An item on this morning’s Radio 4 news programme Today asked listeners: ‘what is on your mantelpiece?’ This was a question first asked by the pioneers of Mass Observation—the project to map the everyday life of the British, initiated in 1937. As part of the effort to construct an ‘anthropology of ourselves’, observers were asked to “write down in order, from left to right, all the objects on your mantelpiece, mentioning what is in the middle” and then to do the same for other people’s houses, taking note of the age, class, and wealth of the householders, and enclosing photographs.

A researcher who has spent long hours in the Mass Observation archive, Rachel Hurdley, commented with a certain weary over-familiarity: “At first the eye can glaze over, because you’re thinking: right, this is going to have a clock; it’s going to have candlesticks; it’s going to have letters behind the clock or underneath the candle on the left-hand side; it’s going to have ashtrays which aren’t used as ashtrays, they’re used to dump collar studs in, sewing stuff, needles; there’s going to be a perpetual calendar; and no doubt there’s going to be smoking paraphernalia and stuff for the fire”. But then Hurdley got caught up in thinking about the letters, and what they meant at a time when there might have been several deliveries of mail each day, and when the envelopes on the mantelpiece might have been part of a dynamic system, a to-do list that represented a serious part of one’s engagement with the outside world. “Whereas now we have emails and iphones and twitter and blogs and god knows what”, then we had a shelf above the fire. “The mantelpiece was like your ipad today”.

Yet the mantelpiece is also a place for display, and the report suggested that such domestic displays are unusually intimate, laying bare the soul; as either Gilbert or George put it, “in five seconds you know exactly what sort of person you are dealing with”. There was also an absorbing discussion of the competition between hearth (or gas-fire) and television-set as the centre of the living-room. All of this might push one to think about the associations between fire, smoking and reading that cluster around those older mantelpieces. Do the candles, the ashtray, the fireplace and the letters connect up–did they connect up? Or were they disparate, chance collisions of unrelated objects, most of them less for use than show?

In a recent conversation with a graduate student friend of mine who is writing about the domestic politics of US Cold War nuclear strategy, we ended up talking about a book he had just bought second-hand. Although the subject-matter of the book, ABM: An Evaluation of the Decision to Deploy an Anti-Ballistic Missile System, edited by Abram Chayes and Jerome B. Wiesner, with Introduction by Senator Edward M. Kennedy (New York: Harper Row, 1969), is pretty far removed from the kinds of things I usually read about for my own research, we stumbled upon what turned out to be a neat little detail inside the volume, which had previously been owned by a college library in California:

As you can see, the stamps in the borrowing slip indicate that the book was a fairly popular loan item until March 1972. After this, it was not borrowed again for eight years, until 1980. To the uninformed reader this evidence of the book’s borrowing history conveys no particular meaning, but my Cold War expert explained that there is in fact significance in these inked dates. In May 1972 the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty was signed between the USA and the Soviet Union. The deployment of an ABM thus became very unlikely, and so interest in books such as this one subsided. In November 1980, however, Ronald Reagan was elected President. He soon began discussions about a renewed arms race, which lead to the announcement in 1983 of a new missile defence plan, dubbed the ‘Star Wars’ initiative. The borrowing slip confirms that interest in this book was revived somewhat during those Reagan years. It tailed off again in the 1990s, and at some subsequent stage the book must have entered the second-hand market after being deaccessioned by the library.

This volume is a serious political document, in which the editors brought together a series of Democrats, all of them either major players in the Kennedy/Johnson administrations, or highly respected scientists, many of whom had also advised the government. Thus the book united technical knowledge about nuclear weapons with political arguments against their deployment, a combination which had not been seen before in such a printed volume. Rushed to press in 1969 by Cass Canfield, a publisher friend of Edward Kennedy, it is furthermore a book which explicitly encourages the individual reader to participate actively in the political debate:

Printed on the inside of the back cover is an invitation for the reader, ‘having read this book’, to make up his or her own mind about the deployment of the ABM system. The coupon may be cut out and sent to Congress via the publisher. Perhaps because this copy was a library book, none of its readers picked up pen and scissors to complete and mail the coupon as directed. There are many other discussions to be had about the significance of this feature of the book. Most importantly however, in the context of the CMT’s activities, this volume reminds us that there is much more to say about both the material and intellectual functions of the book as an artefact around which individuals and institutions interact, especially but not solely in the sphere of political debate.

