IHR Digital

New database projects in maritime history

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Baker) — Fri, 17 May 2013 13:30:00 +0000

The International Journal for Maritime History [1] ran a special forum on a variety of projects, some new, some old and some in development. In Some implications from the Transatlantic slave trade for maritime databases, David Eltis discusses the development of the Trans-Atlantic Save Trade database. This database, launched in December 2008, comprises nearly 35,000 individual slaving expeditions between 1514 and 1866. The records are compiled from various archives and libraries and provide information about vessels, slaves, slave traders and ship owners. By using this data, Eltis hopes to chart the geographical origins of the slaves on the complementary site www.african-origins, launched in May 2011. He outlines plans for a photographic collection and ethnographic material.

The slave trade database offers a variety of search facilities. The initially daunting search screen turns out to be remarkably easy to use and in a very short time I was able to establish the role of Cowes (yes, that Cowes, on the Isle of Wight) as a starting and end point for around ten slaving voyages dating from 1734. With such a well-established site there is the usual contextualisation of material and research materials as well as the ability to download material for particular research projects.

One such research project - Liverpool as Trading Port, 1700-1850 - uses data from the slave database to chart the rise of Liverpool as a port. It combines the data from this site with genealogical material as well as civic records from Liverpool. Stephen Berhrendt et al give a detailed outline of the sources and their incorporation into the database in Designing a multi-source relational database: 'Liverpool as a Trading Port, 1700-1850'.

A more recent use of the slave database is a fascinating article, The speed of ships and shipping in the age of sail in the European Review of Economic History. Using a sample of vessels from the database the article shows that the speed of ships increased significantly.[2]

While the slave trade database has collated material from a variety of sources, the next project discussed uses one source - the Sound Toll Registers. The registers are an intriguing collection of data detailing the accounts of the toll which the king of Denmark levied on shipping which passed through the strait between Sweden and Denmark. The data covers the period 1497-1857, after which the toll was abolished. There are gaps in the sequence but the records are complete from 1574. The database will ultimately contain evidence for over 1 million voyages. Already the project has begun using the data in research and these are outlined in the article, Sound Toll Registers Online: introduction and first research examples. [3]

The forum rounds off with a discussion of the potential of the Navicorpus site, which aims to create a tool for capturing a wide variety of resources related to shipping and maritime trade. The article covers the types of fields and data needed, its development and testing.

It is heartening that well-established sites are providing the impetus and stimulus for other research projects and also heartening that the IJMH ran the forum as a result of a conference held at the French National Archives in Paris in May 2011.

[1] International Journal of Maritime History, 24:1, 2012, p. 253-360
[2] European Review of Economic History,16:4, 2012, p. 469-489
[3] See also Erik Gøbel, The Sound Toll Registers Online Project, 1497-1857, International Journal for Maritime History, 22:2, 2010, p. 305-324

Copyright and images, part 2

noreply@blogger.com (Jonathan Blaney) — Thu, 16 May 2013 11:51:00 +0000

The Permissions Controller for the digitisation of the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments of England, Rachael Lazenby, wrote an introductory guide to copyright for images, drawing on her experience on this project and on other work that she has done. Originally appearing on our British History Online blog, part one of Rachael's guide was reposted here; the rest of the guide is reposted below.

Copyright and images - an introductory guide, part 2

Rachael Lazenby

Identifying copyright holders, orphan works and due diligence

Frequently publishers will include images which have appeared in other publications. The modern convention is to include a caption with the image which makes it very clear who the copyright holder is and who should be approached for permission to reproduce an image. However, the older the publication, the more likely it is that such information will not be found in a caption. The RCHME volumes, the earliest of which date from 1913, contained copyright holder information in a variety of places. This included the illustration lists, footnotes, and the preliminary materials of the texts as well as in illustration captions. When considering using images from older works it is advisable to check in all these places for information on the copyright holder if the original publisher no longer exists or does not retain rights information on older publications. Internet searches, local history societies and local museums may also be able to help in establishing the copyright status of historical images.

Inevitably there were some images included in the original RCHME volumes whose owners could not be traced. Such images are known as orphan works. Different organisations take different stances on how to approach such images and every organisation will have advice on what constitutes due diligence in attempting to establish a copyright holder.(1) A record should be kept of all efforts made in trying to trace the current rights holder.

Crown Copyright

Crown Copyright applies to images produced by certain UK government bodies and lasts for 50 years. The National Archives has a very informative section on this topic, including a list of bodies whose images now fall under Crown Copyright. Many images which are protected by Crown Copyright can be used if a link appears with the image directing the reader to a ‘click-to-use’ licence.

Fair use and Enforcement

So far I’ve tried to avoid distinguishing between reproducing images for a limited circulation (such as a dissertation) and a wide circulation (such as a paper published in a journal). Theoretically copyright law covers any reproduction of a work regardless of the circulation or the commercial value of the work. Of course in practical terms the greater the commercial value of an image the higher the likelihood that the copyright holder may take legal action to prevent or punish any unauthorised use of their image.

Fair use is a concept which enables students and researchers to provide examples and quotations of other people’s works in essays and papers without first obtaining permission from the originator. Generally speaking quotations tend to pose fewer problems than images and providing they appear in the body of a text and for educational, critical or journalistic purposes, they can be used without express permission. Most educational institutions and publishers have a legal team who will be able to advise on any concerns you may have about reproducing images. In addition universities will often provide guidance on matters of copyright in student handbooks.

It is important to note that while fair use can be used as a legal defence, copyright is a complex issue, and copyright holders have the right to protect their work from any unauthorised use.(2) Following the principles of fair use will not necessarily prevent a case from going to court. The internet has made it easier to reproduce images without the consent of the copyright holder and the laws covering copyright are constantly evolving in response to new cases.(3) Although the copyright of images of buildings belongs to the photographer or artist, an interesting case went through the French courts a couple of years ago concerning the Eiffel Tower. Photos of the tower at night were deemed to be protected by copyright law as the lighting display constitutes a work of art.(4)

I hope this post has shed some light on the issues surrounding copyright of images. A few key points to take away with you are:

Copyright arises in a work, it does not have to be registered.
Publicly accessible content is not necessarily in the public domain.
Record your efforts to trace copyright holders if you intend on reproducing orphan works.
Stay within the guidelines of ‘fair use’ but bear in mind it will not always prevent legal action.
Check with your institution’s legal department if you have any doubts about content you intend to use.

