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Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon (1827-1891) was an English educationist, artist, philanthropist, and feminist. Her personal correspondence is quite extensive, containing letters exchanged with her family, friends, and acquaintances. The bulk of her epistolary archive though consists of letters sent to her. Instead of viewing this fragmentation and imbalance as a handicap, this paper argues that the silences her epistolary archive contains can be turned into a meaningful source of information and thus are methodologically relevant. To do so, it examines the extent to which Bodichon herself might have introduced silences ([un]consciously) as a strategy to exercise power over her own narrative. In order to tease out these epistolary silences and make them speak, this paper reads them through the lens of Lisa Mazzei's poetics of silence.

This paper discusses the establishment of the first Protestant church in midnineteenth-century Jerusalem, under Ottoman rule, relying mainly on British Foreign Office archives. It begins with an introduction to the geopolitical context for the spread of Protestantism in Greater Syria, with particular focus on Palestine, including Britain's initial diplomatic efforts to achieve this goal and the challenges it faced on different fronts. The discussion situates these challenges and the ways Britain overcame them within the context of Ottoman imperial regulations, which recurringly stalled or halted construction efforts. As a result, Britain's hopes of establishing a Protestant church in Jerusalem, and the Ottoman sultan's frequent obstruction of these efforts, reflect the layered British-Ottoman relations in the nineteenth century. The paper ends with an examination of the ways the British government managed to secure an Ottoman permit (firman) issued by the sultan, that allowed the completion of the church's construction in 1849. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present the results of a study to examine, determine and propose the optimal approach to develop impact assessment indicators for the UK Web Archive. Design/methodology/approach: The paper analyses the existing literature on impact assessment frameworks for digital resources and the types of impact in related fields to set an approach to develop an impact assessment plan. Primarily drawing from the Balanced Value Impact Model, the approach consists of three stages: context setting, indicator development and indicator evaluation. Findings: The development of a set of potential impact assessment indicators for the UK Web Archive shows not only an optimal approach for the development but also recommendations for web archiving organisations. Research limitations/implications: The research did not carry out follow-up interviews regarding the feedback from UK Web Archive's staff. Adoption of the new set of indicators will further this development. Practical implications: The staff's duties influence their prioritisation of the indicators, so discussions among partners will be helpful in recognising different perceptions, unnoticed strengths and potential values. A progressive accumulation of assessment and improvements from the current state and small regular evaluations will be also helpful to demonstrate the impact and value to the stakeholders in the future. Originality/value: This paper proposes a set of 13 potential indicators for the UK Web Archive of which functionality was checked against set quality criteria and tested through semi-structured interviews and survey submissions with the UK Web Archive staff members. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2005 Rev. Michael Roden, the vicar at Church of England church of St Mary's in Hitchin (a small town about 30 miles north of London) was invited to India to give a series of sermons to Indian Church of England congregations. He was struck during his visit by the scars in Indian society that he thought were the remnants of Partition's aftermath. His visit set him thinking about the ways in which Partition has shaped British as well as Indian and Pakistani society, and about how little people in the UK know about the calamitous results of British policy at the time of decolonization. In particular, he wondered about why it was the case that Partition had never been taught in schools in the UK, and why children were coming out of school with no understanding of the forces which had created a multi-cultural society in the UK over the course of the twentieth century. Reverend Roden contacted the University of Cambridge's Centre of South Asian Studies and set in train a series of events that would lead to Partition being included in the curriculum of all Church of England schools in England and Wales. This process was to engage politicians, academics, playwrights, television companies and members of the general public. It would lead to more than teaching in the classroom – a swathe of television documentaries, for example, were broadcast around he 70th anniversary of Partition in 2017, providing information about a part of the shared UK/South Asian past which has been largely neglected in Britain. Alongside this process, the Centre of South Asian Studies also prepared an exhibition of materials from its own archive collections which ran from August 2017 and drew in thousands of visitors. This paper will examine the ways in which the process of presenting Partition to the people of the UK was fashioned and followed, and the nature of the output which resulted from it, looking at the ways in which academe can interact with public opinion and public knowledge in meaningful and positive ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This paper aims to evidence the perspectives of information professionals in the UK in relation to environmental sustainability and climate action to catalyse collaborative action. Design/methodology/approach: This study takes an interpretivist stance. Research into archive and record management literature was conducted to establish key themes on climate change within the information sector. These themes informed research questions included in a survey cascaded to UK archivists, conservators, records managers and cultural heritage professionals via national mailing lists. The results were then codified and analysed. The study had research ethics and data protection approval from University College London. Findings: Using professional ethics as a framework, this paper argues that climate action can protect records from the impact of climate change, ensuring future access. The information professionals surveyed were motivated by duties to preservation and access to mitigate the impact of the information sector on the environment. However, sector-specific climate action, such as introducing passive storage conditions or decreasing collection sizes, is limited by insufficient resources, organisational hierarchies and cultures, sector support and a perceived