Abiola Olanipekun recently finished an internship at the British Library. In her final blog post she summarises her previous posts about the iPod generation and bids adieu!

In my final months at the British Library I have been a busy bee! I have written a series of blog posts about the Reform reports on the ‘iPod generation’ which were published in 2007 and 2008. If you have not read my previous posts, please take a look at the links below:

For the 1^st one, click here.

For the 2^nd one, click here.

For the 3^rd one, click here.

If you wish to find out more, please visit our Management & Business Portal for in-depth pieces by Reform and others that will stimulate your brain juices!

Once you’ve done that folks, I hope you might read my final post.

The series of reports analysed the situation for the classes of 2005 and 2006 and made predictions about the financial future for people of my generation. The reports wrote about how the 18-34 generation may pay higher taxes than previous generations, will need to support a generation of long-living retirees, have lost the ‘benefits bargain’ and are generally in a dire mess when it comes to a healthy financial future. You may find this to be pessimistic, but in my own case, as a 26 year old living alone in London, I feel the unsettling reality of some of the findings and predictions in this set of reports.

Despite this, I am determined to take a guarded view and not be completely devoid of optimism. It is also possible to take a retrospective view, since a few years have passed since the publication of the reports: there have been changes to the economy since 2008 and while, for example, the number of graduates in non-graduate jobs has recently been reported to have risen, ONS data also shows that in the last quarter, employment levels have improved.

I like to think that maybe prospects might change and who knows, maybe we will come to read fewer articles about the iPod generation being financially challenged!

In the meantime, I hope that you all found what has been documented in these blogs useful – the Reform reports or what I have written or maybe both?! (Just being hopeful!). Thanks for reading.

Postscript: Abiola recently started a new job working in communications. We wish her the best of luck!

In this post Polly Russell highlights the Library's work to assess the feasibility of digitising the complete run of Spare Rib magazine and asks Spare Rib contributors to get in touch.

Members of the Spare Rib Collective Preparing Issue No. 25 in June 1974. From Right to left, Marsha Rowe, Rosie Parker, Rose Ades, Marion Fudger (nee Slade). © Martin Ward, reproduced with kind permission from Marsha Rowe

Few titles sum up an era and a movement like Spare Rib. The magazine ran from 1972-1993 and for many women was the debating chamber of feminism in the UK.

The British Library has recently embarked on a pilot project to assess the feasibility of digitising the complete run of Spare Rib magazine.

Although the entire run of the magazine has always been available to readers at the British Library and other libraries, digitising the copies and making them freely available online would transform access for researchers and the wider public. As Spare Rib is still in copyright, in order for this project to go ahead it is crucial for the British Library that the majority Spare Rib contributors (including illustrators and photographers) grant permission for their material to be digitised and made available online for non-commercial use. 

The contributors and Spare Rib collective members we have spoken to date have been very positive but we still need to contact a great number of former contributors to ask their permission to digitise their content.

The British Library is undertaking a feasibility study to see whether this will be possible. Without sufficient permissions to digitise the project will not go ahead.

If you were a contributor to Spare Rib then we want to hear from you! Please fill in our online form with your information http://bl.sites.hubspot.com/spare-rib-introduction.

 

This project follows the success of our ‘Sisterhood & After’ Women’s Liberation Oral History archive and website which was launched at the Library earlier this year, as well as a sell-out conference which debated the history and future of the feminism. For more information on this project go to www.bl.uk/learning/histcitizen/sisterhood.

Polly Russell, British Library

Jeremy Jenkins, Curator of International Organisations & North American Official Publications, writes:

Following the centenary commemorations of the outbreak of the First World War, few images are more poignant than the Cenotaph in London’s Whitehall and the congregation of ex-service persons standing in silent remembrance of fallen comrades. With the last veterans having now passed away, the First World War has past from memory into history.

