Category Archives: Social Sciences

The International Internet Preservation Consortium Web Archiving Conference: Thoughts and Takeaways

21st century, Event, Humanities, Modern, Social Sciences, Web Archives

A couple months ago, thanks to the generous support of the IIPC student bursary, I had the pleasure of attending the International Internet Preservation Consortium (IIPC) web archiving conference in Hilversum, The Netherlands. The conference took place in The Netherlands Institute for Sound & Vision, adding gravitas and rainbow colour to each of the talks and panels.

The Netherlands Institute for Sound & Vision. Photo taken by Olga Holownia.

What I was struck by most throughout the conference was the extremely up-to-date ideas and topics of the panel. While typical archiving usually deals with history that happened decades or centuries ago, web archiving requires fast-paced decisions and actions to preserve contemporary material as it is being produced. The web is a dynamic, flexible, constantly changing entity. Content is often deleted or frequently buried under the constant barrage of new content creation. Therefore, web archivists must stay in the know and up to date in order keep up with the arms race between web technology and archiving resources.

For instance, right from the beginning, the opening keynote speech discussed the ongoing Russian war in Ukraine. Eliot Higgins, founder of Bellingcat, the independent investigative collective focused on producing open source research, discussed the role of digital metadata and digital preservation techniques in the fight against disinformation. Using the example of Russian spread propaganda about the war in Ukraine, Higgins demonstrated that archived versions of sites and videos, and their associated metadata, can help to debunk intentionally spread misinformation depicting the Ukrainian army in a bad light. For instance, geolocation metadata has been used to prove that multiple videos supposedly showing the Ukrainian army threatening and killing innocent civilians, were actually staged and filmed behind the Russian frontlines. The notion that web archives are not just preserving modern culture and history, but also aiding in the fight against harmful disinformation, is quite heartening.

A similarly current topic of conversation was the potential use of artificial intelligence (AI) in web archives. Given the hot topic that AI is, it’s prevalence at the web archiving conference was well received. The quality assurance process for web archiving, which can be arduous and time consuming, was mentioned as a potential use-case for AI. Checking every subpage of an archived site against the live site is impossible given time and resource constraints. However, if AI could be used to compare screenshots of the live site to the captured version, even without actually going in and patching the issues, just knowing where the issues are would save considerable time. Additionally, AI could be used to fill gaps in collections. It is hard to know what you do not know. In particular, the Bodleian has a collection aimed at preserving the events and experiences of peopled affected by the war in Ukraine. Given our web archiving team’s lack of Ukrainian and Russian language skills, it can be hard to know what sites to include in the collection and what not to. Thus, having AI generate a list of sites deemed culturally relevant to the conflict could help fill the gaps in this collection that we were not even aware of.

Social media archiving was also a significant subject discussed at the conference. Despite the large part that social media plays in our lives and culture, it can be very challenging to capture. For example, the Heritrix crawler, the most commonly used web crawler in web archiving, is blocked by Facebook and Instagram. Additionally, while Twitter technically remains capturable, much of the dynamic content contained in posts (i.e. videos, gifs, links to outside content) can’t be replayed in archived versions. Discussions of collaborations between social media companies and archivists were heralded as a necessity and something that needs to happen soon. In the meantime, talk of web archiving tools that may be best suited for dealing with social media captures included Webrecorder and other tools that mimic how a user would navigate a website in order to create a high-fidelity capture that includes dynamic content.

Between discussions of the role of web archives in halting the spread of disinformation, the use of barely understood tools like generative AI, and potential techniques to get around stumbling blocks within the field of social media archiving, the conference discussions got all attendees excited to begin further exploration of web preservation. The internet is the main resource through which we communicate, disseminate knowledge, and create modern history. Therefore, the pursuit of preserving such history is necessary and integral to the field of archiving.

