more on these discussions here.

        Participants engaging with The Mercury Gazette during the collaborative workshop on December 12, 2017.

After the equipment arrived at the Archives we organised a second workshop, which was held over two days on July 11 and July 12, 2018 and was aimed to provide digitisation training. The first day was open to archivists, librarians and professionals working in institutions on the island, and 23 people attended. The second day was dedicated to the core project team. Training was provided by two members of the University of Florida Libraries digitisation services team: Laura Perry, Digital Production Manager, and Jake Goodson, Special Formats Imaging Assistant. For the complete program, see here.

The morning session of Day 1 included introductions and presentations about the grant, the importance of The Mercury Gazette and an overview of the digitisation process and metadata creation. The afternoon session was dedicated to hands-on training. Participants had the chance to hear and learn about every step of the digitisation, including setting up the equipment, lighting, imaging, and quality control. The first day training was provided in the Archives’ events room to accommodate attendees. During the second day the equipment was set up in the room that has been specifically allocated for digitisation, which is secure and where natural light is controlled, and training was provided there. You can see more pictures and read information about both days.

        University of Florida team Laura Perry and Jake Goodson provide digitization training to workshop participants on July 11 and July 12, 2018.

As Barbados Archives Director Ingrid Thompson noted in her introductory remarks, the grant has been “a learning experience in terms of the details required and the process itself. When you look at how the whole program is structured, it’s not only the application process, but the process of finding the personnel and expertise required. Because for me it’s not only important to receive the grant, but also the outcome and the results. We hope that this experience will allow us to apply for more grants in the future.” Thompson also commented on the teamwork required to make the application possible: “Lissa was the one who passionately advocated for the newspaper’s scholarly importance. Lissa was introduced to me by Amalia, with whom I was already in contact through her work with the Jewish archives on the island.” Ingrid Thompson also invited scholars to initiate discussions in order to prioritize material for digitisation or processing.

In her remarks, Project Leader Amalia S. Levi noted the potential of the digitisation of The Mercury Gazette to foster and facilitate new forms of scholarship on the history of Barbados and of the enslaved. She discussed how archival practices end up locking marginalised populations out of the archives and create gaps and silences in the historical record, and ways to mitigate that. She concluded her presentation with examples of initiatives, particularly digital humanities projects with spatial and network components, that can provide novel ways to locate marginalised voices in The Mercury and bring them to light.

        University of Florida team Laura Perry and Jake Goodson provide digitization training to workshop participants on July 11 and July 12, 2018.

After the training workshop, Project Assistant Lenora Williams discussed her excitement to be part of this process as a junior heritage professional and shared her thoughts: “As the Project Assistant, I will be one of the main persons involved in the day to day digitising. After the first week of digitising after the workshop I can say all the demonstrations by Laura Perry and Jake Goodson have prepared me to fulfill my role in the project. They were able to give me an understanding of each step in the process and the general objectives of each.  I found it very helpful to be able to access professionals in the industry who have the experience working with several types of materials. Most importantly the hands-on training inspired me to approach my duties with a confidence that reading a manual may not be able to cover. So as I continue to learn more about the contents of this resource I am digitising, conservation methods and the new software I am being exposed to, I will always be grateful to those who provided this opportunity and those who made the workshop the success that it was.”

As the project gets under way, we will share more about the process itself, as well as the information gleamed through the pages of the Barbados Mercury Gazette through regular blog posts and conference presentations.

        University of Florida team Laura Perry and Jake Goodson provide digitization training to workshop participants on July 11 and July 12, 2018.

I cannot say that I am much of a football fan. When the World Cup takes place I find my favourite television programmes postponed. Also, my local London pub, which is usually a haven for a quiet evening out with family and friends, is taken over by crowds of supporters watching a match in the corner of the bar and shouting words of encouragement to their much-loved teams.

So, with an initial heavy heart, I started searching the EAP website for material connected to soccer that would be appropriate for a blog post. As always, I got swept away with the archives and for the first time, I feel I may have found my own team to support. I came across a file of correspondence concerning Mabeoana Football Club that was digitised as part of the Matsieng Royal Archives in Lesotho (EAP279). Some of the letters are written in Sotho and so I am unable to read them, but others are in English and they have given me a wonderful impression.

 

Map indicating locations of Lesotho and South Africa (Wikimedia Commons CC BY SA 3.0)

The Club was founded in 1932 but the letters that have been digitised date from 1952-1954. I am assuming the Mabeoana team were made up of talented non-professionals, as indicated by this wonderful letter from the Club Secretary asking for Mr S.C. Pholo to be released from his driving duties so that he could take part in the Sir Sturuk Cup Finals.