In many respects the Cenotaph, which started life as a wood and plaster mock-up, sits at the centre of a deep and complex narrative which brings together the arts of literature, sculpture and poetry, with infrastructure planning in communities across the country. This post showcases one of the more imaginative proposals for war memorials in the years following the conflict.

Above: Cenotaph: a book of poetry and prose,  the contents of which are possibly more readily associated with remembrance and memorialisation. [BL Pressmark: 12298.a.9]

Nestled in the collections there is a thin fifteen page pamphlet published by the Remembrance Association Committee in 1920. This work echoes a general desire throughout the country for local memorialisation. The title of this work is Roads of Remembrance. It suggeststhat suitable existing highways are identified and transformed to show the ‘dignity of roads of remembrance, adorned with trees’.

Above: Roads of Remembrance as War Memorials (title page). [BL Pressmark:20033.c.13]

The scheme outlined proposals for building ‘highways of exceptional dignity and beauty, with open spaces at intervals as special memorials of the Great War.’ The central argument is that the memorial monuments could play a functional role in improving the local infrastructure. For example, suggestions included replacing a weak and dangerous hump-backed bridge with ‘dignified masonry’ example bearing the inscription:

‘This Bridge was rebuilt to commemorate the Heroes of the Great War.’     

This utilitarian aspect of the Roads of Remembrance scheme would allow war memorialisation and highway improvement schemes to be combined. In the last section of the pamphlet twenty-one suitable schemes are outlined including a bypass on the London to Portsmouth road ‘to avoid the narrow and congested roads of Kingston.’  

The editor of the King's Highway describes a scheme of this kind thus:

‘It seems to us that the first principle of a war memorial should be that everyone can participate in any benefits which it confers; Secondly and hardly less important, that it should be of a permanent character-something that will last of all time. Roads and bridges comply with these two conditions.’

 

Asher Rospigliosi, Brighton Business School, writes:

The British Sociology Association hosted a Presidential event, on the Big Data Challenge at the British Library on Friday the 30th October. Upward of 150 interested parties arrived to hear presentations, ask questions discuss and debate the changing nature of  social science research and the evaluation of policy and practice.

The day comprised of four plenary sessions. Each session had a panel of  invited speakers presenting, followed by a discussion. Each considered different aspect of the impact of Big Data on the social sciences or policy, and each had a very different tone. It rapidly became apparent that among many other challenges, a major theme was debate on whether big data as by product of user activities (i.e. not generated as the result of primary enquiry) was to be welcomed or not.

At the heart of this debate on whether to use data generated by use of social media and other digital droppings, were concerns about assumptions of representativeness, ownership of the data, access to the data and informed user consent.

Above: Word Cloud of BSA: Big Data Challenge at the British Library by Digital Coeliac (Warwick University). Reproduced here with kind permission of Sam Martin.

The opening sessions characterised these contrasting considerations. BSA President John Holmwood welcomed delegates, but warned that Big Data risks offering another dream of unifying the Social Science around a behavioural model, while driving our own actions, as academics, for example, through the impact of the National Student Satisfaction Survey.

If this was a mixed welcome to big data, the next speakers were so far apart in their approach and tone as to polarise the audience. Evelyn Ruppert (Goldsmiths) announced her new SAGE journal, Big Data & Society: Critical Interdisciplinary Inquiries, to be launched in 2014. Evelyn offered a highly critical take on Big Data with consideration of the way that business sets many of the questions, and the need for sociologist and anthropologists to provide  the “why?” Ken Benoit (LSE) spoke earnestly about the necessity of doing, if we are to understand and use Big Data. Ken showed examples of technical tools, which he suggested would be needed by researchers in the field. He made a really strong case for introducing technical education much earlier. Then Emma Uprichard (University of Warwick) countered with a passionate warning that engaging with Big Data highlights the splintered nature of the field of sociology. In engaging we are forced to ask “who are we doing this for, and why?”

