Category Archives: 21st century

New oral histories now online: Oxford’s pandemic perspectives

21st century, Digital archives, Medical, Modern, Newly available (2023), Sciences, , ,

https://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/series/collecting-covid-oral-histories

The Collecting COVID project (a collaboration of collecting between the History of Science Museum and the Bodleian Libraries) is currently well into its second year of uncovering Oxford University’s innovative and celebrated pandemic research.

The project has acquired a fascinating selection of oral history interviews from across the University, which explore the rapid research response to the crisis in early 2020. Fifty of these interviews are now publicly available in full on the University Podcasts website. An additional fifty will conclude this part of the collection, with new interviews added routinely.

Oxford academics, principal investigators, professional services and medical students all provide insights into their experiences of this time, providing testimonials that will inform research for generations. Topics are varied with contributors from all academic divisions and include vaccine manufacture and clinical trials, drug design and discovery, COVID misinformation, clinical care of patients, and economic recovery.

Collecting COVID (funded by the E. P. A. Cephalosporin Fund) is ongoing and still actively collecting pandemic research related objects and archival material from the University community. Enquiries and submissions to the collection can be sent to collectingcovid@glam.ox.ac.uk

The archive of development economist Richard Jolly is now available

20th century, 21st century, Archives and Modern Manuscripts, Modern, Newly available (2023), Social Sciences, , , , ,

The catalogue can be found online at Bodleian Archives & Manuscripts.

Richard Jolly graduated in economics from Magdalene College Cambridge in 1956. Due to his Christian religious convictions, he registered as a conscientious objector and did his National Service not in the military but as a Community Development Officer in the Baringo District of Kenya from Jan 1957-Jan 1959, although he reassessed and relinquished his religious convictions during that time. Jolly’s Baringo service, meanwhile, sparked a change in career focus away from business and into the development field and eventually into the United Nations.

(Immediately after leaving Kenya, however, Jolly took part in the British Alpine Hannibal Expedition, which attempted to retrace, with an elephant called Jumbo, Hannibal’s route across the Alps.)

During the 1960s Jolly studied for a Masters and PhD at Yale University in America, and participated in a research tour of Cuba soon after the revolution. After his masters he became a research fellow at the East Africa Institute of Social Research, Makerere College in Uganda (1963), and did short-term economic consultancies in countries across the world.

He became a fellow and later director of the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) at the University of Sussex in 1969. In 1970 he was seconded from the IDS to work for the United Nations as the Senior Economist in the Development Division of Zambia’s Ministry of Development and Finance. Through the 1970s he continued to work on technical assistance and advisory programmes for the UN focussing mainly on labour and employment, including heading missions on agriculture and basic needs to Bangladesh and Zambia.

From 1975 Jolly sat on the governing council and executive board of the Society for International Development (and was vice president of SID from 1982-1985). He helped develop the North-South Roundtable as a project of the Society for International Development, chairing the Roundtable from 1987-1996. The Roundtable was a group founded by Barbara Ward (1914-1981) which incorporated equal numbers of representatives from developed and developing countries to discuss and brief policy makers on global development issues.

Jolly was appointed Deputy Executive Director (Programmes) of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in July 1981 with the rank of UN Assistant Secretary General, serving from 1 Jan 1982 until 1995. He had responsibilities for UNICEF’s programmes globally. His focus on paying more attention to the needs of women and children in economic adjustment policies led to his work on the co-authored book Adjustment With a Human Face (1987).

He was appointed to the UN Development Programme (UNDP) from 1996-2000 as Special Advisor to the Administrator of the UNDP and co-ordinator of the UNDP’s Human Development Report which published reports on a human development approach to growth as well as on poverty, consumption, globalization and human rights.

From 1996-2000 Jolly chaired the UN Sub-Committee on Nutrition and from Sep 1997-Dec 2003 and Nov 2004-Aug 2005 was the Chair of the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council. Following retirement from the UN he was a trustee of the charity Oxfam [Oxfam’s archive is also at the Bodleian Library, with multiple catalogues] and chairperson of the United Nations Association (UK), an independent policy association.