(5)

(1) This link will redirect to information on the European memorandum of understanding on orphan works http://www.ifrro.org/content/i2010-digital-libraries retrieved on 22/2/2013.
(2) http://www.copyrightservice.co.uk/copyright/p01_uk_copyright_law retrieved on 22/2/2013
(3) The difficulties of dealing with such issues are discussed in these articles on policing the internet: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17111041 retrieved on 22/2/2013

(4) http://www.eiffel-tower.com/the-eiffel-tower-image-and-brand/image-rights-the-eiffel-tower-brand.html

(5) St Swithin’s Church London Stone. This is a Wren church destroyed in the Blitz and not restored.

Image Copyright - An Introduction

noreply@blogger.com (Jonathan Blaney) — Fri, 03 May 2013 15:18:00 +0000

The Permissions Controller for the digitisation of the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments of England, Rachael Lazenby, has written an introductory guide to copyright for images, drawing on her experience on this project and on other work that she has done. This is part one of Rachael's guide; the second part will follow shortly. Rachael's posts were originally published on the British History Online blog, but we thought them so useful that they should be republished here.

Copyright and images - an introductory guide

Rachael Lazenby

I’ve recently been working on the project to digitise the inventory volumes of the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments of England (RCHME). Some of the volumes are already live and can be accessed here.

My role has been to identify all images which were not provided by the Commission and seek permission to reuse them on British History Online. A full report on the methodology I devised for this work along with the results is freely available and is published here.

The work has touched upon many issues relating to copyright which are common when using images in research and so I thought it would be useful to explain some of the basics of copyright, how it affects images in particular, along with providing links to various resources available online.

Lammerside Castle, Wharton (1)

Definition of Copyright

Where better to start than with a definition of what copyright actually is:

the exclusive and assignable legal right, given to the originator for a fixed number of years, to print, publish, perform, film, or record literary, artistic, or musical material (2)

A key feature of copyright is that it arises in a work the moment it is created by the originator. It does not have to be registered in the way that a patent might be for a process or a product. It is also important to note that ideas are not subject to copyright - it is the expression of ideas that is subject to copyright. This expression might be a photograph, a piece of text, a musical score or a painting. Copyright may be assigned by the originator to another party or waived by the copyright holder in certain circumstances.

Wherever an originator chooses to display or publish their work the copyright of the work remains with them unless they explicitly assign it to another party or until a fixed number of years have passed after their death. Copyright law varies country by country but in the UK a work remains in copyright until 70 years after the death of the creator at which point it passes into the public domain.

Misconceptions about the right to use images, especially those appearing online, abound. One of the most common is that if an image does not appear with the copyright symbol and a named copyright holder it is not protected by copyright law. Although such copyright notices can help identify a copyright holder, images without this symbol are still protected by copyright law. An image that is publicly accessible is still protected by copyright and an image being publicly accessible does not mean it is in the public domain. Copyright protects a work from any unauthorised use. Even if the reproduction of an image is not commercial, for example if it appears in a blog post, it is not legal without the permission of the originator.

Reproducing art and photographs

Cases involving paintings and drawings which are owned by museums can be complex. For example, should you wish to reproduce a photo of a painting by a living artist, you will have to gain permission from the artist, in addition to the permission of the organisation who owns the photo. It is frequently the case that photography is not permitted in museums and galleries, but if you have taken the photo yourself, and the composition is artistic and takes in more than just the painting itself, it may not be necessary to obtain permission. If an artist is deceased you may have to approach their estate for permission to reproduce an image if they have died within the last 70 years.

There are some organisations which specialise in sourcing paintings and drawings and for a fee will make available a high resolution scan of the work as well as arranging permission for an image to be used. Some UK based examples include the Mary Evans Picture Library specialising in historical images, and the Bridgeman Art Library.(3) Many national and university libraries also have extensive image collections which they are making available to students, researchers and commercial parties (although there are often charges for the service).

A great source of historical images with no known copyright restrictions can be found on the Flickr website: http://www.flickr.com/commons/ Their Creative Commons area is a project making freely available content from museums and galleries across the world. They also encourage tagging of the
images to increase information available about the content.

The Ley, Woebley (4)

Licences
For images which have previously appeared in print or online, it is usually the publisher who can advise on who the copyright holder is, and how permission to reproduce an image can be obtained. The originator of an image might have transferred copyright to a publisher permanently, usually termed ‘assigning copyright’, or they might have granted permission for it to be used only in a specific publication in which case it is referred to as granting a licence.

Licences to use images in publications including online projects will state where and how images can be used. So for example to illustrate this article I can use an image which is now owned by English Heritage, as they have given us permission to use images to promote the digitisation of the RCHME volumes. I could also use any images which are now out of copyright. I cannot use images in this post which have been cleared for use in the volumes by outside parties as permission does not extend to any other use of the image.

(5)

1. Lammerside Castle, Wharton. Royal Commission on Historic Monuments of England, Westmorland (1936) plate 80 http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=120920 retrieved 23/2/2013
2. http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/copyright retrieved 7/12/12
3. http://www.bridgemanart.com/ http://www.maryevans.com/
4. The Ley, Woebley. Royal Commissions on the Historical Monuments of England, Herefordshire: Volume 3 North West (1934) plate 176 http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=124854 retrieved 23/2/2013
5. Plan of Ramsey Abbey. Royal Commissions on the Historical Monuments of England, Huntingdonshire (1926) p. 208 http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=123804 retrieved 23/2/2013

Pollard Prize

noreply@blogger.com (Julie Spraggon) — Wed, 01 May 2013 11:58:00 +0000

The Annual Pollard Prize 2013 (sponsored by Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Ltd.)

The Pollard Prize is awarded annually for the best paper presented at an Institute of Historical Research seminar by a postgraduate student or by a researcher within one year of completing the PhD.

Applicants are required to have delivered a paper at an IHR seminar during the academic year in which the award is made. Submissions should be supported by a reference from a convenor of the appropriate seminar.

First prize is fast track publication in the prestigious IHR journal, Historical Research, and £200 of Blackwell books.

Runner up prizes include publication in Historical Research, and a selection of Blackwell books. A variable number of runner up prizes will be awarded, depending on the quality of applications in any given year.

Enquiries and submissions should be directed to the Executive Editor, Historical Research (Jane.Winters@sas.ac.uk).

