London Library Research Articles

Victoria Welby and the Signific Movement

In this definitive overview of Victoria Welby's (1837–1912) contributions to sign theory through the Significs Movement, Susan Petrilli utilizes her extraordinary interpretive abilities to provide the reader with an overview of Welby's research and her contribution to the study of signs. In order to bring this monumental work to fruition, Petrilli spent time at the Welby Collection of the York University Archives in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, the Lady Welby Library, University of London, and The British Library in London. In addition to Petrilli's insightful analysis and elucidation of Welby's original works, she also provides the reader with selections from Welby's published writings as well the a significant amount of previously unpublished material located in the Welby Collection at York University. Petrilli's careful editing and cross-referencing of these materials contributes to a logical and revealing account of Welby's influential and voluminous work and the Significs Movement.

Two Greek excerpts by Johannes Cuno (1463-1513) in London Arundel 550

The Dominican Johannes Cuno (1463–1513) was a talented Hellenist who was closely associated with Aldus Manutius, Mark Mousouros and Johannes Reuchlin. His manuscript London Arundel 550 is currently held in the British Library in London. It is a miscellany of texts, a little bit like a personal notebook; these texts reflect Cuno's interests as well as the interests of the classicists of the time more broadly. This paper presents for the first time two unpublished items from London Arundel 55011 A discussion of London Arundel 550, including literary contents, can be found in Martin Sicherl, Johannes Cuno, Ein Wegbereiter des Griechischen in Deutschland, Eine biographisch-kodikologische Studie (Heidelberg: Winter, 1978), 59–64. supplied by Johannes Cuno (autograph, Pavia, 1506–8) for the advancement of the learning of the Greek language in the West. These are a) London Arundel 550, f. 28v: Prosody of Greek words (Anonymous, probably Johannes Cuno), and b) London Arundel 550, f. 59v: Glossary of local dialects (Anonymous, after Philostratos).

Henry VIII: man and monarch.

To mark the 500th anniversary of Henry VIII's accession to the throne, there is a major exhibition at the British Library in London. Important and rarely displayed items from the British Library's unrivalled Henry VIII collection are exhibited, including correspondence, key official documents, maps and books from the King's own library. The exhibition examines the extraordinary transformations – personal and political, intellectual and religious, literary, aesthetic and linguistic – that took place in the reign of Henry VIII. We could explore the beliefs and motives behind Henry's actions, telling the story of his reign from his own perspective, but I'd like to look more at his weight and health – the fact that he started out as a healthy, young man who did a lot of exercise and ended up very overweight. Henry's prescription book contains various receipts for treating ulcers and ‘restraining humours’, some of them by the royal physicians and some of them ascribed to Henry himself: ‘An Oyntment devised by the king's Majesty made at Westminster. And devised at Grenwich to take away inflammations and to cease payne and heale ulcers called gray plaster’

Local uses of Aristolochia species and content of nephrotoxic aristolochic acid 1 and 2—A global assessment based on bibliographic sources

Aims of the study More than 100 cases of nephropathy over the last 10 years caused by the systemic and longer term application of Chinese snakeroot ( Aristolochia fangchi) highlighted the risk of using preparations which contain aristolochic acids. On the other hand anecdotal evidence highlights the widespread use of Aristolochia species (Aristolochiaceae) in many regions of the world. Therefore, it was our objective to systematically assess the scientific literature available on the local and traditional use of Aristolochia spp. on a worldwide scale. Our review identifies core species which need to be investigated and which may need monitoring (esp. in national and international trade). Methods An extensive review of the literature available in libraries in London on the uses of species of Aristolochia was undertaken. Relevant information was extracted and entered into a database for analysis. Results Based on the assessment of 566 reference sources 685 individual sets of data were recorded. Seven species – Aristolochia indica L. (Asia), Aristolochia serpentaria L. (North America), Aristolochia debilis Sieb & Zucch. (China), Aristolochia acuminata Lam (India), Aristolochia trilobata L. (Central/South America, Caribbean), Aristolochia clematitis L. (Europe) and Aristolochia bracteolata Lam. (Africa) – are reported widely as being used medicinally. The medical uses vary, but of particular interest are uses in case of gastrointestinal problems, which is likely to result in repeated exposure to the botanical drugs by an individual. About half of all records relate to uses of Aristolochia species in Asia, one-third to the Americas, a continent which has so far received practically no attention in terms of assessing the risk of using species of Aristolochia. Of the 99 species (plus several identified at genus level only) for which we were able to summarise ethnobotanical information, preliminary phytochemical information is only available for 24 species and some of the most common ones including Aristolochia acuminata have so far not been studied phytochemically. Conclusions Species of Aristolochia are used medicinally in many regions of the world and both from an ethnopharmacological and a public health perspective this poses a risk. A systematic assessment of the content of aristolochic acids in the most widely used species is needed to evaluate whether their uses pose a potential health risk. In China and Europe species of Aristolochia have been associated with nephropathy and it is important to evaluate whether nephropathy occurs in other parts of the world, especially India and Central America where the use of species of Aristolochia are reported to be commonly used in traditional medicine.

