IHR seminars > History of Libraries
History of Libraries
Conveners: Giles Mandelbrote (Lambeth Palace Library), Dr Keith A. Manley (The National Trust/Institute of Historical Research), Professor Simon Eliot (Institute of English Studies), Professor Isabel Rivers (Queen Mary), Professor Henry Woudhuysen (University College London)
The seminars are jointly sponsored by the Institute of English Studies, the Institute of Historical Research, and the Library & Information History Group of CILIP.
Venue: Unconfirmed, to be announced
Time: Tuesdays, 5.30 p.m.
| 14 February | Alessandra Panzanelli (University of Perugia) An Unpublished Treatise of Librarianship in the Italian Renaissance: De Bibliothecis disponendis et informandis, by Prospero Podiani (Perugia ca. 1535 - 1615)
This treatise, written in Perugia in about 1570, is concerned with the way of arranging an encyclopaedic collection and, at the same time, arranging the knowledge contained in its books. Room 264, Senate House, second floor |
| 6 March | Fr Peter Harris (Dean of Tower Hamlets) An English Island in Castile: the slumbering treasures of the Biblioteca of the Royal and Pontifical College of St Alban, Valladolid
The College, founded under the patronage of Philip II in 1589, still educates English and Welsh students for the Roman Catholic priesthood. Its Biblioteca is an extraordinary survival of 9,000 vols, containing a wealth of English as well as Continental imprints. The activities of the Inquisition are also a unique aspect of the collection. |
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| 3 April | Elizabeth Evenden (Newnham College, Cambridge) Selectivity and Survival: Matthew Parker and the Role of the Codex in Early Modern England?
This paper will discuss Matthew Parker’s great searching out of manuscripts and the fate of these manuscripts once they came into the Archbishop’s hands. It is the story of the selection, the survival, and the loss of texts from the great libraries of pre-Reformation England, and of books saved, moulded and created to form the history of the English nation and the English Church. |
| 1 May | Dr. Karen Attar (Senate House Library) The University of London Library during the Second World War
While London's Senate House is best known for the period 1939-1945 as the home of the Ministry of Information, the University of London Library continued to operate there. This paper describes its operations during the war years, from regular library activity such as acquisitions to wartime precautions, air raids, and its relations with the Ministry. |
| 12 June | Dr. David Shaw (Canterbury) Interpreting the Benefactors' Book: a documentary and bibliographical account of Canterbury Cathedral Library in the seventeenth century
The Catalogus Benefactorum, established in 1628 to record the names of donors to the Cathedral Library, is a confusing and incomplete document. Other library records exist from the 17th century which help give a fuller picture of the growth of the library, including the confiscation of the collections and the demolition of the library building in the Commonwealth period, and its re-establishment in the 1660s. This meeting will be held in the Guard Room at Lambeth Palace. Intending visitors are asked to contact in advance mary.comer@churchofengland.org. |
| 3 July | Professor Alistair Black (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign) 'The necessity of clear expression' home-grown writing, organisational learning and the library staff magazine in Britain in the first half of the twentieth century
Unlike staff magazines in private enterprises, which pre-date them by two decades, library staff magazines of the early-twentieth century were more truly the product of employees, operated as they often were by staff associations. The library staff magazine provided opportunities for employees to write – as a pastime, as a form of organizational learning and networking, as a contribution to labour solidarity, and, finally, as a vehicle for personal professional advance and identity formation, though one which contained an element of “othering,” of the public as well as junior and female staff. |
