Titles received in November

Click to view all additions to the Reference Collection for November

Australian National Archives - Mapping our Anzacs

Mapping our Anzacs is a new resource from the National Archives of Australia on Australia’s involvement in World War I. It uses a map interface created from Google maps and the Google geocoding service to explore Australia’s involvement in this conflict. Visitors to the site can browse the 375,971 service records of soldiers, nurses, and chaplains in the Australian Army according to the person’s place of birth or enlistment.

In addition to locating records of service, visitors may share information on the the site’s scrapbook, offering information about a particular person, or they may build a tribute to a group of service personnel.

To explore the site, and to find out more about how it works, go to http://mappingouranzacs.naa.gov.au/

British Library Exhibition: Taking Liberties

The British Library is offering tours to PhD students in December, January, and February of its new exhibition, Taking Liberties: the Struggle for Britain's Freedoms and Rights. The hour-long tour will be followed by a presentation delivered by one of the exhibition's curators. Any Research Student who is interested should contact mailto:sophie.villiers@bl.uk for more information about dates and booking.
This free exhibition runs until 1 March 2009, and explores the evolution of British Democracy in the last millennium from the Magna Carta to the Good Friday Agreement.
On 2 February 2009, join leading historians, social scientists, politicians, campaigners and writers for a Taking Liberties Study Day. Key speakers will include Lord Lester QC, Professor Barbara Taylor and human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell . This Study Day is open to anyone who is interested - for more information or to book for this event, please go to http://boxoffice.bl.uk/

CNZS Bulletin of New Zealand Studies student awards

The Centre of New Zealand Studies (CNZS) recently announced that it is offering two student awards of £100 each for submission to its journal, Bulletin of New Zealand Studies.

The first shall be awarded for the best student submission from any subject within New Zealand studies, and the second awarded for the best student submission from any subject within any area of Maori studies.

The closing date for any submission to be considered is 28th February 2009. The following conditions for entry have been outlined by Ian Conrich of the CNZS as follows:

All submissions must be previously unpublished, and follow the CNZS Bulletin's style guidelines. Anyone engaged in part time or full time undergraduate or postgraduate studies or research is able to submit an article, and more than one submission is permitted and to both categories of awards if appropriate. A panel of judges will be drawn from the CNZS Academic Council, International Council, and the advisory boards for the Bulletin and Kakapo Books. The winning article in each category will be published in the CNZS Bulletin for New Zealand Studies.

Anyone interested in further information is directed to contact:
Ian Conrich
Centre for New Zealand Studies
Birkbeck
University of London
Rm.NB300/1
Senate House
Malet Street
London WC1E 7HU
Tel: 0207 862 8065
Email: ian@ianconrich.co.uk

Titles received in October

Click to view all additions to the Reference Collection for September and October.

Featured Collection: British West Indies Regiment

On Armistice Day we highlight some material relating to the West Indian contribution to the Great War. The Institute of Commonwealth Studies holds some records of the British West Indies Regiment, Incluided within the West India Committee papers. These include the War Diary of the 1st Battalion of the British West Indies Regiment, detailing the operational history of the battalion, and the papers of the West Indian Contingent Committee and Ladies Committee – established to provide for the welfare of West Indian soldiers, who visited the camps at Seaford in Sussex and Plymouth, where the units were stationed, raising funds and providing comforts for men in hospitals, clothing, sports equipment and musical instruments, and entertainment and board and lodging for those visiting London.

The experience of West Indian soldiers in the Great War exacerbated underlying tensions and contradictions implicit in West Indian society, stimulating the growth of working-class consciousness and facilitating the growth of black consciousness and nationalism. Peter Fraser has described the war as “a bog into which flowed an idealized loyalty to Britain and an innocent belief in the justice of the metropolitan British and out of which flowed more realistic, jaundiced and cynical views of the true nature of the Imperial connection.”

Despite the level of support for the war effort from the British West Indies, the War Office was initially hostile and reluctant to accept black West Indians. Despite this early unease, by the end of the war 15,601 West Indians had been recruited and sent to do military service in Palestine, Egypt, Mesopotamia, East Africa, India, France, Italy, Belgium and England as members of the British West Indies Regiment (BWIR). 185 soldiers were killed or died due to wounds received, a further 697 soldiers were wounded and 1071 died of sickness. The high level of illness has been attributed to the conditions of wartime service, with a poor and irregular diet, unsanitary and overcrowded conditions, poor medical care, climatic conditions and the high incidence of contagious diseases. The Regiment was awarded 5 DSOs, 9 MCs, 2 MBEs, 8 DCMs, 37 MMs and 49 Mentions in Dispatches.

