Exhibition review: Celebrating art and music: the SOAS collections at the Brunei Gallery

Exhibitions are a great way for libraries and organisations to highlight the strength of their collections through a creative narrative and relaxed environment. Exhibitions are also a great way to for librarians to increase public access to the collections. 

In April, the Brunei Gallery opened its Centenary Exhibition, 'Celebrating art and music: the SOAS collections'. This exhibition explores visual arts and music of Asia, Africa and the Middle East through the rich history of collections at SOAS, with a combination of manuscripts, books, painting, photographs, 3D objects and audio-visual display. 

I got my ticket for the official launch of the exhibition and headed of the gallery on May 3rd and I was amazed by what I saw on display. Curator Anna Contadini introduced the exhibition with Nigerian artist Sokari Douglas Camp's modern welded steel sculptures. I loved her sculpture of a woman blowing kisses titled "Kissss Me" because it resembled the colour of a red lipstick. I also smiled at her stand alone sculpture of a mother, father and daughter dancing probably at a church as they each wore 'Jesus loves me' slogans. 

The exhibition continued through North African and the Middle East. Contadini stated that although some instruments were normally played by men during the Ottoman Period, women were depicted playing flutes and santurs. It was great to see this within the exhibition. The displays slowly changed toward Asian artworks with a long 17th-century Japanese scroll depicting a procession of Korean Ambassadors on horseback. This recently restored piece was beautiful and full of vibrant colours.  

We then encountered a set of 20th-century drums, metallophone, xylophone and gongs from across South-east Asia as the exhibition moved downstairs. To my surprise, we were led into a great live musical performance of a large Thai gong circle, that was also on display. Afterwards, our performer explained the significance these instruments played in the development of ceremonial music and the variety of set play variations that were introduced across the region. The gongs continuing to playing in the background really set the scene for the rest of the exhibition. 

I highly recommend you viewing the pioneering work of South Asian Ethnomusicologist Arnold Adriaan Bake; listening to the recording made from a Tibetan manuscript record of chants; photography from Mustang by Christoph von Furer-Haimendorf and looking at the LP album covers of a collection of songs from the Chinese Cultural Revolution. The exhibition closes on June 24th.

My main take away from the exhibition and talk by Contadini was the emphases she placed on the collections being central and reflective of the scholarly engagements at SOAS. From students playing many of the instruments on display and the new research analysis of music from art. 

Another perk about attending this exhibition opening evening was discounted sale of the accompanying exhibition catalogues. I took full advance of the 50% off to acquire the catalogue for my library collections. Unfortunately, this offer has now passed but you can pick up your copy of Celebrating art and music: the SOAS collections edited by Anna Contadini here. 

'Printing and the Mind: Seventeenth-Century Transformations' Archive Evening

Straight after work on April 24th, I went to the Stationers' Company Annual Archive Evening. This year they held a forum on 'Printing and the Mind: Seventeenth-Century Transformations' in combination with an exhibition in association with Cambridge University Library.

The formal talk of the evening began with Liverymen and President of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain, Gordon Johnson. He emphasised the importance of heritage assets been conserved and accessible and the great expansion of the history of the book in business and intellectual terms. He also made key announcements of the Stationers' Company effects in doing this, including a new digital publication of the Stationers' Company Archive with Adam Matthew Digital. 'Literary Print Culture: The Stationers' Company Archive, 1554-1984" is a valuable resource to explore the history of the book trade from 1554 to the 20th century. Also, a there is new Archives and Library facility due to open in November 2017 back in the Stationer's Hall.

Johnson followed up by introducing co-chair, Ian Gadd, book historian and Professor of English Literature at Bath Spa University. He reiterated the need for organisations to celebrate achievements in scholarly publishing before introducing our two speakers. Mr Scott Mandelbrote, Perne Librarian of Peterhouse, Cambridge, outlined the circumstances of learned printing presses predominating in London at the end of the 16th century. For example, problems in the cost of acquiring scholarly books mostly printed in Europe and the time taken for scholars to make language translations to print. 

