Event Organiser
This event will bring together a select group of librarians, curators and academics who work with rare book collections to advance questions on difficult provenances, to connect people in the field, and to establish the conversations currently taking place across different institutions and disciplines.
This event will bring together a select group of librarians, curators and academics who work with rare book collections to advance questions on difficult provenances, to connect people in the field, and to establish the conversations currently taking place across different institutions and disciplines.
Important collections of items in libraries – just as in galleries and museums – often have historical connections to the trade in enslaved people. However, conversations about provenance in libraries are at an early stage when compared to the work being done other areas of the heritage sector. Many librarians and curators have begun to do the internal work of learning about the provenances of their collections and communicating this to the public; critical library and information scholars have begun thinking about how provenance might be best recorded in metadata and addressing the challenges of ethical cataloguing practices; book historians and humanities academics, especially those in English and History, have long been interested in knowing where and how the rare books they are looking at came from.
It is hoped that this will be a preliminary discussion that leads to future events, so anyone with interest in the topic is encouraged to get in touch. The event is funded by CRASSH and will take place in Cambridge. It is organised by Alice Wickenden and Emma Smith (Oxford). Timings provisional.