CLOSING DATE 31 MAY

May issue of Historical Research

noreply@blogger.com (Julie Spraggon) — Wed, 01 May 2013 11:49:00 +0000

The latest issue of Historical Research is now available (vol. 86, no. 232)

Contents:

'Magna Carta 1253: the ambitions of the church and the divisions within the realm' and 'More light on Henry III's confirmation of Magna Carta in 1253', David A. Carpenter;

'The "Boroughbridge roll of arms" reconsidered', Bridget Wells-Furby;

'Talk, script and print: the making of island books in early modern Venice', Anastasia Stouraiti;

'"His neighbours land mark": William Sykes and the campaign for ‘free trade’ in civil war England', Thomas L. Leng;

'Was there a British Georgian town? A comparison between selected Scottish burghs and English towns', Charles McKean;

‘"The potent spirit of the black-browed Jacko": new light on the impact of John Robinson on high politics in the era of the American Revolution, 1770–84', Andrew Connell;

'Quantifying the language of British politics, 1880–1910', Luke Blaxill;

'Sculpting the nation in early republican Turkey', Faik Gur;

‘"Tolerance means weakness": the Dachau concentration camp S.S., militarism and masculinity', Christopher Dillon.

Look out for the August special issue Early Medieval Laws in Context based on papers from the 2011 conference at the Carlsberg Academy, Copenhagen

Two Chinese resources

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Baker) — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 10:30:00 +0000

At a recent IHR conference, IHR Digital gave a presentation on digital resources to a group of senior academics and budding historians from China. One of the discussions centred around the paucity of Chinese digital resources. Surprisingly within weeks, and rather like London double-decker buses, two resources came to my notice.

"Writing History in the Digital Age": The new Qing history Project [1] is an introduction to the project and its digitisation of Qing archives - "the largest collaborative research endeavour" in China. The authors explain the background to the project, funding and the decision-making process. There then follows a detailed search example using "marriage". Access is via http://www.historychina.net/ (all in Chinese).

The other resource (in English) is the North China Herald newspaper hosted by Brill and listed as one of the prime printed sources in any language for the history of the foreign presence in China from around 1850 to the 1940s. The newspaper was published in Shanghai, at the heart of China’s dealings with the Euro-American world and a city at the forefront of developments in Chinese politics, culture, education and the economy. It also acted as the official journal for British consular notifications, and announcements of the Shanghai Municipal Council; it is the first, and sometimes only, point of reference for information and comment on a range of foreign and Chinese activities.

The first five pages of a randomly selected “issue of the day” can be viewed freely. The issue I looked at (4th March 1875) contained what I took to be the usual array of adverts (rather like the Times of the same date) with one warning prospective purchasers of Martell Brandy to buy only from "respectable Dealers". There were also reports on the fabric trade; a new Chinese government loan; and a record of the meeting of the Shanghai Race Club.

If readers are aware of any other Chinese resources (in English or Chinese) I'd be happy to hear about them so that I'm more prepared for the next Anglo-Chinese conference.

[1] History Compass, Vol. 10, Issue 5, pages 367–374, 2012

James Bettley on RCHME, Essex

noreply@blogger.com (Jonathan Blaney) — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 10:32:00 +0000

This post first appeared on our British History Online blog. British History Online is currently making freely available all the inventory volumes of the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments of England:

Following the publication of the RCHME, Essex volumes on British History Online, the architectural historian James Bettley has kindly written a guest post about the value, and limitations, of these volumes. Dr Bettley's revision of the Pevsner Architectural Guide to Essex was published by Yale University Press in 2007; he was also one of the contributors to the Victoria County History of Essex, Volume 11, published in 2012.

The Inventory of Historical Monuments in Essex

The Royal Commission on Historical Monuments (England) covered Essex in four generous volumes, published between 1916 and 1923. Essex was larger then than it is now – the south-west corner was cut off in 1965, to become the London boroughs of Barking, Newham, Havering, Redbridge, and Waltham Forest – but nonetheless the number of pages devoted to the county is a fair indication of the quantity of interesting buildings still to be found within its borders.

The fieldwork was carried out before the outbreak of the First World War, so it would not be unreasonable to question the value of an inventory that is now nearly a century old. But for those of us who work daily with historic buildings – and for those who only very occasionally wish to find out about an individual building – the Essex volumes remain an invaluable source of information. The descriptions of the major buildings, especially churches, are more detailed than Pevsner’s could be, and because they are written in fluent English, with a minimum of specialist terminology, and follow a standard format, they are easier to follow than the often impenetrable descriptions of the later statutory lists. Nearly all the parish churches, and selected secular buildings, are accompanied by a plan that shows the different phases of building, and there are numerous photographs taken in what was arguably the heyday of architectural photography. The maps are still often the best way of locating an individual building. And for those who wish to know more, the investigators’ original notes, often with additional plans and photographs, can be consulted at the National Monuments Record in Swindon.

Of course, the volumes have what seem to us now to be shortcomings. The brief was to cover buildings ‘from the earliest times to the year 1700’, extended in 1913 to 1714; any building (or any alteration to an older building) after that date was usually just described as ‘modern’. Moreover, works of this kind are only as good as the current state of knowledge, and timber-framed houses (especially plentiful in Essex) were assumed to be 17th, or sometimes late 16th, century, unless otherwise stated; most are now known to be considerably earlier. But that does not detract from the overall value of the descriptions.

The volumes have also become monuments in themselves. They record buildings that no longer exist, such as Little Horkesley Church

destroyed by a stray bomb in 1940; or the interior of Castle Hedingham, before it was ravaged by fire in 1918. Many of Essex’s country houses are of later date than 1714, but Albyns, Belhus, Hallingbury Place, Marks Hall, Shortgrove and Weald Hall

all now demolished, are described and illustrated as they were at their period of greatest extent.

The circumstances surrounding the compiling of the volumes are also of historic interest, as Rachael Lazenby’s post mentions. But there was another aspect to the work that was not covered in the surprisingly interesting Report that was printed at the beginning of the first Essex volume. In the Report one of the investigators, Captain R. E. M. Wheeler, is congratulated on his commission in the Royal Field Artillery. Wheeler was to become better known as the archaeologist Sir Mortimer Wheeler, and in his biography Still Digging (1955) he gives an account of his first day’s probationary work in Essex with the senior investigator, J. Murray Kendall, in 1913. They met (with their bicycles) at Liverpool Street Station and began with what Kendall called ‘a Little Reinforcement’ – a ‘double whisky in new milk’. This was followed with similar reinforcement upon arrival at Dunmow, before starting work at Stebbing, where Wheeler’s realisation that he knew nothing about the items he was being asked to describe was consoled by a third reinforcement at the White Hart. What with that, and the outbreak of war the following year, it seems miraculous that the volumes ever appeared at all.