In the 2000s Richard Jolly became the co-director of the UN Intellectual History Project based at City University in New York which produced a sixteen volume history of the UN’s contributions to development. His papers here at the Bodleian Library form a significant part of a collection of archives from United Nations staff (the UN Career Records Project), a collection that Richard Jolly has been involved with since its inception.

The resilience of digital heritage. A session in focus from the iPRES 2022 Conference

21st century, Digital archives, Lecture, Modern, , , ,

iPRES, the annual International Conference on Digital Preservation, took place in Glasgow 12th-16th September 2022, hosted by the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC). In this blog post, Alice Zamboni reports on some of the highlights of the conference, held in person after a two-year hiatus.

The title chosen for the 2022 iPRES Conference, “Let Digits Flourish. Data for all, for good, for ever” is also an exhortation that perfectly captures the ambitions of the Digital Preservation community and the spirit of its annual gathering at iPRES. Its rich conference programme combined traditional panels with lightning talks, workshops and interactive sessions. The subdivision of the programme into the five thematic strands of Resilience, Innovation, Environment, Exchange and Community was an effective way to foster interdisciplinary conversations among experts who are busy tackling similar issues from different angles and work towards the same goal of ensuring the preservation of digital heritage worldwide.

Thanks to the generous support of the DPC career development fund, I was lucky enough to be able to attend iPRES in person. As I am only a few months into my role as graduate trainee digital archivist at the Bodleian, this was my first professional conference. For me, attending iPRES was the perfect opportunity to get acquainted with current trends and developments in the field of digital preservation and learn more about the important work undertaken in Archives and Libraries across Europe and further afield.

Souvenirs from iPRES: a tote bag and a tartan scarf in the DPC colour scheme

One session that skilfully interwove many of the ideas running through the conference was held on Thursday 15th as part of the Resilience strand. The session brought together archivists, researchers and experts from various Industries, which allowed for a multifaceted exploration of the obstacles posed by the preservation of complex digital resources connected to academia and the art world. The session touched upon a number of issues, from the threat that obsolete software poses to Internet art, to the importance of digital preservation strategies for academic research projects with a digital output and the application of web archiving to academic referencing.

The first two presentations highlighted the value of web archiving as a way to ensure the preservation of online resources used in academic research. Sara Day Thomson and Anisa Hawes’s talk focused on the website created as part of the Carmichael Watson Research Project, based at the University of Edinburgh. The website hosts an important online database of primary written resources and artefacts relating to Gaelic culture. Following the end of the research project, the website was taken down owing to security issues caused by its infrastructure. Day Thomson and Hawes were involved in the complex task of archiving this very large online database using Webrecorder.

Without the web archivists’ intervention, the Carmichael Watson Project website would have simply vanished. The presentation made a case for the development of digital preservation strategies, which should be viewed as a priority by academic institutions whose research output includes important digital archives and databases. Equally, this case study sparks questions about whether web archiving is the sole and most viable solution for the preservation of digital archives and databases. Does the website – its structure and the way in which it displays the database – matter and is therefore worth preserving for its cultural and evidential value, or could the research output be separated from the website and preserved through other means?

Martin Klein’s (Los Alamos National Laboratory) paper on Reference Rot presented another issued posed by the ubiquity of the internet in academic writing and publishing. As the number of scholarly resources available solely in electronic formats grows, so too does the amount of bibliographic citations that include a URL. Yet these links are easily broken. Many of us will have experienced the disappointment of clicking on a hyperlink only to find that the resource is no longer available on that webpage. Fewer will know that this phenomenon has its own nickname: content drift, which exposes URLs to link rot. Luckily, Klein’s project has devised an automatized programme for the creation of what he described as ‘robustified links’. In this way, it is possible to create an archived version of a URL, along with a unique resource identifier that includes information about date and time of creation of this robust link.

Both presentations offered me a new perspective on the work that I do at the Bodleian, where I help manage the Bodleian Libraries Web Archive. I often wonder who the current users of our web archive may be and what value this collection of websites may acquire in decades from now. The two talks made me appreciate the growing recognition of web archiving as a form of preservation of digital heritage as well as the value that these archived resources have for different stakeholders.

