30 September 2022
EAP video
EAP recently commissioned a short film, in the hope that it would raise the profile of the Programme and highlight the importance of making digitised content freely available to everyone. The video is now available on the Library’s YouTube channel and we hope you enjoying watching it.
EAP would like to thank the British Library Collections Trust for generously supporting the making of the film.
04 August 2022
New online - July 2022
This month we are highlighting four pilot projects that have recently been made available online, from Indonesia, Kenya, Russia, and Tunisia.
- Early Cyrillic books and manuscripts of old believers communities in Kostroma, Russia [EAP990]
- Family Manuscript Libraries on the island of Jerba, Tunisia [EAP993]
- Endangered manuscripts digitised in Kampar, Riau Province, Indonesia [EAP1020]
- County Council of Nairobi Minute Books digitised at McMillan Memorial Library, Nairobi, Kenya [EAP1357]
Early Cyrillic books and manuscripts of old believers communities in Kostroma, Russia [EAP990]
Led by Dr Ilya Nagradov, this project (awarded in 2018) digitised a total of 174 books and manuscripts located at traditional residing places of old believers in the Kostroma region of Russia.
Old Believers are Eastern Orthodox Christians who follow a form of Christianity that pre-dates the reforms of Patriarch Nixon, who aimed to unite the practices of the Russian and Greek Orthodox churches in the mid 17th century.
Family Manuscript Libraries on the island of Jerba [EAP993]
This pilot project, led by Dr Paul Love, digitised manuscripts and documents located at the private residence of the El Bessi family. The manuscripts originally belonged to the endowed collection of the al-Bāsī mosque in Waligh, Jerba (Tunisia), which operated from the 18th to the early-20th century.
The texts in the El Bessi library deal with a variety of religious topics including law and theology, as well as biography and poetry. Alongside religious texts, however, the collection holds several works on rhetoric and language as well as the sciences. While many of the manuscripts were written by Sunni-Muslim authors from the Hanafi and Maliki schools of Islam, others were authored by the minority Ibadi-Muslim community on the island. Ibadis are neither Sunni nor Shi’i Muslims and most of their texts today remain in private collections like this one. Having been protected for centuries by Ibadis, collections like this one and many others on the island of Jerba are in danger of being lost forever.
Almost all items are in Arabic, although Turkish appears occasionally as a language of commentary or marginal notes.
This pilot project led to a follow on major project, which has digitised a further seven Arabic library collections in Jerba, Tunisia; the results of which will hopefully go online later this year. But in the meantime, the EAP993 project has produced nearly 100,000 digital images to keep you busy until then.
Endangered manuscripts digitised in Kampar, Riau Province, Indonesia [EAP1020]
This pilot project, led by Mr Fiqru Mafar, produced a survey of manuscripts located in the Kampar region of Indonesia.
The team also digitised manuscripts at 11 different locations.
The dates of the manuscripts range from the 17th century to the 21st century. The oldest manuscript can be dated back to 1668.
County Council of Nairobi Minute Books digitised at McMillan Memorial Library, Nairobi, Kenya [EAP1357]
Led by Ms Angela Wachuka, the EAP1357 team, including digitisation coordinator Maureen Mumbua, digitised minute book volumes for the County Council of Nairobi, Kenya from 1920s-1950s.
This collection, located at the McMillan Memorial Libary, provides unique visual documentation of Kenya’s politics, history and culture during the colonial era, by capturing the City Council’s meeting notes concerning parliamentary matters, historical events and daily life in this significant period.
17 January 2022
New online - December 2021
This month's round-up of newly available collections features archives from India, Romania, Moldova, and Indonesia.