It looks as if the Daamboos Choir had been booked to entertain the spectators during this important match but were unable to perform and had to return their fee. What I desperately wanted to know was whether Mabeoana won the Finals but sadly there is nothing within the archive to indicate whether they became the champions.

There seem to be a mixture of official matches and friendly games. I love this letter to an unknown team again from the Secretary, saying they wish to have a ‘Hot’ Match – I do hope the challenge was taken up and that it was a close and exciting game, certainly the results for 1954 imply that Mabeoana were a talented group of players and at the top of their game.

1954 match results

Sadly, having warmed to this team, a quick search on the internet told me that in 2011 they were relegated from the Lesotho Premier League, and I have been unable to find out anything further about them. So, if there is anyone reading this blog who can tell me more about Mabeoana F.C. – I would love to hear from you. 

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Update: 24 Jul 2018

Thanks to one of our blog readers and the power of Twitter we were provided with some further information about this team. The team still play in Matsieng and are currently in the second division in Lesotho. Mabeoana is the name given to the people from Matsieng. The custodian of the team is the Principle Chief of Matsieng, who is currently Seeiso Bereng Seeiso. 

We wish them luck for the next season and hope to get news of their promotion in the not too distant future!

9 June is International Archives Day –  This year's theme comes from the ICA conference “Archives: Governance, Memory and Heritage” to be held in Yaoundé in November. How could EAP miss the opportunity to highlight some of the earlier projects it has funded around the world, starting in the host country for this year’s conference - Cameroon.

EAP051 was awarded in EAP’s very first round of grants and was based at the Bamum Palace Archives digitising documents written in the indigenous writing system – Bamum. The results of the project have helped the community to rekindle their interest in cultural patrimony. There has been a resurgence in learning the script, which had been previously on the decline.

For the next round of funding, I have chosen the project based at Tuvalu National Archives (EAP110). Climate change in this cyclone-prone area has made these documents vulnerable to complete destruction.

In 2008, we funded the initial phase of a major project digitising the Buddhist archive of photography based at Luang Prabang in Laos (EAP177). The images cover 120 years of photography and it is thanks to the highly venerated monk, Phra Khamchanh Virachittathera, who collected these photographs for more than 70 years, that this archive is now available.  

The following year, we supported our only project in Lesotho (EAP279), where the project team digitised the Matsieng Royal Archives. The ceiling to the archive had collapsed, leaving the material exposed to rain. This, of course, meant it was an ideal candidate for EAP support.

I must not ignore the sound projects that have been funded. In 2010, ‘Vanishing voices from the Uralic world’ (EAP347) was awarded; sound recordings for archives in Russia (in particular Udmurtia), Estonia, Finland and Hungary. There are 39 languages from the region and the 6,000 sound recordings are available online containing endangered languages and dialects.

My quick tour finishes in Columbia (EAP650), with a project based at Caloto Viejo (Old Caloto), the administrative capital of a wide region including Native American groups, European settlers, their enslaved Africans, and maroon communities formed by escaped slaves. These documents are critical for the understanding of Afro-Colombian history. It seems appropriate to end this blog with a photograph of archivists ensuring the safekeeping of material for the future.

This blog post has been written by Mr Nasir Javaid, grant holder for EAP839. The material has just been submitted to the EAP Office and it will be online later in the year.

EAP839 produced digital images of rare Urdu periodicals from the 19th to the first half of the 20th century in order to preserve and make them available to researchers. During this period the project team has successfully produced 3,832 issues. Urdu journals played a significant role in the development of Urdu literature, especially fiction, religion, history, poetry and culture of the South Asian region as a whole, particularly in Pakistan and India. If someone wants to write on the development of fiction or religious literature, they should refer back to these rare periodicals. Literature on Urdu criticism also flourished through these periodicals. Numerous books that were published later also drew content from these periodicals. Some of the best novels available in Urdu were first published in parts in Urdu journals. These periodicals also remained the primary source of advertisements for all major trade brands of that time. A large number of prominent writers and society figures gained popularity through these periodicals.

Humayn, May 1935

Baby Powder advertisement, August 1951

Unfortunately, the highly acidic paper used has made this literature highly vulnerable. It is rare to find complete runs of even the most important Urdu periodicals. Some of the publications have vanished; others are on the verge of extinction. Through digitisation and online presentation it becomes possible to access the publications, overcoming obstacles of location.