The second half of the session turned from academia to the art world, with papers by Natasa Milic-Frayling (IntactDigital Ltd) and Dragan Espenschied (Rhizome). The two papers explored some of the challenges faced by the preservation of Internet art. Both talks were interesting for the historical perspective they offered on recent developments in the art world such as NFT artworks, which may eventually find their way in a contemporary artist’s archive. As Milic-Frayling pointed out, the internet opened up a world of possibilities for emerging artists in the 1990s. Thanks to the web, artists could reach new audiences online without the mediation of art galleries and exhibitions. Yet the dissemination of artworks in the online environment has exposed them to the insidious threat of software obsolescence.

Espenschied showed the valuable work that Rhizome’s platform ArtBase has done to counter this issue. Active since 1999, this archive of Internet art employs various pieces of software to handle obscure data formats used by artists in the 1990s and allows users to perform the artefact choosing from different options, such as browser emulation or a web archived version of the artwork.

Milic-Frayling talked about her recent collaboration with artist Michael Takeo Magruder. Some of his Internet art pieces were created using Flash and VRML (Virtual Reality Modelling Language), both of which are no longer supported by today’s browsers.  At first, it may be difficult to comprehend how a piece of software can negatively affect a work of art. Conservation issues affecting analogue archival material – from the threat of humidity and bookworms for a rare printed book to the excessive exposure to light for a delicate drawing – are tangible and visible. Yet software obsolescence should be taken just as seriously for the way in which it affects the born-digital counterparts to works on paper. In Magruder’s net art piece World[s], the combination of FLASH and VRML contributes to the creation of mesmerizingly intricate three-dimensional virtual shapes floating through a dark space. If the software is not correctly read, the integrity and quality of the artwork are endangered and potentially lost forever. Milic-Frayling worked to ensure the preservation of these net art pieces, guided in her approach by the artist’s requirements around access to and display of his artworks.

Together, the four talks contributed to show that born-digital resources are fragile and especially vulnerable to obsolescence. Yet the picture they painted was far from bleak. The speakers also made a case for the resilience of digital heritage, which owes much to the work that digital preservation specialists do to ensure that born-digital complex objects adapt to constant technological advancement and continue to be accessible to future generations.

Some useful links:

Digital Preservation Coalition – https://www.dpconline.org/

Webarchiving with Webrecorder – https://webrecorder.net/tools#archivewebpage

Robustifying Links Project – https://robustlinks.mementoweb.org/

ArtBase archive – https://artbase.rhizome.org/wiki/Main_Page

 

 

 

 

New: Catalogue of the archive of Peter Landin (1930-2009) computer scientist, academic and gay rights campaigner

20th century, 21st century, Cataloguing, Modern, Newly available (2022), Sciences,

The catalogue of the Archive of Peter Landin (1939-2009) computer scientist, academic and gay rights campaigner, is now online.

Landin’s early career was industry based; in 1960 he became the sole employee of  Christopher Strachey who was then working as an independent computing consultant. As Strachey’s research assistant, he was also encouraged to pursue his autonomous research interests alongside writing a compiler to translate the early programming language ‘autocode’ into the machine language of Ferranti’s new Orion machine. Landin’s radical approach was never finished, but underpins compiler writing to this day. He researched and published prolifically on formalising the semantics of language. His career and contribution to advancing programming languages and computer science in general was incredibly pioneering – encompassed by both industry and academic positions in the United States of America, returning to England to hold the position of Emeritus Professor of Queen Mary University of London (formerly known as QMC) and teaching hundreds of students, and publishing a formal description of ALGOL 60 programming language for the International Federation for Information Processing. His abstract thinking and constant discoveries mean that Landin is celebrated as a pioneering computer scientist today.

Early in his vocation Landin also lectured at the 1963 Oxford Computing Laboratory summer school on advances in programming and non-numerical analysis. He spoke on lambda calculus and applicative expressions, which he would later publish papers on. The names on the timetable below read as a ‘Who’s who’ of key figures in the computer programming sphere at the time.

