Annual Review 2007-2008 - The Royal Commonwealth Society

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Re-connecting with the past In 1993 the Royal Commonwealth Society Library Collections were moved from their home in Northumberland Avenue to Cambridge University Library. In December of last year a link for members was finally re-established. From the newly inaugurated Business Area in the Club, members can now access the catalogued library collections via a virtual link, enabling them to view digitised images and search descriptions of thousands of documents dating back through the history of the Empire and Commonwealth. The generous support of Sir Patrick Sheehy, who also originally headed the appeal which saved the RCS Library Collections for the nation, helped to create this remarkable addition to the Club. It is hoped that the new facility will enable members to re-connect with a crucial aspect of the Society’s past, and there are currently plans underway to encourage use of the link by school visiting parties and university students. For over a hundred years, the library collection was at the very heart of the Royal Commonwealth Society, taking up a large part of the Society’s headquarters and reflecting one of the core aims of the original Royal Colonial Institute “to establish a reading room and a library, in which recent and authentic intelligence upon colonial subjects may be constantly available”. It is hoped that the new virtual link will go some way towards restoring a connection with this important part of the Society's history. Although many members, old and new, are aware of the library collections’ move to Cambridge, little is known about the ongoing work which is being undertaken by a team of dedicated librarians to catalogue, preserve and improve access to the invaluable works. On these pages, RCS librarian Rachel Rowe describes the extensive, at times painstaking, but ultimately fascinating work being carried out at Cambridge University Library. It is hoped that this work, and the astounding array of material contained within the RCS collections, will not be forgotten by members for whom it affords a truly unique insight into a rich past. For further information regarding the Cambridge University Library Link or for assistance in accessing the collections, please contact Joanna Stephenson at joanna.stephenson@ rcsint.org or on 020 7766 9230 26 Annual Review 2007/08 The RCS Library: an ongoing journey From its foundation in 1868, the Society amassed a library on the British Empire, the Commonwealth and member countries, together with smaller collections on the empires of rival nations. The RCS Library today contains over 300,000 printed items, over 700 archival collections and over 800 photographic collections. The archival collections include manuscript diaries, correspondence, pictures, cine-films, maps, scrapbooks and newspaper cuttings and the photograph collections of over 100,000 images. Long-standing members will be familiar with the background to the library’s transfer to Cambridge University Library in 1993, and many will have contributed personally to the appeal, launched in 1992, to save the collection for the nation. In May 1993, 'The Appeal to acquire the RCS Library for the Nation', led by Sir Patrick Sheehy, handed a cheque for £3 million to the Society. Housing the Library was a significant concern. The collection required considerable space and staff attention and thoughts initially turned to London. However, Cambridge University Library soon emerged as the preferred choice. Cambridge had existing strengths in Imperial and Commonwealth Studies and, perhaps most importantly, had only recently added a spacious new extension. The move began on 26 July 1993 and lasted for a fortnight. The Society's then Librarian, Terry Barringer, records that 700 metres of bubble wrap were used along with 1,500 metres of heavy-duty sticky tape. 1 While the future of the collection is now assured, the move to Cambridge is by no means the end of the Library's story. Although new publications are no longer added in great numbers to the RCS Library, they are added to Cambridge University Library’s main collections. European publications, rare photographs and archival collections about Commonwealth countries form an important part of the Library's acquisitions each year and serve to complement the RCS collections. Individual donations also continue to form a very important part of the RCS Library. Since its move to Cambridge, the collections have been enriched by the donation of over 100 archival collections of photographs, manuscripts, correspondence, memoirs and published accounts. Details of these deposits may be found on the National Register of Archives, hosted by the National Archives at Kew, 2 as well as on Janus, the Cambridge archives portal. 3 The challenge facing Cambridge University Library is to preserve the RCS collections in the best possible conditions, whilst simultaneously delivering a range of services to promote the collections, to enhance public access to them and to facilitate and encourage academic research based on them. The University Library aims to achieve this by preserving the collections and identifying those in need of specialist conservation; by identifying, recording and researching the collections; by increasing public knowledge of the collections through retrospective cataloguing, co-operative projects, publicity, websites, exhibitions and publications; supporting users of the collections and providing an enquiry service; making publicly available copies of rare and unique materials – through microfilming, digitisation and other webbased education projects; and by acquiring small archival collections of historical 1 Barringer, T.A. (1994) The rise, fall and rise again of the Royal Commonwealth Society Library, African Research and Documentation, no. 64. (p.2 & pp.7-8) 2 http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/nra/default.asp 3 http://janus.lib.cam.ac.uk