Incunabula at Senate House Library: Growth of a Collection

How does a University library established in the late nineteenth century and donation-driven into the twentieth acquire a collection of incunabula? This article examines the growth of the incunabula collection at Senate House Library, University of London (formerly known as the University of London Library) from the twenty-two fifteenth-century books in the foundation collection of Augustus De Morgan, given in 1871, to the twenty-first century. It describes the influx of incunabula through the gifts of various named special collections, looking also at the role that incunabula played within those collections; through purchase; and through the demise of other institutional libraries. The article further details Senate House Library's treatment of its incunabula and shows how exploration of a small collection (134 of the Library's estimated 200,000 early printed books) sheds light on private and institutional library history.

On Freud's Jewish Body: Mitigating Circumcisions (review)

Reviewed by: On Freud's Jewish Body: Mitigating Circumcisions Sander L. Gilman Jay Geller . On Freud's Jewish Body: Mitigating Circumcisions. New York: Fordham University Press, 2007. xii + 355 pp. $80.00 (cloth, 978-0-8232-2781-5), $28.00 (paperbound, 978-0-8232-2782-2). Jay Geller, who teaches at the Vanderbilt Divinity School, has collected and reshaped his contributions on Freud and his Jewish context, researched and writ-ten over the past twenty-five years, into a comprehensive and readable volume. [End Page 221] On Freud's Jewish Body begins with a valuable stocktaking. Looking at the debates about Freud and his times in the historical and critical literature (including my own work) Geller teases out patterns of emphasis and strings of argument that range from Freud as a repressed religious Jew (Yosef Yerushalmi) to Freud as an atheist Jew alienated from all ritual practice (Peter Gay). He examines these debates as they structured the very idea of Freud's relationship to "Jewishness" that the historians and critics both wish to explicate but which they also use in their works. After this important and focused analysis, Geller places his own work within postmodern theories about the social construction of embodiedness. In the first substantial chapter of the book, he examines slips of the tongue as examined in Freud's work and focuses on the rather specific Viennese question of "Jewish– Gentile" (Geller's terms) intermarriage in the late nineteenth century. The slips of the tongue examined reveal the anxiety in the culture about identity boundaries and the impact of Freud's own conflict about his Jewish identity in the time. In chapter 2, Geller turns to the origins of psychoanalysis as represented in Freud's Interpretation of Dreams (1900) and specifically, in the central dream interpreted in this volume: the "dream of Irma's injection." Here Geller builds on a range of existing interpretations of Freud's reading of this dream and shows the conflicted nature of the historical record in examining the representation of the origins of psychoanalysis. To resolve them, he relies on a rather interesting archival source, Max Schur's 1966 transcription of Freud's correspondence with Wilhelm Fliess (which provides our access to the "day residue" prominent in the dream of Irma's injection). Geller is a great reader of the "slips" and puns that result from multiple readings. In this chapter, he shows how Schur's misreading (a slip of the pen) provides a true insight in the one possible reading of this seminal text. Geller also discusses the importance of his discovery of the first review of Freud's Studies in Hysteria (1895) and its Viennese author to an understanding of Freud's later rethinking of the meaning of the "day residue" in his own interpretation of his dream in 1900. In the third chapter, Geller looks at Freud's 1927 essay on "fetishism" and the reading of the "nose" in a number of Freud's published case studies, especially that of the "Wolf Man" (1918) and "Little Hans" (1909). Geller examines the question of the relationship between the genital and the nose postulated by Freud's confident Wilhelm Fleiss and the centrality of the debates about the difference of the Jewish male body that haunted Freud's Vienna, especially around the question of the ritual practice of circumcision and its implications for Jewish physical difference. In chapter 5, Geller looks at a further case study, that of Daniel Paul Schreber (1911), and Freud's own notes to Schreber's published memoir present in Freud's library in London. Since Freud's sole access to this patient was through his reading of this volume (it was suggested to him by C. G. Jung), Freud's notes, as Geller shows, are a major insight on his reading and on the importance that anti-Semitic rhetoric (present throughout Schreber's text in complex ways) had in his understanding of Schreber's psychosis. [End Page 222] In his sixth chapter, Geller examines Freud's mass psychology in the light of anti-Semitism of the time and then deals with Freud's Totem and Taboo (1913) and Freud's image of masculinity. Geller situates this image...

