A quick round up of some new books: Archival Fictions: Materiality, Form, and Media History in Contemporary Literature by Paul Benzon Description: Technological innovation has long threatened the printed book, but ultimately, most digital alternatives to the codex have been onscreen replications. While a range of critics have debated the benefits and dangers of this media […]
Category Archives: digitisation
Reanimating Working-Class Writing
posted by mdever
In a special issue of Across the Disciplines entitled ‘Unsettling the Archives’, Jessica Pauszek contributes an article entitled Preserving Hope: Reanimating Working-Class Writing through (Digital) Archival Co-Creation. In a section dedicated to ‘Bearing Witness in Unsettling Ways’, Pauszek traces how a working-class writing network, the Federation of Worker Writers and Community Publishers, hoped and tried […]
New article: Critical Digital Archives: A Review from Archival Studies
posted by mdever
New out in The American Historical Review (September 2021) is an article by Itza A. Carbajal and Michelle Caswell that explores how archivists and historians might come together in the digital realm. The authors argue that a more developed understanding of digital archival theory and practice can provide the basis for “doing digital history better“. ABSTRACT […]
Virtual unfolding: New digital techniques for opening complex documents
posted by mdever
An exciting breakthrough has been announced this week, one that permits researchers to read letters without unfolding them, offering new ways of managing sealed and fragile documents. Using a combination of X-rays and 3-D imagining techniques, researchers virtually “opened” four letters from the Brienne Collection, a trunk filled with 2,600 notes sent from Europe to the […]
Colloquium: Information Studies at UCLA
posted by mdever
One of the small upsides of the pandemic has been the move to offer research seminars online via Zoom. What were once small gatherings advertised to a local few are now events available (time zones permitting) to interested scholars globally. For those who can line up with Pacific Time (PT), the offerings for the Department […]
Manuscript fragments: a webinar to catch up on
posted by mdever
The Rare Book School at the University of Virginia has been running a lively set of lectures and panel discussions that are now available online for anyone slow to catch on or living in incompatible time zones. For those interested in manuscripts there is: A Fractured Inheritance: The Problems, Challenges, and Opportunities of Collecting Manuscript […]
Archives: new special issue of ‘Anglia’
posted by mdever
Anglia: Journal of English Philology has published a special themed issue on Archives, volume 138, issue 3 (2020). First published in 1878 Anglia claims to be the oldest journal of English Studies in existence. The Archives issue was guest edited by Daniel Stein. Stein’s wide ranging introductory essay provides both an engaging survey of “the […]
New: The Digital Materiality of Digitized Manuscripts
posted by mdever
A new book by Cornelis van Lit investigates how we might think about the materiality of digitized manuscripts. Of particular interest may be the chapter ‘The Digital Materiality of Digitized Manuscripts”. Often distinctions between analogue sources and digital surrogates turn on the latter’s apparent loss or lack of materiality, a proposition that is challenged here. […]
NEW BOOK: On manuscripts, materiality and ‘thinking through paper’.
posted by mdever
New out from Palgrave: Paper, Materiality and the Archived Page. The emergence of digital technologies in the realm of archives has enlivened our understandings of archival materialities and lent a new intensity to our engagements with the archived page by prompting us to consider the potential of paper and the page in ways that we […]
Archives and New Modes of Feminist Research wins prize!
posted by mdever
The Routledge collection, Archives and New Modes of Feminist Research edited by Maryanne Dever has been awarded a 2018 Mander Jones award from the Australian Society of Archivists. The prize is awarded to the “publication making the greatest contribution to the archives profession in Australia”. The judges’ citation reads: “An impressive scholarly work bringing together twelve thought-provoking and […]
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