Temporary post at British Museum

Tabor Foundation Research Assistant, Asia
London
£21,807 per annum
Fixed-term for 23 months

As Tabor Foundation Research Assistant you will use your academic expertise to provide information on items in the collection. This role would be suitable for anyone looking to begin a career in the Museum sector. You will also be responsible for creating new data and images of parts of the South and Southeast Asia collections, and uploading these records onto the Museum’s online database, Merlin. Initially, this post will involve a one year extensive training period with the first Tabor Foundation Research Assistant, whereby they will demonstrate and share the skills and techniques necessary for the post.

Additionally, you will have responsibility for some original research on collection objects. You will work on other projects concerned with South and Southeast Asian culture, such as exhibitions, when required. This role involves dealing with a very large and diverse collection that requires the ability and research skills to accurately generate cataloguing information.

Educated to degree level (or equivalent) in a subject relevant to South Asia (archaeology, art history etc.), you will also have the ability to write well. Familiarity with data entry (both written and images) is essential. You will work well as part of a team, but also work alone once your initial training has been completed.

For further information or a full application pack, please visit www.britishmuseum.org/jobs or email bm@peoplemedia.co.uk quoting reference 76032.

Closing date: 1 April 2009.

Wellcome to the Library

At the SAALG 80th conference on Friday 20th February delegates were very privileged to see some fine examples of South Asian manuscripts from the Wellcome Library's collections. Presented by Dr. Nikolai Serikoff, the Asian Collection Librarian, these items demonstrate what a remarkable library the Wellcome is.
It's easy and free to join. Go to the E-registration page to kickstart your membership. You can reserve books from the comfort of your PC before making a visit in person. I have used the Library a few times and the staff are very helpful and friendly. I highly recommend it; the Wellcome Library blog offers a taste of the rich and varied nature of its holdings.

Royal Asiatic Society

Forthcoming lectures relating to South Asia:

Odissi Indian Classical Dance (student series)
Dance and talk by Scheherazaad Cooper
March 18th 2009, 6.30 pm
Scheherazaad Cooper is an Odissi Indian classical dance practioner who has performed in Canada, the USA, India and the UK.

C. H. Philips and the East India Company (main series)
by Prof. Huw Bowen, Swansea University
April 16th 2009, 6.00pm

Tracing tea: Darjeeling to London in Pursuit of the Perfect Cuppa (student series)
by Max Lovell-Hoare
April 22nd 2009, 6.30pm
Max Lovell-Hoare's 10,000 mile journey used two modified Indian auto rickshaws and aimed to achieve two world records: the longest journey in a tuk tuk and the world's highest tea party on Pakistan's Khunjerap Pass.

All events are at the RAS, 14 Stephenson Way, London NW1 2HD. For further details see www.royalasiaticsociety.org.

Kolkata Book Fair

Kevin Halliwell and I are visiting the Kolkata Book Fair (where Scotland has the honour to be the theme country - Scotland pavilion pictured), and rather than duplicate posts, you can read all about it in this blog; the posts also refer to 2 other very good blogs from the British Council and the Sunday Herald. Happy reading!

BASAS Conference

The British Association for South Asian Studies Conference 2009 will be held at the University of Edinburgh, March 30th - April 1st.

For further information please contact Dr Crispin Bates at BASASconf2009@ed.ac.uk

India, Raj & Empire

Adam Matthew Digital have a new portal, "India, Raj & Empire", which features just a few of the manuscript collections relating to South Asia in the National Library off Scotland. This is planned to be a 10 year project, adding more material from other collections in the UK. You can get a free 4-week trial as a taster.

Wellcome Images

I'm really looking forward to visiting the Wellcome Collection again for the SAALG conference. The Collection contains some amazing images and many are now available free to view online here. As part of the Medical History of British India Project I have discovered some fascinating pioneers of early medical science and due to this resource have been able to see their faces.
This photograph (credit: Wellcome Images) shows S.R. Christophers, lifelong malaria scientist, on board the ship Elphinstone surrounded by his equipment, including an insect-catching net hung on the door. Christophers lived to be 104 years old and "had the qualities of scientific honesty and integrity."
Russian W.M. Haffkine, who did much vital work in India on cholera and plague, is pictured in Calcutta, 1894, giving anti-cholera inoculations. There is also a super portrait of the Indian Medical Service cholera and snake venom researcher D.D. Cunningham, who I have long admired because he wasn’t afraid to express his opinions.
It’s easy to search, so have fun and you never know who you might meet!

WWI Indian Army medals

On the National Archives website you can now search and download the medal index cards of more than 20,000 soldiers who served in the Indian Army during World War One. The cards record the soldiers who were entitled to, or made a claim for, campaign medals - in particular the British War Medal and the Victory Medal.

