Making the Archive Public #3 – Women’s Work: Oral Histories of the Women’s Institute

Posted on 12 February, 2016 by nspeccoll

This is #3 of the ‘Making the Archive Public‘ series, where we are showcasing examples from this project, using the rich archive and rare book collections on offer to researchers in the North East.

Women’s Work: Oral Histories of the Women’s Institute

Visit: http://winortheast.omeka.net/

This website was created by Jess Kadow and Shelby Derbyshire as part of the Making the Archives Public: Digital Skills, Research and Public Engagement project at Newcastle University.

The Women’s Work project is a collaboration organised between Newcastle University, the Northumberland Federation of Women’s Institutes and The Northumberland Archives. The project consisted of recording and archiving the oral histories of the North-Eastern WI community, particularly its oldest members, as a means of preserving the tradition and heritage of the Women’s Institute.

The diversity of each woman’s experience with the WI, the changes they have witnessed, the friendships they have made and the activities they have participated in have given this project a great level of depth. This exhibition hopes to showcase its best elements.

Making the Archive Public #2 – The Execution of James Maben

Posted on 5 February, 2016 by nspeccoll

This is #2 of the ‘Making the Archive Public’ series, where we are showcasing examples from this project, using the rich archive and rare book collections on offer to researchers in the North East.

The Execution of James Maben

An eighteenth-century execution: Industry and Idleness, Plate XI, ‘The Idle ‘Prentice Executed at Tyburn’, William Hogarth (1747).

Visit: http://executionofjamesmaben.omeka.net/about

This project, by Robyn Orr, uses a digitised version of the eighteenth-century pamphlet, A True copy of the papers written by James Maben, held in the Newcastle City Library Special Collections. The themes that are discussed are Newcastle in the Eighteenth Century, Coins and Counterfeiting, and Prisons and Executions.

The pamphlet demonstrates that a single piece of archival material can be used to create a wider narrative (the front page and page 2 from the digitised pamphlet is shown below).

Front page

Page 2

Making the Archive Public #1 – William Corbett’s Bookshop

Posted on 22 January, 2016 by nspeccoll

Making the Archives Public was a UTLSEC Innovation Fund (University Teaching, Learning and Student Experience Committee) project in 2014/15. Devised by Dr Ruth Connolly and Dr Stacy Gillis from the School of English with further expertise and access provided by our own Special Collections, Queen’s University Belfast, and local heritage partners, it incorporated traditional curation and digitisation with web based visualisations. As an introduction to some of the concepts behind Digital Humanities, these online exhibitions served to widen the understanding and availability of physical documented heritage to the public.

In this blog series, we will be showcasing examples from this project, using the rich archive and rare book collections on offer to researchers in the North East.

Here is the #1 in this ‘Making the Archive Public‘ series:

William Corbett’s Bookshop

Visit: http://corbettsbookshop.omeka.net/

This site, created by Claire Boreham, allows users to browse the shelves of a seventeenth-century bookshop.

William Corbett was a bookseller in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in the seventeenth century. When he died in 1626, an inventory of his shop was made, listing over a thousand books, mentioning around two hundred of them by name. This is an incredible insight into what books the Newcastle public were buying and reading in the early years of printing, such as Bibles and theological books (an example is shown in the image below).

William Corbett’s will and the inventory of his house and shop are held in Durham University Special Collections and the exhibition also includes rare and unique material from Newcastle University Special Collections, Newcastle City Library, and Queen’s University Belfast Special Collections.

Christopher Barker, “The Bible, that is, the Holy Scriptures, contained in the Old and New Testament,” William Corbett’s Bookshop