Taj, October - November 1924

Urdu language, now spoken by more than 60 million people worldwide, was the lingua franca of 19^th century northern India. It was a common medium of mainstream communication when mass printing culture began. It was also the primary South Asian language used by colonial rulers for administrative purposes during the early British Raj. Previously it was very difficult for researchers to find full runs of the first Urdu periodicals. Further, tensions between Pakistan and India have made it very difficult for scholars to complete their research in topics requiring materials published across the national borders.  Making the rare Urdu periodicals accessible online will help improve scholarship on both sides of the border. During this project we have received many requests for copies of these digitised journals from India. The Endangered Archives Programme is making a major contribution towards the preservation of cultural heritage in countries, such as Pakistan, where the governmental support of such initiatives is not a priority.

Humayun, January 1945

This project has enabled staff in Pakistan to develop professionally and to attain levels of performance in the field of technology never before attained within a Pakistani library. Project staff have not only learned to preserve and digitise, but also have become expert in the listing and cataloguing of periodicals. It was our fortune that while scanning these journals we had a chance to see and learn a lot of interesting articles and advertisements on different aspects of social life. Through this project the Mushfiq Khwaja Trust for the Advancement of Knowledge and Culture has developed exceptionally strong and close working relationships with the contributing institution in Pakistan and shared knowledge and skills with those partners.

Ismat, May 1928

The Urdu literary journals have a long publication history some of these have been published continuously for more than a hundred years. It was not an easy task to locate the issues, even family members of the founder, editor and publishers of these journals have only limited numbers. When we digitised these journals they were incredibly pleased that we have preserved the legacy of their ancestors. On occasion, when they need an article they would contact us and also referred other people to us.

Political cartoon, Avadh Punch 1886

The Mushfiq Khwaja Library and Research Centre was also the archival partner on EAP566 resulting in 8635 issues of rare Urdu journals with total number of 615000 images having been digitised. No other institution in South Asia has extensively worked to preserve Urdu journals to this extent.

Remote Capture: Digitising Documentary Heritage in Challenging Locations is a practical guide for those about to embark on a digitisation project and it has just become available online. It is aimed at those who are planning to apply to EAP for future funding, but hopefully the advice will have wider appeal for anyone about to start a similar project.

It has been a joy working on this publication and I hope that people will find the information within its pages helpful. The uniqueness of the book lies in the advice given by those who have taken part in EAP projects and I am extremely grateful for their contributions. But of course, since submitting the draft manuscript to Open Book Publishers, I have received more images of projects being carried out in the field. Although it was too late to include them in the publication, I thought I would share just some in this blog to show that  projects continue to work successfully throughout the world, often in very unique circumstances.  

EAP935: digitising archival material in northern Ghana

EAP951: working on Tristan da Cunha

EAP1005: a portable set-up for Cham manuscripts in Vietnam

EAP1042: working with the Cisse community in Senegal

The fabled city of Timbuktu has attracted frequent media attention over the last few years. During the occupation of northern Mali by Al Qaida linked extremists in 2012 the destruction of mausoleums to local Islamic saints in Timbuktu caused an international outcry and resulted in a UNESCO funded rebuilding project after the recapture of the city in 2013. The extremists also burned around 4500 manuscripts from the Ahmed Baba Institute as their last act of defiance before the French and Malian forces re-conquered Timbuktu. Already during the Jihadist occupation many thousands of manuscripts had been transported in secret to Bamako in the now famous rescue operation organised by the Timbuktu librarian Abdel Kader Haidara. This swashbuckling tale has been the subject of two international best-selling novels, The Bad Ass Librarians of Timbuktu (2016) by Joshua Hammer and The Book Smugglers of Timbuktu (2017) by Charlie English, as well as countless articles and documentary films. Timbuktu, ante bellum, was a thriving city of tourism and the centre of over fifty private family libraries which have now been moved to Bamako where the manuscripts are receiving conservation treatment and are being digitised by SAVAMA, an association of Timbuktu libraries led by Abdel Kader Haidara, which has received international funding from the German, Dutch, Luxemburg, Swiss and Norwegian governments as well as the Ford Foundation and many other sources.