Lively discussion from the audience drew out these themes, with impassioned calls for sociology to be a force for radical change, countered by John McInnes of Edinburgh welcoming social insight through analysis of “feral data”!

Highlights from other sessions included an enthusiastic Emer Colman (dsrptn), an influential advocate of Open Data and Digital Government and Paul Martin (University of Sheffield) with a sobering insight into big health data and the enormous potential (commercial) value to the  NHS.

Throughout the day a parallel discussion and sharing of views was tweeted, by delegates and those beyond the library, using #BigDataBL.

Digital Coeliac (Warwick University) has generated some insightful visualisations after the event.

Paola Tubaro (University of Greenwich) has written an interesting analysis of the Big Data Challenge, drawing on these visualisations.

Above: Influencer Moth: Social Reach vs. Activity for #BigDataBL tweets by Digital Coeliac (Warwick University). Reproduced here with kind permission of Sam Martin. (See Sam Martin's Digital Coeliac blog for a better resolution image)

About the author

Asher Rospigliosi is senior lecture in e-business, digital marketing and business information systems at Brighton Business School. His research interests centre on graduate employability and e-learning. Away from the internet Asher has been fire-keeper at the Glastonbury Festival tipi field for many years, walks his dogs and blogs when he “has a thought”!

On the evening of the 15 October we held the 20^th and final event in our series (with the Academy of Social Sciences) on ‘Myths and Realities’. The series began in 2009 and has examined discrepancies between political and press representations of social issues such as immigration, nutrition, education, crime, food, the environment, welfare and more to understand the gap between social science evidence and more broadly accepted and propagated social ‘truths’. Each event included talks from academics and social science practitioners in which they presented evidence from their field about the particular set of beliefs under discussion. Nearly all of the events have been podcast and are available here as well as on SoundCloud to download.

The final event was chaired by Professor Dame Janet Finch and the speakers were Professors Ivor Gaber and John Holmwood. It aimed to take a broad view of the role of the press and politicians in reproducing particular narratives about our society and to examine the role of social scientists in presenting evidence and challenging misconceptions.

Prof. Gaber gave the first presentation, and with a background in journalism and communications, offered his insights into the notion that as a journalist, one should ‘never let the facts get in the way of a good story’. Gaber critiqued this axiom to show that whilst this way of working could be seen to be responsible for many of the current ‘myths’ about society (e.g. the ‘scroungers’ discourse, ‘problem families’, ‘drugs’, ‘immigration’ and so on), it is also a cultural facet of an industry which is highly pressured and competitive, shaped by particular patterns of ownership and bias as well as by audience expectations. Gaber drew on writers such as Stanley Cohen (e.g. Folk Devils and Moral Panics) and Stuart Hall (e.g. in Policing the Crisis) to talk about the way in which particular narratives about society become subject to exaggeration and distortion as well as about how the press are often guilty of giving primacy to the views and opinions of particular groups (as has been discussed again more recently in relation to the ‘riots’ of 2011). Finally, Gaber raised the question of what objectivity is to the press (a ‘gold standard?’, ‘worthy aspiration?’) and finished on a lighter note with this comic song by Dan and Dan films!

Above: 'News on the way' by Vratislav Darmek

Prof. John Holmwood’s presentation took a different approach, deconstructing the notion of the ‘expert’ social scientist verses the general public/the press. He suggested that there is a danger to the notion of democracy in thinking of oneself (in this case, the social scientist) as the expert or definer of what counts as valid knowledge. In fact, and as recent events have shown, it is in the public interest to question the nature of ‘expertise’. This took me back to another event held here at the British Library (to which Holmwood contributed) where we examined the relationship between power and knowledge (asking whose knowledge counts?). He suggested that when we think of lived realities, and how these realities are perceived and understood by the individual through various practices and experiences, it can become difficult to make a clear distinction between ‘knowledge’ and ‘belief’. If this position is held to be a useful one to take when considering beliefs in other areas of social science, then why isn’t the same approach taken when we examine the different ‘truths’ about society put forward by the press, the public, and social scientists?  Holmwood suggested that there was some truth in Paul Dacre’s recent point that politicians and the press on the left perhaps do not trust the public enough. Holmwood’s intervention was a useful and in some ways surprising one which gave the audience plenty of food for thought for subsequent participatory session as well as for events we hold in the future.

