Annual Report 2007-8 - The British School at Rome

L IBRARY AND A RCHIVEAll Library and Archive publications, exhibitions, specialprojects and events are funded externally, and fundraisingis now one of the Librarian’s main activities. Asreported previously, 2006–7 was a very successful year inthis respect, also thanks to close collaboration between JillPellew, Chair of Development, and the Librarian. It is apleasure to report on the results of the past year.The second project funded by the Getty Foundation tocatalogue and organise part of the J.B. Ward-Perkinsphotographic collection (some 15,000 images) in the BSRPhotographic Archive began in September 2007. All theimages will also be digitised and made available on theinternet. Three sections have been selected and thecataloguing of the 5,450 images of archaeological sites inLibya is now complete. We are collaborating with ProfessorCharlotte Roueché, King’s College, London, and theUniversity of Chapel Hill on their project to publish theInscriptions of Roman Cyrenaica (IRC) on the web, whichwill be linked to our photographs. The first IRC workshopwas held at the BSR in February 2008 and the project waspresented to Italian, American and Polish archaeologicalmissions working in Libya. The response was enthusiastic.Professor Roueché has also secured funding to publishthe BSR publication Inscriptions of Roman Tripolitania on theweb, which will also be linked to our photographs. Thisforms part of a collaborative project between the Centre forComputing in the Humanities at King’s College, London,and New York University, who were among the first toreceive a new Transatlantic Digitization Collaboration Grantawarded by the National Endowment for the Humanitiesand the Joint Information Systems Committee — the BSRArchive will be a partner in this project.Work has now begun on the photographs relating to wardamage and the South Etruria Survey. Ward-Perkins, asLieutenant-Colonel in the British army, led the Sub-Commission of the Allied Government for Monuments andFine Arts, set up to document damage to monumentscaused by bombing throughout Italy during World War II,and he secured a set of 1,250 photographs for the BSR. TheSouth Etruria Survey, the first archaeological survey in Italy,carried out by Ward-Perkins in the 1950s and 60s, isrecorded in over 8,000 photographs and continued ThomasAshby’s pioneering study of the topography andarchaeology of the Roman Campagna.The John R. Murray Charitable Trust awarded theLibrary a very generous grant for the restoration andconservation of volumes in the Rare Book collection and tocomplete the restoration of Thomas Ashby’s photographalbums. This year, three of the remaining ten photographalbums have been restored by Fotocartarestauri in SanCasciano dei Bagni near Siena, who specialise in theconservation of photographs. Work on the Rare Bookcollection by our conservator, Luigina Antonazzo ofLaboratorio Aelle, has progressed very successfully, and therefurbishing of 389 volumes has been carried out this year.We have reported on the progress of our retrospectiveconversion project for many years, and a final fundraisingeffort is needed to complete this, as there are now only threesections left to catalogue. This year we have completed theItalian medieval and Renaissance history section, and the4,000 records are now available on the URBS catalogue.Work has begun on the section that includes ecclesiasticaland non-Italian history. Beatrice Gelosia, Deputy Librarian,has completed cataloguing all periodicals, both current and‘deceased’ (a total of 1,150 titles) onto the URBS system, aswell as all articles from PBSR from vol. 1 to the latest issue.Prof. David Marshall, University of Melbourne, securedfunding from the Australian Research Council for a onemonthpilot project successfully completed in January 2008.Caterina Sciacca, a postgraduate student from Melbourne,studied the Library’s 112 miscellaneous prints and engravings(sixteenth–nineteenth centuries) from the Thomas Ashbycollection which were then added to the URBS catalogue bythe Deputy Librarian and digitised by the Centro diFotoriproduzione, Legatoria e Restauro degli Archivi di Stato.These images will soon be available on the internet.35