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.

SAALG 90th Conference - Friday 21st February - University of Cambridge Library

Join us for the 90th SAALG Conference which will take place on Friday 21st February at the University of Cambridge Library. The theme for the day will be 'Archives' and we will have the opportunity to learn about a variety of collections and projects - there will also be a chance to visit the new Centre of South Asian Studies building in Cambridge.  

Image: Cambridge University Library Faoch via Flickr

The full programme is as follows: 

Image: Cambridge University Library - RCS QM 8/123 - From the Royal Commonwealth Society Library, Queen Mary Collection.  A view showing crowds of people watching the arrival of the Royal Party at a palatial building, Calcutta.

The fee for the day is £20 including lunch, full directions to the Library will be sent out before the day. Please email Helen Porter, SAALG Chair hp7@soas.ac.uk or telephone 020 78984153 to make a booking or for more information. The final day for registering is Wednesday 12th February. 

Visual rhetoric and modern South Asian history

Dr Annamaria Motrescu-Mayes, affiliated lecturer and research associate at the Centre of South Asian Studies, University of Cambridge, is teaching a new seminar series on 'Visual rhetoric and modern South Asian history'.

Time and Location: Michaelmas Term, every Tuesday between 16:00-17:00 in S2 Seminar Room, Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road, Cambridge, CB3 9DP.

All welcome.

For full details see http://karachi.s-asian.cam.ac.uk/visual.html and the poster below.

Royal Asiatic Society Lecture: Reel Histories

Royal Asiatic Society Lecture Series 2011-2012

Reel Histories: The Film and Oral History Collections of the Centre of South Asian Studies, Cambridge

Dr Kevin Greenbank

(University of Cambridge)

Thursday 12^th April 6pm

Free and all are welcome

Royal Asiatic Society

14 Stephenson Way

London

NW1 2HD

Nearest Tube: Euston, Euston Sq, Warren Street

info@royalasiaticsociety.org Tel: 020 7388 4539

Festival of Ideas

The University of Cambridge Festival of Ideas celebrates the arts, humanities and social sciences, and is the only free festival of its kind in the UK.  Festival events are extremely popular, and booking without delay is essential to avoid disappointment.  Visit the Festival of Ideas website for full details on how to secure a place by phone or online: www.cam.ac.uk/festivalofideas.

Events likely to interest readers of the SAALG blog include:

Laying the topmost stone of New Delhi (one of two)
 on 30th September 1927

Moving Pictures, Moving Stories: photographs, films and interviews from the end of the Raj - on Saturday 29 October 2011, 15.00-16.30, Mill Lane Lecture Room 5. 
Dr Annamaria Motrescu and Dr Kevin Greenbank  (Centre of South Asian Studies, University of Cambridge) will discuss the use of these unique archival resources in online projects and classrooms. To book your place, email: admin@s-asian.cam.ac.uk or phone: 01223 338094.

Submitted as a cover for a tourist brochure
by Heather Balfour in 1959

Essays of Empire - on Thursday 27 October 17:00-18:00,  Morison Room, Cambridge University Library, West Road, Cambridge, CB3 9DR. 

Dr Seán Lang (Senior Lecturer in History, Anglia Ruskin University,  and Chair of the Better History Group) will present a glimpse of how school children across the globe responded to the pressures for change within the British Empire through their entries to the Royal Commonwealth Society essay competition.
To book:  telephone 0845 271 3333 or online at: www.angliaruskincommunity.eventbrite.com/ 

Links to digital resources:

Films from the archives, Centre of South Asian Studies: http://www.s-asian.cam.ac.uk/films.html and interviews:  http://www.s-asian.cam.ac.uk/audio.html

Royal Commonwealth Society Essay Competition archive: http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/repository/item_of_the_term/

Freemasonry and the Indian Parsi Community

Some readers of this blog may be interested in a two day conference taking place in London on 22nd and 23rd October 2011, Freemasonry and Empire.

The Saturday programme includes:

Susan Snell, Archivist at the Library and Museum of Freemasonry speaking about the masonic relationship between Umdat ul Umrah (future Nawab of the Carnatic) and the Prince of Wales (future King George IV), Grand Master in 'Western ideology meets Eastern promise: an archival view';
Simon Deschamps, University of Bordeaux III, on 'Freemasonry and the Indian Parsi community: a late meeting on the level'; and Dr Annamaria Motrescu, Centre of South Asian Studies, University of Cambridge, on 'Uncharted masonic identities in British colonial amateur films, 1920-1940'.

Full details of the conference programme are available online at: http://www.canonbury.ac.uk/conferences/programme11.pdf  

Colonial Film: Moving Images of the British Empire

The completed Colonial Film catalogue brings together films from three collections - the British Film Institute (BFI), the Imperial War Museum (IWM), and the British Empire & Commonwealth Museum (BECM). The catalogue uses various tools to enhance the apparatus for researchers consulting these collections. Most important of these are two extra fields of context and analysis, which position and examine a selection of the films in relation to the history of the British Empire. There are approximately seventy-five countries within the Empire represented within this collection.

The BFI collection contains approximately 1,200 films relating to Colonial Africa. There are over 1,100 titles covering India, South East Asia and the Middle East, with approximately 500 of these titles relating to India. The earliest titles within this collection include 70 from the turn of the century concerning the Boer War, as well as footage from India – for example Panorama of Calcutta – from 1899. There are films from local production units - for example, the Malayan Film Unit, the Jamaican Film Unit, and the Gold Coast Film Unit – and from established British producers, such as the Colonial Film Unit, and British Instructional Film - which produced the Empire Series between 1925 and 1928. These films were exhibited and distributed in a variety of contexts. There are instructional films made for African audiences – for example, Anti-Plague Operations in Lagos (1937) and the three BEKE films made in the 1930s; films intended for prospective British immigrants – for example Southern Rhodesia: is this Your Country? (1948); sponsored films for British schools - for example From Cane to Cube (1950); fundraising films for missionary work – for example Salvation Army Work in India, Burma and Ceylon (1925); films for children’s cinema clubs – for example Basuto Boy (1947) and Trek to Mashomba (1950) as well a large number intended for cinemas and non-theatrical sites at home and abroad. The collection includes documentary films, amateur footage, newsreels, actualities, travelogues, and missionary films, as well as over 200 fiction films.

The Imperial War Museum collection contains footage relating to pivotal moments in colonial history; for example the Malayan Emergency - Proudly presenting Yong Peng (1955); Voices of Malaya (1948); The Knife (1955); the British mandate in Palestine - Jewish Colonies in Palestine (1917); Allenby meets Weizmann (1918); Palestine Police (1946); and most notably the experiences of colonial troops in two World Wars. This footage includes extensive material filmed by Army and RAF photographic units during the Second World War, particularly in India, Burma and the Far East, much of which is still to be catalogued. The collection also includes newsreels from the War – most notably 138 editions of Indian News Parade, which ran weekly from 1943 to 1946 – as well as fiction titles, documentaries and unique amateur collections.

The British Empire and Commonwealth’s Film Archive contains approximately 1,700 films dating from the 1920s onwards which were shot mainly by British people living and working within the Empire. In addition, the archive contains government produced information and travel films, commercial documentary and news films, and television material.

Other similar projects include the Centre of South Asian Studies, University of Cambridge, online archive http://www.s-asian.cam.ac.uk/films.html, and Images of Empire http://www.imagesofempire.com 

Annamaria Motrescu, Centre of South Asian Studies, University of Cambridge.