Endangered archives blog

19 posts categorized "Music"

29 September 2010

EAP127 Catalogue announcement

We are pleased to announce that the catalogue for the Popular Market Bengali Books is now available to view via the British Library's Search Our Catalouge: Archives and Manuscripts pages.

2971 examples of Bengali street literature have been digitised by staff at Jadavpur University, Kolkata. Digital copies and (some of) the original material can be consulted at the School of Cultural Texts and Records or the reading rooms here at The British Library. The books cover subjects including folk literature, music and songs, theatre booklets, homeopathy, astrology, adventure novels, horror stories, grammar guides, religious practices and belief, and many many other topics. Anyone reading this blog will be familiar with some of the material, and seen some of the images produced by the Project.

The material is organised into 11 separate Collections, based on the name of the Collector of the original material. This includes the School of Cultural Texts itself whose Collection contains seven sub-collections, reflecting the development of their holdings. The 11 Collections are:

EAP127/1 SCTR Collections

EAP127/2 R.P. Gupta Collection

EAP127/3 Devajit Bandyopadhyay Collection

EAP127/4 Sukanta Chaudhuri Collection

EAP127/5 Samantak Das Collection

EAP127/6 Arun Ghosh Collection

EAP127/7 Satyabati Giri Collection

EAP127/8 Gautam Mitra Collection

EAP127/9 Rudrajit Mookherjee Collection

EAP127/10 Prabir Sen Collection

EAP127/11 Sukumar Sen Collection

Alex

05 March 2010

February Accessions 2010 and Endangered Languages Week

February was another busy month for the EAP. We received material from six projects:

Guinea's Syliphone archives

Pages of Azerbaijan sound heritage

Study and collection of Hakku Patras and other documents among folk communities in Andhra Pradesh

Preserving the archives of the United National Independence Party of Zambia

Preservation, storage and accessibility for archives of the pre-industrial rural society of the Ukrainian Steppe

Rescuing text: retrieval and documentation of printed books and periodicals published prior to 1950 from public institutions in Eastern India

Alex and I also participated in the Endangered Languages Week Open Day organised by the Endangered Languages Project. This was held in the Brunei Gallery at SOAS. The day was well attended by organisations and universities involved in documenting and preserving endangered languages around the world and in promoting research in this area. Our table was next to the World Oral Literature Project who actively document and make accessible endangered oral literatures. It was fascinating to hear about their activities. I took the opportunity to browse the room and pick up a few brochures. It proved an informative day for me. It was also exciting to see so much interest in the preservation of languages and the cultures, traditions, histories and literatures associated with them.

Lynda

08 January 2010

December Accessions 2009

Looking over the EAP Accession records it appears most of December was spent processing new material into the library. We received discs, microfilm and hard drives from seven projects! Some of these were continuing transfers from on-going projects. Some were the first receipts from new projects.

Material was received from:

Preserving the archives of the United National Independence Party of Zambia

Collection and digitisation of old music in pre-literate Micronesian society

Study and collection of Hakku Patras and other documents among folk communities in Andhra Pradesh

Saving archival documents of archaeological researches conducted during the 1920s and 1930s in Ukraine

Digital archive of north Indian classical music

Digitisation of Bolivian indigenous communities' records on ayllu structure, tax and land tenure

Preserving more Marathi manuscripts and making them accessible - major project

This last project is the second undertaken by Dr Feldhaus to copy Marathi manuscripts in India. Her first project, Preserving Marathi manuscripts and making them accessible, was completed in 2007. It successfully microfilmed 300 manuscripts including:  works of the Vakari poet-saints from the 13th to the 17th centuries;  works of the 'Pandit' poets of the 17th and 18th centuries;  notebooks of songs used by performers of kirtans and other types of (mostly Vaishnava) religious performances;  manuscripts on yoga, astrology and other kinds of sciences including (interestingly) the science of horses; and manuscripts of the vast literature of the Mahanubhav sect. The project also conducted training for staff in digital preservation and raised awareness of Marathi manuscript collections and their care.

The current major project is continuing to microfilm Marathi manuscripts and training staff. Here is a glimpse of the result:

EAP248 IMG_2187 

Lynda

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