Early version of timetable for the Oxford Computing Laboratory summer school in advances in programming and non-numerical analysis, 1963. Oxford, Bodleian Libraries, MS. Landin 147. Rightsholder: University of Oxford

Particularly in the series of work papers, drafts and published works and correspondence, Landin’s conscientious and creatively chaotic work ethic is evident. However, computing was never his entire life [1].  As Landin aged, he became less enthused by computer science, particularly disillusioned at its misuse by large corporations and what he saw as the ‘surveillance state’.  This fed into his lifelong disenchantment with bureaucracy, hierarchy and the running of large organisations in general, which is particularly evident in notes, reflections and social aphorisms of Landin, as well as some personal correspondence. In the series of activism and social-political notes, 1961-2003, some papers are testament to his personal life which he kept fairly private. From early 1970s he was involved in facilitating campaigns for the newly founded UK branch of the Gay Liberation Front [GLF] and other social justice causes. Some of the issues we see Landin concerned with in his private notes include:

  • Nuclear free zones and disarmament [2]
  • ‘The Impossibility of getting a campaign going’ [3] and ‘notes for the unaffiliated campaigner’ [4] (This is interesting because  Landin’s involvement in grassroots organisations with a deliberate lack of structure such as the GLF and Bertrand Russell’s Committee of 100, corroborates he disagreed with bureaucracy, hierarchy and administration of organisations in general.)
  • social change and social demonstrations [5] (some of these notes are made on the reverse of a ‘Whose Camden’ poster and GLF poster.)
  • ‘socialists with Rolls Royces’ [6] and the Road crossers [RLF?] Piccadilly Circus ‘The Car Stops Here’ campaign, c.1972 [7] (Landin never owned a car)
  • ‘rights – individual and the collective’ [8]
  • ‘Social values’, including  a circular from Oxford Gay Action Group [9]

Even those colleague and friends closest to him were not fully privy to the entirety of Landin’s personal campaigning life, although correspondence with fellow computer scientist Rod Burstall does shed light on discussions about balancing social activism with work [10]. Other correspondents include:

  • Robert ‘Bob’ Mellor, one of the founders of the GLF [11]
  • Ted Honderich, philosopher [12]
  • Dana Scott, logician [13]
  • Mervyn Pragnell, [14] whose informal underground logic seminars Landin was invited to, c.1960.

However little these two ‘lives’ crossed over, Landin’s archive attests to his constant evolution of teaching and communicating computer science throughout the 1960s to the early 2000s, alongside his interests and involvement in activism, facilitating social change and politics.

Kelly Burchmore

References:

  1.  Bornat, R. ‘Peter Landin: a computer scientist who inspired a generation, 5th June 1930-3rd June 2009. Formal Aspects of Computing, Springer Verlag, 2009, 21 (5), pp.393-395.
  2.  Oxford, Bodleian Libraries, MS. Landin 17
  3.  Oxford, Bodleian Libraries, MS. Landin 18, folder 2
  4.  Oxford, Bodleian Libraries, MS. Landin 20, folder 3
  5.  Oxford, Bodleian Libraries, MS. Landin 18, folder 2
  6.  Ibid.
  7.  Oxford, Bodleian Libraries, MS. Landin 22, folder 1
  8.  Oxford, Bodleian Libraries, MS. Landin 20, folder 1
  9.  Oxford, Bodleian Libraries, MS. Landin 22, folder 2
  10.  Oxford, Bodleian Libraries, MS. Landin 46
  11.  Oxford, Bodleian Libraries, MS. Landin 69 (=Closed)
  12.  Oxford, Bodleian Libraries, MS. Landin 69
  13.  Oxford, Bodleian Libraries, MS. Landin 69
  14. Oxford, Bodleian Libraries, MS. Landin 45

 

 

Collecting COVID: Oral Histories now available

21st century, Archives and Modern Manuscripts, Digital archives, Humanities, Medical, Newly available (2022), Sciences, Social Sciences, Women, , ,

The Collecting COVID project has been underway at the Bodleian Libraries and History of Science Museum since late 2021, with an active collecting programme achieving a range of material acquisitions relating to the University’s research response to COVID-19.  To complement the physical COVID-19 collections established at both institutions, the Bodleian has also been collecting oral history interviews, all conducted by writer and broadcaster Georgina Ferry.