Dr Freyja Cox Jensen, a lecturer at Exeter University, followed by giving an intriguing speech highlighting the English cultural history of classical learning. Once exclusive to rich predominantly white men, classical learning began to spread after 1711. To compete with European stationers, who at the time were at the forefront of scholarly publication, English stationers increased the quantity of printing with the development of new typefaces and metal engraved illustrations. This caused a reduction in book price as more scholars were able to purchase their own copies. I found it quite fascinating that the introduction of English language translations during the mid-17th century encouraged a rise in literacy as printing moved away for the limited knowledge of Latin. 

It was quite clear that classical learning and the development of printing technology greatly influences present day in terms of culture and thinking. Furthermore, its was quite interesting to know that as a few individuals tried to stop these new contributions to English literature, they had to learn to cope with the revolution of printing technology that has taken us into the digital age. Nonetheless, the history of university printing presses like Oxford and Cambridge through this revolution is important to conserve to understand how far we have come. 

After the talk and a brilliant spread of nibbles and refreshments, I took the opportunity to look around the exhibition. Curated by Liam Sims of Cambridge University, the exhibition displayed various manuscripts including Robert Hooke's Micrographia (1665), Joseph Moxon's Mechanik Exercises (1682) covering all aspects of printing and Thomas Sprat's History of the Royal Society (1667) opened on the beautiful frontispiece of Charles II being crowned surrounded by many scientific instruments. It was also wonderful to see the intricate illustration of the opening page of the Stationers' Company charter issued by Charles II on display. 

The exhibition also highlighted new technologies for librarians and researchers from Cambridge University. For example, Cambridge Core, an academic platform bringing together 30,000+ eBooks and 360 journals in one platform. Also, Cambridge Archive Editions, a digitised research material of 1000 volumes of government records available in MARC format such as 'America and Great Britain: Diplomatic Relations, 1775-1815'. I took the opportunity to speak with presenters about the one-time fee for perpetual access available to institutions.
  

Furthermore, the exhibition showcased the important work of conservators such as the National Conservation Service whose repaired volume of 'Liber A' from the Stationer's Archive was on display. I met the Honorary Librarian, Andrea Cameron who introduced everyone to the Stationer's Foundation Library Fund, for the conservation and preservation of books and manuscripts in the Stationers' Company Library and Archives. If you would like to contribute to the restoration of the books you see below join-in the Support-A-Book scheme. 


To read more about the book trade check out these new titles from Palgrave Macmillan's New directions of Book History series:

  

Visit to V&A Archives

Joining mailing lists such a APML is a great way to find out about upcoming events and tour. My most recent tour was of the Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A) Archives at Blythe House located in Olympia. Initially the Head Office of the Post Office Bank in 1900s, the grand building was taken over by the V&A, British Museum and the Science Museum in the 1950s. With the addition of a study room, storage facilities and Textiles Room, Blythe House became known as the building to house the archives and collections of these 3 institutions. 

At the start of the visit, Christopher Marsden, Head Archivist of the V&A Archives printed the picture of the development of the V&A archives. With focus on design education in 1830s, mainly British art and design industry from 1920s and the Great Exhibition of 1982 the importance of archives and record keeping policy came into play. It became necessary to record correspondence to matching objects in the V&A collection in nominal files and information about the V&A building design itself. Logbook of materials, photographs also became an important source to track the history of and locate objects.   

The collection has continued to grow in areas of children's literature books such as Beatrix Potter, theatre performance, fashion and textiles. It now comprising of 4 units: 

·         the Archive of Art and Design

·         the Beatrix Potter Collections

·         the V&A Archive

·         the V&A Theatre and Performance Archive

Open 4 times a week the V&A Archives is available for consultation by appointment only. It is heavily used by enthusiasts, students and academics. I definitely enjoyed seeing the collections of art and design related to British and British based companies, some still in business today. Some of the material on show was the Ideal home photograph album, designs from Garrard silverware and House of Worth items. 