What, How and Why: Accessing Incunabula at Senate House Library, University of London

This article is based on a project undertaken in 2008 to catalogue the incunabula (fifteenth-century printed books) at Senate House Library, University of London (previously known as the University of London Library). The project was unusual because it dealt with books which resembled manuscripts, and which have a long history of printed description which sometimes jars with modern online conventions for resource discovery. The article summarizes the desires which Anglo-American scholars have expressed for the content of descriptions of incunabula in the contexts of printed and union catalogues, and assesses the extent to which these are relevant to the online catalogues of specific libraries. It describes the challenges, including the tensions between scholarly printed incunabula literature and library conventions, and the approach taken at Senate House Library to resolve them. It further evaluates the timing for the project and assesses the project's results, which ranged from institutional to international in scope.

The problem of the broken stick reconsidered

originally caUed the "Senate-House Examinations," after the name of the building in which they took place, and later they became known as the "Mathematical Tripos." Afterwards, the best solutions were published. The ensuing volumes can be found in the Rare Book Collections of the British Library in London and the University Library in Cambridge. In the morning session of January 18, 1854, there was posed [13, pp. 49-52] an elementary problem in geometrical probability that was destined to become a classic. The British call it "The Problem of the Broken Rod," whereas Americans refer to it as "The Problem of the Broken Stick." It says, "A rod is marked at random at two points, and then divided into three parts at these points; shew [sic] that the probability of its being possible to form a triangle with the pieces is 1/4." The exact value of the probability is of little interest, except possibly to numerologists. What is interesting is to see how various later authors, apparently unaware of the original formulation of the problem, reinterpreted what it means to break a stick "at random," and developed fresh methods to solve it. Be advised that I am employing the word "random" in the narrow technical sense used in probability and statistics to refer to any chance phenomenon that is governed by the uniform distribution over a suitable sample space. This usage was recommended by de Finetti [1, p. 152] and [2, p. 62], who was writing on the very topic of random division. However, even with such a restriction, there is more than one way to interpret what is meant by the term "random," depending on the identity of the sample space, just as in Bertrand's Paradox [3], [11]. I shall examine two of these interpretations in detail. Although the problem originated in England, it found its way to France, possibly with the aid of John Venn, wh o was enrolled as an undergraduate at Gonville and Caius College at the time. Presumably, he had taken the exam and done well on it, for he was awarded the title of "Mathematical Scholar" at his college later in the year. The first journal publication was in the founding volume of the Bull. Soc. Math. de France in 1875, written by t~mile Lemoine [6]. Lemoine formulated a discrete version of the problem by considering the rod as a measuring stick divided into equally spaced intervals and allowing the breaks to occur only at their endpoints. This gives rise to a finite number of outcomes, and he treated them in the traditional way, interpreting the word "random" as meaning that all trisections of the rod at a given scale are equally likely. He made tables and calculated the ratio of the number of favorable cases to the number of possible ones. Then he passed to the limit as the scale decreased to zero. In this way, he found the answer to be 1/4, in agreement with the Cambridge Examiners, whom he does not cite. Subsequently, several French mathematicians, including Lemoine himself [7], showed that the same answer could be obtained by formulating the problem directly in terms of the continuum and solving it by use of geometry. References can be found in [7] and [12]. They took as their sample space an equilateral triangle and interpreted the trilinear coordinates of a sample point as the lengths of the broken pieces, as in Figure 1. Relative area provides a uniform distribution of probability on the space. Thus, for them, random trisection of a rod amounted to choosing a point "at random" in the triangle.

