Concert programmes are an increasingly important source to those studying the history of musical performance and concert life, providing rich sociological and musicological context. Though there are currently projects in place to improve access to these vital documents, the arrangement of programmes has so far escaped in-depth study. Therefore…[Read more]

A review of the original Sims game and how fans are attempting to preserve the game and its assets through digital archives and other participatory practices. Written for the Intensive: Cult Media Review section of Intensities: The Journal of Cult Media.

The author examines a choice of the conceptualisations of the ‘musical work’ within the domain of music in the context of bibliographical control and information retrieval. The study uses the principles of domain analysis proposed by Hjorland (Hjorland 2002) as a framework. The scope is wide and does not claim to be comprehensive. The phi…[Read more]

This paper engages with the existing body of archival literature that addresses what has been termed “documentary art” in order to address questions regarding the treatment of visual materials in archival practice and theory. It will also borrow and apply theories from the disciplines of material culture studies and art history in order to for…[Read more]

Through a discussion of the materiality of photographic documents and the inherent qualities of digital objects, this article examines the viability of digitization as a method of archival photographic preservation. By exploring notions of surrogacy, originality, and aura, the author presents and deconstructs the popular argument that digital…[Read more]

Abstract What is a Health Library? What categories need to be met so that a library can be referred to as a Health Library, and not just a library with health material? A literature review was carried out, looking at the history of health libraries in the UK, various organisations linked to those, the staff that work in them, the services they…[Read more]

This study aimed to examine in depth a newly-built modern public library to gain insight into attitudes to and perceptions of a modern library space in 2014. It used as a starting point a previous study carried out in 2005 and published by Black (2011) which gathered Mass Observation Archive data on public perceptions of public library buildings…[Read more]

Powerpoint slides for a lecture on Area Studies, given for the #cityLIS Information Domains module (#INM307), 2015-16 cohort.

The study sets out to examine in detail a Carnegie Shadowing Group in a large urban comprehensive school, questioning what the impact may be of participation in such a group. This piece of action research takes place in the context of a wider literature-based enquiry into the nature and benefits of reading for pleasure and what may motivate young…[Read more]

Steven Spielberg’s 2002 Minority Report narrates two interrelated stories. The micro
story concerns a family, a kidnapped son, the ensuing trauma, and the work of mourning that
follows. The macro story concerns criminal justice, social stability, and hermeneutics at the level
of the nation state. The problem for both stories is ontological a…[Read more]

This paper discusses Pacific Rim as a film deeply concerned with birth, in particular the horror of birth, and the process by which birth is assimilated. The film may then be seen as part of an unbroken commentary on nuclear
weapons insofar as it is our technological, capitalistic, and nuclear capability that allows
us to close the “breach” and…[Read more]

The purpose of this dissertation was to investigate, firstly, the availability of LGBTQ materials in public high school libraries in the U.S. state of North Carolina and, secondly, how LGBTQ students use these materials. The availability of LGBTQ materials was researched via querying schools’ remotely accessible OPACs for both checklists and r…[Read more]

Kismet may not be the first Muslim superhero, but he may be the first worthy of that title. Some buffoonish characters preceded him, and other orientalist caricatures appeared on earlier comics pages, but without either superpowers or other key elements of the genre. This month (March 2014), on the seventieth anniversary of his first appearance,…[Read more]

Linked Data techniques were applied to data about the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) projects, in order to retrieve information about the production and use of digital data by projects relating to the Ancient World [poster presentation].

This paper examines Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake in relation to environmental justice. The best-selling first novel in Atwood’s Maddaddam Trilogy, Oryx and Crake was widely hailed for its nightmarish depiction of a post-apocalyptic, bioengineered future. The major themes of the novel mirror key themes of the environmental justice movement tod…[Read more]

A multidisciplinary approach is employed to study informational processes that may occur on subliminal physical (quantum) and subliminal cognitive (unconscious) levels, with a focus on assessing how these processes may be influenced by and in turn exert influence on human concepts and perceptions of information and reality. The unconscious is…[Read more]

This work presents a brief overview on the history of Web archiving projects in some English speaking countries, paying particular attention to the development and main problems faced by the UK Web Archive Consortium (UKWAC) and UK Web Archive partnership in Britain. It highlights, particularly, the changeable nature of Web pages through constant…[Read more]

This article raises questions about the aesthetics of scale as they appear relative to genetically modified organisms in science fiction and especially in Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Windup Girl (2009). Bacigalupi makes the unusual choice of representing GMOs largely through science fictional tropes of automatism rather than the grotesque. Because of t…[Read more]

This essay considers Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (1952) from the standpoint of its influential depiction of African Americans as automata. Through Ellison’s other writings, including his review of Gunnar Myrdal’s An American Dilemma (1944) and his unpublished drafts of Invisible Man, the essay links the political concerns of the novel with…[Read more]