Although two battalions of the BWIR were involved in fighting in Palestine and Jordan against the Turkish army (where they sustained many casualties and honours) the War Office determined that Black colonial troops would not fight against Europeans, consequently most members of BWIR functioned in non-combat positions, as labour battalions. Members of the BWIR also experienced discrimination in housing, promotion, treatment in demobilisation and even pay. The most blatant experience occurred at the end of the war when the entire BWIR were denied a pay rise granted to other imperial troops under Army Order No.1 of 1918. The BWIR soldiers protested quickly and angrily and were supported by West Indian Contingent Committee who pointed out the hypocrisy and impossibility of the situation and warned of the serious effect differentiation would have on public opinion in the colonies when the West Indies contingent was demobilised. Discriminatory treatment was a significant factor in a four day mutiny by the men of the ninth battalion, in December, 1918. These events at Taranto, Italy produced much anxiety in the Colonial Office and impelled it into pressing the War Office to grant the BWIR the pay increase. The argument was won, but not so much as a triumph of fair pay and justice but as an effort to prevent unrest in the West Indies.

More photographs from the collection are available here

Commonwealth Matters Spring/Summer 2008

The latest issue of the Institute's newsletter, Commonwealth Matters, has now appeared. Click here to download a copy and find out more about new staff and recent activities at the Institute.

Exhibition: Under the Southern Cross

The Weston Room, Maughan Library & Information Services Centre in Chancery Lane is offering an exhibition, entitled Under the Southern Cross, until Saturday 13 December 2008.
It is open 09.30-17.00 Monday to Saturday.

The exhibition is based around items from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office Historical Collection, which was transferred to King’s College London in 2007, and explores the experiences of the early European settlers in Australasia, and the effect they had both upon their new homelands and on the indigenous populations of both countries. The exhibition also focuses on the early explorers of the Australian interior and their motivations. For more information, please see the exhibition's web pages at http://www.kcl.ac.uk/iss/library/spec/exhib

Library survey 2008

The Institute of Commonwealth Studies Library would like all recent users to complete the following survey, in order to help us plan and improve our services, so they best meet user needs. This is especially critical at a time of many changes for the Institute and Library.

There are only 10 questions and this shouldn’t take you more than 15 minutes. Please do click on the link below which will take you to the survey, and respond by the 30th of September 2008.
Click here to go to the survey

Books received in July and August 2008

Click to view all additions to the Reference Collection in July and August 2008.

Resource for Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade

The Transatlantic Slave Trade Data base http://www.slavevoyages.org/tast/index.faces - this free website, created by Emory University, is an enlarged and revised edition of the Cambridge 1998 CD-ROM dataset. It is much easier to use, and consists of four main databases:

• Voyages - search for particular voyages in this database of documented slaving expedictions. Lists, tables, charts, and maps can be created using information from the database.


• Estimates - this database offers an interactive feature to help you to analyze the full volume and multiple routes of the slave trade.


• Images - this database is a collection of digitised maps, manuscripts, paintings, sketches, and photographs of people, places, and vessels. Many of these also link to related voyage records.


• African names - this database identifies over 67,000 Africans aboard slave ships, using name, age, gender, origin, and place of embarkation.
  

Staff at the Library

August has been a month of goodbyes and hellos to Library staff:

Yvette Bailey, Acquisitions Officer for the past six years, left to take up the post of ULRLS Procurement and Accounts Officer at Senate House Library. The rest of the Library team will be joining her there next year, of course. Rodney Bill is our new Acquisitions Officer, joining us from Senate House Library.

Beth Sockett, our Graduate Trainee Library Assistant, completed her year with us. Our new trainee is Sheena Ginnings.

We would like to give our thanks to Yvette and Beth, who both contributed so much during their time with us, and we'd like to offer a warm welcome to Rodney and Sheena.