- Digitisation of the Kováts Napfényműterem photographic archive (Odorheiu Secuiesc, Romania) (EAP1130)
- Preserving the History of Indian Cinema through Digitising Early Urdu Film Magazines (EAP1262)
- Safeguarding of the intangible Romani heritage in the Republic of Moldova threatened by the volatilisation of the individual unexplored collections (EAP699)
- Personal Manuscripts on the Periphery of Javanese Literature: A Survey and Digitisation of Private Collections from the Javanese North Coast, its Sundanese Hinterlands and the Fringes of Court (EAP1268)
EAP1130 - Digitisation of the Kováts Napfényműterem photographic archive (Odorheiu Secuiesc, Romania)
This project digitised photographs from the Kovats Photographic Museum and Studio in Romania. The vast majority of the photos represent the work of several generations of photographers from the Kovats family. A small part of the photographic archive consists of images created by collaborators of the Kovats studio, and of donations of photographic materials from the local population of Odorheiul Secuiesc.
The first photographic studio in Székelyudvarhely (Odorheiu Secuiesc) was founded by Ferenczy Lukács (1850-1926) in 1876. In 1903 Kováts István Sr.(1881-1942) bought the studio from Lukács and in 1906 reopened it under his own name – Kováts Napfényműterem (Kováts Sunlight Studio). It still operates today at the same address. Ferenczy Lukács and Kováts István Sr. were not only photographers, but also amateur historians and ethnographers. They documented with passion and attention for detail the life of the small rural communities, mainly of Hungarian and Székely ethnicity, around Székelyudvarhely (Odorheiu Secuiesc).
Kováts István Sr. was also a photographer in the army of the Austro-Hungarian Empire during the First World War, and he was dispatched throughout Europe on the Romanian, Galician and Italian battlefields. He brought back around 400 negatives with images from the trenches, portraits of fellow soldiers, and daily life of his company – a personal view of a war that re-shaped Europe and changed the life of millions of its inhabitants, a view that offers to any military historian precious documents. Living for most of his life in Székelyudvarhely, Kováts István Sr. documented everything – social life, architecture, traditions, and his studio was a central point in the life of the city.
Over 5000 photographs can be viewed here.
EAP1262 - Preserving the History of Indian Cinema through Digitising Early Urdu Film Magazines
This project aimed to preserve the rich record of cinema history in India through digitising Urdu film magazines and periodicals from the early twentieth century. Shedding new light on South Asian film journalism and readership, this material highlights aspects of local engagement with film that have remained unexamined so far and are under threat of being lost forever. Given the scarcity of Urdu material that survives today, the digitisation of rare film magazines makes a significant contribution to future scholarship on the subject. This material constitutes an invaluable resource for early Indian film history and Urdu writing on cinema.
While Indian film journalism has not been widely studied, this is all the more concerning for Urdu materials that are less accessible and less widely read than those in other languages, especially English. The production triangle of Hindu-Urdu cinema that spanned Bombay, Calcutta, and Lahore changed irrevocably with partition, and many publications and films from Lahore are believed to be lost forever. The periodicals surveyed and digitised under EAP1262 were largely published in Calcutta, with the exception of one very rare publication from Lahore, and represent a valuable record of an undivided Hindi-Urdu film culture. While Bombay became the major centre for Hindi-Urdu film production, and a more important site for Urdu publishing than Calcutta, these publications offer an invaluable off-centre vantage point of colonial-era Hindi-Urdu film culture and journalism.
The archives can be viewed here.
EAP699 - Safeguarding of the intangible Romani heritage in the Republic of Moldova threatened by the volatilisation of the individual unexplored collections
This project digitised the personal archives of several Roma families in Moldova. The archives mostly consist of individual photographs and photo albums. The albums are notable for their use of illustrations and collage alongside the photographs of loved ones.
During the project the team were able to discover and digitise material from the families of some well-known Roma personalities from the past, as well as material from ordinary Roma families. The digitised material is now publicly available in the Moldovan National Archive as well as the British Library, and is an important source of information for Romani studies.
The project digitised 2557 images from 36 individual collections dating from between 1925-2013. They can be viewed here.
EAP1268 - Personal Manuscripts on the Periphery of Javanese Literature: A Survey and Digitisation of Private Collections from the Javanese North Coast, its Sundanese Hinterlands and the Fringes of Court
The project highlights the periphery of Javanese and Sundanese literature. It covers tales written by scribes residing near shrines, notebooks scribbled by commoners, and works produced by courtiers on their own behalf without apparent patronage from nobles or sovereigns. The grant holder came across these sources while doing fieldwork in places like Gresik, Yogyakarta, Surakarta and Tasikmalaya. Their vernacular provenance increases their obscurity and simultaneously limits their preservation due to a lack of patrons. Thus, it also allows for an interesting survey on the more personal sides of Javanese and Sundanese writing.
