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.