SAALG winter conference: British Library, 22 January 2016 - do come!

BL Qatar Project

We are pleased to announce the next SAALG conference, which will take place at the British Library on Friday 22nd January 2016. The theme of the conference is metadata, and we have invited curators from a range of institutions to tell us how, through metadata, they have made their collections accessible. Kolkata cemetery records, Arabic manuscripts, and colonial films all feature in the day. There will also be an introduction to the British Library’s Qatar project and a tour of the digitisation studios. See programme below.

SOUTH ASIA ARCHIVE AND LIBRARY GROUP
93rd CONFERENCE

To be held at the British Library, 96 Euston Road, London NW1 2DB on Friday 22nd January 2016 in the Conference Centre (Eliot Room)

A map is available online at http://www.bl.uk/aboutus/quickinfo/loc/stp/


PROGRAMME

Arrival and coffee: 10.30 – 11.00

11.00 – 11.10
Introduction and welcome

11.10 – 11.50
Clare Sorensen, Historic Environment Scotland, 'Scotland in India, India in Scotland : an unexpected archive’

11.50 – 12.30
Yasmin Faghihi, Cambridge University Library, ‘FIHRIST: metadata, collaboration and sustainability’

12.30 – 1.50
Lunch (provided) and networking

1.50 – 2.30
Annamaria Motrescu-Mayes, Centre of South Asian Studies, Cambridge, ‘Old media and new digital literacy: the Colonial Film Database’

2.30 – 3.30
Introduction to the Qatar Project at the British Library and tour of Qatar digitisation studio

3.30 – 4.00   
Tea

4.00 – 4.30
Business meeting

Conference ends

The fee for the day is £20.00, which includes lunch and refreshments. To make your booking, please email Antonia Moon at the British Library by Friday 8th January.

If you have to cancel your place after Friday 8th January 2016, you may be asked to pay an administrative charge.

Arabic manuscripts online

Arabic Manuscripts Online is a digital manuscripts library, accessible for free, based on the Wellcome Library's Asian Collection.  It includes manuscripts in Arabic and Persian which have been photographed in their entirety, and can be viewed in detail alongside comprehensive manuscript descriptions.  Researchers can also compare two manuscripts side-by-side to illuminate the differences.

Significant passages in the manuscripts, such as the incipits, basmala, explicits and section headings (for most but not all manuscripts), are fully transcribed, and extensive physical descriptions have been recorded by conservation specialists for most of the manuscript descriptions.

It is also possible to explore the content of the online catalogue more selectively, where manuscripts may be browsed according to their categories or searched via the full text search facility. Users can search using the old Arabic alphabet through a virtual keyboard, matching the original content of the manuscripts. The results of the searched manuscripts may be further narrowed down through the faceted filters, which retrieve more precise results for the researcher's convenience.  There are themed help pages and a useful glossary.

Arabic Manuscripts Online was made possible through the Wellcome Arabic Manuscript Cataloguing Partnership (WAMCP) and combines the efforts of the Wellcome Library, the Bibliotheca Alexandrina and Kings College London Digital Humanities Department.  It is funded by JISC and the Wellcome Trust.