Other than surveying and digitising these sources, the project team also used them for Natural Language Processing (NLP). The diversity of the writing styles and vernacular languages found within these manuscripts is expected to contribute to the development of a comprehensive Javanese handwritten text and entity recognition model called Gado2.
399 digitised records can be viewed here.
21 September 2021
New online - August 2021
This month's round-up of newly available collections features archives from India, Mauritius, and Bulgaria.
- Lama Mani: the texts and narrative thangkas of India’s exiled Tibetan storytellers [EAP1016]
- Preserving a unique archive of diaspora and disease in the Indian Ocean from 1867 to 1930: a test case from Mauritius [EAP863]
- Minority press in Ottoman Turkish in Bulgaria [EAP696]
EAP1016 - Lama Mani: the texts and narrative thangkas of India’s exiled Tibetan storytellers
Lama Manis are traditional storytellers who travel around Tibet visiting communities to perform and tell stories of Buddhist practices. They travel with performance related objects, texts, and sets of large colourful thangkas (traditional Tibetan painted scrolls).
The material in this collection was brought to India from Tibet by Lami Mani storytellers who continued to perform within the communities of the Tibetan diaspora in India and Nepal. It includes items from Dolma Ling Nunnery, and several prominent Lami Mani figures. The project team digitised texts and thangkas, as well as objects including a prayer wheel, dagger, and brass pointers.
EAP863 - Preserving a unique archive of diaspora and disease in the Indian Ocean from 1867 to 1930: a test case from Mauritius
This project digitised a near-complete set of burial records of individuals buried in the Bois Marchand Cemetery since 1867. These records effectively provide a unique repository of demographic and disease data, and bridge historic, archaeological and anthropological concerns. It has huge potential for historians, archaeologists and anthropologists researching disease, demography, and diaspora in this part of the world.
The records detail the demographic data for individuals buried in Bois Marchand, a cemetery that is segregated according to religious/vocational affiliation i.e. Christian, Hindu or Muslim, for example, or, Military Personnel, or Police Force. Along with its local historical value, the records include details as to the point of origin for the interred, in some instances as far afield as Ireland and Jamaica, but generally focused on India, Africa and China; cause of death; where the individual died on Mauritius etc. This forms a remarkable dataset for historians to mine in order to better understand the context of political action and reaction in response to death and disease.
EAP696 - Minority press in Ottoman Turkish in Bulgaria
This project digitised a small selection of Ottoman Turkish language periodicals from the Bulgarian National Library’s collections. The Ottoman Turkish press in Bulgaria in the 1878-1943 period was a unique phenomenon within the post Ottoman Balkans. Not only for the significant number of newspapers and magazines published, but also because some of them continued to be printed in Arabic script years after 1928 when Turkey itself changed to the Latin script.
There was a literal publishing explosion in the ten years following 1878 in which there were more Ottoman Turkish newspapers in circulation than during all the previous years of the 19th century combined. The newly founded Bulgarian state was a multi-ethnic country with a significant minority population – a predominantly Turkish speaking one. The official Bulgarian authorities recognised this as evidenced by the Bulgarian State Gazette, which was printed in both Ottoman Turkish and Bulgarian for the first two years of its run. Yet surprisingly these issues are extremely hard to come by and are not digitised. These newspapers are an invaluable source for understanding the transitions and obstacles for modernisation for the minority populations in the Balkans.
Further reading: Motherhood: A Form of Emancipation in the Turkish Minority Press in Bulgaria (1878-1944), by Seda İzmirli-Karamanlı. Published on the British Library’s Asian and African studies blog, 19 August 2021.
11 August 2021
New online - July 2021
This month's round-up of newly available collections features archives from Nepal, Serbia, and Ghana.
