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.