Register of Commonwealth Research

We're pleased to announce that we have updated the version of the Register of Commonwealth Research hosted on SAS-Space, our institutional repository. The updated version, current to May 2008 and containing over 16000 records, can be downloaded here. The Register is a database of Commonwealth-related doctoral research undertaken within the UK, with coverage extending back to the 1920s.

Each year, the Institute publishes Theses in Progress in Commonwealth Studies, a list, derived from the Register, of all current doctoral research. The 2008 edition is available to download here.

Change to Library admission procedure

From August onwards, all Library readers will be given a simple form to indicate their status, which should be completed for every visit they make. Anyone intending to use the Library is given the from by Reception staff. Requiring only a single tick to complete, it should be passed to Library staff at the Service Desk in the Reading Room.

The purpose of this new form is to enable us to have a much better idea of how many visits are made to our Library each year, and by whom. Please note that existing admission procedures continue as before: all Library readers must sign the Institute visitors' book and anyone who has not used the Library before, or who needs to renew their membership, will need to complete the Library registration form.

Library staff would like to thank all of our visitors for their cooperation in completing this form.

Mandela in London exhibition at the Museum of London

The Museum of London is marking Nelson Mandela's 90th birthday with a photographic exhibition of his visit to London in 1962. We, and the Ruth First Memorial Trust, were delighted to be able to contribute three images towards this exhibition, from the Mary Benson Collection (ICS 6).

This photo from the collection shows Nelson Mandela with Mary Benson (right) and Freda Levin. In 1957 Mary Benson became secretary to the Treason Trials Defence Fund in Johannesburg. She became a close friend of Nelson Mandela, and assisted with smuggling him out of South Africa in 1962. See more information about the Mary Benson Collection.

Books received in May and June

Click to view all additions to the Reference Collection in May and June 2008.

George Padmore Institute lecture series

The George Padmore Institute is hosting the following lectures in July:
4th July, 19:00-21:00hr - David Hilliard, "The Black Panther Intercommunal News Service 1967-1980"
9th July, 19:00-21:00hr - Carole Boyce Davies, "Left of Karl Marx: the Political Life of Black Communist Claudia Jones"
23rd July, 19:00-21:00hr - Colin Grant, "Negro with a Hat: the Rise and Fall of Marcus Garvey"

More information about these, and other, events is available from the George Padmore Institute website. Enquiries may be directed to info@georgepadmoreinstitute.org.

SCOLMA Conference 2008

Last week’s SCOLMA conference focused on two projects, the Endangered Archives and Endangered Languages projects.

The Endangered Archives Programme, funded by Arcadia (formerly the Lisbet Rausing Charitable Trust) provides grants, administered by the British Library, to safeguard archival material at threat of being lost or destroyed. Archives have been defined widely to include rare printed sources (books, serials, newspapers, ephemera, etc.), manuscripts in any language, visual materials (drawings, paintings, prints, posters, photographs, etc.), audio or video recordings, digital data, and other objects and artefacts - but normally only where they are found in association with a documentary archive. The programme provides pilot project grants to investigate, survey collections and assess the feasibility of projects, as well as major research project grants which provide for surrogate copying and cataloguing of collections.

We heard from two projects that had been funded – David Zeitlyn talked about archiving a Cameroonian photographic studio; that of the studio photographer Jacques Touselle, with a collection of about 40,000 negatives; and Dr Siddig Elzailaee, discussed the endangered archives of Sudanese trade unions, 1899-2005. Both projects were extremely interesting and the talks revealed the risks archive collections face, as well as the richness of the content made available through these projects. Other countries in which projects have been funded include Tuvalu, Nigeria, India, East Timor, Cameroon, Ghana, Tanzania, Nevis, Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Jamaica. Details of the programme and projects funded can be accessed at http://www.bl.uk/endangeredarchives

The Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Project, also funded by Arcadia, is hosted at SOAS, the School of Oriental and African Studies. Presentations by Prof Peter K. Austin and Dr Friederike Luepke, gave an overview of current research on endangered languages, and a case study of the Bainouk language in Senegal. It was enlightening to hear how attitudes to languages, the social spheres in which languages are used, and trends towards moving to cities impacted on indigenous and ancestral languages. The website for the project is available at: http://www.hrelp.org

SCOLMA conference and ALUKA, online African resource

SCOLMA: The UK Libraries and Archives Group on Africa had its annual conference last week. One presentation was from conference sponsor ALUKA, an international, collaborative initiative building an online digital library of scholarly resources from and about Africa. The name, ‘Aluka’, derives from a Zulu word meaning ‘to weave’, reflecting Aluka’s mission to connect resources and scholars from around the world.