James Bettley

Bibliography of British and Irish History updated

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Salt) — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 16:40:00 +0000

BBIH has been updated with 4,782 new records, bringing the overall total to nearly 530,000. Nearly half of the new records cover publications of 2012-13; over 500 of them concern the history of Ireland and the Irish, and just over 200 deal with the history of London.

The next update should appear in June. You can keep informed of new records relating to your areas of interest by using the ealerts feature.

Rezensieren - Kommentieren - Bloggen

noreply@blogger.com (Danny Millum) — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 11:33:00 +0000

The week before last I was in Munich, at the Rezensieren - Kommentieren - Bloggen conference organised to celebrate the second anniversary of recensio.net, the online review platform for European History.

The IHR's Reviews in History is a partner in this venture, and it was as deputy editor of this journal that I was invited to take place in a panel session to discuss the current state of online reviewing and commenting, and to speculate as to its future.

The panel (like the conference itself) was conducted solely in German, bar my own translated (and possibly therefore slightly random) intervention, and it was interesting that not just the language but the concerns of the participants and audience differed in some ways from those of British academics.

The keynote speaker on this topic, Dr Gudrun Gersmann, of Cologne University, predicted the demise of the traditional review. It was growing harder to find historians prepared to review, given other demands on their time, and in any case the new and preferable approach would be a crowdsourcing model, which would come to replace peer-reviewing by a couple of experts.

Other issues that were raised included those engendered by the sometimes more heirarchical German academic system, where a junior historian might feel loathe to be critical of a Professor's work, or where to be seen as one of those 'blogging types' might be deleterious to one's career. More familiar to British ears were the in-depth discussions as to how to secure funding to develop and maintain digital platforms such as recensio.

The debate was a deeply-engaged and at times heated one, and my schoolboy-German as a result might well have led to to some arguments escaping me! Fortunately full details can be in this round-up on the conference blog, and there are more comments here. A twitter round-up can be found by searching for #rkb13.

Memorial Photography

noreply@blogger.com (Jonathan Blaney) — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 11:08:00 +0000

I recently went to the Death exhibition at the Wellcome Collection, just up the road from the IHR. The exhibition shows highlights from the collection of Richard Harris; it is free but, on the Saturday afternoon I chose, there was quite a queue.

I particularly enjoyed the photographs in the exhibition but I didn't notice any Victorian photographs of the dead. These have interested me since I first heard them mentioned in an essay by Stephen Jay Gould. When photographs were an expensive luxury families often had no likeness of a relative who had died and so would have the corpse photographed as a memento, as in this example at the Musee D'Orsay. Stranger, and more culturally interesting, was the practice of propping up the corpse, or otherwise arranging them in the closest simulacrum of life that could be managed. I wonder if this was done for practical reasons - that it was the best way to photograph a person effectively when you had cumbersome equipment and long exposure times. This example, with parents holding their dead daughter, clearly memorialises their love for her:

This might seem alien now but different ages have had fascinating particular ways of memorialising the dead. In Greek stelae, there was a fashion for depicting the dead person with their living relatives, often shaking hands or making some other gesture of leave-taking. The death mask, a practice that seems to have fallen away with the coming of photography, is particularly touching when taken of a young person - such as the death mask of the 25-year-old Keats, which you can see at the Keats House Museum in Hampstead.

Photographs of the famous in death do not surprise us so much. Perhaps this is because we expect the famous to be minutely documented to satisfy our curiosity. Man Ray, who did not know Proust, went to photograph the celebrated writer two days after he died - nowadays you can find the snapshot pinned to a wall on Pinterest.

There seems to have been little written on memorial photography. In the histories of photography I have looked at there is a brief mention or none at all. The best list of references I can find is seven items on Copac, under the category Postmortem photography - history.

Perhaps in time phenomena like Facebook memorial pages will come to seem eccentric too. The Facebook example illustrates how the question of death in the digital age brings problems of its own; as one blogger, following the sudden death of her husband, has chronicled, we should all be planning for access to important online accounts for those who have to sort out our affairs if we die.

How can historians develop an effective social media presence?

noreply@blogger.com (Jane Winters) — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 15:23:00 +0000

On Tuesday 29 January we held a workshop at the Institute of Historical Research for postgraduate students and early career researchers. The main aim of the event was to learn from best practice in the archives and library sector, and to help historians develop skills and gain confidence in the use of social media. We had three wonderful speakers, Laura Cowdrey (The National Archives of the UK), Julian Harrison (British Library) and Isabel Holowaty (Bodleian Library, University of Oxford), who spoke, among other things, about social media strategies, the importance of knowing your audience, what makes for successful blogging, and keeping on top of information overload. These themes were picked up in the subsequent break-out groups, which addressed five questions: 1. Why do researchers need to develop a social media presence? 2. How can you balance the personal and professional online? 3. What are the best ways to build relationships/community online? 4. How do you deal with negative feedback/interaction? 5. What are the best social media platforms for communicating historical research, and why?

The first question was felt to be rather a leading one by some attendees – should we assume that a social media presence is necessary? – and some of those present were undoubtedly sceptical of the benefits of engagement with social media. Scepticism is one barrier to the effective use of social media, but general anxiety about getting it wrong seems to be more significant. Reassurance from peers who have taken the plunge, and have concrete examples of social media helping with their research and/or career development, is enormously helpful in overcoming this nervousness. A small workshop is an ideal forum for exchanging knowledge and experience, and I think we inspired at least a few people to take their first steps.

A summary of the discussions has been published using Storify http://storify.com/ihr_history/social-media-knowledge-exchange-workshop, with links to other useful information included.

This blog post was first published on the Social Media Knowledge Exchange website.

Image from http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Social-media-for-public-relations1reduzido.jpg

Blogging For Historians

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Phillpott) — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 11:00:00 +0000

When you read a blog post about History what are you looking for? If you own a blog do you write posts about historical topics? Why do you do this? What do you get out of it? These are all things that are of interest for the Blogging for Historians project.