The audience contributed to the subsequent discussion with questions such as:

• Are all these ‘myths’ necessarily always right-wing?
• Why does the value of cognitive psychology not feature in this discussion?
• How do ‘myths’ and ‘realities’ around pornography feature in this context?

The event itself (excluding audience questions and further discussion I’m afraid) can now be viewed as a video online via our YouTube channel. Please feel free to use this video to generate your own discussions, or in your teaching, and please feel free to share the link!

Holly Gilbert, Social Sciences, writes:

This one-day event, held on Monday 7 October, was the second time we have collaborated with colleagues from the International Association of Visual Urbanists and Goldsmiths, University of London to create a space for discussion about the use of visual methods in researching the urban environment. The event was part of the annual Urban Photo Fest and was fully booked. It was a really stimulating and thought-provoking day.

Above: Professor Caroline Knowles. Photograph © Felipe Palma and reproduced here with kind permission.

We were taken from flip flop factories in China to the Olympic Park in Stratford via Brighton as photographed by its traffic wardens, the sewer systems of London and the view from the top of the unfinished shard. We looked at the ephemeral objects found in city streets, we followed the journey that a couple took across Switzerland in 1935, we encountered water as an intervention in the spaces of Berlin and we listened to the sounds of the landscape and literature of East London.

The presentations and discussions considered different ways of using visual methods to do urban research, questions about the ethics of selecting what makes it into the frame, the effective force of images and the mischievous, playful nature of visual research. Ian Cooke, Curator of Politics and the Propaganda exhibition at the British Library, introduced us to some of the photographic and moving image collections held here at the Library.

Above: One of the panels in discussion. Photograph © Felipe Palma and reproduced here with kind permission.

A series of films was screened during the day, many of which can be viewed online via the links below, which gave art practitioners and researchers from across the social sciences the opportunity to share their work in a different format. The films explored cities across the world including Lima, Gateshead, Dubai, Berlin and various parts of London.

Keynote Speaker

Professor Caroline Knowles,Goldsmiths, University of London

Plastic City: Insights from the Flip-Flop Trail

Papers

Anthony Palmer, Goldsmiths, University of London

Landmark - staging the urban landscape in London’s East End

David Killeen, Independent Artist

To You I Follow

Paul Halliday, Goldsmiths, University of London

The Appearance of Things

Bradley L Garrett, University of Oxford

Encountering the city through urban interventions

Diego Ferrari, Kingston University and Central Saint Martins

Photography as mapping space

Micheál O’Connell, University of Sussex

Contra-Invention: the photography of Britain’s Traffic Wardens

Maria Papadomanolaki, London College of Communication, University of the Arts London

Tracing Paths: exploring landscape and listening from and beyond the books

Panel Chairs

David Kendall, Goldsmiths, University of London

Toby Austin Locke, The British Library

Rachel Jones, Goldsmiths, University of London

Film Screenings

Urban Habitat II (2013) – Video: Lluís A. Oliver; Photos: Diego Ferrari; Music: Junior Jero