- Digitisation of the photographic collection from DirghaMan and GaneshMan Chitrakar Art Foundation [EAP838]
- Safeguarding the fragile collection of the private archive of the Lazic family [EAP833]
- Safeguarding the British Colonial and Regional Administrative Archive in Northern Ghana [EAP935]
EAP838 - The DirghaMan and GaneshMan Chitrakar Art Foundation photographic collection
This important and unique collection of photographs gives a fascinating insight into life in Nepal at a time when the country was under self-imposed isolation from the outside world. During this period cameras were still quite rare and only owned by the elites and court photographers. As a result, there are relatively few photographic records documenting late 19th and early 20th Century Nepal.
The collection consists of images taken by the Royal Painter and Court Photographer Dirgha Man Chitrakar (1877-1951), and his only son Ganesh Man Chitrakar (1916-1985), who took over the role in 1945. Dirgha Man was a skilled painter and employed in the palace from the age of 14. After his brother received treatment from the Court Physician, Dirgha Man presented him with a painted medallion as a way of thanks. Prime Minister Chandra Shamsher (ruled 1901-1929) saw this medallion and impressed with the painting skills, decided to employ him as Royal Painter and Court Photographer in his palace. This important role enabled him to capture court and local life, official events and state visits that otherwise would not have been recorded.
After his father retired at the age of 71, Ganesh Man took over the role of Royal Painter and Court Photographer. After the country opened up to the outside world at the end of the Rana rule in 1951, Ganesh Man then worked for USAID as Chief Photographer where he documented the landscape of Kathmandu Valley and the surrounding cities. He made the first aerial photographs in 1955 and was the first person in the country to develop colour slides. He also opened a black and white photo studio, Ganesh Photo Lab., in 1971.
Their photographs are a rich resource that captures key moments in Nepal’s history. The photographs include portraits, diplomatic visits, landscapes, historic structures, and festivals. They capture images of urbanization, changes in the lifestyle and infrastructural transformation in Nepal. The collection is not only one family’s patrimony but also an account of Nepal’s history.
EAP833 - The Lazic family private archive
This project digitised and preserved valuable private archives and library collections owned by the Lazić family in Serbia, who for six generations have collected important and rare material. Aleksandar Lazić (1846–1916) was the founder and owner of the Library until 1910 when his son Luka Lazić (1876-1946) took over and enriched the collection with material documenting the Great War. He acquired much of the material in or around the battlefield and continued to purchase related material until his death in 1946. Along with his son and successor Milorad Lazić (1912–1977), they also accumulated a significant collection of law books. The majority of these were acquired between 1930-1950 and are crucial for theoretical and historical research of the Serbian state, law, and society. The collection has continued to grow as other members of the Lazić family care for this important archive.
Much of this material relating to the First World War is unique and not found in any other library or archive. The collection includes Serbian newspapers printed in exile in Corfu and Thessaloniki during the Austro-Hungarian occupation of Serbia. There are also copies of the rare journal ‘Pregled Listova’, published in Geneva for members of the Serbian government in exile.
EAP935 - Safeguarding the British Colonial and Regional Administrative Archive in Northern Ghana
This project continued the work of two previous EAP projects (EAP256 and EAP541) to digitise the material from the Public Records and Archives Administration (PRAAD) in Tamale, northern Ghana. During the earlier projects, the research team was able to assess PRAAD’s collection of rare historical records on the colonial administration and history of Northern Ghana, resulting in a comprehensive survey of the Northern Regional Administration Records and District Assembly Records collections. Subsequently, through the EAP541 Major project, the research team digitised five records series amounting to 126,239 images. The EAP935 project completed this work by digitising a further eight collections, adding over 212,000 images to the archive from three regions of the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast: Northern region records collections, Upper West Region records collection and Upper East Region records collection.
12 July 2021
New online - June 2021
Over the past month we've continued making new archive collections available to view through our website. You can read about the individual projects below.