The new Business Area, housing the link to the RCS Collections at Cambridge University Library importance which complement and enrich the RCS collections. The achievement of these aims requires the development of a highly motivated, knowledgeable and skilled staff but also a significant amount of fund-raising from external sources. To date, a huge amount has been achieved towards this ambitious vision. Nearly 40,000 online descriptions have been created for published material in the collection. This includes the internationally significant Cobham collection on Cyprus, rare books in all subject areas, monographs on Africa and Canada, periodical holdings, and, most recently, historically important runs of official reports, published in the colonies and Commonwealth. Records for all these items may be found in Cambridge University Library’s online catalogue, 4 and special web pages have been written to guide users as to how best to search for official publications. 5 With the exception of the recent project to catalogue official publications in the collection, all the cataloguing of published works was funded by an external grant from HEFCE, the Higher Education Funding Council for England. A breakthrough was made last year when the Trustees of the Appeal to Save the Royal Commonwealth Society Library for the Nation agreed to release the outstanding £600,000 from the residue of the appeal to fund work to increase access to the collections. Work over the course of 2007 has concentrated on cataloguing rare runs of colonial Blue Books and monographs and serials published by government bodies in Africa, Malaysia and Hong Kong. Yearbooks and Directories will follow shortly. Funding to increase access to the library’s rich pictorial and archival collections has come from a variety of bodies and a huge amount of desperately needed professional conservation work has been undertaken on the collections since they arrived in Cambridge. The photograph collection has been completely re-boxed in acid-free containers and individual images sleeved in clear inert plastic. Glass plates and lantern slides have been individually wrapped in acid-free paper, interleaved by inert foam and protectively boxed. Thousands of volumes of official reports have been cleaned by hand using smokesponges to remove wartime debris and thousands more items have been restored using a specially purchased museum book cleaner. Preservation of rare and unique items in the collections has also been enhanced by major microfilming projects. Funding from several sources has enabled the Library to provide readers with robust working copies of very delicate and fragile periodicals and pamphlets. Microfilm and digital copies of unique RCS archival sources relating to the British Empire and Africa have now been published, making them available to scholars around the world. 6 To give some idea of the growing scale of interest in the collections, in 1993 the RCS Library was used by 116 individual researchers and the RCS librarian, Terry Barringer, answered around 250 research enquiries received by letter and a further 280 by phone. Today annual visitor numbers hover around the 500 mark, but the significant growth in use has been in distance-enquiries. In the last year, the RCS Librarian has answered 1,388 email research enquiries and the trend is continuing upwards as more people learn about the collection. Visits to the RCS catalogues on the University of Cambridge’s Janus server 7 have increased from about 5,000 a month in June 2004 to 40,000 a month in June 2007, with the cumulated number of hits over that period topping the one million mark. None of the work which has been undertaken thus far to preserve, catalogue and enhance the RCS Library Collections would have been possible without the generous support of several external funding bodies and all that remains to be done will require continuing support. It is hoped that this article will have given you a taste of the challenges faced by Cambridge University Library today in meeting these aims. Rachel M Rowe, RCS Librarian February 2008 If you would like to learn more about ways you can help the RCS Library, please contact the RCS Librarian, Rachel Rowe at Cambridge University Library. Email: rcs@lib.cam.ac.uk or by post to Cambridge University Library, West Road, Cambridge, CB3 9DR. For more information on using the collections in Cambridge, please see the RCS Library’s web pages: http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/deptserv/rcs/index.html or phone 01223 333146. 4 http://ul-newton.lib.cam.ac.uk/ 5 http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/deptserv/rcs/rcs_op_project/index.html 6 Africa Through Western Eyes and Empire Online: http://www.ampltd.co.uk/search/search.aspx?mainsearch=royal+commonwealth+society 7 http://janus.lib.cam.ac.uk www.rcsint.org 27
Page 1 and 2: Creating ideas, building with visio
Page 3 and 4: Contents Royal Commonwealth Society
Page 5 and 6: Director-General’s Report My eigh
Page 7 and 8: Events, Conferences and Banqueting
Page 9 and 10: Building on the past, creating the
Page 11 and 12: Speakers at the RCS during 2007-200
Page 13 and 14: Another important development was t
Page 15 and 16: Can faith and politics meet on peac
Page 17 and 18: Migration: perception, policy and t
Page 19 and 20: Lobbying Parliament ‘Making an im
Page 21 and 22: experiences of the catastrophic eff
Page 23 and 24: “I think that you can grow the ec
Page 25 and 26: Throughout November and December 20
Page 27: The voice of youth Young people hav
Page 31 and 32: Write around the world The Commonwe
Page 33 and 34: network of tiny fibres and capillar
Page 35 and 36: An International Network Branch and
Page 37 and 38: The Caribbean In the Caribbean, the
Page 39 and 40: Supporting the work of the RCS The
Page 41 and 42: It is not only the volume, but also
Page 43 and 44: like me, they were helpless. It nev
Page 45 and 46: Dr David Suzuki, Co-founder of the
Page 47 and 48: Consolidated balance sheet As at 31
Page 49 and 50: Prince Edward Island (The Royal Com
Page 51 and 52: Nexus Strategic Partnerships is an

Annual Review 2007-2008 - The Royal Commonwealth Society

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