Communication Access in the Library for Individuals who use Augmentative and Alternative Communication

Libraries for All is a community-based program that aims to enhance communication access to the library for individuals who use augmentative and alternative communication (AAC), by providing resources and instruction. The goals are to (a) provide communication boards, (b) complete facilitator training, and (c) promote the program. To accomplish these goals, four communication boards were created and provided to all public libraries in London, Ontario. A train-the-trainer model was employed to ensure that all members of the library staff were familiar with the boards and aware of strategies to communicate more effectively with individuals who use AAC. Marketing materials were sent to potential stakeholders. The success of the program in meeting these three goals is highlighted.

Vampires like Us: Writing down 'The Serbs' by Tomislav Longinović (review)

REVIEWS H5 enterprising study, rather than the longer established and far larger Slavonic and Baltic collections of major national and university libraries. It is an immensely practical littlebook that should be welcomed by all whose interests do not stop at the Russian borders: the countries whose collections are discussed here are Belarus, Croatia, Estonia, Latvia, Poland and Ukraine. Not only will this guide ease access to these (relatively) small libraries, but also provide valuable insights into the life of some of the enterprising East European ?migr? communities towhich this country has afforded hospitality in the post-war period and, of course, long after. After a preliminary introduction, the author, Ihar Ivano?, formerly assistant librarian at the Francis Skaryna Belarusian Library and Museum in London, begins by providing a broad survey of the history and significance of the emigration and its libraries, including a historical view of World War Two and its resultant displaced persons, the Polish immigration to Britain (then, as now, very extensive), the European Volunteer Workers Schemes, as well as notes on later immigrations, and on the ways newcomers to this country established a community lifeand set up their libraries. In the second section Ivano? reviews the existing literature available, including that on the reasons for establishing community libraries, the nature of their collections and users, collaboration with public and other libraries, and the influence of democratic transformations in (parts of) the former Soviet block. Next comes a historical review of the libraries, a survey of their collections and significance. This section is followed by a survey of thework practices of the community librar ies, and one on theirorganization, including budgets and volunteer and other workers. The conclusion assesses the differences and similarities between the twelve libraries reviewed, and theirposition in a changing context. The bibliography is excellent, and three appendices afford valuable additional annotated information on each of the libraries within Ivano?'s purview: the firstis a description of each in turn, the second a review of their collections, work practices and organizations, whilst the third is an abstract in Belarusian This book, whose modest price includes postage and packing, may be ordered from 57 Guilford Rd, Leicester LE2 2RD. It deserves the attention of everyone who takes an interest in the East European emigration to Britain, and should be ordered by all serious libraries. UCL Arnold McMillin Longinovic, Tomislav. VampiresLike Us: Writing Down 'theSerbs'. Belgrade Circle, Belgrade, 2005. 222 pp. Bibliography. $15.00. No, it is not a typo: the author does write 'the serbs', the uncapitalized common noun in quotation marks, in order to remind the reader of Lyotard's way of differentiating between the Jews and 'the jews'. VampiresLike Us explores the imaginary structures of a nation as they are performed in oral and written literature,popular music and visual culture. Longinovic provides a context for understanding the role that imaginary networks of signification 146 SEER, 86, I, 2008 play in the structuring of both the local and global narratives about a par ticular national articulation. The author focuses on 'the serbs' as a particular example of the returns of the gothic vision of vampirism, which mediated the emergence of 'the serbs' as a phantasm of a vampiric community governed by the excesses of a malignant historical imagination alien to the values of Europe. What themedia tend to represent as alien and 'other' to Europe in theYugoslav tragedies of the 1990s, Longinovic claims, is in fact a legacy of the violence that formed the foundation ofmodern Europe: the political and cultural ideas made flesh in the blood and law binding the nation state. This manoeuvre of interpretative reversal is consistently applied throughout the book. Both the representation of 'the serbs' in themedia, and Serbian self-representation are questioned with the same strategy, and made to give an account ofwhat they suppress and deny. The second chapter, which can be understood as the core of thisprovocative book, develops the interpretation of the 'torturer victim formula' in the Serbian imaginary, but it also finds thisvery formula projected onto thewider screen of the global representation of'the serbs'.This leads us to the aim ofLonginovic's book: it seeks toprovide an understanding which might facilitate an action...