The project examines the purpose behind blogging either as an individual or as an intuition for academic purposes. It looks at ideas about best practice as well as the hopes and desires of those writing or reading the posts. The idea is to gather a wider body of evidence regarding what people involved in History-related disciplines think of blogging and why they may give it a go. The project will attempt to do the following:

A series of podcasted interviews with practitioners in archives, libraries and history departments who blog about History in one form or another.
A workshop (details to follow) about History blogging to be held in the Institute of Historical Research
An online survey asking for thoughts and ideas about blogging

A crucial part of the research for the Blogging for Historians project will derive from the survey. This is live now and it would be brilliant if you could take a moment of your time to fill it in. The survey is very short and should take less than five minutes to complete. It is broken down into three sections:

Using blogs
Creating and managing blogs
Personal details

It is the first two sections that will provide the majority of interest and will hopefully raise some interesting thoughts, ideas and questions. Essentially the survey asks why we create blogs, what do we hope to gain from them, and how do we access blog posts as a reader? It also asks what do we gain by reading blogs? From this survey it is hoped that we can further understand the processes and many reasons why blogs have become such a successful forum for writing, reading, and discussion over the last few years, and what impact or importance this might already and in the future have for the History discipline.

I would be very grateful if you could fill in this survey. It doesn’t matter if you own a blog or just visit them (or even if you don’t visit them – I would be interested in that too). The survey is interested principally in History-related blogs, but this does not necessarily mean academic or professional. There are a variety of History-related blogs out there, all of which have something useful and interesting to offer.

Access to the survey can be found from this link:

Blogging for Historians Online Survey

It should take no longer than five minutes to complete and personal details will be kept confidential. Statistics from the results of the survey alongside my thoughts and analysis will appear on this blog early in 2013.

For more details about the Blogging for Historians project see its own blog here: Blogging for Historians Blog

The project is funded through the SMKE scheme. For further details about this project see here: SMKE website

Our Inscribe online palaeography tutorial goes live

noreply@blogger.com (Jane Winters) — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 15:11:00 +0000

After a period of testing, the introductory module of the new free online course on Palaeography and Manuscript Studies is now available.

InScribe provides a set of materials suitable both for someone interested in exploring Palaeography for the first time, as well as for those in need of a refresher.Graduate students, academics and members of the general public undertaking this introductory module will become familiar with the most important writing styles (scripts) of the medieval period with particular reference to the English context; they will be able to explore a number of newly digitised manuscripts; and they will acquire some transcription practice.

The module includes short videos with experts on the field discussing relevant topics. Moreover, transcription can be practised in the new Transcription Tool developed in collaboration with King's College London.

Later in the year, we will release new modules that will provide advanced online training on Diplomatic, Script and Translation, Codicology and Illumination. The introductory module is free of charge.

Try InScribe now. Notice that you will need to register (for free) to gain access to the module.

Developing guidelines for the citation of audio-visual material

noreply@blogger.com (Jane Winters) — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 15:50:00 +0000

You may be interested to hear the latest update from the AVcitation project.

Have you ever wondered how to cite a TV advert? Or extra features on a DVD? What about a scene from a director’s cut feature film or amateur film footage held in an archive? Or how do you ensure that those writing for your journal provide enough information on the resources they have used? How can you give the best advice to students and how do you make sure that your own resources are being correctly cited?

Image from Sabine Schostag at da.wikipedia

The answers could be closer than you think.

In an exciting initiative, the BUFVC has brought together academics, archive historians, journal editors and researchers to address the complexities of audio visual citation. As part of the HEFCE-funded Shared Services project, this working group is currently producing a series of guidelines to enable the citation of a range of audio visual sources for teaching, learning and research.

Following a survey of existing guidelines on AV citation produced by Universities and academic journals, the working group led by Dr Sian Barber is now producing a set of new guidelines to offer a practical approach to this tricky problem. Once finalised, the guidelines will be thoroughly tested and the results of these testing sessions will be incorporated into the final template.

These guidelines are being created for two purposes: to provide sensible, clear and practical uniform guidelines for citation of audiovisual material and to ensure that all audiovisual material referenced and used in research and higher education can subsequently be found by others.

Existing guidelines for audiovisual resources are modelled on standards established for text-based sources. They frequently privilege the author, a practice which is unsatisfying when applied to a great deal of audiovisual material. In the era of YouTube videos, podcasts, adverts, off-air recordings and DVD extra features it is crucial for students, researchers and academics to be able to cite these kinds of sources according to what is useful rather than simply title, author, date and publisher. Useful information for audiovisual sources may include detail on date uploaded or created, version, format, date accessed, chapters, URL or point of access, and owner of material.

These guidelines are not a catalogue record or a database entry. As with any source, you can find out a great deal about audiovisual material which does not need to be included in a straightforward citation. Digital records often include extensive metadata such as catalogue numbers, length of the footage in feet, the date of the original footage, when it was digitised, related items in the series and if it has been broadcast since its original transmission. This is important information, yet including all of this in a citation is not appropriate or practical.

Rigorous enough to provide all the necessary information for referencing purposes and yet flexible enough to allow for the citation of material as diverse as YouTube videos, radio programmes and lecture podcasts, the guidelines will be made freely available in March 2013.

For more information see: http://bufvc.ac.uk/projects-research/sharedservices/avcitation

Join the discussion on Twitter: @bufvc #AVcitation

Journal of Digital Humanities and Historical Social Research special issue - Digital Humanities

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Baker) — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 12:52:00 +0000

I've just come across The Journal of Digital Humanities a comprehensive, peer-reviewed, open access journal that features scholarship, tools, and conversations produced by the digital humanities community. It has published three volumes (beginning in 2011) and is produced by the Center for History and New Media (CHNM) at George Mason University.

On the homepage it states, "The Journal of Digital Humanities offers expanded coverage of the digital humanities in three ways. First, by publishing scholarly work beyond the traditional research article. Second, by selecting content from open and public discussions in the field. Third, by encouraging continued discussion through peer-to-peer review."

The journal has articles, project news, reviews of digital resources and publishes work identified by the weekday publication Digital Humanities Now. The latest issue (vol. 3, 2012) has an article, Visualizing San Francisco Bay’s Forgotten Past by Matthew M. Booker (associate professor of American and environmental history at North Carolina State University) and an article The Impact of Social Media on the Dissemination of Research: Results of an Experiment by Melissa Terras (Co-Director of University College London (UCL) Centre for Digital Humanities). There is also a review of the resource The French Book Trade in Enlightenment Europe, 1769-1794: Mapping the Trade of the Société Typographique de Neuchâtel hosted by Leeds University.

Coincidentally Reviews in History has also published a review of this important resource which includes a detailed and considered author's response.

Furthermore, the journal Historical Social Research has a special issue entitled Digital Humanities which presents the proceedings of a workshop that took place in Cologne,on 23-24 April 2012, celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the first conference on the use of computer technology in the Humanities. Topics covered include mark up, digital preservation and curation.