New: Catalogue of the Archive of Denis Healey

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

The archive of Labour Party politician Denis Healey is now available for consultation. The catalogue can be consulted online at Bodleian Archives and Manuscripts.

via Wikimedia Commons

Healey held various roles both in and out of government, including Secretary of State for Defence, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Shadow Foreign Secretary and Deputy leader of the Labour Party, and ran for Party leadership in 1976 and 1980. The archive contains papers on Healey’s political work, as well as his personal interests, particularly his love of photography.

A real highlight of the collection are Healey’s diaries, which he kept throughout his life and cover holidays he took as a youth, his service in Second World War, and his political career all the way from his first job as International Secretary of the Labour Party to his death in 2015. These diaries give a personal, and often entertaining view of his times and his contemporaries – I particularly like his 1946 description of Michael Foot: “He looks like the Tory idea of a weedy Bolshie – gaunt, black hair en brosse, black glasses, bad teeth, and a ravaged complexion, and talks with a nervous cockney glottal stop” (MS. Healey 62).

Diaries of a cycling holiday in Germany, July-August 1936, from MS. Healey 61

My personal favourites, however, aren’t his political diaries, but rather the group of diaries he kept to record a cycling holiday he took to Germany in 1936. These were written in rough while on the holiday, written up neatly on his return (a good thing, as Healey’s handwriting is pretty terrible) and illustrated with postcards, photographs and sketches. Healey was a passionate anti-fascist, to the extent of leaving the Communist Party because of their opposition to WW2 following Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, and in 1965 he had an altercation with notorious neo-Nazi Colin Jordan who invaded the stage at a town hall meeting: “I barged him off”, Healey says in his diary (MS. Healey 63), but contemporary newspapers seemed sure it was a punch. However, his experience of travelling around and talking to people strongly influenced his post-war attitudes to international relations, as well as simply being a fascinating and oddly charming account of an outsider’s view of Nazi Germany.

New: Catalogue of the archive of James Callaghan (1912-2005), Labour Prime Minister

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

The archive of James Callaghan is now available for consultation. The catalogue can be accessed online at Bodleian Archives and Manuscripts.

James Callaghan in 1978 (via Wikimedia Commons)

Leonard James Callaghan, better known as Jim, was born in Portsmouth in 1912. His first job, at the age of 17 was as a tax inspector, and while working with the Inland Revenue he became involved in the trade unions, working as branch secretary of the Association of Officers of Taxes. During the Second World War he served in the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve, and reached the rank of lieutenant in 1944. He stood in the 1945 general election and was elected Member of Parliament for Cardiff South East (later Cardiff South and Penarth), a seat he held until his retirement in 1987.

Callaghan remains the only person to have held the four great offices of state – that is the offices of Chancellor of the Exchequer (from 1964-1967, when he was responsible for trying to stabilise sterling and the balance of payments deficit), Home Secretary (from 1967-1970, when he oversaw legislation including the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1968 and the Race Relations Act), Foreign Secretary (1974-1976, when, among other things he worked on the renegotiation of the terms of Britain’s membership of the European Economic Community), and Prime Minister. His term as Prime Minister is probably best remembered for its end, with the infamous period of industrial action known as the “Winter of Discontent” and the vote of no-confidence that led to the dissolution of his government and Margaret Thatcher’s rise to power.

Callaghan stayed on as leader of the Labour Party until 1980, when he was succeeded by Michael Foot. In 1987 he retired as a Member of Parliament and was elevated to the House of Lords as Baron Callaghan of Cardiff. His autobiography ‘Time and Chance’ was published in the same year. He died in 2005, eleven days after the death of his wife Audrey, who he married in 1938.

Callaghan’s archive contains material relating to all of his political roles, and show an interesting picture of a period of change in Britain, both on international level with papers on decolonisation and independence movements in Malta, Cyprus, and Africa, in British industry, particularly the privatisation of British Steel, which was a major employer in Callaghan’s constituency of Cardiff South and Penarth, and in the Labour Party itself, with papers on 1980 commission of enquiry, which changed the way the Labour Party was funded and how the leader was elected.

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.

