My apologies for not posting for over a month! Where does the time go? Unfortunately, I spent the past couple of weeks recovering from a bout of the flu. This explains some of my inactivity blog-wise. For the rest, well our new cataloguing system went live last month and we've been receiving final submissions of material from projects, keeping me busy cataloguing and accessioning.

The results of two newly-finished projects were waiting for me when I returned. The first consisted of over 300 DVDs worth of historical periodicals from Jerusalem. This project - Preservation of historical periodical collections (1900-1950) at the Al-Aqsa Mosque Library in East Jerusalem - successfully copied 24 titles, including 13 newspaper titles and 11 magazine and journal titles. These items record the history of Palestine in the first half of the 20th century, documenting important historic events and political movements as well as the development of the Arab press during this period.

The second project to submit material - Archiving 'popular market' Bengali books - copied almost 3000 examples of street literature from Bengali. These books cover such a variety of themes and genres it's impossible to adequately summarise thier content. But, to mention a few of the topics covered, there are books on local history, folk culture, songs, religion, cooking, agriculture and farming techniques, general knowledge, citizens rights and political reform, as well as astrology, films, plays and fiction of all types. Although immensely popular with their readers, literature of this type is endangered because of their short print runs, the quality of the paper they're printed on and the nature of their use.