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Discoveries at the IWM Discovery Centre

tonypilmer2 Comments

Last week I joined the excellent Local Studies Group South/APML tour of the new Discover History Centre (aka library) at the Imperial War Museum London. I won’t give a full description of the excellent work they do at the IWM because they have agreed to do another tour in 2014 (ADVERT – to express an interest in the tour, please e-mail tony.pilmer@tiscali.co.uk – END OF ADVERT) – so I’ll just say a couple of things that really interested me.

Sadly, the old round reading room has gone (though it does mean they don’t have to carry all those books up those stairs!) – instead they have an inner and outer reading room. The concept is great – they want to entice casual visitors into the outer space so they can find out more about anything that interests them. The can do this through looking the general books on the shelves and tables, search the museum databases and, if there is room in the inner sanctum, the enquiry staff can call up some amazing stuff from the stacks.

The other great thing is that there is lots of warfare magazines, so it will also attract the many fans of public library warfare sections and readers of Jane’s Manuals. There was certainly a buzz in there. Currently the IWM is a building site, so hopefully readers will continue to go through the centre doors once the permanent exhibits are there to distract casual visitors.

The other great thing is that there are lots of warfare magazines, so it will also attract the many fans of public library warfare sections and readers of Jane’s Manuals. There was certainly a buzz in there. Currently the IWM is a building site, so hopefully readers will continue to go through the centre doors once the permanent exhibits are there to distract casual visitors.

Another thing really interested me. The museum has got just about all the visitors that they can handle, so the emphasis is getting people to see the IWM material online. I really felt that they thought that a virtual visit was just as important, if not more important, than someone coming through the door – how refreshing! I was talking to one librarian recently and they were saying that they only got a fraction of the  enquiries on Saturdays compared to ten years ago – but we are gaining hundreds or thousands more virtual visit though our online collections. If we both local studies guys and our masters agreed with the IWM guys that virtual visits are really important, perhaps we should be really radical and say we should opening our doors less so we can put more of our amazing stuff online?

APML/LSG South tour of the Explore History Centre at Imperial War Museum London

tonypilmerLeave a comment

Booking has just opened for the APML/LSG South tour of the Explore History Centre at Imperial War Museum London.

Explore History Centre
Imperial War Museum London
Monday 2nd December 2.30-4pm
Cost: Free

Come and have an introduction to the Explore History Centre at Imperial War Museum London.  The centre provides access to the museum’s documents, sound archive, published items, digital resources and War Artists Archive. Join for a tour that will show us some of the amazing material the library holds and how they help twentieth and twenty-first century military and family historians. The tour is limited to ten people.

To book your place please contact Tony Pilmer via tonyp@rusi.org or telephone 020 7747 2604.

34 ways to use potatoes…other than as vegetables – The Big Friday Find

TraceyLeave a comment

Although I like mashed potatoes and treacle, I have never thought of combining them in a pudding!

joannembailey's avatar

Thirty-four ways of using potatoes...other than as vegetables (Front)

For this week’s Friday find we thought we would share one of our long standing favourite finds. This Ministry of Food leaflet, from WWI, was included with our collection of wartime posters. Many of these posters encourage people to eat less bread because of grain shortages.

Save the Wheat and Help the Fleet
According to this leaflet during WWI we had an “unprecedented surplus of potatoes – over 2,000,000 tons”. The Government were understandably keen to encourage people to make the most of this “farinaceous food stuff” including cooking and using potatoes in their skins.

Our favourite recipe from this collection is the Treacle Potato Pudding, which is made using the following recipe:

1 lb. mashed potatoes, 1 egg, half an ounce of sugar, 1 ounce of ground rice, 1 ounce of cooking fat, flavouring essence or other flavouring, 3 tablespoons full treacle, 1/2 teaspoon full of baking powder.

Coat a plain charlotte mould whilst warm with a…

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Experiences of World War One: strangers, differences and locality

tonypilmerLeave a comment

Interesting looking course has just come through on the local history jisc list – only £25 and could give some good tips for local events using our collections…..

British Association for Local History (BALH)/University of London Institute of Commonwealth Studies (ICwS)  workshop:
 
Experiences of World War One: strangers, differences and locality on 28 February 2014 at Senate House, University of London.
 
We are connected to the First World War through our family and community histories, and through the war’s impact on British and other societies. The war provided opportunities to go to new places, engage in different activities and meet people not encountered in peacetime. What were people’s experiences of different places, living under different conditions, and how did they engage with different cultures? 

This is an introduction to researching war experience and its legacy: taking individual, family and community perspectives through the prism of the local, national and international. It will raise questions such as:

how did local communities interact with colonial and Dominion troops?  in what ways did racial issues impact on local community relations during the war, and in its aftermath? what relationships evolved between communities, hospitals where colonial/Dominion troops were treated and individual soldiers? how might the war’s legacy be informed by ethnic minority histories? during the war years, and after, how was the idea of Empire experienced, understood and imagined by people in British localities? to what extent did war change European colonial victors’ views of their extended Empires? 

Themes will be illustrated by reference to sources such as newspapers, local authority records, diaries, correspondence, Imperial War Museum archives, The National Archives and websites.

PROGRAMME

10.00  registration, and coffee/tea

10:30  welcome and introduction: Professor Philip Murphy, Director, Institute of Commonwealth Studies (ICwS).

10:45  keynote: The relationship of locality to national and international events in the First World War. Dr Catriona Pennell (Exeter)

11:30  Local responses to ‘the other’: 1. Whose remembrance? a study of available research on communities in Britain, and the colonial experience of the First World War. Dr Suzanne Bardgett (Imperial War Museum)  2.  Responses to Black and Indian soldiers in Britain. Dr Richard Smith (Goldsmiths, University of London)

13:00   lunch

14:00 Localities, nations and Empire: Britain and Ireland in times of crisis, 1912-1922.

Professor David Killingray (Goldsmiths, University of London; and ICwS) 

15.00 Using The National Archives colonial records. Dr Mandy Banton (ICwS), 

15.45  final discussion, and tea.

For flyer, further details and registration:

http://events.sas.ac.uk/icws/events/view/14049