The first batch of born digital audio files have now been made publicly accessible through the University Podcasts website.

https://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/series/collecting-covid-oral-histories

Consisting of 20 episodes relating to the interviews of 13 researchers and academics spanning across academic divisions, the interviews reveal an insight into some of the incredibly impactful work happening behind the scenes during the height of the pandemic. From drug discovery/repurposing, vaccine trials and development, government policy tracking and development of mass testing programmes, the interviews offer the listener a window into our recent past and into the immense efforts taken to combat a global health emergency.

The Collecting COVID project is funded by the E. P. A. Cephalosporin Fund.

The Roger Bannister catalogue is now online

20th century, 21st century, Archives and Modern Manuscripts, Medical, Modern, Newly available (2022), , , , ,
The official race card for the 6 May 1954 athletics meeting at Iffley Road Athletic Ground featuring the world record mile race, signed by Bannister, Chataway and Brasher

The official race card for the 6 May 1954 athletics meeting that featured the world record mile race, signed by Bannister, Chataway and Brasher, who are all listed as members of Achilles, the club for current and former members of the Oxford University Athletic Club

You can now find the catalogue of the archive of athlete, neurologist, and Master of Pembroke College, Sir Roger Bannister (1929-2018) online at Bodleian Archives and Mansucripts.

A talented middle-distance runner from childhood, Bannister came to the University of Oxford in 1946 to study medicine. He served as president of the Oxford University Athletic Club where one of his achievements was to redevelop and resurface Oxford’s Iffley Road athletics track, where he later won a world record. In 1949 in the European Championships, which was his first international event, Bannister won bronze for Great Britain in the 800m final. By 1951 he was ranked first in the world over the mile. In 1952, Bannister concentrated all his efforts on the Olympics in Helsinki, but even though he was considered a favourite, he finished a crushing fourth.

This blow left him on the verge of retiring from athletics, but instead he decided on a new goal: being the first man to run a mile in under four minutes. The world record was 4:01.3 but two other men were drawing close to it: Australia’s John Landy, and America’s Wes Santee, who both ran 4:02 minute miles in 1952 and 1953.

On 6 May 1954, at a meeting between Oxford University and the Amateur Athletic Association at Oxford University’s Iffley Road track, Bannister and his pacemakers Chris Brasher and Chris Chataway (then a student at  Magdalen) were in the AAA team, and lined up at the starting line. There was a false start: by Chris Brasher. The wind had been swirling all day and the decision to run had been touch or go until the wind suddenly dropped, just before the race. In his memoir Twin Tracks, Bannister remembers how angry he was at this delay, afraid that they might be about to lose the lull in the wind.  The starter’s gun went off again.

At first Brasher held the lead, pacing Bannister for just over two laps, and then Chataway took over. With over 200 yards to go, Bannister turned on his famous finishing kick and accelerated into the lead with the Oxford crowd screaming in the stands.

He crossed the line at 3:59.4, not only breaking the world record but running the first ever sub-four minute mile.

Instantly internationally famous, Bannister was sent by the Foreign Office on a tour of America, while also finding time that spring to qualify as a doctor, but 46 days later his world record was broken by rival John Landy. In August 1954, the Landy and Bannister met in one of the most anticipated races of the twentieth century at the British Empire [Commonwealth] Games in Vancouver. The ‘Miracle Mile’ put Bannister’s finishing kick on full display. Landy, who was in the lead, made a famous mistake when he turned nervously to look for Bannister over his left shoulder, only for Bannister to overtake him immediately on the right. Bannister beat his own record with a time of 3:58.8 but Landy retained the world record.