Updated Catalogue: Conservative Central Office – Young Conservatives

20th century, Humanities, Modern, Newly available (2023), Social Sciences, , , , , , , ,

We are pleased to announce the arrival of our expanded catalogue of the Young Conservatives, the youth wing of the Conservative Party. Over 40 boxes of new material have been added to the archival collection of the organisation, which existed under this name from 1946 to 1998, and was recently revived in 2018. The new material spans from 1959 to 1994 and covers a range of records from minutes and papers of the Young Conservatives’ National Advisory Committee to campaigning leaflets, posters and manifestos, adding substantially to the existing collection held as part of the Archive of the Conservative Party. The collection covers a range of important events within the history of the Young Conservatives, most notably its swing towards the radical right-wing during the 1980s, as well as its gradual membership decline and the early political careers of some prominent figures in British political and public life. This blog post will explore a handful of interesting topics which can be explored within this expanded collection, highlighting its significant historical value.

Youth for Military Disarmament

Throughout its existence, the Young Conservatives has had varying degrees of power and influence within the Party as a whole. Our new material explores this impact through various series including working groups and reports, external relations, publicity and officers’ papers. One of their most notable areas of influence was through campaigns they led, such as Youth for Military Disarmament (YMD) and the campaign for Sunday Trading.

YMD was set up by the Young Conservatives at the start of the 1980s to counter the message of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, especially amongst youth, instead arguing against unilateral disarmament in the UK. The campaign group had multiple directors, including Nick Robinson, later BBC political editor, and created an array of campaigning materials including posters, leaflets, badges and stickers. Files on YMD included in this catalogue offer an insight into the creation and use of these campaigning materials. The image below illustrates some examples, and the ‘campaigning checklist’ suggests leafletting in streets/schools/colleges and holding public meetings to spread the message.

YMD campaigning checklist and materials – CPA CCO 506/37/7.

This note from Phil Pedley, then Vice-Chairman of the Young Conservatives, demonstrates the early creation stage of these campaigning materials. Underneath a draft sketch and outline of the poster, he explains: ‘With this I’m trying to get the message across that there’s two sides with weapons & both must put down their weapons.’ The file later contains the completed A2 poster depicting a never-ending trail of USSR missiles contrasted with a handful of NATO missiles alongside the caption: ‘Do they really want peace? We do!’, clearly modelled on this initial idea.

Note from Phil Pedley, Vice-Chairman of the Young Conservatives, outlining his ideas for a YMD poster, Jul 1981 – CPA CCO 506/37/6.

Factionalism and swing to the right

From the early 1980s the Young Conservatives began to split into two factions, known informally as the ‘wets’ and ‘dries’, or the moderate and more right-wing sections of the group. This division was a reflection of the Party as a whole, which saw a similar split under the more hard-line leadership of Margaret Thatcher. The 1980s thus saw much in-fighting within the Young Conservatives, manifesting itself in accusations of electoral malpractice, members being banned from events, and scathing newsletters and leaflets spread at conferences. The image below is an example of a poster distributed at the 1988 Young Conservatives Annual Conference by the ‘dries’, criticising the leadership of Nick Robinson, Chairman at the time, specifically for banning 100 members from the event. The ‘wets’ successfully limited the influence of the ‘dries’ for several years until 1989, when Andrew Tinney became the first Chairman successfully elected from the right-wing slate.

Poster distributed at the 1988 Young Conservatives Annual Conference – CPA CCO 506/16/44.

A couple of new boxes contain material related specifically to the Committee of Enquiry, established in 1982 in response to extremist activity and right-wing infiltration into the organisation. As outlined in a circular in file CPA CCO 506/39/1, the need for this Committee ‘had been self-evident to the National Advisory Committee after the appalling publicity – principally in the summer months of 1982 – generated by the activities of the Uxbridge Young Conservatives’, who had ‘invited self-confessed fascists to speak to their branch and produced a newsletter entitled Dreadnought, which carried articles that were blatantly racist’.

