Blog

This week marks the publication of The Gilded Age and Progressive Era, a resource which brings together varied primary source material from eight archives to shed light on this transformative period in American history.

How McGill University Library built upon its pilot digital collection in Quartex by exploring the potential of HTR Transcription to remove barriers to accessing and understanding primary sources in its Fur Trade Collection.

This week marks the centenary of the first paper poppies sold by the Royal British Legion in November 1921. These small red flowers have become a symbol of remembrance, a physical marker of national grief following the bloodshed of the First World War – but also a flashpoint for political debate over who should wear them, when and why. 

“The Powder magazine, which in the dead of night of the 14^th August was broke into […] the doors most audaciously and daringly forced open, at the great risk of their being blown up”. So wrote George James Bruere on the 17^th of August 1775 in his role as the Governor of Bermuda at the height of the American War of Independence.

All my life, I have been drawn to stories of the sea. My grandfather’s bookshelf was lined with maritime histories, and I followed his lead to the best of my ability with bedtime tales of Captain Pugwash. My parents were scuba divers too, and a holiday wasn’t worth having if fifty per cent of it wasn’t spent in the water. It’s little wonder, then, that Colonial Caribbean captures my imagination the way it does – so many of the narratives in this vast and fascinating collection lead, in one way or another, to the ocean.

Central Asia, Persia and Afghanistan, 1834-1922: From Silk Road to Soviet Rule - the latest addition to AM’s Archives Direct platform - showcases a wealth of documents from the National Archives, UK relating to the “Great Game”. Filed in one of the volumes digitised for this collection is a report concerning William Watts McNair's ‘Explorations in part of Eastern Afghanistan and Kafiristan', an exhaustive record of travels undertaken in 1883.

It has been over 40 years since the wedding of Prince Charles to Lady Diana Spencer at St Paul’s Cathedral on 29^th July 1981.

This guest blog was written by Edward Armston-Sheret, a PhD candidate at Royal Holloway’s Department of Geography. As part of the collaboration between the Royal Historical Society and AM Ed, and a number of other early career researchers were awarded a twelve-month subscription to AM’s collections of digital primary sources. 

As covid restrictions are eased and thoughts turn, at least here in Britain, to travelling abroad, my own thoughts have turned to our digital collection Medieval Travel Writing, and to a mysterious globetrotter, or yarn-spinner, or both, about whom so much is contested that even his existence is a matter of debate – Sir John Mandeville.

Migration to New Worlds holds a fascinating collection of letters from the Iwata family highlighting the devastating aftermath of the attack on Pearl Harbor for Japanese Americans in the US.

On 17 May 1824, the memoirs of the enigmatic Lord Byron went up in flames at the hands of some of his closest friends and family members. This blog presents a captivating exploration of the events that unfolded, featuring first-hand accounts from those involved.

This weekend marks the 93rd Academy Awards, the biggest annual event in the Hollywood calendar. The 2021 nominations made Chadwick Boseman the seventh actor nominated for an acting Oscar posthumously. In honour of this, and his potential upcoming win, I took a deep dive into Popular Culture in Britain and America, 1950-1975 to see what I could uncover about some of the previous posthumous Oscar nominees.

Re-watching the excellent drama series The Terror, recently shown on BBC2, has inspired me to scour through AM’s Age of Exploration resource once again for material on Arctic exploration and, in particular, on Franklin’s Lost Expedition of 1845. 

Many of us may have spent the last few days surrounded by a glut of chocolate eggs – large or small, hidden or not, the chocolate Easter egg has become a staple springtime treat.

This Sunday, March 21 2021 marks World Poetry Day. I have taken this opportunity to explore the John Murray Archive, digitised from the National Library of Scotland in AM’s Nineteenth Century Literary Society: The John Murray Publishing Archive.

Lena Richard was a trailblazer, and a savvy entrepreneur committed to the well-being and heritage of her community. She was also an exceptionally talented chef and educator, passionate about Creole cuisine.

“In a pandemic, babies don’t stop coming”, commented a midwife from Bradford Royal Infirmary in a 2020 BBC interview. There seems no better time than women’s history month to turn to narratives regarding this constant human experience in 1993 directive on “Birth” from the newly released Mass Observation Project Module II: 1990s.

“Self-control is strength. Thought is mastery. Calmness is power”. You would be forgiven for thinking these words were from a modern-day mindfulness expert, or perhaps an Instagram influencer. But no, they are found in the notes of an American prisoner of war from the Second World War, published in America in World War Two: Oral Histories and Personal Accounts.

Perhaps one of the most personal experiences LGBTQ+ people face is the decision to come out (or not) and, inevitably, each person has their own story to tell. Here are three of them from a 1995 directive titled All About Out.

Friday 12th February 2021 marks the 212th birthday of Charles Darwin, the father of evolution. Granted, it’s hardly a landmark number, but here at AM we’ll take any excuse to dive into one of our collections and let our inner history nerds run free. This blog comes with a warning, though – vegetarians, you might want to look away now…

In this blog, we consider how the history of human sexuality and gender identity can be explored through the diaries of a historic lesbian figure, Anne Lister (1791-1840). Published with Handwritten Text Recognition software, the manuscript material is now searchable for the first time.

Sex & Sexuality: Self-Expression, Community and Identity is the second module for this collection. It presents documents that focus on the lived sexual experiences of individuals, activism within the LGBTQ+ community, the criminalisation of sexuality between the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries as well as the devastating HIV/AIDs crisis among other major events within LGBTQ+ history.

In an episode of Russell T. Davies’s new drama, It’s a Sin, the protagonists, a group of young gay men, cluster around the television in their battered but cheerful London flat. Crammed onto the sofa, they have obviously anticipated this moment. But what they are watching isn’t 1986’s latest, now nostalgic, primetime hit, but a new government advertisement.

In this guest blog, Zachary Bodnar, Archivist, Congregational Library & Archives (CLA), discusses why Quartex was selected as the platform to support CLA’s digital future. Much has been said about how Quartex will change, and make better, the ways in which we present our digital resources to our users.