Tuesday 31 July 2012, Cambridge University Library will be holding its
fifth masterclass as part of the Incunabula Project.

The masterclass, entitled ‘Integrating Images in the Fifteenth-Century
Book’, will be led by Roger Gaskell, of Roger Gaskell Rare Books
(http://www.rogergaskell.com/About.htm).

The invention of printing meant that identical copies of verbal texts
could be produced. However the provision of exactly reproduced images, the
same in each copy, lagged behind, and hand-drawn or pasted-in illustrations
continued to be used. Using examples from the UL collection, this class will
provide hands-on instruction in identifying and analysing the technologies
of picture printing by which standardised text-image relationships were
achieved.

The seminar will be held in the Sir Geoffrey Keynes Room at the Library.
It will start at 2.30pm and will last approximately 90 minutes, allowing time
for questions and discussion. Attendance will be limited in order to allow
all attendees a chance to see the books under discussion up close, and
to participate in the discussion.

To book your place, please contact William Hale at
.

All the news these days seems to be about libraries closing down, and as an academic I hear more and more of my colleagues saying that they don’t need to go to the library any more. So it was interesting–on a weekend visit–to be confronted by the new £190m ‘Library of Birmingham’, which is due to open next year. The second largest library in the country after the BL, it’s an extraordinary building, sitting proudly alongside the Rep Theatre and Symphony Hall, wrapped in a whimsical lacework that irresistibly draws the gaze. Let’s hope it pulls in the punters too.

Library & Information History Group

David McKitterick (Wren Library) will give a talk on *Seventeenth-Century Libraries*

Monday 2 July, 3pm, Morison Room, University Library

All welcome

Thursday 31 May, 12.30-2, Faculty of English (room tba)

Professor Sukanta Chaudhuri (Jadavpur University) will give a paper entitled

‘Tagore’s Text: An Online Variorum’

Sukanta Chaudhuri is the author of numerous books, including The Metaphysics of Text (Cambridge, 2010). He was a co-founder and Director from 2004-2010 of the Jadavpur School of Cultural Texts and Records.

Libraries: New Research Directions

An Early Modern Research Centre colloquium at the University of Reading

Friday, 8 June 2012

This colloquium aims to bring together people researching the history of libraries over a wide chronological period and from diverse disciplinary perspectives. Papers and discussion will focus not only on particular cases but also on broader methodological questions about the current practice and possible future directions of library history. Lunch and refreshments will be provided.

Fee: £15 (£10 students and unwaged)

Programme

10.30am  Coffee and registration

11am  Welcome

11.15-12.45pm   

Matthew Nicholls (University of Reading): ‘Libraries in the ancient world: points of communication.’

David Rundle (Corpus Christi College, University of Oxford): ‘How libraries die, or what the fate of manuscripts in early modern England can teach us.’

12.45-1.45pm  Lunch

1.45-3.15pm                          

Anne Overell (University of Durham): ‘The libraries of Cardinal Reginald Pole and his friends, ca.1520-1558.’

Daniel Starza Smith (University of Reading): ‘“Well versed in all parts of learning”: the Conway family libraries, 1610-1645.’

3.15-3.45pm Tea

3.45-5.15pm                          

Paddy Bullard (University of Kent): ‘What did Jonathan Swift do in libraries?’

Rose Dixon (King’s College London): ‘Virtual “magazines of learning”: The Dissenting Academy Libraries Project, 1720-1860.’

5.15pm                                     

Warren Boutcher (Queen Mary, University of London): Closing comments followed by discussion.