I would encourage others to visit these archives to learn more about specialist collections such as art and design. You can see a few pictures of the visit below. 

N.B. Permission was granted to take photography on this visit. 

Giving a tour of Kew Gardens Library, Art and Archives

In November, me and the other graduate trainee at Kew carried out a tour for some graduate trainees from Reading University. Unfortunately, I was unable to go to a reciprocal visit, so I really wanted to impress with a nice display of our rare books collection and illustrations.

The day itinerary mainly consisted of:

Meet & Greet

Intro to Library and Archives Graduate Trainees

Tour of the Library, Art and Archives

Lunch

Display presentation

Some of the material on display form the oldest part of our rare books collections within the library dating back to the 12-14th century. I also decided it was a good idea to put books that I had catalogued on display also. The book with the red card inside is featured on my new blog post called the The Living Fossil

Next month, I will be shadowing and giving a tour of students and interns. So I am really looking forward to doing more tours.

Visit to London Library

Having visited the London Library, I realise that I appreciate their collection policy of only acquiring books that will be central to their collection thus never disposing of anything. As a form of preservation and unique identification a lot of books are covered and labelled with a London Library book stamp.

Other unique features of the library is that out of the million books it has 97% are on open access either in the 1890's wing containing art and humanities books or literature session majority in English and some foreign languages. Winding around this maze it is easy to see the thought given to keep the library as it once was by ensuring the writers room has no electronic devices so have complete silence. However, also new editions such as T.S Elliot house for the art collection and The Times Room.


Taking the time to speak to the tour guide, it was great to find out why so many librarian aspire to work there. The majority of head librarians and /or cataloguers are either fluently bilingual or trilingual. You can imagine the step competition to be able to speak and write up to three languages. There are also some interesting projects such as retrospective cataloguing of the holdings of the times newspapers which is a very sort after skill.

I will be interesting to visit again just to see the art room once more. The blue lights are definitely my favourite part of the library.

Not your ordinary music library

I always thought that a "music library" was just a place to store all your music on Itunes, but I definitely got a different idea of a term, while visiting Surrey Performing Arts Library for "CILIP in Surrey" event.

After trekking through the beautiful scenery of Denbies Vineyard in pouring rain, me and my colleague arrived at the library which houses a large collection of music, dance, theatre, and cinema in print and digital format.

With over 4000 play sets and 6000 music sets in rolling stacks from Christmas carols, modern plays and pantomimes, available in different languages with individual scores for every part of an orchestra it is no wonder it is pretty large. I think one of the things that shocked me the most that even the book collections included notes on the techniques used to not only play the music but to the way in which a theatre set can be made and drama costumes can be designed.

The collections are classified and catalogued with a combination of ANSCR and Dewey Decimal Classification System and there has a catalogue available through Surrey Libraries. When you have one of the last remaining music sets from famous artists within your collection, you really wouldn't dream to make that so easily accessible. However, with a 6 months reservations period, items can be on loaned to orchestras, choirs, schools etc for 2-3 months at a time. 

This was astonishing to me and a lot of librarians at the talk, because with a reduction in print-based material, just how do you deal with loss or damage? You can imagine that having an item on loan for 3 months that it isn't going to come back your library in one piece, especially if the user doesn't have proper handling training.

I have to say that I was pleased to know that the performing arts library didn't have to bear the brunt of this. Within its collection policy, anything can be loaned without charge but any damaged or lost items would have to be bought and replaced by the user. When a library has shrinking budgets, this is an effective method. The library also has a stock replenishment system that for any play set, score etc. there are always multiple copies e.g. one copy for every member of an orchestra for multiple requests.   

I thoroughly enjoyed learning about this library and it specialist collection.