History in Conversation

Floundering in the Slough of Despond - singleness, unfitness, and the British woman missionary in India, c.1920-1950

Andrea Pass (University of Oxford)

5 December 2012

The Audacity of Veracity - the Rev. Tiyo Soga's role and part in the translation of the Bible into Xhosa

Jo Davis (University of South Africa)

29 May 2013

Unique and Distinctive Collections within University Libraries: Current RLUK Initiatives and Related Matter

Alison Cullingford (University of Bradford)

20 November 2012

The impact of digitisation and its implications for the future direction of archives and special collections

Richard Ovenden (Bodleian Library, Oxford)

Until recently Richard Ovenden was keeper of special collections at the Bodleian and it is with that hat on, that he talks about the rise and impact of digitisation at Oxford. Ovenden believes that the Bodleian might well have been the first (or at least one of the first) libraries to own a website which has helped to put them into a position at the forefront of digitisation. Admittedly, a large portion of that success also relates to the fact that the Bodleian has a large and unique collection upon which companies, including Google, wish to digitalise. Digitalisation attempts began at the Bodleian in the 1990s with what at the time seemed liked large digital project, but which now look relatively small. Expectations have changed and this brings with it changes in scholarly trends and some major implications for special collections and archives. It is these subjects that Ovenden talks about in this session of the Archives and Society seminar. Working with Google the Bodleian collections, alongside an initial 4 other libraries have had large portions of their collections digitalised and made freely available online. These have all been books that are in the public domain and out of copyright. It would seem that after the initial approach by Google that caused outrage from authors, their lawyers proved more cautious in identifying out of copyright material, than Bodleian’s own librarians. Other projects have involved Proquest amongst others, plus of course EEBO and ECHO, from which the Bodleian has a large representation. They are now also part of the EEBO Text Partnership project that is trying to semantically mark-up these early published texts using accurate encoding techniques. Another in-house project for the Bodleian is to try and draw together various digitalisation projects that they have undertaken in the past and now look quite tired, under one updated interface. When Ovenden moves on to look at changes in scholarly trends he looks at expectation, and of how digital copies of journals are now always expected, and monographs, other books and even original MSS are not that far behind. Nevertheless, the Bodleian’s physical collection is still well utilised. The library floors are still busy. Digital has not yet taken away from the physical. Ovenden also discusses born-digital archiving and the changes in technical knowledge and expertise that is required to be successful in this regard. There is also a warning here over the use of commercial social media and cloud computing services – the licences may well one day lead to issues over the ownership of data. This is certainly something that we should be careful about. To conclude Ovenden notes the following about what digital archiving needs to consider: How do you add value to the research process? What purpose is there for digitalising? Should scholars be involved at an early stage (i.e. should archives be approaching successful academics for their digital and traditional archives before they have finished using them)? Issues of costs and funding Marketing – justifying existence of archives

Dr Andrew Flinn (UCL)

23 October 2012

Cathy Williams (The National Archives)

21 Febraury 2012

Kirsten Ferguson-Boucher (University of Aberystwyth)

6 November 2012

Unveiling the unknown: archiving the Black contribution to the performing arts over three centuries 2011 03 28

Leon Robinson (Positive Steps Organisation)

“I don’t want any more black artists to pass away without being acknowledged for the great work that they had done.” This is Leon Robinson’s driving force for looking into long forgotten black artists from Victorian Britain. Leon comes from a performing arts background but through his interest in collecting photographs and play bills of Victorian performers has moved into talking about history as a way of promoting what has almost become a lost history for the benefit of people today. “This is British Entertainment History” not just black history, Leon states firmly. Our second ever live stream was therefore a lively passionate affair with Leon showing various photographs, advertisement posters and videos. Leon’s collection derives primarily from postcard fairs and it is now a large and rare collection of known and forgotten performers. Indeed, Leon states that it was those performers that were unknown that most interested him when thumbing through the dealers stands. The excitement of the hunt comes through clearly. Indeed, one of the most interesting parts of Leon’s talk (other than his clear enthusiasm for the subject) is his story of how he collected these sources over many years; how he created his archive himself and learnt about what was out there and where to look. Uncovering history is however, only part of it – Leon is not collecting for collecting sake he wants to spread the word and let other people know about what he is learning and finding. Through his Positive Steps Organisation, Leon has created various videos (some of which he shows) about the history of black performers and his attempts to get young people involved through the use of lenticulars of those performers. Leon also highlighted a problem in cataloguing systems especially related to finding or identifying the colour of Victorian performers. As an example Leon discussed a poster advertising a dance group with no images. On another occasion when Leon went to an archive they told him that they had no materials on black entertainers but when Leon turned to leave he noticed a poster on the wall with the name Florence Mills which he recognised as being a black artist. There is a very real problem here of identification especially when there is no visual imagery to give us that identification. I was at the session itself and have since reviewed the video and both times I found it hard not to get enthused and excited about what Leon was talking about. He reaches down to the heart of what makes an historian tick (the excitement of searching archives and discovering new things about our subjects) but expresses that enthusiasm in a way that few historians would allow of themselves. This of course comes from Leon deriving from a performing arts background. His interest is in the excitement of presentation of these sources and what they can say more than writing of articles and books. I think one of the questions that we received from our online audience summed up my thoughts on this: it was great to see the “physicality of the archives emphasised so much”.

