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Call for Papers for ‘Paper Trails’ a new open access publication with UCL Press

By Nazlin Bhimani, on 23 August 2019

Often there is more than research inside the books we read. Bookmarks, train tickets, receipts, and menus tucked into pages offer clues about the life of the book itself.

Yet the lives of our research material often go unmarked, lost between the gaps in disciplinary boundaries and narrow definitions. The biographies of books and documents can illuminate their contexts, as printed matter that is sold, passed down or abandoned. What happens when we consider the three moments of production, transmission, and reception together with our own research stories? Documents, like people, have births, lives, and even deaths, so what does it mean to investigate the biographies of texts, objects, and archival records? Beyond the formal roles of cataloguing and archiving, what part do researchers play in shaping the emergent archive?

This is not strictly an intellectual history, nor even a material book history, but something more like a social history of ideas, inspired by work such as Antoinette Burton’s discussions of Archive Stories (Duke University Press, 2005), Arlette Farge’s reflection on the Allure of the Archives (Yale University Press, 2013), Lisa Jardine’s discussion of Temptation in the Archives (UCL Press, 2015), and Ann Laura Stoler’s call to read Along the Archival Grain (Princeton University Press, 2009)Indeed, the stories of our research material evolve significantly over their life cycles, as Arjun Appadurai outlined in The Social Life of Things (Cambridge University Press, 1986). Beyond commodities and value, however, this new publication seeks to consider our affective relationship with research material, juxtaposing critical histories with reflections on practice.

The editorial board invite contributors to submit papers to be published in a BOOC (Book as Open Online Content), a fully open access platform with UCL Press described as “a living book”. We are interested in a broad geographical and chronological scope and actively welcome a diverse range of topics and authors.

We will look to publish material in four streams, which will allow us to set fully REF compliant academic work alongside work produced by practitioners for their professional development:

  • Research Stories (8-10,000 words): We are encouraging a focus on research stories to invite a more reflective methodology, offering a more inclusive and engaged commentary on the work involved in researching, ordering, and preserving the past. This section will consist of double-blind peer-reviewed academic articles.
  • Co-Production (flexible word count): Outputs from projects in which non-academic, undergraduate and taught postgraduate audiences collaborate with others (collection professions, academics, members of the public etc) to create new work that is based on research collections.
  • Collection Profiles (500 words): This stream consists of shorter, descriptive or even narrative pieces, that highlights items or collections of interest. This may be a prelude to a piece of in-depth research, but it does not necessarily need to be.
  • Engagement (2,000 words): Reflective pieces that focus on a broad range of engagement activities, from the professional’s perspective. These can be case studies, or ‘think pieces’ on particular skills or techniques.  They should inform professional practice.

Please send in proposals for publications in these streams, along with a brief biographical presentation.

Deadline for submissions is 31st January 2020. For further information, please contact the lead editor, Dr Andrew WM Smith (University of Chichester) –  a.smith@chi.ac.uk

UCL Special Collections Lates: The Colour of Spring

By Helen Biggs, on 12 April 2019

Our first Late was a sold-out success, so we’re very pleased to be able to announce the next event in our evening programme.

Inspired by the seasonal burst of many-hued blossoms outside our windows, we’d like to invite you to join us for The Colour of Spring, featuring a talk on how coloured light can reveal hidden secrets in Mediaeval manuscripts, a history of the educational movement the Woodcraft Folk, and displays of original material from UCL Special Collections.

Get your ticket now!

Flyer for UCL Special Collections Late event, The Colour of Spring

The Colour of Spring

Date: Tuesday, 7th May, 6.15-8pm
Venue: UCL Haldane Room, Wilkins Building, Gower Street, WC1E 6BT

A Colourful Heritage: Multispectral Imaging Manuscripts and Rare Books from UCL Special Collections

Multispectral imaging involves capturing images of an object illuminated in ultraviolet, visible and infrared light. Capturing images in different colours, including light that is invisible to the human eye, can reveal features on the books which cannot usually be seen. This talk by Cerys Jones, final-year PhD student in Medical Physics at UCL, will present a brief introduction to multispectral imaging in heritage and show several examples of recovering lost features on manuscripts and rare books in UCL Special Collections.

Politics and Pedagogy: How I made use of the Woodcraft Folk Archive.

Rich Palser, a retired Further Education lecturer, is currently writing a book on the history of the Woodcraft Folk in the inter-war years which draws heavily on the organisation’s archives now held at UCL Institute Of Education. He will be talking about the archive’s relevance to his own interest in the relationship between politics and pedagogy, but also suggesting ways in which the archive may be relevant to the research of others.

Guests will be able to view a number of items for UCL Special Collections, including medieval manuscript fragments, material from the newly acquired Woodcraft Folk Archive, and an emblem book once belonging to Ben Jonson. There will be a brief colourful interlude, courtesy of our conservation team, and there will be plenty of time to enjoy a glass of wine (or soft drink) and nibbles, included with your £5 ticket. Click here to book your place now!

UCL Special Collections Launches Lates Programme

By Helen Biggs, on 11 March 2019

We are excited to be launching a series of evening talks for 2019, starting this month and running through to the next academic year.

We’ll be hosting sociable, relaxed after-work events,  perfect for anyone who is interested to come into UCL to learn about the wonderful rare books, archives and manuscripts that we hold here.  Each evening will present a particular topic or theme; talks and collection displays with wine, soft drinks and nibbles for all.  What more could anyone want?!

Our first Late will be ‘Protest!  Voices of dissent in art and text’.  Guest speakers Egidija Čiricaitė and Susannah Walker will join us to explore this theme through their fascinating research and corresponding collection items.

