•    KEY HIGHLIGHTS
•    ARCHIVE LED TEACHING
•    VISITING FELLOWS
•    APPOINTMENTS
•    ENQUIRIES - TOPICS AND THEMES 
•    STATISTICS - VISITS AND ENQUIRIES

KEY HIGHLIGHTS

Back to the Future: Arts in a Digital Age

The Challenges & Opportunities of Curating in a Digital Age, 24 May
Justine Mann (Archivist) joined colleagues from the National Archives and East Anglian Film Archive to explore the impact of digital on archives. (Part 2 of 4 in a series of free events held at Norwich Castle, Town Close Auditorium). 
Back to the Future: The Future of the Past in the Digital Age

UEA Library Joins Research Libraries UK Group, 31 May

UEA Library achieved a major accolade in being approved membership for Research Libraries UK (RLUK), a consortium of the leading and most significant research libraries in the UK and Ireland.  

UEA Library has been approved for its membership from August 2022 and becomes one of only a few members outside the Russell Group of universities. The new membership will create opportunities for new partnerships and shared services with other RLUK institutions. 

The citation from the RLUK Board was as follows: “We were very impressed with the activity that UEA is already undertaking – including your work activity around contemporary collecting, archives, and Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) engagement, and your leadership on eBooks and textbooks.”

ARCHIVE LED TEACHING

PGT Cultural Heritage (Exhibitions), 3 May

Students were introduced to theoretical approaches to exhibitions including discussions around the relationship between the original object and digital surrogates, the pace of digitisation and the barriers institutions sometimes face in digitising at scale as well as the democratisation of the archive through public led exhibitions. The session also introduced students to our exhibition software, Omeka.net, employed in our exhibitions: Suffragette Stories and Lorna Sage: Bad Blood. 10 students. Remote delivery.

Seminar (Digital Exhibitions with Omeka), 6 May

Students were trained in the use of Omeka.net exhibition software and participated in adding digitised exhibits from our suffragette archives, The Kenney Papers, to the Suffragette Stories exhibition. Students transcribed cursive manuscript text written on the back of business cards given to Emmeline Pankhurst and Jessie Kenney during a trip to Russia in 1918. They were also shown how to assign metadata, and how to apply thesaurus terms, for consistency and to aid discovery. 8 students. In person delivery.

Publishing Module, 9 May

Students were provided with access to original correspondence between publishers and their authors, providing direct insights into the editorial and marketing processes involved in the publishing of trade fiction. Students were encouraged to identify common themes that might still be applicable in publishing today, and where practices might have changed. 

Material included: editorial correspondence between the literary agent Darley Anderson and Lee Child, then a first-time writer. Letters from Penguin to Charlie Higson providing editorial feedback and suggestions that Higson should limit the violence within his second Young Bond novel for fear of upsetting parents and children’s librarians; letters from the literary agent AP Watt to Nadine Gordimer concerning the South African government’s decision to censor her novel and correspondence between Doris Lessing and her publisher on the confusion surrounding a publicity tour. 15 students. In person delivery, Elizabeth Fry building.

MA CW Research Methodology Day Archives ‘Writers and Archives’ Panel, 25 May

Justine Mann, Archivist at the British Archive for Contemporary Writing chaired a panel of speakers to explore: 

  • How writers make use of literary archives for creative inspiration/ research /to understand the publishing process and the career of a writer. 
  • What Writers in Residence/Fellowship opportunities exist within archives and how writers can create their own funded opportunity.
  • How collecting a writer’s literary archive works. 
  • How writers should approach the preservation of their own literary archive.

Speakers:

  • Rufus Talks, graduate of the MA in Poetry 2020 and cataloguer of the Sarah Maguire Archive shared highlights from the archive and its potential value for poets, biographers and students of literature.
  • Fiona Sinclair, graduate of the MA in Prose Fiction and current PhD student, spoke about her use of archives in the writing of her historical novel and her experience of being a Writer in Residence at UEA.
  • Dr Nonia Williams, Lecturer in Literature and Academic Curator of the Doris Lessing Archive spoke about her work as a literary scholar and her research with literary archives.

45 students, Julian Study Centre.

VISITING FELLOWS

Denise Hansen and Lily Meyer

In June we welcomed Denise, a PhD candidate studying translation strategies at University College London and Lily, a PhD candidate in fiction at the University of Cincinnati. They are both researching the literary translation archives of David Bellos (‘Life, a User’s Manual’ by George Perec), Anne Born (‘Letters from Africa’ by Karen Blixen), and John Fletcher. Hansen’s research focuses on translation strategies while Meyer is looking at reluctance in translation.

 

Dr Cristina Gamberi

Cristina, a tutor in gender studies at the University of Bologna, has joined us to research the archive of the writer and Nobel Prize winner Doris Lessing. Gamberi is exploring Lessing's use of fictional techniques in her autobiographical writing.

APPOINTMENTS

Cataloguing Assistant

In April we were pleased to welcome back Emily Walker who has joined us for a 3-month cataloguing internship, working with the archive of Lee Child. Emily is a doctoral researcher at UEA in the field of British comedy sitcoms.

BACW Project Archivist

Dr Helen BusbyDr Helen Busby joined us in June as a British Archive for Contemporary Writing (BACW) Project Archivist, covering Justine Mann’s post for 3 days per week over the next 18 months, while Justine is engaged on the Mellon Foundation funded poetry archives project. Helen is a qualified archivist and holds a PhD in History from UEA. Most recently she has as worked as a Project Manager on ‘Festival Forever’ at Norfolk and Norwich Arts Festival (NNF) and as Project Manager and Cataloguing Manager at the Norfolk Records Office, as part of an ‘Unlocking our Sound Heritage’ a heritage lottery funded project.

Visiting Poetry Fellow

In May Will Harris was appointed as new Visiting Poetry Fellow at the BACW. Harris will join the BACW project team pioneering a new centre for study and research into contemporary poetry at UEA, which has been funded by the Mellon Foundation. More: Will Harris appointed as new Visiting Poetry Fellow at The British Archive for Contemporary Writing

ENQUIRIES - TOPICS AND THEMES 

BACW COLLECTIONS

LORNA SAGE ARCHIVE Angela Carter ROGER DEAKIN ARCHIVE Waterlog; Wild swimming

OTHER COLLECTIONS

PRITCHARD PAPERS US-based modern furniture company Knoll’s expansion into Europe; Lawn Road Flats’ tenants; Gordon Raymond Brown (architect); 1930s furniture by designer Marcel Breuer UEA COLLECTION The Queen’s 1968 visit to UEA; The Street; Earlham Hall gardens in the 1840s; UEA SU magazines of the 1960s and ‘70s; Keswick Hall ZUCKERMAN ARCHIVE French gun batteries; the Loch Ness ‘monster’; the 1950s failed attempt to set up a UK Centre for Tropical Agriculture in the UK; WWII bombing of Italy and Sicily by Mediterranean Allied Air Forces; development of satellite communications.

STATISTICS - VISITS & ENQUIRIES

Archives: 160 (44 remote): UEA 101; UK 46; Int’l 22
Special Collections: 9