Reconstruction of the Ben Essayouti Library, Timbuktu. Photograph taken by UNESCO Bureau of Mali (Wikimedia Commons)

Certain important libraries in Timbuktu declined taking part in the rescue mission to relocate to Bamako. Instead they chose to hide their precious manuscripts in secret desert hiding places in and around Timbuktu: these include the Imam Essayouti, Al Aquib and Al Wangara manuscript libraries, attached in turn to the three ancient mosques of Timbuktu: the Djinguereber (built 1327), the Sankore (built soon after) and Sidi Yahya (1440). Together they compose what was known as the University of Timbuktu. The British Library, through the Endangered Archives Programme and in partnership with the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library in Minnesota, USA, is now undertaking the digitisation of these libraries in situ in Timbuktu, where work is underway in the Imam Essayouti library since October 2017, and will begin in the Al Wangara in April 2018.

 
Imam Ben Essayouti with Sophie Sarin

The Imam of Sankore at the Al Aquib Library, Timbuktu

The Al Imam Ben Essayouti with Sophie Sarin

Although the main concentration of Arabic manuscripts in Mali was undoubtedly in Timbuktu due to its position as the most important trading city of the Trans-Saharan trade route since the early Middle Ages, other Malian cities also boast large deposits of ancient Arabic manuscripts: Djenné in particular. It is situated some 500 km south of Timbuktu in the Niger Inland Delta of Central Mali and was also an important city of trade and scholarship and one of the gateways where Islam first penetrated Mali in the 13^th century. Djenné is a repository for thousands of manuscripts which have been kept by families for centuries. In 2009, the British Library’s Endangered Archives Programme ran a Pilot Project, which concluded that Djenné’s manuscripts provided a suitable source of material for the mounting of a major two year digitisation project. This was the first in a series of three consecutive major projects, which finally came to an end in October 2017, when in the region of 400,000 images had been achieved from the 8,500 manuscripts which are currently stored in the Djenné Manuscript Library.

 Djenné Manuscript Library

Malian manuscripts deal in the main with traditional Islamic subject matter such as Hadiths (traditional sayings and stories attributed to the Prophet Mohammed), Islamic Jurisprudence of the Malikite School, religious poetry and sermons etc. There are also frequent philosophical expositions, mainly on ethics and logic as well as many manuscripts dealing with the Arabic language and grammar. There is history, correspondence, and astronomy which is normally treated as inseparable from astrology. A large proportion of the manuscripts, particularly in Djenné, fall under the label ‘esoteric’; incantations and magic formulas which purport to tell the future or influence the course of events by the use of phrases from the Qur’an in combination with the manipulation of vegetable matter or animal sacrifices. These sorts of practises are frowned upon by certain factions within Islam and some believe that this may possibly have caused the destruction of the manuscripts in Timbuktu by the fundamentalists who derive their Islamic creed from the Wahhabist school of Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

The involvement of the British Library through the EAP in these projects in Mali continues to be instrumental in safeguarding these manuscripts. In the case of Djenné not only in digital form but also in providing a physically safe environment for the storage of the documents, which had previously been kept in very precarious situations in the family homes, susceptible to the vagaries of the climate where during the rainy season violent rainstorms often cause destruction to the fragile mud buildings, and insects are a continuous hazard.

Digitising in Djenné

However, the menace for the manuscript collections in both Djenné and Timbuktu lies not only in the threat of physical deterioration; the political situation is very unstable. There exists an uneasy truce in Timbuktu, but Islamic extremists are encamped in the surrounding desert and attacks on the city are frequent despite a very large UN peace keeping force.  Similarly, the escalating security crisis in central Mali is making the future uncertain for the Djenné Manuscript Library. State presence is withdrawing from the area as frequent attacks from local Islamic fundamentalists target state employees at institutions such as gendarme guard posts and schools. The Mission Culturelle, as the representative of the Ministry of Culture is a potential target and by extension the Djenné Manuscript Library. So far neither has been targeted, but the situation is volatile. The fact that the Djenné collection of documents has now been digitised and that copies exists at the British Library and also at the National Archives in Bamako means that although the original copies continue to be kept in troubled central Mali, at least the vast majority of manuscripts have now been saved for scholars in digital form, and the Timbuktu manuscripts from the three famous Timbuktu University Libraries are now also on their way to being digitally preserved for posterity.

Written by Sophie Sarin, grant holder of five EAP projects based in Mali: EAP269, EAP488 (Over 2000 manuscripts newly online), EAP690, EAP879 and EAP1094

 

From September 2018, the British Library will be showcasing the projects carried out in Djenné in the form of an exhibition to be held along the Second Floor Gallery. There will also be accompanying events related to Mali during the autumn, so do check the Library's What's on page later in the year.