The ALUKA resource contains digitised content from Africa and elsewhere in three content areas or themes:

• African Cultural Heritage Sites and Landscapes


• The African Plants Initiative


• Struggles for Freedom in Southern Africa

The resource includes a wide variety of material, including photographs, letters, published works, illustrations, site plans, rock art images, maps, articles, plant specimens, oral testimonies, personal papers and newspaper reports.

Access from UK universities is free until the end of June: http://www.aluka.org/

ALUKA logo reproduced with permission

Theses in Progress in Commonwealth Studies 2008

The 2008 edition of Theses in Progress, the Institute's annual listing of Commonwealth studies-related doctoral research currently being undertaken at universities throughout the UK, is now available to download.

This list of current MPhil and PhD research is derived from the Register of Commonwealth Research, a database of theses completed or in progress. The Register contains over 16,000 records dating back to the 1920s and may be accessed via SAS-Space, our institutional repository. Its geographical coverage comprises the former British Empire (excluding the United States), the Commonwealth and its non-UK member countries, and former British Protectorates. The subjects covered are history, politics, sociology, anthropology, economics, geography, literature, language, and religion. Education, medicine, law, science, and technology are included on a selective basis.

Data for the Register are obtained from a variety of sources, such as printed lists, univeristy annual reports, information posted to university websites, and correspondence with university registrars and academic supervisors throughout the UK. This correspondence is of great importance in ensuring that coverage is accurate and as broad as possible.

Anyone currently undertaking doctoral research that fits with the scope of the Register is very welcome to contact us to ensure that it is included by emailing commonwealth.register@sas.ac.uk

Titles received in April 2008

Click to view all Reference Collection books added to our collections in April.

ANZAC Day - Collection of the Month

On ANZAC Day the Library is pleased to launch its first collection/book of the month.

Anzac Day is commemorated by Australia and New Zealand on 25 April every year to remember members of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) who landed at Gallipoli in Turkey during World War I. Anzac Day is also a public holiday in the Cook Islands, Niue, Samoa and Tonga.

The Ellis Ashmead Bartlett papers (ICS 84) are listed on the ULRLS Archives Database, and include diaries, reports and photographs of the battles at Gallipoli as well as documentation on the aftermath of this unsuccessful campaign.

Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett was born in 1881. He began his career as a war correspondent in 1904, covering the siege of the Russian port of Port Arthur by the Japanese, and entering the city with the victors. His account, Port Arthur: the siege and capitulation (London 1906) was well received. For the next few years he mixed a full social life in London and the country and in Paris (as described in his diaries) with periods as a war correspondent and writer and a developing political career. At the outbreak of war in 1914 Ashmead-Bartlett returned from Bucharest to volunteer for his old regiment, but was turned down for medical reasons. He was selected by the National Press Association as the London Press representative on the Dardanelles Campaign, which began in March 1915. He was soon critical of the conduct of the campaign by the Allied commander Sir Ian Hamilton and the General Staff. Returning to London in June 1915 (having survived the sinking of the 'Majestic' on 26 May) he discussed the campaign with senior ministers and politicians (Asquith, Balfour, Carson, Bonar Law, Churchill, Kitchener) and presented a memorandum on the subject to the cabinet. Ashmead-Bartlett returned to the Dardanelles at the end of June, his equipment now including a movie camera which he used to make the only moving pictures of the campaign. Further disastrous landings and assaults in August and, in his view, the continued mismanagement of the campaign led him to make another attempt to influence the government, by sending a letter to the Prime Minister with Australian correspondent Keith Murdoch. Though the letter was seized by the military authorities, Murdoch wrote another version from memory, and this was delivered to Asquith via the Australian PM Fisher. Ashmead-Bartlett was dismissed as a war correspondent in the Dardanelles on 30 September 1915 (he had already unsuccessfully applied to the NPA to be relieved). Exactly how much effect his interventions had will probably remain unclear, but Ashmead-Bartlett might have been partly responsible for the withdrawal from Gallipoli in 1915 and the subsequent resignation of Churchill. The issue of Ashmead-Bartlett's role in the campaign continued to be raised well after it ended. He was invited to give evidence to the Dardanelles Commission in 1917 and the publication of his books, Ashmead Bartlett's Despatches from the Dardanelles (1916) and The Uncensored Dardanelles (1928), and those of Sir Ian Hamilton and others usually caused a flurry of articles and letters in the press. Ashmead-Bartlett claimed that the War Office persecuted him after his dismissal and in 1916 attempted to prevent him delivering a series of lectures on the Dardanelles campaign in England, the United States, Australia and New Zealand.