Baltic and Slavonic Libraries in Britain: Their Place in Developing Group Identity and the Life of Emigré Communities by Ihar Ivanoǔ (review)

144 SEER, 86, I, 2008 biographical description at the expense of textual analysis. Happily, it isnot. Rosenflanz organizes her book into chapters whose titles themselves exem plify the virtuosic wordplay she identifies as a central element ofKrzhizha novskii's writing (indeed, the chapter titles themselves are taken from the subheadings of one of Krzhizhanovskii's own articles about Shakespeare): 'Slova: Words', 'Vesci: Things', 'Vesci-Slova: Things-Words', 'Slova-Vesci: Words-Things', 'Vescie Slova: Prophetic Words'. The chapters treat, respec tively, the varieties and sub-varieties ofKrzhizhanovskii's intricatewordplay, the influence ofKant on his literaryphilosophy and worldview (whichRosen flanz sums up at the end of the book as a 'denial of absolute metaphysical truthand its replacement by a metaphysics of fiction',p. 138), themetaphor ical landscape of Krzhizhanovskii's phantasmagoric prose, and his critical interest in Formalist ideas regarding word-meaning relationships ('For Krzizanovskij, word and thing become conflated: word is thing with the power of poetic pronouncement ? vescee slovo. The word is a tripartite con struction of slovo?ver?vescanie\ p. 138).The last of the chapters focuses in part on Krzhizhanovskii's own 'prophetic' awareness thathis life'swork would only be appreciated in the future (some of the evidence forwhich Rosenflanz finds inKrzhizhanovskii's aphorisms, for example: T am at odds with the present, but eternity loves me', p. 135). Rosenflanz's chapter on the author's wordplay is especially interesting,and makes a contribution not only to the still-emerging history of early twentieth centuryRussian literature,but to the history and practice ofwit, and in par ticular the evolving status ofwordplay inRussian criticism since Lomonosov. The chapter is an annotated catalogue of the author's encyclopaedic use of varieties ofwordplay, including three types of homonymy, poetic etymology, five types of paronomasia and two types of pun. Her careful taxonomy, with its abundant quotations from Krzhizhanovskii's works, also amounts to an introduction to his language and prodigious sense of humour. Her treat ment in a subsequent chapter of Krzhizhanovskii's complex engagement in praxis with the theories of the Formalists also gives themonograph a broader appeal to scholars ofRussian Formalism and its legacy. In sum,Rosenflanz's meticulously detailed, yet eminently readable book is a fitting introduction to 'an author whose prose revealed the verbal pyrotechnics of a Nabokov, the imagination of a Borges and the ironic wit of a Chesterton' (p. 137).This is an ambitiously stated panegyric, to be sure, but it is one that is compellingly supported inRosenflanz's impressivework. UCL Seth Graham Ivano?, Ihar. Baltic and SlavonicLibraries inBritain: Their Place in Developing Group Identityand the Life of Emigr? Communities. Manifold, London, 2006. 112pp. Tables. Notes. Bibliography. Appendices. ?8.00 (paperback). The emigration fromEastern Europe towards the end of and after World War Two led to the setting up ofmany community libraries in Britain (particu larly in London and Leicester), and it is these that form the subject of this REVIEWS H5 enterprising study, rather than the longer established and far larger Slavonic and Baltic collections of major national and university libraries. It is an immensely practical littlebook that should be welcomed by all whose interests do not stop at the Russian borders: the countries whose collections are discussed here are Belarus, Croatia, Estonia, Latvia, Poland and Ukraine. Not only will this guide ease access to these (relatively) small libraries, but also provide valuable insights into the life of some of the enterprising East European ?migr? communities towhich this country has afforded hospitality in the post-war period and, of course, long after. After a preliminary introduction, the author, Ihar Ivano?, formerly assistant librarian at the Francis Skaryna Belarusian Library and Museum in London, begins by providing a broad survey of the history and significance of the emigration and its libraries, including a historical view of World War Two and its resultant displaced persons, the Polish immigration to Britain (then, as now, very extensive), the European Volunteer Workers Schemes, as well as notes on later immigrations, and on the ways newcomers to this country established a community lifeand set up their libraries. In the second section Ivano? reviews the existing literature available, including that on the reasons for establishing community libraries, the nature of their...