- Records from the archives of Tristan da Cunha [EAP951]
- Records relating to the Shevchenko Scientific Society, Ukraine [EAP900]
- Archival material relating to the 'Young India' gramophone record label [EAP190]
EAP951 - Records from the archives of Tristan da Cunha
Tristan da Cunha is a small island located in the southern Atlantic Ocean and known as “the remotest island in the world”. Its isolated location means it has unique flora and fauna which have been studied in scientific expeditions since the 19th century. Some of the records include diaries and other documents related to these expeditions, as well as reports on the number of penguins, seals, and other wildlife on the island.
The isolation of this British Overseas Territory is also interesting from a social history perspective. Records include copies of correspondence about life on the island, appeals for members of the clergy, and even a letter from 1815 regarding the establishment of the British colony.
This blog post written by the project holder gives further information about this project and the challenges involved in setting up the project in such a remote location.
EAP900 - Records relating to the Shevchenko Scientific Society, Ukraine
The Shevchenko Scientific Society (ShSS) in Lviv is a Ukrainian institution that specialises in the history of Central and Eastern Europe. It was founded in 1873 and is dedicated to the promotion of academic research and publication. Subject areas include Philosophy, Philology, Ethnography, Mathematics, and Natural Studies. The ShSS played the role of the Academy of Sciences before the foundation and opening of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, Kiev in 1918.
Records digitised include a complete set of the scientific journal "The Notes (Memoirs) of the ShSS" (1892-1937). There are also many other documents regarding scientific and organizational activities of the ShSS. These include: minutes of general meetings; statutes; details on commissions granted by individual sections of the society.
EAP190 - Archival material relating to the 'Young India' gramophone record label
This project digitised gramophone records, disc labels, record catalogues and publicity material from ‘The National Gramophone Record Manufacturing Company Ltd. Bombay’, which issued records under the ‘Young India’ label between 1935-1955. The company produced over 10,000 titles on 78-rpm, 10 inch diameter shellac discs with two songs per disc. The recordings of film, popular, classical and folk music, as well as educational material were issued mainly from amateur or up-and-coming artists. They feature music from different regions of India, sung in many different languages. While the audio recordings have been available on BL Sounds for some time, the related images of Young India ephemera are only now available again via the EAP website.
26 February 2021
New online - February 2021
February may be the shortest month of the year, but it is another month packed with newly digitised collections being added to the EAP website. The three latest projects to go online include:
- Manuscripts of the Lanten community in northern Laos [EAP791]
- Documents at the Jaffna Bishop's House, Sri Lanka [EAP981]
- Documentary heritage of traditional Protestant communities in Bulgaria [EAP1145]
EAP791 - Manuscripts of the Lanten community in northern Laos
Led by Professor Dr Josephus Platenkamp and Joseba Estevez, the EAP791 project team digitised 768 manuscripts owned by private collectors within the Lanten community in northern Laos.
Members of the Lanten community migrated from the Guizhou, Guangxi and Yunnan Provinces of China into Laos and Vietnam following the social, political and economic upheavals during the last century of the Qing Dynasty (1644 to 1912).
Lanten (also known as Lao Huay and Yao Mun) are classified as one of the 39 ‘ethnic minorities’ of northern Laos that are officially acknowledged by the People’s Democratic Republic of Laos.
Written in Classical Chinese supplemented with lexemes from Lanten language, these manuscripts mediate the transfer across the generations of the religious knowledge and verbal and non-verbal expertise enabling ritual experts to communicate with the Deities of the Lanten pantheon. To that end the manuscripts contain instructions for rituals of healing, marriage, death, ordination, and exorcism, specifying the sacrificial procedures and the Deities involved.
EAP981 - Documents at the Jaffna Bishop's House, Sri Lanka
This major project followed on from pilot project EAP700. Led by Dr Appasamy Murugaiyan, the EAP981 team digitised the remaining rare documents kept under the guardianship of the Jaffna Bishop House in Sri Lanka.
The digitised material covers the period between 1775 and 1948.
The range of material digitised includes handwritten bound registers, personal memoirs, chronicles, account books, correspondence, registers of marriage, baptism, birth and death, newspaper clippings, pastoral letters, biographies of the local bishops, and some religious books.
