Special Collections blog

Newspaper digitisation project - The Gryphon

Fri, 15 Feb 2013 09:18:00 +0000

Up until February the main bulk of the student newspaper project involved scanning the weekly Union News from the 1960s. Digitising papers from the entire decade has now been completed, with each issue formatted into a neat PDF searchable document, which will ultimately end up on the Digital Library.

Following the 1960s project, attention has turned to The Gryphon - the student newspaper published from 1897 until 1946, 5 or 6 times a year.

The Gryphon looks very different to Union News, on thicker paper in a smaller, journal format. As you can see there is no big headline or front page to The Gryphon - instead each booklet has a decorative front and back cover, with various colours and styles depending on the volume.

The bright and elaborate cover is usually the only flash of colour which appears throughout The Gryphon; even black and white photos are a rarity in the early volumes. Sketches and monochrome prints are more common - used in the advertisements and to accompany some of the articles. In many issues the double page spread in the centre also contains a hand drawn cartoon, often caricaturing a professor or lecturer.

Of the 50 years of The Gryphon, there is a focus to digitise issues from the World War I and II years - starting at 1914 in preparation for the WWI centenary next year. Many of the issues from this period contain a booklet of 'military service', listing staff and students alphabetically who served in the War. A few loose supplements of photographs have also been found, depicting portraits of lost or killed soldiers.

Other regular features of the Gryphon from 1914-1920 include changes in staff, editorial notes and departmental notes - reporting on news from academic departments and societies. Extracts from manuscripts, poems and plays are also printed in the newspaper, as well as letters, reviews and articles discussing student life and sport fixtures.

The Classics of Mountains and Seas

Tue, 29 Jan 2013 15:40:00 +0000

As part of the reception team at Special Collections, responding to visitor enquiries enables a wide range of different material to cross my path each day, reflecting the diversity of the holdings at Leeds. It is noticeable when a library user requests something from an unfamiliar or seldom-visited part of the stacks.

The Royal Asiatic Society's collection of Chinese books is an extensive resource, but not our most frequent source of visitor requests. So I was inclined to browse an item from this collection once it had been issued and returned, not least because of its interesting binding.

Composed of four separate string-bound sections within a hard cover, I discovered the book to contain many fantastical drawings of creatures great and small, rendered in a delicate, expressive linear style.

As the department had recently been involved in presenting displays about illustrated books via the Stanley and Audrey Burton Gallery, and in the Special Collections display cases, I thought my colleagues might be interested to hear about the item.

A little investigation via the library catalogue, and then online, revealed the book to be Shan Hai Jing, which translates as The Classic of Mountains and Seas. A collection of mythology, geography and culture produced by many authors and compiled over centuries, the book provides a wide-ranging account of pre-Qin China. Versions of the text have existed since the4th Century BC, with its final form being reached by the time of early Han Dynasty, in the 3rd Century AD.

As well as the item in Special Collections, the library also has a copy of a translation of the text, by Anne Birrell, in the Brotherton Library's main collection.

The book describes landscapes, mythological stories, creatures, customs, early medicine and culture in over a hundred small states, covering a vast area of China. These stories have become folk classics, and the inspiration for much subsequent literature.

Creating the Newspaper

Fri, 16 Nov 2012 11:02:00 +0000

An interesting article was found from 1964, showing how each issue of Union News was created. Appearing in Issue 250 in late January, the following images give an insight into the editing and publishing process, without the technological advances that we have today.

Take a look at the images to see how the student newspaper was created nearly 50 years ago.

Creating an article/issue

The text in articles was typed and redrafted on a type writer and then photos were added after being developed in the Union dark room. Article assembly was done by hand and could take anything from 1 hour to a whole night - clearly a process which took much longer than the digital process we have today.

Printing

When the printers received a copy of the newspaper, the 'Linotype operator' inputs the information (right hand picture) which makes up pages 'on the stone'. This then runs off the presses to produce the final product (left hand photo).

Sales returns

The final pictures show students selling Union News and counting up the sales returns - something which doesn't happen today with the free copies of Leeds Student readily available in the Union.

In 2012 there are clear advances in terms of newspaper production - with articles typed on the computer, photos captured and uploaded in seconds, and correspondence with the printers all done digitally. As of 2009 issues of Leeds Student are available online in digital format - also making the archiving process easier and quicker.

Meet Helga

Fri, 02 Nov 2012 10:29:00 +0000

After the student newspaper volumes have been prepared and catalogued they are ready for digitisation! This takes place in the digitisation suite in Special Collections, which has a variety of different scanners and cameras.