Roger Bannister retired from athletics that year to concentrate on his medical career. He practiced clinical medicine as a neurologist at both St Mary’s Hospital and the National Hospital for Nervous Diseases in London and did his national service with the Royal Army Medical Corps from 1957-1959, which included writing a life-saving report on preventing heat illness. His research interests were in the autonomic nervous system, with a particular interest in the neurological control of breathing, on orthostatic hypotension (a failure to regulate blood pressure) and on multisystem atrophy. From 1982 he was the first chairman of a body he largely inspired, the Clinical Autonomic Research Society. Also in 1982, he published the first textbook on the autonomic nervous system, Autonomic Failure.

From 1971-1974 Bannister served as the first chairman of the Sports Council (now called Sport England) and was knighted for this in 1975. He oversaw an increase in central and local government funding of sports facilities and he also introduced the first testing for anabolic steroids. He was subsequently appointed the president of the International Council for Sport and Physical Recreation (ICSPR). Between 1985 and 1993, he returned to Oxford to serve as Master of Pembroke College.

Roger Bannister published two autobiographies, The First Four Minutes (1955) about the four-minute mile, and Twin Tracks (2014) about his dual careers in athletics and medicine.

The archive includes correspondence and papers about the four minute mile, including training schedules and many congratulations letters and requests for appearances and advice. It also includes correspondence relating to his working career as a doctor, head of the Sports Council, and Master of Pembroke, as well as an extensive range of photographs covering his athletic career and public appearances.

Windrush Day 2022

20th century, 21st century, Event, Modern, Spotlight,

Wednesday 22 June 2022 is Windrush Day in the United Kingdom, celebrating the contributions of Afro-Caribbean migrants and their descendants to British culture, economy and society. The day is also a call to acknowledge and reflect on the hardships and sacrifice endured by the huge number of brave people who responded to the British call to colonies to migrate to Britain, assist in her recovery from World War Two and build a life here.

To mark Windrush Day, we thought we would have a look in our Archives and Modern Manuscripts to highlight some items related to the ship H.M.T. Empire Windrush, and the 70 year anniversary of 2018.

H.M.T. Empire Windrush

The first generation of settlers arrived in Tilbury Docks, 22 June 1948, aboard the Empire Windrush ship (previously called ‘Monte Rosa’, before the British renamed it). On this Caribbean journey the ship picked up passengers in Trinidad, Jamaica, Cuba, Mexico and Bermuda. Reports of numbers of arrivals on that first day vary between 500-1000 Caribbean men and women, but immigration from the colonies continued into the 1950s whereby the new British citizens who had travelled aboard H.M.T. Empire Windrush to their new home numbered tens of thousands. Many were servicemen or ex-servicemen.

In 2016 the John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera  received the donation of the Sayers Collection of Ocean Liner Ephemera,  which holds some material relating to the ship’s other voyages.

After being claimed as a war prize by the British at the end of the Second World War in 1945, the H.M.T. Empire Windrush still operated as a troopship, at a hefty 14651 tons. Image credit: Sayers Collection of Ocean Liner Ephemera, WP37 Empire Windrush RP troopship

An order for a Divine Service given on board, 30 Oct 1949. Image Credit: Sayers Collection of Ocean Liner Ephemera, ZB19 Empire Windrush Divine Service

‘The Black House’, 1973-1976, photographic series by Colin Jones

Photojournalist Colin Jones, together with journalist Peter Gillman of the Sunday Times, created a photo-series focused on a community hostel run by Caribbean migrant Herman Edwards at 571 Holloway Road, London during the 1970s. The hostel was a refuge for young black British people who were victims of prejudice, unemployed and had problems with the law. The name of the series comes from the name given to the hostel by those who frequented the halfway house, officially named ‘Harambee [Swahili for ‘pulling together’]’, who knew it as ‘the Black House’. Jones and Gillman set about to create a photographic record of everyday life in the house. The story of the series of the British Caribbean adolescents is ‘one of the most profound portraits of Black urban life in Seventies Britain’.[1]

Two photographs from ‘The Black House’ series feature in the Hyman Collection of British Photographs, which was donated to the Bodleian in 2019. The photographs have been digitised and can be viewed on Digital.Bodleian here: MS. 16177/5/4 and MS. 16177/5/5 

 

Psalm for Windrush

Oxford, Bodleian Libraries, Mus. 2021 c. 1 (22)