Although all of our Lates events will have academic research at their core, they will be accessible and are open to all aged 16+.  We hope you can join us for the first of what will be a regular series of talks and evening events to inspire, intrigue and amuse!

Get your ticket now!

Protest! Voices of dissent in art and text

Date: Tuesday, 26th March, 6.15-8pm
Venue: UCL Haldane Room, Wilkins Building, Gower Street, WC1E 6BT

The Small Press Project: In Conversation with Egidija Čiricaitė and Liz Lawes

The Small Press Project from Slade School of Fine Art takes inspiration from UCL Special Collections’ small press collection each year. This year’s project, Visions of Protest: BLAKE THE MARCH, has been used as a critical lens through which artists, academics and students can focus on what connections exist between the democracy of print, their aesthetics and the autonomy of artists’ books and publishing. The project is formed through a programme of workshops, performances, screenings, talks, collaborations and interdisciplinary practices involving non-academic institutions and the public.  Egidija Čiricaitė will be in conversation with Liz Lawes, our very own small press collections expert (and UCL’s Subject Liaison Librarian: Fine Art, History of Art and Film Studies).

Egidjia Čiricaitė publishes books, exhibitions, and book related projects.  Although firmly based within contemporary artists’ books practice, her varied interests can be loosely divided between book history and contemporary metaphor theories (in linguistics).  Egidija is co-curator of Prescriptions project of artists’ books and medical humanities (University of Kent). She is co-curating Artists’ Books Now events at the British Library and is currently studying for her PhD at the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL.

Printing Peterloo

On the 16th August 1819, a peaceful protest for electoral reform at St Peter’s Fields Manchester was suppressed. The large crowd, assembled to hear the orator Henry Hunt, were charged on by the local yeomanry cavalry resulting in casualties and injuries. The events became known as “Peterloo”, an ironic reference to the Battle of Waterloo of 1815. This was a pivotal moment in the histories of democracy, protest and “working class politics.” Peterloo inspired political pamphlets, poetry and caricature and most recently Mike Leigh’s film of 2018. This session will consider the memory of Peterloo in print using objects from UCL Special Collections and The British Museum.

Susannah Walker was a Teaching Fellow in History of Art at UCL from 2014 to 2018 specialising in Print Culture and Romanticism, and is currently working as a curator in the British Museum’s Department of Prints and Drawings. Her recent work has involved cataloguing and researching a range of political pamphlets produced in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars.

Wine (or a soft drink) and nibbles are included with your £3 ticket. Click here to book your place.

Transparency can be tricky. Conserving UCL’s iconic buildings plans and drawings.

By Angela Warren-Thomas, on 29 June 2018

Written by Laurent Cruveillier on June 29, 2018

The College Plans, belonging to the Records Office Collections within UCL Special Collections, Archives and Records Department, are housed in part at the National Archives and in part at UCL. They are architectural plans and drawings of several landmarks of the UCL campus, such as the Cruciform, the Rockefeller Building of the “New” Chemistry building.

If most of these plans and drawings, dating from the end of the 19th and early 20th century are in stable condition, some show conservation pathologies that prevent their usage by students, scholars or the public, or would impede their handling for digitization and cataloguing purposes.

They present naturally occurring conditions in working documents, such as pin holes, folds, dirt and smudges, creases… but these objects are also often torn, cockled, warped, and bear historic repairs, many of which are made with pressure-sensitive adhesive tape that needs to be removed. Those conditions are worsened by the fact that most paper substrates are brittle, particularly the different kinds of tracing paper.

A conservation campaign was then launched to stabilize as many records as possible. The work started with surveying 485 items of the collection, and identifying the unstable ones.

The plans and drawings were prioritized according to their state and their relevance for the curators of the collection, and were treated according to a protocol aiming at stabilizing them with minimal intervention:

  • Setting of tears using wheat starch paste
  • Repairs and consolidation of regular paper objects using different thicknesses of remoistenable repair tissue prepared with wheat starch paste and methylcellulose.
    Some of the tissue was toned with black acrylic paint for the repairs over black media on the recto of objects.
  • Repair and consolidation of tracing paper using remoistenable tissue prepared with Isinglass: a fine protein adhesive prepared using swim bladders of sturgeon fishes.
  • Adhesive removal using poultices prepared with methylcellulose and ethanol, or heated spatulas and other solvents.
  • Structural infills
  • Photographic and written documentation:
    Condition and treatment records
  • Housing in polyester pockets.

These interventions were carried out by paper conservators at UCL Special Collections Conservation Department, and also involved the participation of UAL – Camberwell College MA Conservation intern students, who were given the opportunity to add working collection objects treatments to their portfolios while learning and practicing different techniques, such as preparing Isinglass, removing adhesives or repairing tracing paper.

Priority was given to stability for handli

ng purposes, also respecting the nature of each substrate. For instance, repairs on tracing paper were done with extremely thin tissues to avoid being visible by transparency. Due to their aesthetical value, some objects were nevertheless given extra care, with the usage of toned tissues for repairs and infills. One plan with a large lacuna even received an infill digitally produced to minimize the visual impact of interrupted lines.

In the images, one can see the detail of record Ref. Nº ROC 86, a drawing for a decorative swag of the Board Room in the Rockefeller building before and after conservation. It was extremely rewarding for the conservators to discover that the ornament was still in place. As recommended in writing on the May 1907 document, the sculptor hadn’t “adhered” exactly to the drawing, but his execution of the motif still allowed super-imposing the final result with architect J. Carmichael’s vision.