90 likes | 186 Views
UK Perspectives on ‘split collections’. Diasporic Literary Archives Workshop, Pavia, 26 February 2013 Rachel Foss Lead Curator, Modern Literary Manuscripts British Library rachel.foss@bl.uk. Overview of talk. What do we mean by ‘split’ collections?
E N D
UK Perspectives on ‘split collections’ Diasporic Literary Archives Workshop, Pavia, 26 February 2013 Rachel Foss Lead Curator, Modern Literary Manuscripts British Library rachel.foss@bl.uk
Overview of talk • What do we mean by ‘split’ collections? • BL collaborative projects and initiatives: • Acquisition and resource discovery (models of collecting: tranche-based; future accruals etc) • Translators’ papers • Digitisation and born-digital collections
Modern literary manuscripts collections • 1600 onwards; across all genres; drafts and supporting material • Actors, theatre agents, literary critics; corporate as well as personal archives; literary trends • BL Strategy for Heritage Acquisitions: • To be the national hub for personal archives • To offer integrated, user-focussed services for BL archives • To demonstrate and maximise the impact and value of the collecting of archives • To show national leadership in the field of personal archives • Dual role of the BL. GLAM context and national distributed responsibility
What do we mean by a ‘split collection’? • Split across collecting institutions • Acquisition by a single institution: appraisal and future accruals • Models of collecting: Idea of the ‘life archive’; tranche-based model
Acquisition, cataloguing and resource discovery • Ted Hughes Archive • BL/Emory Catalogues • Access points: • Location Register of Twentieth Century English Literary Manuscripts; National Register of Archives; Ted Hughes Society; Dictionary of National Biography entries • Networking application; UK Memory of the World Register • BS Johnson – BFI DVD release
Translators’ Papers • Implications for and challenges to collecting policies: • ‘Hidden’/ invisible material • Territory and ‘appropriateness’; pre-eminent individual writer • How should collecting be directed? • Data protection and sensitive information? • BL Conference, Literary Translators (2011); GLAM mapping exercise; user consultation survey
Digitisation • Collaborative Projects – digital re-unification • Jane Austen’s Fiction Manuscripts Digital Edition: • http://www.janeausten.ac.uk/index.html • The First World War Poetry Digital Archive: • http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/ • Europeana 1914-1918: • http://www.europeana.eu/portal/ • English Online at the BL
Enhanced Curation • Record and create contextual material around environment: • Workroom photography • Recording interviews • Video conversational tours of a writer’s habitat • Record of the acquisition process itself (John Berger Audioboo diary): enhancement of the catalogue record and extra research resource