Ellen Terry, Spheres of Influence and the Ellen Terry and Edith Craig Database

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Baker) — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 13:22:00 +0000

Pickering and Chatto have published the book, Ellen Terry, Spheres of Influence, a collection of essays that explores the influence of the actress as well as the cultural significance of her daughter Edith Craig (1869–1947) and her son Edward Gordon Craig (1872–1966), and includes references to Bram Stoker, Lewis Carroll and of course, Henry Irving.

The last two chapters are significant for researchers in theatre history and the Terry family and those interested in digital resources. Katharine Cockin (the editor of the volume) in her chapter, Ellen Terry: Preserving the Relics and Creating the Brand, outlines the history of the National Trust's archive of more than 20,000 papers belonging to Terry and Edith Craig at their home Smallhythe Place, Tenterden. Described as one of the Britain’s most significant theatre archives, it is the result of Terry's own selection of material for preservation during her lifetime, as well as the active collection by her daughter after Terry’s death.

Cockin, along with Julian Halliwell, in the next chapter, Describing the Ellen Terry and Edith Craig Archive, discuss the AHRC-funded Ellen Terry and Edith Craig Database Project and the resulting online guide to this catalogued archive and explores some of the features of the project, the development, design, and interface of the database, as well as providing a detailed summary of this significant archive.

Hopefully the ultimate goal for the project is the digitisation of the documents (or at least a selection) rather than just the (still very useful) digitisation of the catalogue.

Digital Milton

noreply@blogger.com (Jonathan Blaney) — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 17:25:00 +0000

On 13th November the IHR's annual Creighton Lecture will be given by Professor Quentin Skinner, on Milton as a theorist of liberty. Quentin Skinner is well known as a historian of political thought and has written extensively on major figures such as Hobbes and Machiavelli, as well as Milton. I will be at the lecture with my notebook and my brain open.

I have loved Milton since I was a teenager, but my affection doesn't seem to be very widely shared. 2008 was the anniversary of Milton's birth but the occasion was not marked by, say, a flotilla of boats down the Thames and a book by Andrew Marr. Milton's Cambridge college, Christ's, held an all-day reading of Paradise Lost (still available as audio) and a series of lectures by luminaries such as Christopher Ricks, Geoffrey Hill and Quentin Skinner (available as podcasts). A fine biography by Gordon Campbell and Thomas Corns was published but that, as far as I know, was about it.

Delacroix, Milton dictating to his daughters

The best critical edition in English literature that I know is Alastair Fowler's magisterial Paradise Lost: I have great admiration for Harold Jenkins' Hamlet, but Fowler seems somehow to have the measure of Paradise Lost, whereas Hamlet leaves its greatest critics far behind. Surely 2008 would have been the perfect moment for the launch of a digital edition of Fowler's masterpiece. Milton's text is stuffed with allusions and borrowings from other texts; opening my copy at random I come to Book IV, line 411:

Sole partner and sole part of all these joys

A seemingly simple line spoken by Adam to Eve (this is before the Fall, after which they get a bit huffy with each other). Fowler knows better. He gives references to the OED, Marsilio Ficino, John Donne, St Bernard and Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, plus two articles in the secondary literature. The only thing he doesn't tell us is that the British death metal band Paradise Lost did an album called The Anatomy of Melancholy; perhaps this will be updated in the next edition.

All of this, of course, would work brilliantly: links could take the reader directly to the OED and to the periodical articles. The current standard edition of Donne's sermons, edited by Potter and Simpson, is available online, for example (there is a project to re-edit the sermons, which aims to supersede Potter and Simpson, and hopefully will be published digitally as well as in print, but is at an early stage). There could even be links to Richard Bentley's bizarre 'corrected' edition of Paradise Lost - corrections which Fowler occasionally deigns to pour scorn on.

Milton wrote extensively in prose, including a pleasingly idiosyncratic work of systematic theology, De Doctrina Christiana, which only appears to be available online as page scans at archive.org. At least Milton's most famous prose work, Areopagitica, a defence of freedom of the press, has been made available with useful notes by Dartmouth College.

All are welcome at Professor Skinner's lecture. Simply email IHR Events to book your place.

The online atlas of Irish population change, 1841-2002

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Baker) — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 12:10:00 +0000

Ireland has a dramatic and unusual population history, with overall population declining dramatically from 8.2 million to 6.5 million between 1841 and 1851 and then declining gradually and almost continuously to 4.5 million in 1961.

The quote is from an article [1] in Irish Geography which describes a splendid resource combining various data to chart this "dramatic and unusual population history". The resource in question is the Irish Population Change Atlas, an interactive, online resource detailing 160 years of Irish population history through which population change can be explored and researched.

The article discusses the collection of the data and how it is made available online by using 16 census returns from 1841-2002 and mapping these onto the electoral districts of Ireland. These districts (3432 in total and based on the 1851 Electoral Division boundaries) have remained largely stable over the time period and where they have changed the team has made compensations.

The availability of such population data at a consistent set of boundaries means that researchers can now examine population change for the entire island. The article also gives a statistical analysis of population trends for various time periods. Furthermore, other avenues of possible research are suggested such as the impact of roads, urbanisation and rural migration. The intuitive (i.e. press a button) download data option will help in this research (data is downloaded into an excel document). There also seems to be a facility to map the changes onto different maps - a menu offers "Satellite", "Terrain", and "Hybrid", however I could not get these maps to display. There is also an "Export as image" download but I could not get this to work either.

The Atlas, based at the National Centre for Geocomputation at NUI Maynooth, cleverly charts population change by map, county, place names, graphs and a timeline. It is a testament to the ingenuity of the team and software that so much information is displayed in an easily digestible and easy to use resource. Users must have Adobe Flash Player 9.0 or above to use the site.

[1] Kelly, M. and Fotheringham, Stewart A. The online atlas of Irish population change 1841–2002: A new resource for analysing national trends and local variations in Irish population dynamics. Irish Geography, vol. 44: 2-3, 2011

Bibliography of British and Irish History updated

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Salt) — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 15:00:00 +0000

An update to the Bibliography of British and Irish History was released on 9 October, containing 5,500 new records, of which over 3,500 deal with publications of 2011-12. Nearly 600 of the new records deal with the history of Ireland (or with Anglo-Irish relations and the Irish Diaspora) and 277 of them relate to the history of London, including information on recently completed theses on London history kindly provided by the Centre for Metropolitan History.