Cold Angel (2013) – Bradley L. Garrett

Sounds of Wapping, London River Thames (2013) – Tine Blom and Portia Winters

Missing You (2013) - Micheál O’Connell/Mocksim

Lugares que fui and Wilder's Car (2012) –  Rebecca Locke

Big Bus Tour (2008) –   David Kendall, Marina Loeb, Keyvan Gharaee Nezhad

Wild The Need to Leave the Cage of Love (2009) – Annalisa Sonzogni

Dépaysement 4, 1 & 2 (2013) – Melanie Clifford

A Microcosm City: subtitled (2013) – Maria Papadomanolaki

Landscape of Disappearances: Reflections 1(2013) – Rachel Sarah Jones

Ayquina (2012) – Felipe Palma

Bridget Lockyer, a PhD student at the University of York, reviews ‘In Conversation with the Women’s Liberation Movement’ which was held at the British Library in October 2013

‘In Conversation with the Women’s Liberation Movement: Intergenerational Histories of Second Wave Feminism’ took place on Saturday 12^th October at the British Library. I first heard about this event when I was approached by Signy Gutnick Allen and Sarah Crook from the History of Feminism Network, who, along with British Library and the Raphael Samuel History Centre, were organising the day-long event.  My work on the Women’s Liberation Movement (WLM) in Bradford and my current research into women’s paid and unpaid work had prompted them to ask whether I would like be an ‘interviewer’ on one of the themed panel sessions. Of course I said yes, this is an event I would have attended anyway, so I was really pleased to be directly involved. I was also intrigued by the conversation format and how the intergenerational discussions would transpire.

The event was inspired by Sisterhood and After: The Women’s Liberation Oral History Project and I really liked this idea of extending this fantastic project, which I had followed closely, beyond the confines of its website and archive into an interactive discussion about the WLM and its legacy. The day would be a series of themed ‘conversations’ with two junior academics/activists interviewing two ‘senior’ academics/activists who had been involved in the WLM. Each panel would also include a question and answer session, giving space for the audience to contribute and join in the conversation.

The event proved to be very popular, selling out twice (having been moved from a smaller space into the British Library’s conference auditorium). The unusual format was nerve-wracking, particularly for the junior interviewers, despite being armed with our pre-prepared questions. There was a lot to fit in, a range of different topics to cover and I think both the speakers and the audience were unsure of what to expect.

Above: Badge from last National Women's Liberation conference, 1978. Unidentified maker. Available via the Women's Library at LSE.

The first session on ‘Women’s History’ was perhaps the most interesting for me as a historian. Sally Alexander and Catherine Hall were interviewed by Lucy Delap and Rachel Cohen. They discussed the close relationship between the WLM and history, the WLM partly emerging out of a need to examine women’s own histories and the histories of other women. Yet I was quite surprised to hear that they were completely confident that they themselves, as part of the WLM, were actively making history. I particularly liked the anecdote about Sheila Rowbotham imploring a women’s group to write dates on their pamphlets and minutes, sparing a thought for future archivists. They also discussed the WLM’s influence on historical methodologies and the importance of positioning yourself within your own research.

In the second session, entitled ‘Reproductive Choices’, April Gallwey and Freya Johnson Ross interviewed Denise Riley and Jocelyn Wolfe. The word ‘choice’ was discussed at length, with particular focus on who had the choice to do what when it came to reproduction, and the change in the terminology from ‘rights’ to ‘choice’. Jocelyn discussed how, as a black woman, the concept of reproductive choice was different, as black women’s bodies were (and are) controlled in different ways. The panel also discussed motherhood and childlessness, and the class implications behind the terms ‘yummy mummy’ and ‘pram-face’, again bringing to the fore questions about language and context.

After lunch, there was the ‘Race’ panel in which Gail Lewis and Amrit Wilson were interviewed by Nydia Swaby and Terese Johnson. Gail Lewis commented how differently her work was received and adopted in the United States compared to Britain. Both Gail and Amrit felt that British feminism has not fully engaged with race and race politics, particularly within academia. Amrit Wilson discussed feminist campaigns around immigration, and I was particularly interested in the anti-deportation campaigns of the 1970s and their links to the WLM. A question from the audience asked how white women should engage with race within their work and activism. The panel’s response was simple: educate yourself, read the texts and do not shy away from it.