The Bodleian holds a printed copy of the original 24 page music score for Psalm for Windrush: for the Brave and Ingenious, with words based on Psalm 84.  In 2018,  to mark the 70th anniversary of the arrival of migrants from the Caribbean aboard H.M.T Empire Windrush, Westminster Abbey held a service of thanksgiving and commemoration: ‘Spirit of Windrush: Contributions to Multicultural Britain’. This service also took place in the wake of the Windrush Scandal. The anthem of the service was Psalm for Windrush, written by British Jamaican composer and academic Shirley J. Thompson specifically for the commemoration of the Windrush Generation. Psalm for Windrush was performed for the first time at the Westminster service by sopranos Nadine Benjamin and Gweneth-Ann Rand, tenor Ronald Samm and Baritone Byron Jackson, accompanied by Peter Holder on the organ and directed by Thompson. This copy was printed in The Netherlands,  as part of the Deuss Music Vocal Series.

Many of the British Caribbean migrants settled in London. London local authorities (as well as those further afield) charities,  organisations and heritage institutions are holding arts events, hosting festivals, curating playlists and collating educational resources to engage with Windrush,  the Windrush generation and descendants, and their lived experiences.

References:

[1] ‘Remembering Colin Jones’ Landmark Photographic Series The Black House’ 4 Nov 2021 Elephant Art accessed via https://elephant.art/remembering-colin-jones-landmark-photographic-series-the-black-house-04112021/

Can web archives tell stories?

21st century, Archives and Modern Manuscripts, Medical, Modern, Newly available (2022), Web Archives, ,

Archives tell stories. A series of induction sessions with archivists have brought me, a web archivist, to a new understanding of what archives are and what archivists do.

Archivists enable stories to be told — stories about people, organisations, society and much more. Archival materials bring them back to life. The very making of a collection — how its contents have been selected, preserved and made available to the public, and how some have not – constitute stories in themselves.

But can web archives tell stories? Web archives differ from conventional archives, where archival material comes into custody as a collection with a relatively clear boundary, within which archivists carry out appraisal, selection and cataloguing work. The boundaries for web archives, by comparison, have been both blurred and expanded.

Continue reading →

Oral History collections at the Bodleian Libraries

21st century, Archives and Modern Manuscripts, Digital archives, Medical, Modern, Sciences, , ,

You may or may not know that as well as the physical tangible treasures in our Special Collections, Archives and Modern Manuscripts are also home to born-digital archives which are stored, processed and managed through our digital repository, Bodleian Electronic Archives and Manuscripts (BEAM). In the past few years, the Bodleian Libraries have accessioned and processed a number of oral history collections, which are rich resources of spoken memory.

What kinds of oral histories do the Bodleian Libraries hold in Special Collections?

The development of medical history both locally and nationally is reflected in the holdings of Sir William Dunn School of Pathology oral histories and Recollecting Oxford Medicine: Oral Histories. Recollecting Oxford Medicine is a project funded and facilitated by Oxford Medical Alumni and generous private donors. The archive of their oral histories augments our current physical holdings on Oxford medics and medicine, by setting out to question and listen to a large range of interviewees across various departments, divisions and disciplines whose work also spanned different periods from the Second World War until the current day. Recollecting Oxford Medicine makes for a fascinating account of the development and changes of the Oxford Medical School and the Oxford Hospitals from the memories of those at the forefront.

Series of publicly accessible ROM interview recordings, hosted on University of Oxford Podcasts.

List of some of the ROM interviews available as podcast episodes through the Recollecting Oxford Medicine series. Episodes currently number 51.

Since the latter part of the twentieth century, oral history projects have consciously sought fill gaps in collective history by interviewing subjects and collecting testimonies from those who may have been excluded from participation. Oxford Women in Computing: an Oral History project is one example of this practice and a recurring theme in the oral history interviews is gender splits in computing which interviewees perceived and experienced. These oral history interviews, conducted by Georgina Ferry, capture the stories and memories of pioneering women at the forefront of computing and its teaching, and in research and service provision at Oxford from the 1950s-1990s. The series of publicly accessible interviews can be found here. 