Podcasting and "Africa Past and Present"

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Baker) — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 09:37:00 +0000

It's always nice to discover a new digital resource and an article which gives some context to it. Such is the case with an article on Africa Past and Present in South African Historical Journal [1] entitled Podcasting the Past: Africa Past and Present and (South) African History in the Digital Age. The author, Peter Alegi (one of the instigators of the site), describes the technical aspects of creating the podcasts, followed by an assessment of the audience. As would be expected of a resources based at Michigan State University, the majority of listeners/downloaders are based in the USA. However by the end of 2008 users from 44 countries had downloaded episodes about 20,000 times and the website had received 52,725 visits. Alegi also discusses podcasts and scholarly publishing, their differences and complementary aspects, as well as using the site in teaching.

Africa Past and Present began in 2008 and contains podcasts about history, culture, and politics in Africa and the diaspora. The stated mission is, "...to broaden the availability and accessibility of cutting-edge knowledge relating to African experiences and to do so in a down-to-earth and informed manner." The site contains feature interviews with eminent scholars, commentary on current events, and issues and debates of relevance to Africans at home and abroad.

Some highlights from the site includes, Episode 65: A Female King: Gender and Oral History in Eastern Nigeria in which Nwando Achebe discusses her recent book The Female King of Colonial Nigeria: Ahebi Ugbabe. Achebe describes key aspects of King (or Eze) Ahebi’s life; reflects on the value of oral history and multidisciplinary methods; and discusses Igbo gender, culture, and power during British colonial rule.

Hlonipha Mokoena's Episode 52: Zulu Intellectual History considers her book, Magema Fuze: The Making of a Kholwa Intellectual, and explains the rise of a black intelligentsia in 19th- and early 20th-century South Africa through the remarkable life of Fuze.

And Episode 33: The African Diaspora in Britain in which Marika Sherwood examines the history of the African diaspora in Britain and notes the inadequate treatment of Black history in the UK school curriculum.

For those interested in podcasting the IHR offers a free, short course - Podcasts for historians - which takes a snapshot view of podcasting for educational and academic study looking into the pedagogical issues surrounding podcasts and asks what the benefits of podcasting might be in a Higher Education setting or as an aid for scholarly research.

[1] South African Historical Journal Volume 64, Issue 2, 2012 206-220

Churchill, Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown and Powell

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Baker) — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 14:13:00 +0000

In a previous blog I mentioned how Churchill has dominated historical writings and also mentioned that he had a journal devoted to him. Well now Churchill has his own online archive which is reviewed in Reviews in History. And so Churchill joins some of his successors in the digital age.

Perhaps the most striking and certainly most exhaustive is the website of Margaret Thatcher. It claims to be the largest contemporary history site of its kind, offering free access to over 8,000 speeches and interviews as well as historical documents from The National Archives, American presidential libraries and Churchill College, Cambridge. The archive is usefully divided into date periods, such as 1925-1944 Early Life and 1970-1975 Cabinet Rank. There is a free text search facility and a useful browse function as well as searches by date and keyword. A comprehensive advanced search option allows users to pin down a specific speech such as the "lady's nor for turning" 1980 conference speech. The contextual material details the source of the speech, when and where delivered, and notes that the 1980 speech was interrupted by a protester. Where available there are links to audio and video files.

John Major too has his own site, which offers access to thousands of speeches and statements relating to both Major and the 1990-1997 Conservative government. As with Thatcher, there is a biography and a chronology of the key events of his premiership. You can browse the documents by date or use the search function. There is a note to the effect that this is a temporary site "with the function of making available key speeches and statements for research or general interest". The site also notes that there is a permanent, more comprehensive and multi-media site due to be launched next year [2013].

The subsequent Labour prime minsters also have their own websites, however these seem far more promotional rather than historic. Tony Blair's site is professional and slick as one would expect from probably the most media-savvy of all politicians. The site is labelled "The office of Tony Blair" and comes across as advertising all Blair's charities and political works. There is no archive, the earliest speech on the site is dated 2007 and there is a short biography which concludes with "50 Achievements of the Labour Party in government under Prime Minister Tony Blair". The site seems to be more about maintaining his legacy than offering useful material for historians.

"The office of Gordon & Sarah Brown" hosts Gordon Brown's site: again a promotional site with little for historians. It is interesting that there is very little reference to his time as prime minister and is certainly geared up to "Gordon Brown's activities since leaving Downing Street in May 2010." This is very much a working politician's site with links to their (Gordon and Sarah's) campaigns and to his constituency website.

An interesting addition to politician's websites is one for Enoch Powell. The site presents the speeches of Enoch Powell in the hope that it will lead to a re-evaluation of his life and work. The archive includes the scanned original speeches (often with Powell's annotations) from 1957 to1995. The speeches are divided by decade. Although users can search the speeches for a particular word, one has to access each separate batch of speeches in order to do so. There is an index to the speeches (as a PDF) but there are no hyperlinks to the text. One needs to note the date of the speech and then look for it in a particular decade. Rightly or wrongly, Powell will be remembered for the "rivers of blood" speech. Trying to find the speech on the site is no easy task. It helps if you know that the speech took place on the 20th April 1968 and a simple word search for "rivers" will happily find the speech. (The PDF index has the speech listed incorrectly under the 28th).

For a full listing of all prime ministers, with portraits, biography, major acts and terms of office, the official No. 10 site - Past prime minsters - is very useful.

The Royal Society Picture Library database

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Baker) — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 08:00:00 +0000

The Royal Society Centre for History of Science has developed an online picture database of historical images from the Society's collections. The website acts as a showcase for the Society's extensive picture resources and it is hoped that this will provide a valuable tool for researchers.

Joanna Hopkins, picture curator, outlines the project to develop the database in a recent issue of Notes & Records of the Royal Society [1]. She briefly discusses re-cataloguing of the collection, describes the collections, the development of the site and using the site.

The historical images include portraits, scientific instruments, botanical drawings and even Isaac Newton's death mask.There is a set of galleries which offer a selection from the collection and showcase exhibitions, as in 'Edward Lear and the Scientists', and illustrations from Francis Willughby's De historia piscium, 1686 (beautiful engravings of fish).

Each image has the usual cataloguing data - creator, dates, media, contextual notes etc. all of which is displayed in a simple but stylish manner. The interesting note on the Newton's mask reads:-

"This death mask is one of several prepared shortly after Newton’s death, probably by the artist Michael Rysbrack. Rysbrack used the likeness to sculpt Newton’s features in marble for his tomb at Westminster Abbey. This mask was owned by the 18th century French sculptor Louis-François Roubiliac, who carved a marble bust of Newton (now at Trinity College Cambridge)."

New images will be added to the site and users are requested to check on a regular basis for new additions. The Society may consider it worthwhile setting up an RSS feed for the new images.

