Diasporic Literary Archives Network and the Commonwealth: Namibia, Nigeria, Trinidad & Tobago, and other examples

This article brings together three themes: primary sources for the study of literature; the diasporic nature of literary manuscripts; and the impact of the diaspora on the English-speaking world, in general, and the Commonwealth, in particular. The article begins by describing some general characteristics of literary manuscripts, focusing in particular on their diasporic nature. It then outlines the work of the project known as the Diasporic Literary Archives Network in the years 2012-15. It concludes with an assessment of the archival diaspora as it affects cultural and literary heritage work in Commonwealth countries

The destinies of literary manuscripts: past present and future

This essay reviews the ways in which literary manuscripts may be considered to be archivally unique, as well as valuable in all senses of the word, and gives a cautious appraisal of their future in the next ten to twenty years. It reviews the essential nature of literary manuscripts, and especially the ways in which they form “split collections”. This leads to an assessment of the work of the Diasporic Literary Archives network from 2012 to 2014, and some of the key findings. The essay closes with reflections on the future of literary manuscripts in the digital age – emerging trends, research findings, uncertainties and unknowns

Colonial Land Claims in East and West Florida

The Florida Historical Records Survey (Works Progress Administration) is engaged in translating, abstracting, and indexing the manuscripts relative to land claims in East and West Florida in the Field Note Division of the Department of Agriculture at Tallahassee. These manuscripts constitute the archives of the Boards of Commissioners for the settlement of claims based on English and Spanish land grants in the Floridas, which Boards sat at Pensacola from 1822 to 1825 and at St. Augustine from 1823 to 1826. Although certain portions of this material, chiefly of a legal nature, are summarized and published in American State Papers, Public Lands, in the several reports of the Commissioners, and in those of the Committee on Public Lands relative to land claims in Florida, much important social and economic data on the second Spanish occupation, 1783-1821, are as yet unpublished

Digital archiving of manuscripts and other heritage items for conservation and information retrieval

Expression of cultural heritage looking from the informatics angle falls into text, images, video and sound categories. ICT can be used to conserve all these heritage items like; the text information consisting of palm leaf manuscripts, stone tablets, handwritten paper documents, old printed records, books, microfilms, fiche etc, images including paintings, drawings, photographs and the like, sound items which includes musical concerts, poetry recitations, chanting of mantras, talks of important persons etc, and video items like archival films historical importance. To retrieve required information from such a large mass of materials in different formats and to transmit them across space and time, there are several limitations. Digital technology allows hitherto unavailable facilities for durable storage and speedy and efficient transmission / retrieval of information contained in all the above formats. Hypertext and hypermedia features of digital media enable integrating text with graphics, sound, video and animation. This paper discusses the international and national efforts for digitizing heritage items, digital archiving solutions available, the possibilities of the media, and the need to follow standards prescribed by organizations like UNESCO to enable easy exchange and pooling of information and documents generated in digital archiving systems at national and international level. The need to develop language technology for local scripts for organizing and preserving our cultural heritage is also stressed

Manuscript Collections

published or submitted for publicatio

“Things That Were, and Things That Are, and Things That Yet May Be”: The J.R.R. Tolkien Manuscript Collection at Marquette University

A talk on the Tolkien Archive at Marquette University’s Rayner Memorial Library in Milwaukee, Wisconsin—its origins, usefulness, and current reorganization project

The Imaging of Historical Documents

No abstract available

Annual Report 2007-2008

Unit reports Addition of web-based bibliographic instruction Establishment of the Learning Commons Installation of new workstations Lots of statisticshttps://digitalcommons.humboldt.edu/library_pub/1039/thumbnail.jp

MS-097: Robert B. Fortenbaugh Papers

This collection consists mainly of material related to his professional careers as a Lutheran minister and professor of history. Other than the two photo/scrapbooks, there are few materials related to his personal and family life. One scrapbook contains mostly ephemera collected while a student at Gettysburg College, (1909 – 1913), and the second one contains material documenting his work as a minister in Syracuse, NY, between 1916 and 1920. Both scrapbooks contain numerous family and personal photos. Special Collections and College Archives Finding Aids are discovery tools used to describe and provide access to our holdings. Finding aids include historical and biographical information about each collection in addition to inventories of their content. More information about our collections can be found on our website http://www.gettysburg.edu/special_collections/collections/.https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/findingaidsall/1089/thumbnail.jp

Signs of intelligence: William Herle's report of the Dutch situation, 1573

On the 11 June 1573 the agent William Herle sent his patron William Cecil, Lord Burghley a lengthy intelligence report of a ‘Discourse’ held with Prince William of Orange, Stadtholder of the Netherlands.∗ Running to fourteen folio manuscript pages, the Discourse records the substance of numerous conversations between Herle and Orange and details Orange’s efforts to persuade Queen Elizabeth to come to the aid of the Dutch against Spanish Habsburg imperial rule. The main thrust of the document exhorts Elizabeth to accept the sovereignty of the Low Countries in order to protect England’s naval interests and lead a league of protestant European rulers against Spain. This essay explores the circumstances surrounding the occasion of the Discourse and the context of the text within Herle’s larger corpus of correspondence. In the process, I will consider the methods by which the study of the material features of manuscripts can lead to a wider consideration of early modern political, secretarial and archival practices