New this month - New Jewel Movement publications

Newly added to the collections are important primary sources for the study of Grenada, consisting of one issue (Aug 1981) of the Newsletter of the New Jewel Movement National Women’s Organisation and a number of issues from 1981-1983 of the New Jewel, the newspaper of the New Jewel Movement.


The New Joint Endeavour for Welfare, Education, and Liberation, or New JEWEL Movement (NJM), was a Marxist-Leninist vanguard party in the Caribbean island nation of Grenada. The NJM was established in 1973 as an alliance of the Joint Endeavour for Welfare, Education and Liberation (JEWEL) and the Movement for Assemblies of the People (MAP), and was led by the lawyer Maurice Bishop. The movement was an opposition political party through the 1970s and took control of the country with a successful revolution against the government of Eric Gairy in 1979 ruling by decree until being deposed by the US military after its 1983 invasion.

These new additions add to our collection of secondary sources on Grenada, Grenadian politics, the revolution and the invasion, as well as primary material published by the New Jewel Movement and support groups (established after the invasion) which include earlier issues of the New Jewel Movement’s newspaper entitled New Jewel : let those who labour hold the reins. The collection also includes material published by the Grenada National Party, National Democratic Party, and the Grenada Seamen and Waterfront Workers' Union and Grenada Commercial and Industrial Workers' Union, as well as speeches by Maurice Bishop, when he held the post of Prime Minister

Index to Kenyan newspaper articles

Indexkenya.org is an online index of articles published in Nairobi newspapers. The focus of the articles indexed includes culture, law/governance, reproductive health, and other topics about which information is difficult to obtain. The index aims to selectively index details of articles published since 1980. The actual content of an article is not provided, rather online citations describing the articles. Hard copy of any article indexed can be ordered directly from the Kenya Indexing Project. This database will be updated on a regular basis.

The index selectively coveres four newspapers published in Nairobi since 1980. These are the Daily Nation, East African, East African Standard and The People. The database is being created by a project team which has received finance from the Ford Foundation and short term funding from the International Development Research Centre to index legal articles.

South Africa's Drum magazine turns 60 this month!

Drum was first published in Cape Town in March 1951 under the title African Drum moving in September 1951 to Johannesburg under a new publisher, Jim Bailey. Drum flourished, eventually achieving a circulation of 400,000 copies distributed not only in South Africa but also in Ghana, Nigeria and East Africa.


Anthony Sampson who was editor of Drum in Johannesburg in the 1950s, later writing a memoir of this time entitled Drum: an African adventure and afterwards says of the importance of Jahannesburg, , “Of all South Africa's cities, Johannesburg was the chief magnet. The gold mines below and around the city absorbed thousands of contract workers. They arrived from the rural areas to be kept in batchelor compounds. Then, months later they were sent back to their homes when their contracts expired. This world existed alongside a much more sophisticated black Johannesburg of shebeens, dancehalls, snappy dressers - where life was lived fast, and on the streets. And it was this world which provided much of the creative talent in the magazine Drum.”


Drum walked a fine line in dealing with the subject of apartheid. As confronting apartheid head-on would have led to the publication being - as other publications were to be over the following years, Drum attempted to expose the evils of the racist system without actually condemning official policy.”


While Drum opposed racism and apartheid, some of the key events of the Liberation Struggle were not published. Jim Bailey did not approve the publication of any reports or photographs of the Sharpeville massacre, nor the terrible work and living conditions of migrant workers on the mines.

More information on the history of Drum, is available on the South African History Online website.




The Baileys African History Archive  houses the Drum collection and has digitised many of the images from the South African Drum and its sister magazines across Africa. Images can be searched, viewed and purchased from this site.

The Institute of Commonwealth Studies holds Dorothy Woodson's Drum : an index to "Africa's leading magazine," 1951-1965 , and copies of Drum are held at both SOAS and the British Library.

(with thanks to the Archival Platform)

Australian Newspapers

Now available on Trove is an increasing collection of digitised Australian newspapers. The Newspapers collections have been digitised as part of the ongoing Australian Newspapers Digitisation Program (ANDP).

The project aims initially to digitise four million pages, and currently has nearly two million pages available, with the remainder awaiting digitisation or adding of metadata to allow searching.
In this collaborative project titles and issues have been selected by State and Territory libraries, and have a focus on state titles, and material published prior to 1955 (for copyright reasons). Some material has been included after this date (including the Australian Women's Weekly) where copyright permission has been granted.

There are hopes that work on this resource will continue after the four year project is completed and the initial four million pages added. The resource is a valuable source for historians, and included advertisements and other material making it a rich source for studying social history.

Database Trial - UK Press Online

New Database Trial


UK Press Online is being trialled by the Senate House Library. Two million pages of the 20th Century's biggest-selling newspapers, from 1900 to today, all searchable by name, word, or phrase. Daily Mirror Archive, Daily Express Archive, Sunday Express from 2000 and the Watchman Archive 1835-1885. look on the Database trials page.
 
This resource may be useful in showing how events elesewhere were reported in the UK popular press. Do let me know your feedback on the resource.
 
David Clover

New archives lists in PDF format added to catalogue - John Ferguson and Ceylon

One of the projects for the Commonwealth Studies Library this year has been to add PDF format catalogue lists or handlists to the archives catalogue for each of our collections, whether or not the collection is listed on the catalogue. We hope this improves access to our collections and also makes it easier for readers and potential readers to get an overview of collections and make requests in advance.

Recently added lists include those for:

ICS 86 Ferguson Papers

Papers of John Ferguson CMG, Assistant Editor, later Proprietor and Editor of the Ceylon Observer 1861-1913, and member of the Legislative Council for Ceylon 1903-1908; also some of his uncle Alastair Mackenzie Ferguson CMG, Assistant Editor, later Proprietor and Editor of the Ceylon Observer 1846-1893.

The collection includes material relating to the ‘Ceylon Observer’ and related publications, railways in Ceylon, tea, coffee, coconut and other planting trades, the governors and governance of Ceylon, John Ferguson’s official honours and appointments, religious matters in Ceylon, visits and lecture tours undertaken by John Ferguson overseas, and papers relating to Ferguson’s personal, family and social affairs.

Novia Scotia historic newspapers online

With thanks to Intute for alerting us to this:

Novia Scotia historic newspapers online


A joint project of the Beaton Institute, Cape Breton University and Nova Scotia Archives & Records Management this resource provides free access to the full text of about 15 local newspapers covering the 18th-20th Century. These are rich sources of social, political and economic history of Canadian regions. Titles include Nova Scotia Chronicle and Weekly Advertiser (Halifax), 1769-1770, and The Cape Breton News (Sydney), 1850-1854