Progress Report 7

July 2000 - August 2000

Contents:

General Summary

Modules

• Archives
• Printed Sources
• Awareness
• IT

Action Points

Appendix 1: Project researcher's July Report

General Summary of Activity

We have spent this month arranging the surveys at the Modern Records Centre and Wolverhampton Archives. A great deal has also been achieved in the outreach module of the project with presentations to conference, training day, articles and a radio interview. The mailbase is continuing to grow and more details can be found on this in Roiyah's report. For printed sources, the collection description workshop was a great success and very well attended. Thanks very much to everyone who participated. The Steering Group met towards the end of the month and was able to approve the scope of the project. Minutes from this will soon be circulated and the scope put up on the web-site. IT has been another area of concentration with a successful meeting and discussion, among other items, of the technical processes involved in transferring information. At the meeting it was also agreed that CASBAH would be able to host the Black and Asian Archive Working Party web-site and a site for the Black and Asian Studies Association, from September, subject to confirmation from BAAWP and BASA.

Modules

Archives Thanks to Marika Sherwood, for suggesting and allowing RSB and SC to survey her research files. The information found was extremely useful, relating to the holdings of various repositories, collections and biographies of individuals and organisations of great interest to the Black and Asian History side of the module. A follow up afternoon is scheduled for August to continue noting details.

Preparatory work was completed at the Historic Manuscripts Commission for the Modern Records Centre, looking at the lists supplied by the MRC to the National Register of Archives. Potentially useful collections were noted for follow-up at the MRC and a great deal of useful work was achieved. The MRC's web-site and Archive Hub listings at http://www.archiveshub.ac.uk/ were also very helpful. This has speeded up the time-consuming input of information and has enabled the project to look in depth at a greater number of collections than would have otherwise been possible.

SC met Peter Evans at Wolverhampton Archives to discuss arrangements for the survey there. Thanks very much to Peter for his time and advice. The survey has been arranged for the 25th -28th September.

BBC South is involved in a project with Southampton Council to research the history of African-Caribbean migration to the South, and have offered to work in collaboration with CASBAH. Funding for the project was secured from the Home Office Diversity Partnerships Project.

The Archive survey strategy was approved at the Steering Group meeting with some additional points added to the plans. These will be circulated with the minutes of the Steering Group very shortly.

Lambeth Archive have sent a completed questionnaire of the collections held in the repository relating to Black and Asian History and this is in addition to the references found by the project in newspapers, settlement examinations etc.

Printed Sources and Audio-Visual The Collection Description workshop brought the Printed/AV module group together for the first time to discuss the techniques and problems of creating collection descriptions for printed sources. Items discussed included the level of description that could be achieved, whether the fields were suitable for AV descriptions and what extra information might be required to enable non-partners to create collection descriptions for inclusion on the database. Minutes and the findings of the workshop will be circulated soon.

The printed sources strategy was passed by the Steering Group and this will be circulated to partners with the Minutes of the meeting.

RSB is continuing to add to the mapping database for printed collections. One such library contacted us to ask to be involved in the project; this was the Race Relations Archive in Manchester which holds a great deal of printed material and ephemera. The Institute of Latin American Studies publication on 'Latin American and Caribbean Library Resources in the British Isles', will also be extremely useful.

Awareness Two presentations were given this month, one thanks to Amanda Sives, at the Society for Caribbean Studies conference at Birmingham University (RSB) and the other at Nottinghamshire Archives, Ethnic Minority Archives Training Day (SC). Both occasions offered an excellent opportunity to raise awareness of the project and encourage further involvement. David Ward will be speaking at the LUCAS Training Day on Ethnic Minority Archives at Liverpool University on October 11th

JE gave a radio interview about the project and its aims on BBC London Live. The project is also named as a useful source for Black History on a factsheet for BBC TV's 'Making History'.

A press release about the activities of the project was sent to Geraldine Charles, who will soon be publishing her book in the Society of Genealogists' series, 'My Ancestor was an Anglo-Indian'. This will, hopefully, be included in the book in a section on sources and further information.

RSB attended the most recent Black and Asian Archives Working Party meeting and gave a report on the progress of the project. The mailbase has been very busy with a number of new members and discussions or requests for help.

IT At the IT meeting a number of issues were discussed both concerning the web-site and the database. We are almost set to semi-automate the transfer process from Access to MySQL. The transfers are planned to go ahead on a monthly or two-monthly basis, allowing us the opportunity to check relationships and data for corruption before it goes up on the web. From September it will be possible for the team to update the web pages automatically rather than having to pass changes on to Frances each time. The display of search results was also discussed and it was agreed to adopt the draft for archives supplied by SC, subject to it being technically possible, a draft for printed sources will also be put together. Thanks very much to KA and FB for all their work.

The Steering Group considered the use of UNESCO and LCSH. From the research done so far it looks almost certain that LCSH will be chosen as the thesauri to use because it allows for cross-domain searching; is used by archives and libraries and has a structure in place that seems more suitable for our subject matter. However, it was agreed that a test of both thesauri, based on an archive and printed collection at the ICS would be a useful exercise. It was suggested that the results could be the basis of a report on the limitations of UNESCO for our purposes.

For the web-site, usage figures have been an extremely useful method for charting the number of hits made. To get an idea of increased use I have included the results from earlier months. May saw 483 requests averaging out at 16 per day. June saw 676 requests with an average of 23 per day. July had 2,367 requests with 77 requests per day. The majority of hits were from the UK, but visitors from Austria, the Netherlands, USA, Canada, Germany, Italy, Australia, Singapore and France were also listed. Reports are also available for referring URLs and among these the Black Information Network 'blink' figures very strongly as does the RSLP web-site, AIM25 and the Society for Caribbean Studies. Search engine hits include google and mirago. The next step is to register the page with the more mainstream search engines e.g. Yahoo and Infoseek.

Action Points

Surveys at Modern Records Centre and Wolverhampton to do Results of TUC and LMA surveys to send back

Write up of Printed / AV Sources Collection Description Workshop Printed/AV sources search results format to draft Updates to web page to be passed on to FB

Reports on test database to be compiled Fields on web to be finalised for end of August

Appendix 1: RSB July Report

In the last month the TUC survey has been completed, Marika Sherwood's archive has been partly examined, and the preliminary work for the MRC survey has been started. Work has also continued with the LMA survey and the CAB researchers and universities databases.

The move to increase dialogue with members of our mailbase continues. This month there has been a number of conversations, events posted and requests for information made.

The work on the database for researchers and academic institutions has been done in preparation for our research student. The database will list researchers, departments and centres and is based on a recent paper by Jean Besson on the development of Caribbean Studies. The information on the Caribbean Studies side is extensive but more work will have to be done on the Black and Asian areas.

There are several forthcoming conferences related to our areas of interest. I have made steps to attend two conferences and have been given permission to work alongside the registration desk promoting Casbah and getting participants to fill out a questionnaire so that they can be added to our database. Casbah leaflets/ A4 promotionals will also be included in the conference pack.

Aims for month of August:

Activities: The MRC survey Preparation for the Wolverhampton survey

Inputting: The LMA survey has to be completed and reported on The MRC and Wolverhampton surveys have to be inputted Marika Sherwood's material to be inputted Andrew Lewis material to be inputted

Preparations for new academic year: Seminar series to be discussed Presentations to student archivists and librarians must be scheduled Researchers' questionnaire to be created Casbah A4 promotional for conference packs Press releases/articles to be sent out to university newsletters