The Committee wrote a report on the ‘Infiltration by the Extreme Right into the Conservative Party’ which covered the entire Party, its members fearing that the problem was not confined to the Uxbridge Young Conservatives or even the Young Conservatives as a whole. A draft version of this report was leaked in 1983 and a consequent BBC Panorama programme, ‘Maggie’s Militant Tendency’, made various allegations of far-right sympathies within the Party. These led to two Conservative MPs, Gerald Howarth and Neil Hamilton, successfully suing the BBC for libel in 1986. Below are letters from these two MPs to John Selwyn-Gummer MP, Chairman of the Party, expressing their anger at having been included in this report.

Letters from Gerald Howarth MP and Neil Hamilton MP complaining about their inclusion in the Young Conservatives report on the infiltration of the extreme right into the Conservative Party, October 1983 – CPA CCO 506/39/4.

Notable figures

The Young Conservatives acted as an entrance into politics for many key political figures, catering for roughly the 16-30-year-old age group and encouraging membership by offering social activities and events in addition to political ones. Many of the new files released in this update contain correspondence, election manifestos, reports, and other insights into these early political careers, including future Conservative MPs such as Richard Fuller, Murdo Fraser, and Eric Pickles.

Below are some examples of candidate manifestos for internal elections, including those of:

  • Richard Fuller: Young Conservatives Chairman, 1985-1987, then an MP.
  • Nick Robinson: Young Conservatives Chairman, 1987-1988, then a journalist.
  • John Bercow: MP and Speaker of the House of Commons.
  • Andrew Tinney: Young Conservatives Chairman, 1989-1991.

Election Manifestos of Richard Fuller, 1986, and Nick Robinson, 1987 – CPA CCO 506/20/11.

Election Manifestos of John Bercow and Andrew Tinney, 1989 – CPA CCO 506/20/12.

Event programmes

Whilst the majority of the newly added material covers the 1970s and 1980s, there are a handful of interesting files covering the activities of the Young Conservatives during their earlier years of much higher membership, the group reaching c. 150,000 members in the 1950s. These include event programmes outlining the various social activities put on throughout the year by individual area branches. An example below demonstrates the events hosted by the York Young Conservative Organisation from April to June 1959, including games nights, a balloon race, and a motor treasure hunt.

Event Programme of the York Young Conservatives, 1959 – CCO 506/36/1.

All the material featured in this blog post, alongside the full updated collection of the Young Conservatives, is now available to view at the Weston Library. To browse the catalogue, visit: Collection: Conservative Party Archive: Conservative Central Office – Young Conservatives | Bodleian Archives & Manuscripts (ox.ac.uk)

New Archive of the Conservative Party releases for 2023

20th century, Humanities, Modern, Newly available (2023), Social Sciences, , , , , , , , ,

Each January the Archive of the Conservative Party releases files previously closed under the 30-year rule. The majority of newly-available files this year include research, correspondence, briefs and reports created in the lead-up to the 1992 General Election. It has been just over thirty years since John Major’s somewhat surprising election victory, allowing us to open up files offering a unique insight into the behind the scenes work contributing to this win. These include subject files and briefs prepared by Conservative Research Department, campaign documents created by Conservative Central Office, and reports collected by the Public Opinion Research Department, each with significant historical value. Additional newly-released material this year includes Conservative Research Department letter books, files created by the Conservative Overseas Bureau/International Office, and papers and correspondence of Conservatives in the European Parliament.

This blog post will explore a number of highlights of the newly-released material, specifically focussing on files relating to the 1992 General Election. A full list of the newly de-restricted items is linked at the end of the post.