[1] Notes & Records of the Royal Society 66:1 2012 p. 105-110

InScribe: a new way to learn Palaeography

noreply@blogger.com (Jane Winters) — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 12:31:00 +0000

Welcome to InScribe: Palaeography Learning Materials! This new project, based at the School of Advanced Study (University of London), was devised by Prof Michelle Brown (who left the School in July) and Dr Jane Winters. InScribe is a new online resource (VLE) to support the teaching of Palaeography and Manuscript Studies at a postgraduate level. This is a collaborative enterprise between the Institute of English Studies (IES), the Institute of Historical Research (IHR), the Warburg Institute and in association with the Department of Digital Humanities (King’s College, London). Our aim is to provide effective distance training in the various areas attached to Manuscript Studies; to complement (not replace) traditional teaching methodologies; to make a wide range of digital tools and resources available to those members of the public with an interest in the field; and to provide carefully selected bibliographies for each subsection within the module.

The structure of this new digital tool is based on the courses on Manuscript Studies provided by the Centre for Manuscript and Print Studies (IES) and it will both support and expand these by providing students with a range of learning materials as well as high-quality manuscript images for transcription. The module will consist of one core section introducing students to the basic principles and skills related to Manuscript Studies and Palaeography. In turn, this will be followed by dedicated ‘pathways’ leading participants to a specialist knowledge in one of four areas: Codicology, Scripts and Transcription, Diplomatic and Illumination. This aims to ensure that the resource meets the needs of students and scholars from a number of fields ranging from History and Art History to Languages and Literatures.

The module, delivered through Moodle, will go live by the end of October and it will include a number of new learning materials developed in-house. Among these there will be podcasts and clips of academics discussing relevant topics and items, often with the primary sources in front of them. The module will also feature a newly-developed transcription tool, which will allow them to acquire transcription practice before undertaking the assessment at the end of each unit. This tool has been developed in collaboration with the Department of Digital Humanities at KCL. In this initial phase, the platform will offer both the initial section and one of two pathways: Script or Diplomatic. The advanced sections on Codicology and Illumination are expected to be developed in a later phase.

For updates on the project, please stay tuned!

Contact: Fran Alvarez at Francisco.Alvarez-Lopez@sas.ac.uk

Horatio Nelson on Connected Histories

noreply@blogger.com (Jonathan Blaney) — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 09:40:00 +0000

One of our summer interns from Leicester University, Charlotte Ward, writes in a guest post:

For my BA dissertation I am looking at ‘Crime and Punishment in the British Navy and Army during the wars with France from 1793-1815’ so I decided that I would create a connection that was linked to this topic. As this was my first connection I thought it would be a good idea to research a well-known person as this would probably mean that it would produce more results. I decided to choose Horatio Nelson, the famous admiral who led Britain to victory at sea with battles that included the Nile, Copenhagen and Trafalgar. For my initial search I typed ‘Horatio Nelson’ into the person bar and set the years to 1793-1815, the years of my dissertation topic. Even though Nelson died in 1805 at the Battle of Trafalgar I thought that there might be a fair amount about his legacy including documents, images, memorials etc that were made after his death. This search produced 227 matches across three databases. 209 of these matches came from the British Museum Image Collection Database where, as I previously stated, many of these images are from after he died to commemorate his life and achievements.

As Nelson’s exploits during the Napoleonic Wars are famous and well known, I thought it would be interesting to see if anything from earlier on in his naval career or indeed in his life would come up in a search. So I tried a new search and changed the dates to encompass the entirety of his life (1758-1805). This produced 135 matches across four databases. One match I found particularly interesting, seeing as I am researching an area of crime and punishment, was from the Proceedings of the Old Bailey Online. Captain Nelson had been a character witness at the trial of a man called James Carse who had been accused, and was found guilty of, the murder of a woman. Nelson describes the man as being ‘melancholy’ and ‘quiet’ and believes that because he was not a drunkard or used to drinking so he believed that as the man had been drinking that night he was probably not used to the effects of the alcohol and that this might be to blame. Nelson also makes a very salient point about the nature of crime in the navy stating that ‘it seldom happens that any man can serve four years without being guilty of some sort of offence’ which is something I will consider in my dissertation. Also, rather interestingly, one of the lawyers was William Garrow someone else whose life and exploits I am especially interested in.

Connected Histories is a fantastic resource. I have discovered things I may not have thought to look at and probably would not have come across. It is great to be able to save things that you find in an easy to access list as I often find that when I am researching things online I often have too many tabs open or I lose and forget certain pages I have visited. Although many of the databases are not free to use (though thankfully like many universities mine is signed up to all of them) it does allow you to see the sheer volume there could potentially be on a certain topic, person or place. Those that are free to use make for fascinating reading and provide a glimpse into online historical collections.

The Journal of Victorian Culture, historical fiction and "Digital Forum"

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Baker) — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 12:07:00 +0000

This time last year the IHR was preparing to host the conference Novel approaches: from academic history to historical fiction. The conference covered such areas as the transition of historians from writing history to writing historical fiction; the differences and similarities between historical fiction and academic history; the popularity of historical fiction; and the need, or not, to be historically correct. Quite by chance, while checking the Journal of Victorian Culture, I noticed a Roundtable on A.S. Byatt's The Children's Book. The novel is set during the period 1895-1919 and follows the dramas of a number of inter-related families connected with the children’s author Edith Nesbit and can be considered to be part of the popular neo-Victorian fiction. The Roundtable could happily have been part of the IHR conference.

The Roundtable is introduced by Joseph Bristow and is followed by Katharina Uhsadel, who places the novel within Byatt’s career and the attention to historical detail in the book. Diana Maltz examines the socialist/Fabian subculture comparing the lead character Olive Wellwood to Nesbit’s real life. Morna O’Neill then examines the ways in which the Victoria and Albert museum, art exhibitions and art movements of the time are portrayed. Finally, Margaret D. Stetz considers the representation of death in Byatt’s novel.

The Journal of Victorian Culture also runs a strand entitled “Digital Forums” – a useful series of articles highlighting a particular digital resource or use of such resources. The latest issue discusses the “Nineteenth-century newspapers in the digital age”. Areas covered include the current provision of digital resources of newspapers and the types of research they facilitate, while the other papers discuss the quantitative methodologies known collectively as ‘distant reading’. Previous Digital Forums have covered the use of digital resources in the classroom, crime and Victorian reading habits.
A forthcoming Digital Forum looks at social media in the history community.