Tag: Midlands

A whisky for Dracula: Digitising Nottingham’s oral history

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Bela Lugosi in the trailer for Dracula (1931). Source: WikiMedia Commons. Url: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bela_lugosi_dracula.jpg.

Count Dracula walks into a bar and orders a whisky … It sounds like the start of bad joke, but in 1951, if you were drinking in a certain bar in the East Midlands, you would have got the fright of your life. That year, Bela Lugosi was reprising his most famous film role in a performance of Dracula at the Theatre Royal Nottingham. After the Monday night performance, he walked straight out of the stage door and, in full costume, headed for the Flying Horse Hotel in need of refreshment. Mr. Stokes, the Night Porter, remembered the shock of the regulars for many years afterwards. (You can see a copy of the original program on the Theatre Royal online archive.)

This anecdote is one of the highlights of Nottingham’s oral history collections. The Unlocking Our Sound Heritage (UOSH) project has been spent the last four years digitising oral history and sound collections from around the Midlands. This is part of a national project run by the British Library to preserve at-risk collections and improve public access, where possible.

Over on their blog, UOSH give overviews of the work they have been doing with Nottingham Local Studies and Nottingham University Special Collections. The former post includes a clip of the Bela Lugosi anecdote. Major collections that have been digitised by the project include:

  • Making Ends Meet: Earning a Living in Nottinghamshire 1900-1950
  • The History of the University of Nottingham
  • Nottingham General Hospital Oral History Project
  • The D.H. Lawrence Collection.

Job: Cataloguer for sound heritage in the Midlands

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A job that may be of interest to local studies staff is being advertised at the University of Leicester.

Cataloguer (Unlocking Our Sound Heritage Project)

Vacancy terms: Full-time and fixed-term from 7 September 2020 to 6 September 2021.

Salary details: £22,417 to £26,715 p.a.

Advert closes midnight on: 3 July 2020.

Unlocking Our Sound Heritage is a major national project funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund and led by the British Library. It aims to digitally preserve almost 500,000 endangered sound recordings from across the UK and make 100,000 available online, transforming the visibility of sound archive collections in the process. 

The University of Leicester is the regional hub for the Midlands and is one of the project’s ten hubs, which are based in Aberystwyth, Belfast, Brighton, Bristol, Glasgow, Leicester, London, Manchester, Newcastle, and Norwich. Over three years, we will work with partners across the region to ensure that 5,000 sound heritage items are digitally preserved and accessible to new audiences. The digitised material will then be used as part of innovative learning and outreach activities. 

The role of cataloguer is to create metadata about sound recordings and associated documentary material. This metadata will be entered on spreadsheets so that information packages can be created and sent to the British Library. The role will involve liaising with other cataloguers, volunteers, and members of the project team, to ensure the metadata is created and processed to the standards required by the project.

Further details here: https://jobs.le.ac.uk/vacancies/1918/cataloguer-unlocking-our-sound-heritage-project.html

Saving Your Sounds: An introduction to preserving and using sound collections.

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This free event will look at conserving and using sound recordings. This will interest any local history group or museum, library, archive or individual that holds sound recordings or is thinking of working with old sound recordings. It is organised by the Unlocking Our Sound Heritage Midlands Hub  and the East Midlands Oral History Archive (EMOHA), with support from the Oral History Society.

Date and time: Tuesday 9th July from 10am–3.30pm.

To register contact Colin Hyde on ch38@le.ac.uk or tel: 0116 229 7358. If you want lunch please state if you have any particular dietary requirements.

Location: Ogden Lewis seminar rooms, David Wilson Library, University of Leicester, University Road, Leicester LE1 7RH

Maps and directions can be found here – http://www.le.ac.uk/maps/ . The nearest public car park is the Granville Rd/Victoria Park car park, while the campus is a 20 minute walk from the train station.

Provisional Timetable

09.30-10.00         Tea/coffee/registration.

10.00-10.20         Introductions from Colin Hyde of the UOSH project. Updates from Helen Foster of EMOHA and Cynthia Brown of the OHS.

10.20-11.00         Why the UOSH project has been set up. What sound recordings exist in the region and why they are ‘at risk’? What will we be doing?

11.00-11.45         The history and identification of recording formats with hands-on examples.

11.45-12.00         Tea/coffee break.

12.00-12.45         Preservation of formats. A guide to digitisation.

12.45-13.30         Lunch (provided).

13.30-14.15         Cataloguing your sound recordings. Hints and tips.

14.15-14.30         Tea/coffee break.

14.30-15.15         Using the archives – ideas for what to do with your sound recordings. Learning and engagement.

15.15-15.30         Summing up/close with option of a look at the digitisation studio.