conflict with the duty to preservation. Originality/value: To date, there is a growing body of literature from other countries on archival practices and the natural environment. However, the UK in general and the records management sector in particular, have not yet fully engaged in the discussion. This study reviews these knowledge gaps for the UK information sector to appropriately respond to climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In July 2021 Andreas Mytze died in London, where he had lived since the mid nineteen-eighties. Based on his extensive archive as well as his published material this paper offers an assessment of his contribution to Exile Literature and Exile Studies in the various areas in which he was active. As a seller of second-hand books, he sourced exile literature, completed, circulated and published lists of this stock, much of it rare and difficult to obtain. As a publisher he redressed this deficiency by re-publishing rare or forgotten works of exiled authors and offering contemporary authors, particularly those living in Great Britain, an opportunity to place material which held little attraction for conventional publishing houses. Finally, at a time when Exile Studies was in its infancy, as editor of the journal europäische ideen, he used his skills as an investigative journalist to source and publish documents and correspondence which provided scholars in the field with valuable source material. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Archaeological data provide a potential to investigate the diffusion of technological and cultural traits. However, much of this research agenda currently needs more formal quantitative methods to address small sample sizes and chronological uncertainty. This paper introduces a novel Bayesian framework for inferring the shape of diffusion curves using radiocarbon data associated with the presence/absence of a particular innovation. We developed two distinct approaches: 1) a hierarchical model that enables the fitting of an s-shaped diffusion curve whilst accounting for inter-site variations in the probability of sampling the innovation itself, and 2) a non-parametric model that can estimate the changing proportion of the innovation across user-defined time-blocks. The robustness of the two approaches was first tested against simulated datasets and then applied to investigate three case studies, the first pair on the diffusion of farming in prehistoric Japan and Britain and the third on cycles of changes in the burial practices of later prehistoric Britain. • Bayesian methods for modelling diffusion curves with radiocarbon dates are introduced. • Sample interdependence and non-sigmoid diffusion curves can be handled. • Robustness is tested on simulated datasets and archaeological case studies. • Code and data are available on a GitHub repository and archived on Zenodo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The study aims to shed light on the current state of "Dataset repositories" indexed in Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR). Design/methodology/approach: From each repository/record information, the Open-Access Policies, Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH), year of creation and the number of data sets archived in the repositories were manually searched, documented and analyzed. Findings: Developed countries like the United Kingdom and the USA are primarily involved in the development of institutional open-access repositories comprising significant components of OpenDOAR. The most extensively used software is DSpace. Most data set archives are OAI-PMH compliant but do not follow open-access rules. The study also highlights the sites' embrace of Web 2.0 capabilities and discovers really simple syndication feeds and Atom integration. The use of social media has made its presence known. Furthermore, the study concludes that the number of data sets kept in repositories is insufficient, although the expansion of such repositories has been consistent over the years. Practical implications: The work has the potential to benefit both researchers in general and policymakers in particular. Scholars interested in research data, data sharing and data reuse can learn about the present state of repositories that preserve data sets in OpenDOAR. At the same time, policymakers can develop recommendations and policies to assist in the construction and maintenance of repositories for data sets. Originality/value: According to the literature, there have been numerous studies on open-access repositories and OpenDOAR internationally, but no research has focused on repositories preserving content-type data sets. As a result, the study attempts to uncover various characteristics of OpenDOAR Data set repositories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that navigating the formalized, regulated and institutionalized data sharing landscape is challenging for researchers tasked with making qualitative data available for re-use. Archiving empirical material has progressively become a requirement enshrined in the policies of UK research institutions. Yet, how qualitative researchers feature – as data (co)creators and curators – within a process governed largely by quantitative data management strategies remains undocumented. Using examples from the ESRC Timescapes initiative, this article argues that to advance ethical practice in qualitative secondary analysis (QSA), data sharing policies and practices need to be re-framed to respect, value and care for the particularities of qualitative data and the emotional, intellectual and temporal investments made by qualitative researchers working in an increasingly pressurized Higher Education (HE) environment. Accordingly, ideas from the ethics of care literature are employed to propose areas where 'habits of care', attuned to the needs of qualitative researchers and data, can be fostered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Diaries and other materials in the Mass Observation Archive have been characterised as intersubjective and dialogic. They have been used to study top-down and bottom-up processes, including how ordinary people respond to sociological constructs and, more broadly, the footprint of social science in the 20th century. In this article, we use the Archive's COVID-19 collections to study how attempts to govern the pandemic by mobilising ordinary people to see like an epidemiologist played out in the United Kingdom during 2020. People were asked to think in terms of populations and groups; rates, trends, and distributions; the capacity of public services; and complex systems of causation. How did they respond? How did they use the statistics, charts, maps, concepts, identities, and roles they were given? We find evidence of engagement with science plural ; confident and comfortable engagement with epidemiological terms and concepts; sceptical and reluctant engagement with epidemiological subject positions; use of both scientific and moral