General Election Warbook, Mar 1992

The Conservative Party’s Organisation Department, the largest component of Conservative Central Office, underwent a significant number of structural and organisational changes throughout its lifetime, becoming known as the Campaigning Department from 1989. The Department oversaw campaigning, training, community affairs, and local government, many of their records therefore offering an insight into election planning. Being released this year is a final draft copy of Conservative Central Office’s General Election ‘Warbook’, a document prepared for John Major outlining campaign plans for the election (see file CCO 500/24/309/2). The purpose of the document, as stated in its introduction, ‘is to outline the political scenario in which the next Election will be fought and to provide the detailed guidelines and direction within which a successful campaign can be waged.’ The document is divided into sections on the ‘battleground’ and the ‘campaign’, covering issues such as target groups and floating voters, election timing, and the role of the Prime Minister in the campaign.

Below is an example of a couple of pages from the battleground section of the document, highlighting some of the key political issues of the time in the UK. Inevitably, the economy comes first. The country was still in the midst of a recession that had begun under Thatcher’s leadership, with high unemployment a particular worry. Throughout these pages there is a clear focus on ‘psychological’ impacts of certain issues, including the ‘psychological turning point’ of inflation in the UK falling below that of Germany, and the ‘psychological 2.5 million barrier’ in unemployment figures. It is evident that this election campaign was highly focussed on the way the general public perceived economic changes. Further issues explored in later pages include the NHS, Europe, crime and education.

General Election Warbook: Economic Issues, Mar 1992 – CPA CCO 500/24/309/2.

A later section of the document focusses on target groups and communications during the campaign. It highlights the importance of media in reaching target audiences, stating ‘the objective must be to saturate the media with the Party’s campaign. If the Party reaches the media then the Party’s target groups among the electorate will also be reached.’ Some of these target groups, those typically considered floating voters or who current messaging was failing to reach, included the 30-45 age group, and upper working-class men. The importance of John Major as Party Leader is also discussed here, the document emphasising that ‘the Election Campaign will be more presidential in its style and manner than hitherto experienced.’

General Election Warbook: Target Groups and Communications, Mar 1992 – CPA CCO 500/24/309/2.

Inside Conservative Research Department, Mar-Apr 1992

Conservative Research Department also played a fundamental role in preparations for the election, acting as an essential source of facts and figures for key party members and MPs during the campaign. During the build-up to the 1992 General Election, David Cameron was Head of the Political Section of the Research Department, playing an integral role in these preparations. Amongst the new releases for this year are a couple of his letter books, as well as letters and briefs created by him amongst the letter books of desk officers who worked under his leadership.

The memoranda pictured below, sent out by Cameron in successive days in the week before Labour released their Shadow Budget, illustrate the inner workings of the Research Department at this time. Cameron stresses the importance of making sure ‘we destroy, comprehensively, Labour’s Shadow Budget on Tuesday’, highlighting the need to find any ‘technical slip ups’ and to brief selected journalists with specific topics and questions that might be particularly harmful to the opposition. This period was obviously one of the busiest for those employed in this department, with specific focus on anticipating the moves and policies of other parties in order to effectively tackle them.

David Cameron Letter Book: Political Section (General Election briefing material), Mar 1992 – CPA CRD/L/5/6/14.

The same letter book also contains a document looking back on the work of Conservative Research Department during the campaign. In addition to leading the Political Section of the Research Department, Cameron was responsible for briefing John Major for his press conferences throughout the election campaign, contributing to the very early mornings demonstrated by this timetable. This was perhaps too much to take on, as he reflects: ‘It was a mistake for the job of briefing the Prime Minster to be given to the Head of the Political Section. I should have concentrated solely on monitoring and responding to the statements and activities of the Labour and Liberal parties. It was quite difficult to combine both jobs and do them properly.’ Other reflections include the fact that the Economic Section were ‘persistent offenders’ in being late to submit briefs, and that opposition monitoring had been a particularly successful aspect of the campaign.

David Cameron Letter Book: Political Section (General Election briefing material), Apr 1992 – CPA CRD/L/5/6/14.