The material also covers a wide range of languages, including French, English, Tamil, Latin, Portuguese, Sinhalese, and Dutch.
EAP1145 - Documentary heritage of traditional Protestant communities in Bulgaria
This pilot project, led by Dr Magdalena Slavkova, produced a survey of 52 collections of material relating to Protestant communities in Bulgaria.
These collections contain a wide variety of content types including photographs, notebooks, correspondence, books, wedding and baptism certificates, religious booklets, newspaper clippings, and postcards.
In addition to the survey, the EAP1145 project team, which also included Dr Mila Maeva, Dr Yelis Erolova, and Dr Plamena Stoyanova, digitised a sample of 69 files from these collections.
05 February 2021
New online - December 2020 and January 2021
We have a bumper blog this month, covering new projects that went online at the end of 2020 and the beginning of 2021. While access to physical archives is currently restricted in many parts of the world, digital archives are increasingly important. Here are five recently digitised collections that are now freely available to access online:
- Nineteenth-century records in the Sierra Leone Public Archives [EAP782]
- Sanskrit Manuscripts and Books in the State of Jammu and Kashmir [EAP886]
- Manuscripts and Archival Documents of Russian Old Believers Escapists (Skrytniks) [EAP1017]
- Tibetan Bonpo Manuscripts [EAP1077]
- Thai-Mon palm-leaf manuscripts [EAP1123]
EAP782 - Nineteenth-century records in the Sierra Leone Public Archives
The EAP782 project team led by Professor Suzanne Schwarz digitised police, court, and colonial records housed at the Sierra Leone Public Archives.
The documents span a period from the formation of the British Crown colony of Sierra Leone to the formation of the Sierra Leone Protectorate. These records offer significant insights into the lives of inhabitants of the region.
These provide rare insight into the life experiences of formerly enslaved people and their descendants. By the mid-nineteenth century, the population was comprised mainly of liberated Africans (and their descendants) drawn from across West Africa. The digitised records reveal the practices used by successive colonial governors to re-settle tens of thousands of liberated Africans in Freetown and surrounding colonial villages, including Regent and Wilberforce.
The police and court records include the depositions of witnesses, as well as those brought before the court for different offences. Testimony from formerly enslaved people is particularly rare, and provides a basis for reconstructing biographical information on individuals uprooted and displaced by the Atlantic slave trade.
EAP886 - Sanskrit Manuscripts and Books in the State of Jammu and Kashmir
Led by Mr Chetan Pandey, the EAP886 project team digitised 46 books and manuscripts located in the state of Jammu and Kashmir, in India. In particular, they focussed on material relating to:
- Sanskritism
- Hinduism
- Kashmir Shaivism (a Tantric school of Mysticism indigenous to Kashmir)
- Tantra
- Mysticism.
EAP1017 - Manuscripts and Archival Documents of Russian Old Believers Escapists (Skrytniks)
The EAP1017 project team, led by Dr Irina Belayeva, digitised manuscripts and documents of the Skrytniks (Old Believers Escapists) - a social group that was in opposition to the Russian state, first to the Russian Empire and then to the Soviet Union.
The digitised material shows the structure of Skrytniks, their traditions, faith and intercommunication with other social groups.
EAP1077 - Tibetan Bonpo Manuscripts
Dr Valentina Punzi and the EAP1077 team digitised 6 collection of Tibetan manuscripts belonging to private households in the Qinghai Province of China. These include rare and unique ritual texts from the late 19th and early 20 centuries.
EAP1123 - Thai-Mon palm-leaf manuscripts
The Mons of Thailand and Burma were regional, cultural, and religious intermediaries and supported a palm leaf manuscript tradition into the 1920s. The EAP1123 project team, led by Dr Patrick McCormick, conducted a survey of 28 temples in and around Bangkok.
They also digitised a sample of manuscripts from six collections. Many of these texts are unknown in Burma, but they are key to understanding recent history in the region and the Mon role in intellectual history.
Combined, the survey and digitisation sample provide important insights into the history of the Mons in Thailand and Burma.
We will be continuing to publish more digital collections in the coming weeks, so keep an eye out for those!
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