Today is the third International Archives Day, and also marks the 62nd anniversary of the International Council on Archives. More information about the day, and the intentions of the ICA in establishing the celebration, can be found here.

Raising awareness of the importance of documentary heritage in shaping and supporting collective memory and upholding citizen's rights around the world is one of the aims of the EAP, and International Archives Day provides us with an excellent opportunity to reflect on our progress so far.

The project Digitisation of Bolivian indigenous communities' records on Allyu structure, tax and land tenure is currently in its final stages, and illustrates our aims and objectives well. The original material is held at the Archivo de La Paz and consists of volumes, maps and loose documentation. The Bolivian indigenous communities require the records as proof of community membership and land ownership and this enormous demand requires repeated handling and copying of the material, which slowly contributes to its degradation.

Creating digital copies has enabled the staff at the Archivo de La Paz to supply access copies on DVD to the 438 cantones of La Paz, increasing community access to this invaluable resource and enabling the Archive to keep the originals in storage, preventing further deterioration through use.

Here are some images taken from the collection:

 

 

Alex
  

During May we received digitally copied material from three projects, all of them from Asia. Here are links, with some images:

Assessment and preservation of the old Vietnamese Ecole Francaise d'Extreme Orient archive in ancient ideographic Nom script

Digitising private collections of Acehnese manuscripts located in Pidie and Aceh Besar Regencies

 

Preservation of historic ephemera and manuscripts from Nepal

 
Lynda 

One of the private collections digitised as part of the EAP127 project is that of Devajit Bandyopadhyay. A noted singer of North Indian classical music and Bengali songs, he is also active in the theatre, a passion reflected in his collection of theatre materials.

The collection comprises theatrical scripts, song books, and musical instruments, but it is his collection of booklets designed to promote new productions that have been digitised as part of the EAP project. These booklets, whilst not precisely programmes, contain much of the same information, such as castlists, a plot synopsis, song lyrics and photographs of the performance.

The images below are taken from the booklet promoting the play Himmati Ma, a Bengali production of Brecht's Mother Courage and Her Children, which opened in December 1995.

 

 

Alex
 

Cataloguing continues on the Popular Market Books from Bengal. For this post I've pulled out some language primers. Educational books are a common category in this material and language guides for Bengali, Hindi and English appear to have been very popular. Introductory books for spoken and written English appear quite frequently, as do manuals for professional letter writing.

 

 

I've also come across some wonderful illustrated Bengali primers. Since starting work with the EAP I've been studying the scripts of the new languages I'm presented with. It's important that our catalogues provide accurate transliterations of titles and other information, in line with Library of Congress standards, in order to facilitate access. These primers will, I hope, prove useful as I continue with Bengali and Hindi.

Here's a selection of pages from one of the most visually appealing.

 

 

Alex
 

Last month we received only one set of new material - two collections of rare dongjing archives from Yunnan in China. This material was copied by the project Survey on surviving dongjing archives in Jianshu, Tonghai and Mengzi. Its arrival couldn't have suited us better. It came just in time to be catalogued by Thushari Perera, who is doing a placement with us as part of her degree in Archives and Records Management at University College London.

We should be able to announce the completion of this catalogue and its availability very soon. In the meantime, I can tell you that the project copied 23 manuscripts and other records belonging to Mr Li Chun and 10 manuscripts from the collection of Mr Wang Kaichao. Most of these documents are music scores, lyrics or texts associated with dongjing performances and rituals. Also included are records from dongjing societies, a biography of the Sacred Zhang and volumes used in worshiping the North God.

 

The image above is from a music score belonging to the Li Chun Collection. The image below comes from the Wang Kaichao Collection and belongs to a text that gives details of donjing performances that celebrate the God Taiyi rescuing the threatened. This powerful early Daoist god is thought to act of behalf of those suffering misfortunes.

 

Lynda
 

In April each year the EAP International Advisory Panel meets to discuss the latest round of applications. From this meeting comes a new batch of projects, and the anticipation of new material. This year over 40 applications were received, including ones from Ethiopia, Honduras, Uzbekistan and Indonesia. Successful projects will be informed and their details will be added to the 'projects' pages on our website.

Lynda

We are pleased to announce that the catalogue for the Historical Periodical Collection of the al-Aqsa Mosque Library is now available to view via the EAP webpages.

Consisting of 13 newspapers and 11 magazines variously published in Palestine, Syria and Turkey, the collection is an important source of information about Palestine, its history and people in the early 20th century. The collection also offers an insight into the development of the Arab press during the British Mandate Period.

If you would like to access the digital material, or have any questions about the project and its outcomes, please contact us: [email protected]

Alex

When it comes to accessioning material, each month is as busy as the last. During March we received packages from five EAP projects. Looked at in other ways, this can be measured as 1,318 DVDs and one external hard drive, or 6 terabytes, or 45 archival disc boxes, or eight shelves (almost a whole bay!).

Projects that submitted material are:

Preservation through digitisation of the endangered Armenian rare books and making them accessible on the Web (phase 1)

Preserving the archives of the United National Independence Party of Zambia

Preserving memory: documentation and digitisation of palm leaf manuscripts from northern Kerala, India

Assessment and preservation of the old Vietnamese Ecole Francaise d'Extreme Orient archive in ancient ideographic Nom script

Retrieving heritage: rare old Javanese and Old Sundanese manuscripts from West Java (stage one)

Lynda