The scanners in the suite come in all sorts of shapes and sizes and are used for different purposes. The 'edge' scanner is used mainly for digitising course readings, as it scans quickly and is good for OCR reading (which enables scanned images to be electronically searched). Next is the photo scanner, which can create scans of 1200 dpi (dots per inch) - double the dpi of the 'edge' scanner - so is used to scan flat photos and negatives, including glass plate negatives. Other scanners include the sheet feed scanner for bulk scanning of non fragile objects, and 'Helga', which is used to scan the newspapers.

There is also a 'phase 1 medium format digital SLR' camera which at 60 megapixels can produce amazing quality photographs of fragile objects and texts. The camera is held above the object in a copy stand with 2 large LED lights to illuminate the item - in 'cold' light to prevent heat and UV damage which would come from ordinary lights.

So as I mentioned, the basis of my work on the newspapers is done on Helga, the largest scanner in the suite. My first reaction to Helga was that she looked like something from Dr Who, as she is over 2 meters tall and makes sounds like a plane taking off! Despite this, the scanner can create full colour images at 600 dpi and is used primarily for large texts - so is perfect for the newspapers which open out to A2 size pages.

The process of scanning each page takes about a minute - it takes maybe 20 seconds to scan a double page spread, and then a bit of extra time to trim and crop the image. The images are then saved in a bundle, making up each separate issue of the paper.

Since I have started digitisation (almost) everything has run smoothly, enabling 5 years worth of newspapers to be digitised. The only issue is that the full colour images are huge - one saved image is about 500,000 KB - taking up the same space as about 125 songs. Consequently the drive on Helga keeps filling up, though with a bit of rearranging and relocating files, space has been cleared for the many more images to come. Phew.

An Introduction to the Student Newspaper

Fri, 19 Oct 2012 09:29:00 +0100

Here in Special Collections we have a large store of the Student Newspaper, with issues dating from the 1890s to the present day. Over the years both the appearance and name of the newspaper has changed; it started life as The Gryphon until 1946 when it became Union News, before changing again in 1970 to the more modern looking and familiar Leeds Student. As an intern I am involved in the digitisation of this collection, so it will be available for everybody at the University to view in the new Digital Library that is being constructed.

As I approach the half way point of semester one the project is in full swing, which has started with newspaper preparation. I spent the first few weeks of term delving into the stacks, to find any duplicates of the bound volumes of newspapers that are stored in the Reading Room. Boxes of loose newspapers have been identified, which may be easier to scan because the text is not hidden in the spine of a bound volume.

I have also been cataloguing the condition of the newspapers, as some of the copies are very fragile and potentially unsuitable for scanning. An extreme amount of care has to be taken when handling the newspapers. Clean hands are vital and being slightly too forceful when turning the pages can tear the brittle paper.

To begin with I'm going to focus on the digitisation of Union News from the 1960s, and then will move on to scanning The Gryphon from the war years, in time for the WWI centenary in 2014.

Poetry and Audience

Mon, 08 Oct 2012 09:22:00 +0100

Emily Timms is the Undergraduate Research Scholar for the School of English, supervised by Professor John Whale. She was really taken with the idea of examining Leeds student poetryand found outaboutPoetry and Audience magazine, where student poetry is published alongside external poets.

"I discovered that the Brotherton Library Special Collections have a 'Leeds Poetry, 1950-1980' archive, which has the most complete collection of Poetry and Audience hence I have been able to centre my scholarship research exclusively on the journal. The collection has enabled me to do a comprehensive survey of Poetry and Audience and the supporting materials designed by the Special Collections were invaluable in helping me focus and orientate my research. By utilising Special Collection's comprehensive archive of Poetry and Audience volumes, anthologies, Gregory Fellow papers and literary correspondence, I have been tracing Leeds student poetic and aesthetic developments from 1950 to 1980, with fascinating results which have inspired my third year dissertation.

I have also been inspired to contribute to the archive by conducting interviews with various alumni poets and academics, with the aim of creating digitised audio testimonies about Poetry and Audience, student writing and the creative atmosphere of the University itself, which is proving to be very exciting!".

Thanks to Emily for sharing her experience with us.

All hands on deck

Thu, 27 Sep 2012 12:42:00 +0100

The end of "action week" doesn't mean all the action stops in Special Collections, just that there are more priorities to juggle, now that we have a busy reading room open to researchers.

As some projects draw to a close, others just begin - and we will use this space to give updates and share our finds. All the behind-the-scenes work continues with new acquisitions coming through the doorand members of the team working to improve access to collections (old and new).