Oral Histories and Archives

Processing oral history collections which are kindly donated or transferred gives the opportunity to train and utilise new skills urgently needed to preserve the authenticity and significant components of, and manage, the born-digital records of these projects. These include learning to use editing software to edit mp3 derivatives of master wav. audio recordings as a means to comply with UK data protection legislation when creating public access versions of recordings.  Part of the work flow of managing and making these oral histories available has also included mapping metadata such as indexed names and subjects between BEAM documentation to our cataloguing system Bodleian Archives & Manuscripts, to the back end of the publication portal for University of Oxford podcasts, where the publicly accessible oral history recordings are currently hosted.

Oral Histories are recognised as multi-faceted and valuable educational and research tools. These oral histories held in Special Collections are for everyone; whether a subject specialist, a multidisciplinary, an inquisitive Oxford resident or university member… or just anyone curious who fancies learning about something new! University of Oxford podcasts can be accessed for free anywhere online on the web in the links given above, and also through Apple podcasts.

Watch this space for updates on any new acquisitions or newly catalogued oral history projects.

 

 

 

 

The academic papers of Abdul Raufu Mustapha

20th century, 21st century, Archives and Modern Manuscripts, Cataloguing, Modern, Social Sciences, , , , , ,

Abdul Raufu Mustapha (1954-2017), born in Aba, in what is now Abia State in south-eastern Nigeria, was appointed University Lecturer in African Politics at Oxford University in 1996, becoming the university’s first Black African University Lecturer. In 2014 he was appointed Associate Professor of African Politics. His academic papers were donated to the Bodleian Libraries by his widow, Dr. Kate Meagher, in 2018 and 2020 and catalogued recently with the generous support of the Oxford Department of International Development, St. Antony’s College, Oxford, and Dr. Mustapha’s family.

Mustapha’s research interests related to religion and politics in Nigeria, the politics of rural societies, the politics of democratization, and identity politics in Africa. His papers contain substantial research materials relating to fieldwork examining the political consequences of rural inequalities, conducted at Rogo Village, Kano State, Nigeria, for his D.Phil. thesis, ‘Peasant Differentiation and Politics in Rural Kano: 1900-1987’ (St. Peter’s College, Oxford, 1990). This fieldwork was followed up in the 1990s by further research using questionnaires for household heads and interviews focusing on topics such as land holding, assets, income, expenditure,  corn production, village life and politics. There are also materials relating to other research projects and articles by him.

Rogo questionnaire

Questionnaire for household heads, Rogo, Feb 1998. Oxford, Bodleian Libraries, MS. 15476/4

In later years, Mustapha studied the issues posed by radical Islamist sects in northern Nigeria, creating a transnational Nigeria Research Network of scholars to study Muslim identities, Islamic movements and Muslim-Christian relations. This culminated in the publication of a research trilogy on Islam and religious conflict in northern Nigeria, comprising Mustapha, A.R. ed., Sects and Social Disorder: Muslim Identities & Conflict in Northern Nigeria (Boydell & Brewer, 2014); Mustapha, A.R. and Ehrhardt, D. eds., Creed & Grievance: Muslim-Christian Relations and Conflict Resolution in Northern Nigeria (Boydell & Brewer, 2018); and Mustapha, A.R. and Meagher, K. eds., Overcoming Boko Haram: Faith, Society and Islamic Radicalization in Northern Nigeria (Boydell & Brewer, 2020).

During his time in Oxford, Mustapha worked to support students from Africa and was the patron of the student-run Oxford University Africa Society. He served as an Associate Editor for the journal, Oxford Development Studies. Within Nigeria, he was a member of the Board of Trustees of the Kano-based development Research and Projects Centre, and of the editorial board of the Premium Times newspaper. Internationally, he was a member of editorial advisory groups for the journals, Review of African Political Economy, and Africa. He participated in the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa, where he served in many capacities. He wrote reports for the Working Group on Ethnic Minorities, the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, and the project on ‘Ethnic Structure and Public Sector Governance’ for the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, Geneva.