Collectors, classifiers and researchers of the Malay World: How individuals and institutions in Britain in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries collected, arranged and organised libraries, archives and museums and how that impacts on today’s researchers

This paper briefly examines well-known libraries and archives in Britain with important Malay collections. However, it will highlight those less well-known libraries and other institutions that hold material of interest to researchers of the Malay World, particularly those institutions primarily perceived as dealing with the world of science rather than the humanities. Collections relating to the Malay World held in British libraries and archives are particularly rich in historical, literary and linguistic material. Historians, linguists and those interested in literature will obviously look to institutions such as the British Library, SOAS Library and other well-known centres of Asian history, linguistics and literature. But would they think to look in the libraries and archives of such places as the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew; the Natural History Museum; the National maritime Museum; the Science Museum; the Zoological Society; the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine; and the Linnean Society? The great scientific institutions of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries collected a vast range of material, primarily focussing on their areas of interest, but not exclusively so. The boundaries between what we see as science, the social sciences and the humanities were less precise in the past than they are today, and historical collections held in scientific institutions cover a broader range of interests than many present-day researchers realise. In previous centuries a “scientist” was not just a person specialising in pure science but someone of a broad education who was as likely to be interested in not just his chosen field but in the wider world around him. His collecting, research and writing often reflected this wider interest. Such permissive collecting often led to items, that could be of interest to a varied range of researchers, being absorbed into, and unintentionally hidden in, a specialist collection. How something is classified and arranged in a collection can exclude information and restrict access as much as provide information and allow access. This paper will attempt to show the wealth of material on the Malay World held in British institutions, particularly scientific institutions, and suggests that researchers should look beyond a narrow view of their subject and where they think material would be held

Historical Amnesia: British and U.S. Intelligence, Past and Present

Many intelligence scandals in the news today seem unprecedented - from Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, to British and U.S. intelligence agencies monitoring activities of their citizens. They seem new largely because, traditionally, intelligence agencies on both sides of the Atlantic were excessively secretive about their past activities: even the names “GCHQ” and “NSA” were airbrushed from declassified records, and thus missing from major historical works and scholarship on on post-war international relations. The resulting secrecy about British and U.S. intelligence has led to misunderstandings and conspiracy theories in societies about them. Newly opened secret records now reveal the long history of many subjects seen in today’s news-cycle: Anglo-American intelligence cooperation, interference by countries in foreign elections, disinformation, and the use and abuse of intelligence by governments. Newly declassified records also add to our understanding of major chapters of international history, like Britain’s post-war end of empire. Without overcoming our historical amnesia disorder about U.S. and British intelligence, citizens, scholars and policy-makers cannot hope to understand the proper context for what secret agencies are doing today

Road User Charging – Pricing Structures.

This project considers the extent to which the public could cope with complex price or tariff structures such as those that might be considered in the context of a national congestion pricing scheme. The key elements of the brief were: • to review existing studies of road pricing schemes to assess what information and evidence already exists on the key issues; • to identify what can be learned about pricing structures from other transport modes and other industries and in particular what issues and conclusions might be transferable; • to improve the general understanding of the relationship between information and people’s ability to respond; and • to recommend what further research would be most valuable to fill evidence gaps and enable conclusions to be drawn about an effective structure

The hunt for submarines in classical art: mappings between scientific invention and artistic interpretation

This is a report to the AHRC's ICT in Arts and Humanities Research Programme. This report stems from a project which aimed to produce a series of mappings between advanced imaging information and communications technologies (ICT) and needs within visual arts research. A secondary aim was to demonstrate the feasibility of a structured approach to establishing such mappings. The project was carried out over 2006, from January to December, by the visual arts centre of the Arts and Humanities Data Service (AHDS Visual Arts).1 It was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) as one of the Strategy Projects run under the aegis of its ICT in Arts and Humanities Research programme. The programme, which runs from October 2003 until September 2008, aims ‘to develop, promote and monitor the AHRC’s ICT strategy, and to build capacity nation-wide in the use of ICT for arts and humanities research’.2 As part of this, the Strategy Projects were intended to contribute to the programme in two ways: knowledge-gathering projects would inform the programme’s Fundamental Strategic Review of ICT, conducted for the AHRC in the second half of 2006, focusing ‘on critical strategic issues such as e-science and peer-review of digital resources’. Resource-development projects would ‘build tools and resources of broad relevance across the range of the AHRC’s academic subject disciplines’.3 This project fell into the knowledge-gathering strand. The project ran under the leadership of Dr Mike Pringle, Director, AHDS Visual Arts, and the day-to-day management of Polly Christie, Projects Manager, AHDS Visual Arts. The research was carried out by Dr Rupert Shepherd

European Slave Trading, Abolitionism, and “New Systems Of Slavery” in the Indian Ocean

Recent scholarship on British, Dutch, French, and Portuguese slave trading in the Indian Ocean highlights the need to explore structural connections between pre- and post-emancipation migrant labour systems in the colonial world. Europeans purchased and transported a minimum of 431,000-547,000 slaves of African, Indian, Malagasy, and Southeast Asian origin to destinations in the Indian Ocean world between 1500 and 1850. These data, coupled with recent research on European abolitionist activity in the region and the movement of convict and indentured labourers throughout and beyond this oceanic basin, point to the development of an increasingly integrated global movement of migrant labour during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries

CREATe 2012-2016: Impact on society, industry and policy through research excellence and knowledge exchange

On the eve of the CREATe Festival May 2016, the Centre published this legacy report (edited by Kerry Patterson & Sukhpreet Singh with contributions from consortium researchers)

Speaking the Same Language: Using Controlled Vocabularies to Search Museum Collections Databases

This study set out to see how controlled vocabularies help people find collections materials in electronic museum databases.It did this by interviewing collections staff from four museums. Eight people from library and non-library work areas at the four museums, who regularly search a museum database in the course of their work, were asked about their experiences with using controlled vocabularies to search. How people used controlled terms depended upon their job tasks and upon their knowledge of terms, past experience and training, and whether they trusted that terms would deliver good search results. Difficulties in using them were identified as being to do with terms themselves; the knowledge of the person searching; and the quality of information in the database. Despite controlled terms rarely being used alone for searching, respondents considered that controlled terminologies are important tools within museum databases for accessing collections. Controlled terms are resource intensive and need institutional backing to work well. Peer support, formal training, staff with database and controlled terms experience, and access to terms lists are some specific factors that would assist controlled vocabularies to work better for the people who search museum databases. Museums need to allocate sufficient financial and administrative resources to controlled terms, if they are serious about improving access to their collections