Records in a Rival's Repository: Archives of the Dutch East India Company and Related Materials in the India Office Records (British Library), London (and the National Archives of Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur)

AbstractTwo of the former so-called rival empires of trade in the Orient, the Dutch and the British with their respective East India Companies, are today friendly neighbours, closely co-operating both politically and economically. Their erstwhile mercantile rivalry in the East, however, is still reflected in the fact that part of the records of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) is nowadays kept in—of all places—the department of India Office Records at the British Library in London, the very repository of the archives of the British East India Company (EIC).This article presents an overview of the relatively unknown and unexplored materials derived, copied, or translated from the VOC and stored in that lion's den. Apart from a few miscellaneous papers, three groups of records will be described: the remaining archives of the VOC establishment at Melaka (in Malaysia), VOC documents in the Mackenzie collections, and relevant materials in the archives of the EIC. The bulk of the first group of records and parts of the second and third group are unique. In addition, the few Dutch records from Melaka that still remain in Malaysia will be dealt with in an Appendix.

To bin or not to bin? Deselecting print back-runs available electronically at Imperial College London Library

Serials: The Journal for the Serials Community has been digitised and can be accessed in full on this website. All content is freely available on an open-access basis. Serials was published between 1988 and 2011. In 2012, the journal was retitled and is now published as Insights: the UKSG journal.

Rewriting Nursing History – Again?

In the late 1970s, when I first began to gather together the authors whose essays would later appear in Rewriting Nursing History,1 I found myself among others who experienced the same kinds of dissatisfactions with the history of nursing that I did. With the arrogance of the young, we believed we were at the cutting edge, at the start of something new. The judgments of nurse historians have been kind; they seem to have confirmed us in the passions we displayed. Yet the themes, research designs, and methods that are in place today were simply not visible on the horizon. And perhaps it is quite right that that is so. A critical reflection on what has transpired over the intervening years is an appropriate topic for this Monica Baly Memorial Lecture. At the time that I entered the world of nursing history in the United Kingdom, and for many years after that, Monica Baly was an indomitable figure. The wide-ranging arguments of her Nursing and Social Change were well known and stood alongside her standard text on district nursing, An Approach to District Nursing. There were what Sioban Nelson has called the gentle corrections to the existing canon in her book Florence Nightingale and the Nursing Legacy and a continuing array of articles and chapters came during the years thereafter.2 It was Monica Baly who recorded the story of the re-emergence of nursing history of which Reuniting Nursing History was a part. Her careful documentation jolted my memory of those first visits I made to the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) library in London. It was there, with the assistance and encouragement of librarian Frances Walshe, that I began to put together the network of scholars that resulted in Rewriting Nursing History. But it was Baly who had the foresight and determination to put it all on paper and to work tirelessly behind the scenes with others such as Christopher Maggs to create an institutional presence for the history of nursing and to keep it alive.3 This article gives me an opportunity to reflect on the progress of nursing history since Rewriting Nursing History'was published in 1980. There is no hope, in a context such as this, of doing justice to the impressive volume and range of work that has been accomplished over the years. What I will do, instead, is ponder some of the reflections of those who are steeped in the field. I will ask myself how far the approaches being advocated by them today relate to the demands of that youthful band who worked toward something I described as intellectually satisfying and at the same time more relevant to practising nurses too.4 There are three parts to this article. First, I want to comment on the writing of Rewriting Nursing History and to trace how my own intellectual thinking about nursing - its past and its present - developed from and out of that. My training as a sociologist and student of social policy, rather than as an historian, is particularly germane to this. Second, I want to make some observations on a quarter-century of impressive achievements in the history of nursing. To help with that, I turn to four historiographic essays that have offered an overview at different points in the period raising issues - some of which differ and some of which remain the same. Third, I want to offer my own comments and observations on the current agenda - the themes and issues in the field and the circumstances under which nursing history is being produced. An Intellectual Journey Rewriting Nursing History was a book that fell into place not only as a result of conversations and correspondence with like-minded people in the worlds of academia but also with encouragement from the practicing nurses with whom I was in contact. We were in total agreement that it was time for a vibrant new kind of history, but we totally disagreed about the form that that history should take. My co-writers had strong commitments to labor history, Marxist history, and feminist history, to name a few. …