Ben Worthy explains the benefits, limitations and difficulty of the Freedom of Information Act brought in by the Blair administration in 2000. The act would subsequently become known as one of two acts that Tony Blair would later declare as a mistake during his time in office. At the time Blair believed that the act would make politics more transparent and help the British people trust politicians and the decisions that they make. Instead the act proved problematic for politicians as the media took it up as an additional means for finding headlines. The expenses scandal that began in 2009 came to light as the direct result of a freedom of information request. In this paper Worthy provides his listeners a whistle stop tour of the Constitution Unit’s various projects and investigations of the effect of the Act. Through surveys, interviews, official documents and media information (such as newspapers) the Unit have analysed the expected and unexpected ramifications. When Blair and his government brought the act through Parliament their aims and objectives were as follows: Objectives: · To make government more transparent · To make government more accountable · To improve decision making · To enable the public to better understand decision making processes · To engage public participation in politics · To endear public trust of the workings of government Worthy believes that whilst the first two items have been achieved successfully the other four still need more work. Part of the problem, it would seem is that politicians (including Blair) begin their political career keen on freedom of information – it sounds like a good thing and something that they should be in support of – however, as time goes on they begin to find it annoying and come to believe that it is abused by the media. Interest in supporting the mechanisms of freedom of information therefore decline. One of the unexpected ramifications is the ‘chilling effect’: attempts to undermine the act through less keeping of records from meetings and discussions occurring more often away from official ‘recorded’ procedures. The evidence gathered by the Constitution Unit suggests that this does happen (often at the level of local government) but it is not a large problem. However, Worthy admits that it is actually quite hard to measure such activity. The paper ends with a whirlwind tour of alternative freedom of information activities in other countries: Ireland, India, Mexico, Italy, Sweden, and China. The conclusion there is that each country is different in how it uses freedom of information and that these differences are largely cultural.

Simon Wilson (Hull History Centre)

Simon Wilson admits that some years ago the thought of putting together a repository of digital materials was scary for him and his colleagues. However, with the help of a successful grant funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Hull History Centre became partnered with colleagues at the Universities of Virginia, Stanford, and Yale on a project entitled AIMS (Born Digital Collections: An Inter-Institutional Model for Stewardship). This grant enabled the archivists at Hull to focus entirely on born-digital documents for an extended length of time. In today’s paper, Wilson looks back over the project, what they learnt, and what ideas they have for other archives. As part of the project a white paper was produced which is now available online. This was written for archivists by archivists and looks at the entire process of archiving born-digital materials. There are a variety of difficulties with learning to archive born-digital materials. For starters the material can often be much larger than a physical copy whilst also appearing much smaller (for instance a pdf could contain thousands of pages). Then there is the issue of formats and changes in technology. At Hull they updated an old computer (which they now call their forensic workstation) that contained a zip drive, floppy drive, CD-ROM drive and, in addition, USB connectivity. This enabled them to access digital material contained in old formats, check them, and upload them via USB. Hull also takes photographs of the physical containers (i.e. the floppy disk itself) in the hope that this might also be useful to future research. In addition they have learnt to use various tools that enable them to rapidly check file formats and other aspects of digital files. The AIMS project has given Hull confidence in considering the issues surrounding the collection, storage and management of born-digital archives. This might include documents such as pdf’s, but also e-mails, letters, reports, blogs and websites amongst much else. The AIMS project was awarded Archive Pace Setter status which means that it is recognised as achieving an innovative approach to new methods of management and collection care. The project also has a blog entitled Born Digital Archives which follows their process throughout the project and is well worth a look.

6 March 2012