SAALG conference, February 2009.

Our 80th CONFERENCE will be on Friday 20th February 2009 at the
Wellcome Collection Conference Centre, in Euston Road, London, NW1 2BE

Speakers:
Francine Millard (National Library of Scotland)
"Rum barrels and rabid badgers - discover the medical history of British India."

Henry Noltie (Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh)
“Robert Wight and the botanical drawings of Rungiah & Govindoo”.

Eleanor Lanyon (Outreach Officer) and Dr Nikolai Serikoff (Asian Collection Librarian, Wellcome Collection)
Tour and exhibition of the Wellcome’s South Asian collections.

Nicholas Martland (Faculty Librarian Arts & Humanities/South and Southeast Asia and Pacific, SOAS)
"Sago, nutmeg and camphor: growing plants from the Malay Archipelago in the Calcutta Botanic Garden".

Attendance at the conference costs £10, payable on the day.
If you will attend the 80th conference, please contact:

Rachel M. Rowe
Email: rmr29@cam.ac.uk Phone: 01223 338094
OR
Jan Usher
j.usher@nls.uk 0131 623 3802

by 4th February.

Date for your diaries

The next SAALG conference will be held on Friday, 20th February 2009, at the Wellcome Library, Euston Road, London. Further details will appear on this blog in the next few weeks, as well as the usual email and snail mail contacts. Nice to have something to look forward to in the New Year!

The British Government and India

The National Archives have made another great resource available, The Cabinet Papers Online, 1915-1977. The section on colonialism in India will be of most interest to SAALG members. This is a JISC funded digitisation programme, and it's packed with information, photographs and maps on the workings of cabinet government at a fascinating period of UK history.

Respected Memsahibs

The Centre of South Asian Studies, University of Cambridge, is pleased to announce the publication of Respected Memsahibs: an anthology / compiled by Mary Thatcher during her time as Archivist at the Centre. It is published by Hardinge Simpole, ISBN 1-84382-2148, price £18.95, and is available from Amazon.

It contains extracts from the letters, memoirs and narratives of nineteen women who lived and worked across the British Indian Empire between the First World War and Independence in 1947. These records form part of the archives of the Centre of South Asian Studies and form a unique record of life and work in the latter days of the British Raj.

Mary Thatcher began collecting material from former residents of different parts of British Asia in the late 1960s and assembled a large number of collections of papers and recorded interviews. She was particularly interested in the lives of women and encouraged many to write more memoirs of their time in India

'Flu pandemic

While I was working in the National Library of Scotland's stacks on the India Papers Collection I had a look at some of the Sanitary Commissioner's annual reports from 1918, when influenza swept the world and killed millions. Thousands were killed in the Madras Presidency; in some districts as many as between 30-50,000 people. One problem was the superstitions of the people, particularly in rural areas:"Several people, mostly in the interior, were averse in the beginning to resorting to a medical treatment under a superstitious belief that the epidemic was a visitation of the Goddess or Amman and that no treatment by drugs should be attempted." (Annual report of the Sanitary Board, the annual report of the Sanitary Commissioner and the annual report of the Sanitary Engineer, Madras 1918)
Meanwhile the European Army in India had 19,308 men admitted to hospital and 775 deaths. As in the rest of the world, the second wave in autumn 1918 caused high mortality amongst sufferers.

(Francine Millard)

Scottish Cemetery Kolkata

Off a busy street in Kolkata lies a little corner of Scotland - the old Scottish cemetery, containing the remains of hundreds of Scots who made their home in what was the heart of Imperial India. The decaying cemetery is now the subject of a project by the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS). At the invitation of the Indian National Trust for Art & Cultural Heritage and the Kolkata Scottish Heritage Trust, RCAHMS staff are on their first field trip there to assess the damage and draw up a restoration plan.
Names from the interment register will be added to a database, and the team will not only restore the monuments, but help create a green space for the city.

You can follow the team's progress in their blog.

Medical History of British India - on microfilm, too

All 136 volumes from the Medical History of British India project Phase 2 have all been microfilmed and are available to view at the National Library of Scotland. To view what’s on each reel, including Phase 1, enter Mf.IP in the search box on the main NLS catalogue and then select the shelfmark option. The volumes themselves will be returning to the shelves by the end of November; some will be undergoing conservation treatment first, however.
The digital images are undergoing renaming, sorting and conversion to Jpeg format. Then they will be processed by Optical Character Recognition (OCR) so that you can fully search them when they are online next spring . I can’t wait for that, especially to look for names of Indian Medical Service officers.

Francine Millard.