The ‘Sexualities’ panel was the most difficult and tense panel. Both Sue O’Sullivan and Beatrix Campbell, answering questions asked by Amy Tooth Murphy and Charlie Jeffries, gave personal accounts of their transition from having only sex relationships with men to having sexual relationships with women. They considered how sexuality and gender was perceived during the WLM, discussing bisexuality, political lesbianism and trans women. During the panel session and the Q and A the followed, there were quite a lot of angry interjections. There seemed to be some misunderstanding of what Bea and Sue had said, a confusion between which views were their own, and which views were the ones prevalent at the time. It was in this session that the location of the event seemed to jar slightly with its purpose, and a smaller, more intimate space would perhaps have been more appropriate.

The fifth session was the ‘Work and Class’ panel, where Kate Hardy and I interviewed Lynne Segal and Cynthia Cockburn. Our questions focused on how the WLM tackled issues of women’s work, what had been learnt and the challenges women face today in the current political and economic climate. We also discussed the how we could and should put class politics and socialist politics back into feminist debate and activism.  

The final speaker was Susuana Antubam, Women’s Officer of the University of London’s Union. She was there partly to represent younger feminist activism. Susuana spoke about some of the prevailing attitudes towards women and feminism on our university campuses but also discussed the multiple campaigns she was involved with, ensuring that the event ended it on positive, hopeful note.

Not everything about this event worked, but that is to be expected with an unfamiliar format. Some people wanted more contributions from the junior feminists and for the dialogue to be less one-way. I found the conflict that arose frustrating and know that others too felt disappointed by the lack of unity. Yet the great thing about feminism in its broadest sense is that it is not afraid to constantly challenge itself and to keep challenging the assumptions made by those within in it, to ensure, as Susuana said, that no woman is left behind. In many ways it was good that the event was not a self-congratulatory ‘pat on the back’ for those in the WLM. Yet we have got to understand the context in which their mistakes were made in and appreciate that they were negotiating unchartered territory and forging new paths. I think this event highlighted some of the differences, intergenerational or otherwise, between feminists, and the potential for miscommunication between them. We’ve got to hope that these differences won’t mean feminism presses the self-destruct button. After all, the common ground is that we were all there, prepared to listen, eager to take part and willing to continue the conversation.

Bridget Lockyer is in the third year of an AHRC funded PhD at the Centre for Women’s Studies, University of York. Her research interests include women’s experiences of paid and unpaid work in the UK voluntary sector; voluntary sector culture and change since the 1970s; feminist activism and its links to voluntary/community work and oral history methods.

This post was originally published on Bridget’s blog: bridgetlockyer.wordpress.com

If you are in the first year of a PhD in the social sciences, why not come along to one of our doctoral open days on 2 and 13 December 2013?

These days are a chance for new PhD students to discover the British Library’s unique research materials. You will learn about our Social Sciences collections, find out how to access them, and will have the opportunity to meet our expert staff and other researchers in your field.

The collections at the British Library which are relevant to social science research range from national government documents, material from international organisations, legal documents and texts, sound recordings and oral histories, trade literature and market research, datasets and digital resources, newspapers, magazines and other news media...amongst other things.

The King's Library at the British Library. Photo by Daniel2005.

These days are the perfect opportunity to find out what the British Library holds that could support and enhance your research. The days include sessions by social science curators and members of the reference team to help you find and use the collections. In previous years the days have been a great way to demystify our collections and to welcome new researchers into the British Library. To make the most of your day, you may wish to get a free Reader Pass before the event.

The events are solely for first year PhD students who are new to the Library. Lunch and refreshments will be provided and there is a small charge of £5. Find out more and book here.

There is some introductory information and case studies about our social science collections (aimed at postgraduate and academic researchers) on the ESRC website here. These pages provide some great examples of how social scientists have used our collections and descibe the sort of content you can expect to find here.

We hope to see you in December!