Planning your intranet strategy

Meg Pratley (Internal Communications Officer) demonstrated the RCN’s intranet and DrJanet Smith (Staff Development Officer) talked about Imperial College London Library’sintranet and communications strategy. 32 people attended the meeting in one of RCN’scomfortable meeting rooms.

The London Library

The London Library, an independent subscription lending library and registered educational charity, has been providing a wide selection of books for loan to members in all aspects of the humanities since 1841. Books and periodicals on applied art and the history of art, in all the major European languages, form an increasingly important part of its collections. The Library is embarking on a period of extension and development, and welcomes new members.

Digitising the Hand-Written Bible: The Codex Sinaiticus, its History and Modern Presentation

The German theologian Konstantin von Tischendorf discovered the oldest manuscript of the Bible in the middle of the 19th century. Thereafter its parts were dispersed and stored in famous libraries in London, Leipzig and St. Petersburg, and in St. Catherine's Monastery near Mount Sinai, its original home. An international consortium of libraries has been formed to preserve and research all the parts of this manuscript and then to unite them in digital form. This will result in a virtual Codex Sinaiticus on the Internet, though there will also be a printed version. Standards for preservation, transcription and digitisation have been established with the help of European and U.S. experts. This joint venture, supported by a number of research councils and foundations, began in 2006 and will be completed by 2010.

List of periodicals

The following periodicals are scanned in compiling the abstracts, although it should be noted that not every issue of a periodical that is scanned will be represented in every volume of Language Teaching. The majority of the periodicals are held in the CILT (The National Centre for Languages) Library in London, UK. A complete list of CILT's collection, together with additional publications such as newsletters and bulletins, may be obtained from the CILT Librarian or from <http://www.cilt.org.uk/irs/collection.htm>.

Thomas Bowrey's Madagascar Manuscript of 1708

In 1913 an old chest was discovered in a manor house in Worcestershire in the west of England. Packed with bundles of manuscripts, it contained several hundred letters and business papers written in a crabbed italic hand. These documents belonged to Thomas Bowrey, an English overseas merchant, who was born in 1662 and died in 1713. The collection of papers was later purchased by Colonel Henry Howard, and in 1931 part of it was presented to the Guildhall Library in London. These documents include an incomplete manuscript titled “Discription of the Coast of Affrica from the Cape of Good Hope, to the Red Sea” dated 1708. The notes indicate that Bowrey intended to write a book that encompassed descriptions of all the major ports of the region.Only fragments of the draft survive. Most of the manuscript contains amendments, crossed-out sections, and blank spaces. The text consists of different versions of a preface, brief accounts of the Dutch Cape Colony and Delagoa Bay in Mosambique, as well as a draft portion which has the title “Islands of yeCoast of Africa on yeEast Side of yeCape of Good Hope: Places of Trade on Madagascar.” The densely written and in part hardly legible text is on sixteen folio pages. It gives information about Assada, Old Masselege, Manangara, New Masselege, Terra Delgada, Morondava, Crab Island, St. Vincent, St. Iago, Tulear, St. Augustin Bay, St. John's, Port Dauphin, Matatana, Bonavola, St. Mary's Island, and Antongil Bay. This document also includes descriptions of Mauritius and Bourbon, nowadays called Réunion. Most of these places were visited by English, Dutch, and French seafarers in the last decades of the seventeenth century.

Catalogue of Dated and Datable Manuscripts c. 888-1600 in London Libraries. P. R. Robinson

<i>Catalogue of Dated and Datable Manuscripts c. 888-1600 in London Libraries</i>. P. R. Robinson