The collections held at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies Library include a substantial amount of material relating to Ashmead-Bartlett's involvement in the Gallipoli campaign as well as other material relating to the rest of his career. The collection includes diaries, which include covedrage of the Dardanelles campaign (1915) and the subsequent lecture tour of America, Australia and New Zealand (1916); correspondence (1892-1930, predominantly 1907-1930), relating mainly to journalistic activities, particularly in the Dardanelles; articles and writings (1900-1930) written by Ashmead-Bartlett, mainly as war correspondent; and a large collection of photographs taken during the Dardanelles campaign, including the one above.

HEFCE review of Senate House Library

The Higher Education Funding Council for England recently published Sir Ivor Crewe's review of special funding for research libraries. As a result, HEFCE's funding for Senate House Library will be cut significantly over a period of two years, and a further review has been initiated into the role of Senate House Library. More information and a link to the full report is available on Senate House Library's web site.

Sir Ivor Crewe's HEFCE review of special funding for the School of Advanced Study supported the current funding arrangement for the School and its libraries, and endorsed the University of London Research Library Services. For more information, see the School of Advanced Studies' web site.

Australia and New Zealand Library and Archives Group - London Workshop

ANZLAG London Workshop

Date: Friday, 9th May 2008
Venue: NG15 Senate House, University of London, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU

We are very pleased to hold the second annual ANZLAG workshop, featuring speakers from The National Archives, the British Museum, Kings College London, the Institute of Commonwealth Studies Library, the Imperial War Museum, and the Menzies Centre for Australian Studies. A tour of the Centre for New Zealand Studies, also located in Senate House, is included in the programme of events. See the full programme here.

Please register in advance, registration £10 (£5 students and unwaged) payable on the day. Contact David Clover for further details or to register.

The ANZLAG London workshop has been organised by:
Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London
http://commonwealth.sas.ac.uk/

The Menzies Centre for Australian Studies, Kings College London
http://www.kcl.ac.uk/menzies

The British Library
http://www.bl.uk/

Titles received in March 2008

Click to view all Reference Collection titles received in March.

Recent Journal Subscriptions

Journal of Namibian Studies

Published twice a year, in January and July, this is a new interdisciplinary journal focusing on the history, politics, and culture of Namibia. For more information about the journal's aims and perspective, see http://www.namibian-studies.com/index.htm

Journal of Australian Colonial History

This annual publication has been produced since 1999. The Library now holds every issue from Vol.2 no.2 (2000) onwards.

Commonwealth Day - 10th March 2008

The theme for this year's Commonwealth Day is "The Environment: Our Future" - see the Commonwealth Secretariat's website for more information.

The Library contains a wealth of material related to this theme, including reports from national governments, the UN, and various regional intergovernmental bodies and NGOs. We also have a number of works focusing on the future of small
island states in the Pacific and the Caribbean. All of this material can be found on the Catalogue, or you can browse a selection of titles via the regional lists below:

General Commonwealth

Africa

Asia

Canada

Caribbean

Australia and the Pacific

New Online Exhibition - Rhodesia UDI 1965

This new online exhibition showcases some of the materials within our Archives and Special Collections relating to Rhodesia and its unilateral declaration of independence (UDI) in 1965. The exhibition examines the following themes: The Road to UDI, Sanctions, African Nationalists, Reactions from the Commonwealth, and events after UDI.

The aim of this online exhibition is to promote the potential of archives and encourage existing, new and different users to experience all that archives have to offer. View the exhibition

Image: The President of U.A.N.C.: Bishop Abel Tendekai Muzorewa, 1980 Election poster

Titles received in February 2008

Click to view all Reference Collection titles received in February.