6pm   Drinks

For a booking form, please visit the EMRC website (http://www.reading.ac.uk/emrc/events/emrc-events.aspx) or contact the EMRC secretary, Jan Cox:  j.f.cox@reading.ac.uk

Organiser: Rebecca Bullard: r.bullard@reading.ac.uk.

‘Royal Devotion: Monarchy and the Book of Common Prayer’

An exhibition at Lambeth Palace Library, London

Curated by Brian Cummings and Hugh Cahill

1st May – 14th July, 2012

This exhibition traces the close relationship between royalty and religion from medieval to modern times. It tells the story of the Book of Common Prayer and its importance in national life. This story is illustrated with books, manuscripts and objects, many of which have royal or other important provenances. For details and tickets see: http://www.lambethpalacelibrary.org/content/royaldevotion

There is also a series of public lectures to accompany the exhibition:

10 May – Professor Eamon Duffy, ‘Latin for Lay People; Medieval Prayer Books’

31 May – Revd. Dr. Judith Maltby, ‘The Prayer Book Under Duress: Public Worship in the Civil War and Interregnum’

6 June – Professor Brian Cummings, ‘The Genesis of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer’

5 July – Professors Stephen Taylor and Philip Williamson, ‘Coronation, Prayer Book, and People 1660-1953’

Doors open 5.15pm (admission by Library exhibition entrance). Lectures will take place in the Guard Room, Lambeth Palace, at 6 p.m. Exhibition closes for ticket-holders at 8pm. Refreshments will be available after the lecture.

Tickets (including free viewing of the exhibition before and after the lecture) £12 each. Season ticket for the series of four lectures £35. Tickets by pre-booking only. To book lecture tickets please telephone 0743 204 4820, email visitor.manager@churchofengland.org or write to Visitor Manager at the address below, enclosing a cheque payable to Lambeth Palace Library.

Royal Devotion exhibition booking information: Tickets cost £12 Adults, £10 Concessions (over 60s, student and unemployed), under 17s free. Price includes printed exhibition guide. To buy tickets and for more information visit www.lambethpalacelibrary.org or call 0844 847 1698

Opening times:

Tuesday- Friday 11.00-13.30 and 14.00- 17.00 (last entry 16.00), Saturdays and Bank Holidays- 11.00-16.00 (last entry 15.00)

Lambeth Palace Library, Lambeth Palace Road, London SE1 7JU

www.lambethpalacelibrary.org

Today the Cambridge Digital Humanities Network gathered to hear a presentation on ‘The Evolution of e-Research’ from Dave De Roure, Professor of e-Research in the Oxford e-Research Centre. Truth to tell, I still feel very much an interloper in the e-Research universe. Or perhaps not so much an interloper as someone lowering himself with trepidation into a freezing cold swimming pool. I’ve not quite adjusted to the idea that the humanities academic is going to be useful in future principally as a miner of data rather than as a reader of books. Nor do I hold out much hope that I’ll be able to learn all the acronyms before they become obsolete, in about three weeks’ time.

Today’s most provocative acronym came courtesy of a project called Structural Analysis of Large Amounts of Music Information, or (yes) SALAMI. The aim of SALAMI was to analyse 23,000 hours of digitized music, breaking it down (or slicing it up) into its constituent elements–intros, verses, choruses, bridge passages and outros (sic) for pop music, more complex categories for classical (‘outros’ become ‘codas’). Quite what the ultimate purpose of the exercise was, or what new research has been made possible by it, was a little unclear, although one can certainly imagine that interesting patterns might emerge over time. There are, though, some important senses in which music is not like salami…

A second musical project to which De Roure drew attention has just been launched by the Bodleian library. What’s the Score? invites any musically-literate person to mark up pages from the library’s collections of mid-Victorian piano sheet music, which have hitherto been uncatalogued. First investigations suggest that it’s quite a fiddly operation. It will be interesting to see whether this latest effort at crowd-sourcing reaps results.

In other news, the website of the Cambridge Digital Humanities Network has just gone live–click here to take a look!

Professor Stephen Orgel of Stanford owns an edition of Horace with annotations that will require a skilled eye to decode… two sample images below. Roll up, roll up!