We are seeking to recruit a cataloguer to join the EAP team at the British Library’s St Pancras site.
This post is until 31 December 2023 (with the hope that it will be renewed). The purpose of the post is to support the team by cataloguing material received from the various projects. Making the material accessible for scholarly research is a key element of the Programme and you will be a valued member of EAP.
This post would be suitable to someone who has an understanding of at least one of the communities represented in EAP projects (The Caribbean, Asia, Middle East, Africa, Latin America). We actively and warmly welcome applications from candidates who feel their culture has been represented by the EAP collections.
If you would like to apply, please visit the British Library Website. The application deadline is 16 November 2022.
EAP755/1/1/110/3 "Woman helping two kids study for the article La vida de las mujeres, Vosotras magazine"
The project team has digitised 84 documents, made up of a total of 77 palm leaves documents and seven old books. The palm leaves belong to the period 1600 to 1910 AD. Notable outcomes are the recovery and digitisation of assumingly ‘lost’ ancient works like ‘Lagnaprakarana’ of renowned ancient scholars and a Palm leaf manuscript text of Rgveda. The records cover the topics of Astronomy related mathematics, Ayurveda, Upanayana, Astrology, Commentaries, amongst others. The sources of these collections are mainly from two families with renowned tradition of knowledge in ancient Kerala. One is the Irinjadapilly Mana the ancestral home of Sangamagrama Madhava, the legendary Mathematician of the 14th century. The other is Kunnathur Padinjaredath Mana, known for their knowledge in Vasthu Sastra and Tantra.
This project digitised records owned by the Bishopric of Santa Clara in Cuba, and held at three separate locations: the Catedral de Santa Clara, the Iglesia de San Juan, and the Iglesia of La Caridad. Records include baptism, death, and burial registers.
This project digitised notarial documents from 1853-1900 corresponding to the First Notary Office of Cartagena, and notarial documents from 1859-1861 corresponding to the Notary Public of the Municipality of El Carmen de Bolívar. Such documents are found in the Historical Archive of Cartagena de Indias, an administrative unit of the Historical Museum of the same city. The digitised material accounts for the social history of both the city of Cartagena de Indias and the Municipality of El Carmen de Bolívar. It addresses aspects related to economic life (including: trade, formation of commercial companies, purchase-sale of possessions and rural and urban properties, production and marketing of tobacco, public administrative contracts, mortgages), as well as characteristics of social, public and private life (civil marriages, successions of post-mortuary assets, appraisals, wills), both in rural and urban areas.
This project digitised records from six different Baul collections in West Bengal, India. The songs of the Bauls (literally “mad”, intoxicated by divine love) are composed by gurus or spiritual teachers, and performed by itinerant folk musicians. They are performed among low-caste communities in India and Bangladesh, where they are recognized as intangible cultural heritage. An encyclopedia of beliefs and practices, Baul songs discuss ideas on cosmogony, health, sexuality, meditation and everyday life.
The collections provide important primary sources for the study of the Baul tradition of Bengal, showing how the songs are passed down across the generations and transmitted from older gurus to contemporary singers/practitioners. They provide information about the continuity and change in the repertoire of Baul songs, while also offering a window to understand the intimate and devotional relationship between gurus and disciples of this tradition.
The records include handwritten notebooks of Baul songs, three albums of correspondence between guru and disciple, historical documents, and numerous photographs of Baul performers and their families which have been found within the pages of the notebooks.
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.
This major digitisation project led by Professor Ewa Balicka-Witakowska, followed on from a previous project to digitise manuscripts in the collection of the Biblioteca Generale (BG) at St Saviour Monastery in Old Jerusalem.
The EAP1142 team digitised more than 100,000 pages of manuscripts and documents that date back as far as the 14th century and as recently as the 20th century.
Inside cover of Regulation of the Fratri minori, late 19th century [EAP1142/1/1/50]
Led by Dr Frank Michel Meddens, this pilot project produced a survey of archival material within two communities near the village of Pamparomás, in Peru. In discussions with members of the town council of Pamparomás, three communities with early Spanish colonial foundation settlement (AD 1532-1615) and possible surviving archives were selected for this survey: Chaclancayo, Cosma and Jimbe. Though the latter was considered too remote to investigate in the time available to project members during the 2022 fieldwork season.
This digitisation project followed on from a previous project to digitise Mongolian newspapers written in traditional Mongolian script. Led by Mr Bayasgalan Bayanbat at the Monsound and Vision Foundation, this latest project digitised the following newspaper titles:
The editions concern a wide range of topics, including politics, economy, science, education, international affairs and home affairs.
It is noteworthy that while the traditional Mongolian script title remains consistent in each edition of the newspaper, the Cyrillic script and Latin script variants of the title differ across the collection. This is a sign of the Sovietisation of Mongolia during the 1930s and 40s, including an alteration to the Mongolian language, with the traditional Mongolian script replaced with Cyrillic.
Ardyn Undesnii Erkh (28 December 1935), EAP1391/1/2/232
In another Peruvian project, Ms Irène Favier led a major project that digitised a collection of damaged 19th century medical documents from the Cercado asylum. The documents span from 1859-1920 and include:
EAP1470 has started with a bang - an exhibition at the State Archives of the Republic of North Macedonia to celebrate the 140th anniversary of the birth of Milton Manaki. Milton, along with his brother, are known as the first cinematographers in the Balkans. Photographers who left a lasting legacy with their work not only within the Balkans but also further afield. This significant photographic archive will be digitised as part of EAP1470.
The exhibition was officially opened by Minister Bisera Kostadinovska-Stojčevska on 21 August 2022, and is part of the international Cinematographers film festival “Manaki Brothers”, which is traditionally held in Bitola and is supported by the Ministry of Culture.
The display consists of 18 panels that reveal the most significant segments of Milton's work and life, and glass cases containing his photographic equipment, including his Camera 300. Original documents are also on show, as well as a digital exhibition that thematically and chronologically deals with his photographic work.
It is clear from the pictures sent by Goce Stojanovski, Head of the Bitola Department at the State Archive and project lead for EAP1470, the opening was a huge success and we are looking forward to making the Manaki Brothers' photographs available online - it is obvious there are some gems amongst the archive.
We are pleased to announce the dates of the Webinars for Applicants to Round 18. The call goes out on 19th September and we encourage anyone interested in submitting an application to attend the webinar which will give a broad overview of the requirements of the Programme and things to take into consideration for this latest round.
We will hold two identical webinars, in the morning and afternoon to accommodate different time zones:
Wednesday, 21st September 2022 at 11.00 to 12.00 BST and 15.00 to 16.00 BST
During the webinars, we will discuss the EAP Round 18 application process and we will answer any questions. Please send any questions you might have in advance to [email protected].
Please register for your webinar of choice at the following links.
We are delighted to be partnering with Chevening to offer a professional development fellowship.
The Chevening Fellow will develop a community crowdsourcing project to improve the discoverability of approximately 10,000 digitised West African manuscripts within the EAP collections. We are keen to ensure these manuscripts are assigned titles in Arabic script, making them more accessible to local researchers.
The fellowship will be based with the EAP team and offers the chance to spend 12 months 'behind-the-scenes' at the British Library. It is open to anyone based in Mali, Niger, Nigeria or Senegal.
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.
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.
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.
Municipal Council of Nairobi Minutes of Proceedings of The Council and of the Several Committees Thereof for the Month of May, 1940 (EAP1357/1/1)