literacy to negotiate regulations and guidance; and use of scientific literacy to compare and judge government performance. Governing the pandemic through scientific literacy was partially successful, but in some unexpected ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Decades of archives scholarship highlight colonial influences in archival collections as well as archival praxis. This research project explored the extent to which archives workers in the UK feel prepared and equipped to engage professionally with decolonizing archival practices. I conducted an anonymous online survey of workers across the archives sector to gauge their attitudes to different decolonizing practices in archives and their openness to participating in such initiatives. This article discusses and mobilizes my findings to suggest ways to encourage engagement with decolonizing practices across the sector. Participants were asked about their professional background and their initial understanding and feelings about archival decolonization before rating statements reflecting different decolonizing approaches and sharing final comments. Responses reflected a strong degree of openness towards different decolonizing practices, particularly increasing (digital) access and sharing ownership. There was support for change led from within the sector based on collaborative approaches, while there was some resistance to what was considered a politicizing of the issue. I propose ways forward centred on communication, collaboration, and peer support across the sector, particularly in exploring ways to accommodate decolonizing approaches into archival praxis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This case study traces the evolution of the Make Film History project, an award-winning archival resource which gives emerging filmmakers and educators in the UK and Ireland access to 270 films for creative reuse on course-related projects. It explores the barriers to the creative reuse of audiovisual archive material in education; and how the project overcame these with the support of our project partners at the participating archives to create a new, sustainable model for creative reuse in a range of educational settings and in partnership with film festivals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the possibilities offered to researchers by the film holdings which can be found in archives that exist outside of the more conventional, subject-specific film archives in the UK such as those held by the British Film Institute. The Marks and Spencer Company Archive exists principally to hold the company records and related materials illustrating the history of one of the UK's most successful and long-established high-street retailers. Although their film holdings are extensive, these materials are somewhat tangential to the main collection and might not be a source that has been recognised to date by film scholars. Such collections also exist in a number of other commercial organisations, as well as public sector ones. The article details the holdings, arranging them into significant groupings, and analyses their style and content with particular attention to their potential status as both history on film and as film form. In doing so, it posits the opportunity to consider further exploration of film holdings normally thought of as outside film scholarship, and the value of more utilitarian forms of film-making than those usually found in entertainment or art cinema. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the aftermath of the Hanslope Park disclosure and the release of the 'migrated archives,' the United Kingdom's (UK) Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) had to supply a reason for how it came to pass those tens of thousands of classified records documenting Britain's colonial administrations were stored in secret for half a century. Officially, the FCO responded that its own accidental neglect had resulted in the scandal. This article, by using archival materials released as part of the 'migrated archives' and research conducted at the Kenyan National Archive, argues that the contrary was true. In response to growing pressures from former colonies and international organisations, the FCO intentionally concealed 'embarrassing' colonial administrative files from public view as a strategy to preserve the UK's diplomatic standing and political prowess amidst the geopolitical shifts caused by decolonisation and the Cold War. The article describes this strategy in the context of colonial fragility, or the cosmetic interest in protecting the UK's reputation as a 'good' state, which in turn propagated harm along racialised lines by dislocating evidence of the colonial past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the late Victorian and early Edwardian period references to 'social work' in the UK emerged in the context of the movement for social reform. Using a wide variety of contemporary literature, archival sources and Internet searches this article finds that, alongside charitable and philanthropic work, the term 'social work' referred to a particularly wide range of social, health, educational, industrial welfare and recreation activity. Few attempts were made to attribute an explicit meaning to the term and it was not used as frequently as is sometimes implied by commentaries about the period. However, voluntary and paid workers were increasingly referred to collectively as 'social workers' and became the subject of increasing discussion about their roles and need for training. This article traces the developments in references to social work and social workers in the literature and highlights the early debate that took place in the UK and USA about the relative importance of practical work and study of the social sciences, introducing the tension which characterised social workers' subsequent difficulties in establishing a professional identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article follows up on the book The French Anarchists in London, 1880-1914 (2013), by exploring some primary material uncovered since this publication, and considering the ways in which research into the history of anarchism as a transnational movement has evolved. In the years since the publication of this book, a great deal of research has furthered or challenged its findings, especially in relation to print culture and the study of global anarchist networks. The mass digitisation of periodicals (both anarchist and mainstream) and archives in the last ten years offers new tools to find detailed information about the personal and political lives of these elusive anarchists in London - and further afield, thus rectifying the original study's London-centric focus. These sources are also crucial in documenting the ways in which anarchists were perceived and portrayed in Britain, France and internationally, and constructed into a major public threat through media discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]