Term time brings with it lots of specific work for our team and a busy period.Tutors book our spaces for lectures and seminars - not just as aphysical space but as somewhere for studentsto engage with items from our collections as part of their learning.Some tutors know exactly what they want to consultin a session, whereas others ask members of our team to join them to give"show and tell" segments about items of our choice.We are aided by knowing the general subject area of interest and using our catalogues and databases, but otherwise we are left to use our imaginations when making selections.It is always rewarding to hear students say they have engaged with the collections in these sessions- often a first stepto what becomesindependent research in the reading room.

Anyone who wants to book the Brotherton room for a teaching session or for group study, using material from Special Collections, should contact us.

The thrill and utility of Special Collections

Mon, 10 Sep 2012 14:56:00 +0100

Owen Lowery is a PHD researcher at the University of Bolton and has been consulting the papers of the poet Keith Douglas over his last four years of research at Special Collections:

"Keith Douglas, who served in Europe and in the deserts of North Africa, and who was killed at the age of twenty-four, three days after the D Day landings, is of particular interest so far as my PhD research is concerned because of his development of what he termed 'extrospective' poetry, that is, poetry based on the observation of external details.

Given the visual quality of much of Douglas's poetry, the ability to see examples of his paintings and drawings has proved to be particularly valuable. I have been able to trace his development through school reports and his own letters, a development which culminates all too early, in the physical proofs of his poems. Also vital to my research thus far has been the evidence of Douglas's own reading, of which Special Collections contains one hundred and four examples, allowing a considerable degree of insight into at least some of the voices by which Douglas's poetic development may well have been influenced.

The practical importance of Special Collections material relating to Keith Douglas goes hand-in-hand with the sheer pleasure, the thrill of having been so close to manuscripts thatthe man who has been so important to my work for so long has held in his own hands."

Thanks to Owen for sharing his Special Collections experience.

Ready for some action

Fri, 31 Aug 2012 12:15:00 +0100

Special Collections closed to the public last week for five days of "lifting, shifting and sorting".

The primary aim was to unpack 120 boxes of cookery books and pamphlets, sort them into alphabetical order, and relocate them to the stacks. It was also a chance for us to tackle other (unseen)collections that were still in boxes or on shelves.

In any work environmentthere are restrictions on time and resources - in the case of an archive this meansthere's never enough people to do the sorting and no room in which to carry it out. The important upshot is that once we do that, the cataloguing can begin, and the resourcesbecome accessible to everyone - our users will at last be able to enjoy such titles as Your Long Suffering Stomach and The Compleat Angler's Wife.

The role of an archive is to preserve but also to open up collections to people, soit's ironic that the only way to achieve this is to close. However, closing meant we could use the reading-room space to unpack and lay out all the books, check their condition and put them into alphabetical order on trolleys. They wouldthenbe wheeled into the stacks and physically put back on the shelves.With this in mind, we rolled up our sleeves, and- with reinforcements, plenty of refreshments, a plan and a task master - we were ready for action.

DayOne was daunting, but there is also something magical and exciting about the unopened box. The mystery within is what draws us to this environment, along with a need or desire to impose some order onto chaos. We often hear of the lone archivist or researcher, after spending hours poring over papers and looking through boxes, discovering some lost or rare document. In reality, for those of us who work here, it all boils down to lifting, shifting and sorting.

Using Special Collections: the art of longevity

Mon, 20 Aug 2012 10:22:00 +0100

Katrina's Leeds-funded project is mentored by Iona McCleery and Alex Bamji and feeds into their You Are What You Ate project. Katrina has been using Special Collections in her research over the summer and shares her experience with us.

"My scholarship is based on the fantastic Cookery Collection (part of the Brotherton Collection). I specifically chose to explore its 17th-century recipe books and manuals because of the wide availability of brilliant sources. Reading the recipe books, I decided to focus on the recipes to counter melancholy, exploring the link between our food and mood - something which still preoccupies us today. I've contributed to the You Are What You Ate website and started an early modern recipes blog to publicise my research.

"My favourite find was Edmund Gayton's The Art of Longevity (1659). Gayton studied medicine at Oxford and dabbled in poetry. His book provides practical advice on qualities of foods and is written entirely in heroic couplets:

'Have you no courage?

At any time revive your soul with Borage...

Sirrup of Borage will make sad men glad

And the same sirrup doth restore the mad'

"I particularly liked this piece as it bridged the gap between my scholarship with the School of History and my English degree, demonstrating the interdisciplinary nature of research. At first I was quite daunted by doing research, and by using Special Collections, but I soon got into it: everyone's been really helpful and I've learnt so much in just six weeks. Next year I'm continuing my research in the Cookery Collection, working on 17th-century recipes to safeguard pregnancy."

Good luck to Katrina in her research - we look forward to seeing her back in the reading room sometime soon.

If like Katrina your research has been inspired by using Special Collections and you would like to share your story, get in touch with Joanne Fitton.