Defence, 1990-1992

The issue of defence was an area in which the Conservative Party particularly sought to distance their policies from those of their opposition, emphasising their approach as the only one able to keep the country safe. A newly-released subject file on defence (COB 8/5/2 Folder 5) contains briefings and memoranda relating to the Saatchi and Saatchi Party Election Broadcast on defence. The file demonstrates the gradual process involved in creating such broadcasts, with various annotated drafts illustrating how phrasing and structure was altered. The image below shows Guy Rowlands, Conservative Research Department defence desk officer, emphasising the need to remove the naming of the Ayatollahs as ‘villains’, as this inclusion was ‘just too sensitive and would spark problems’.

Party Election Broadcast on defence: planning, Feb 1992 – CPA COB 8/5/2 (Folder 5).

This file also contains papers relating to a plan of ‘teasing out some damaging nuggets from the Labour hierarchy by way of inspired correspondence.’ The plan involved finding members of the public, identified by constituency agents, willing to send letters to opposition MPs such as John Prescott, Gerald Kaufman and Joan Ruddock, to help the Party learn more about Labour’s defence policy and even encourage admissions such as ‘their life-long support for CND’, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. In a letter to the Oldham West Conservative Association, Rowlands offers recommendations for such correspondence, suggesting ‘perhaps the letter-writer could pretend to be full of concern for nuclear proliferation and argue that the world needs organisations like CND more than ever before…!’ This was certainly an interesting tactic but may well have contributed in some small way to the Party’s election victory.

‘The Quest for Labour’s Defence Policy’, Feb 1992 – CPA COB 8/5/2 (Folder 5).

All the material featured in this blog post will be made available from 3 Jan 2023. The full list of de-restricted items can be accessed here: Files de-restricted on 2023-01-03

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 Earls of Clarendon catalogue is now online

16th century, 17th century, 18th century, 19th century, 20th century, Archives and Modern Manuscripts, Early modern, Humanities, Modern, Newly available (2022), Social Sciences, Women, ,

You can find the new catalogue of the family and working papers of seven Earls of Clarendon (2nd creation) online at Bodleian Archives and Manuscripts.

The archive adds considerably to the Bodleian’s existing collections of Clarendon family papers, which include the seventeenth-century state papers of the very first Earl of Clarendon (1st creation) who was chief advisor to Charles I and Lord Chancellor to Charles II. His heirs in the Hyde and Villiers families took up the mantle and continued to serve the British government and the royal family well into the twentieth century. Notable postings included the 4th Earl of Clarendon serving as Viceroy of Ireland during the Great Famine and later as Foreign Secretary, and the 6th Earl of Clarendon serving as Governor-General of South Africa in the 1930s.

The archive includes approximately 800 letters from Queen Victoria and correspondence with monarchs and statesmen including Frederick the Great of Prussia and Viscount Palmerston. It also includes intimate family and estate papers, including letters between mothers and sons and husbands and wives.

I have been blogging about interesting items I’ve found along the way, ranging from 19th-century condoms to letters from the front during the American War of Independence (plus one extremely cute dog) and you can find those posts all here at the Archives and Manuscripts blog.

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.

 

Invasion of Ukraine: web archiving volunteers needed

21st century, Archives and Modern Manuscripts, Digital archives, Social Sciences, Uncategorized, Web Archives,

The Bodleian Libraries Web Archive (BLWA) needs your help to document what is happening in Ukraine and the surrounding region. Much of the information about Ukraine being added to the web right now will be ephemeral, and especially information from individuals about their experiences, and those of the people around them. Action is needed to ensure we preserve some of these contemporary insights for future reflection. We hope to archive a range of different content, including social media, and to start forming a resource which can join with other collections being developed elsewhere to:

  • capture the experiences of people affected by the invasion, both within and outside of Ukraine
  • reflect the different ways the crisis is being described and discussed, including misinformation and propaganda
  • record the response to the crisis

To play our part, we need help from individuals with relevant cultural knowledge and language skills who can select websites for archiving. We are particularly interested in Ukrainian and Russian websites, and those from other countries in the region, though any suggestions are welcome.

Please nominate websites via: https://www2.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/beam/webarchive/nominate