Category Archives: Culture

The Power of Persuasion at the British Library

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US Army recruiting poster by DonkeyHoteyA new exhibition opened at the British Library today examining the potent power of propaganda and its often insidious influence on modern human civilisation.

Propaganda: Power and Persuasion explores international state propaganda from the 20th and 21st centuries, encompassing the many ways posters, films, cartoons, sounds and texts have been used by world nations of every political & social creed to try and influence and persuade their citizens to their point of view.

Over 200 different items are on display ranging from recruiting material such as the famous 1917 ‘Uncle Sam’ US Army poster pictured opposite, to playing cards & board games and multimedia sources such as TV adverts, right up to the digital age with a section devoted to social media and Twitter in particular.

The exhibition runs from 17th May to 17th September. For further details, visit the British Library website here;

http://www.bl.uk/whatson/exhibitions/propaganda/index.html

US Army recruiting poster by DonkeyHotey, reproduced under CC License from Flickr.

Have a Laugh on Us with our Leisure Reading Collection

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Gary Shteyngart by KatieA3

Howard Jacobson has just been announced the winner of this year’s prestigious Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize, the only annual literary award for humorous literature, for his novel Zoo Time, making him the first author to have ever won the award twice.

The competition celebrates books that are deemed to have captured the comic spirit of P.G. Wodehouse, author of the immortal Jeeves & Wooster and Blandings novels.

Jacobson won the first ever Wodehouse prize in 2000 for his novel The Mighty Walzer. His prize consisted of a Bollinger Champagne, a complete set of Wodehouse’s works, and - perhaps most fittingly for the spirit of Wodehouse – a Gloucestershire Old Spot pig will be named after after his book!

Although we don’t (yet) have a copy of Zoo Time in our collection, we do have other works by Howard Jacobson among our collection, as well as previous winners of the award among our Leisure Reading collection, including Vernon God Little by D.B.C. Pierre (2003), Salmon Fishing in the Yemen by Paul Torday (2007) and Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart (2011 – pictured above with his award). That’s in addition to a variety of contemporary and classic comic works by the likes of Terry Pratchett, Stephen Fry, Alan Bennett and, of course, P.G. Wodehouse. So if you’re stuck for something to lighten your exam mood, why not have a browse today?

Gary Shteyngart with his 2011 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Award, image by Katie A3, reproduced under CC License from Flickr.

Help Innovate the British Library and win £3000!

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BL_labs_pictureThe British Library have just launched a competition inviting proposals for an innovative project utilising their vast digital collection. The eventual winner will receive £3000 and a residency at the British Library while their project is implimented.

The Labs competition is designed to attract scholars, explorers, trailblazers and software developers who see the potential for new and innovative research and development opportunities lurking within the British Library’s immense digital collections. Through soliciting imaginative and transformative projects utilising this content entrants will be giving the British Library a steer as to the types of new processes, platforms, arrangements, services and tools needed to make it more accessible.

A virtual discussion about the competition is being held this Friday (17th May) using Google Hangout should you wish to find out more. Full details and terms & conditions of the contest are also available via British Library website here:

http://labs.bl.uk/Competition+2013#Details

World Press Freedom Day

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world press freedom day

Today is World Press Freedom Day, UNESCO’s annual awareness raising celebration of the fundamental importance of the freedom of the press and the right to freedom of expression as enshrined in the Universal Declation of Human Rights.

The event, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year, is held on this date to mark the Declaration of Windhoek, a statement of press freedom principles compiled by African journalists in 1991 which is regarded as a landmark in the ongoing battle for global press freedom as both a fundamental human right and an essential cornerstone of democracy.

In the UK press freedom has come into much scrutiny in recent years following the findings of the Leveson Enquiry into the culture, practices and ethics of the British press following the News International hacking scandal which first came to light in 2005, and that has resulted in the closure of the News of the World paper in 2011 after 168 years in print, and several on-going high-profile court cases. The government and the newspaper industry remain locked in a bitter dispute about how to implement press reforms in the light of it.

We have a copy of the Leveson Inquiry in our High Demand section on Level 3. We also have many books on the subject of press freedom among our collection, as well as access to vast fund of electronic newspaper archives among our newspaper databases on Library Catalogue Plus, including the Times Digital Archive, the Daily Mirror Archive, and of course Nexis UK, which offers comprehensive coverage of UK, European and US newspapers.

University Creative Writing Competition

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university creative writing competition

Would you like the chance to have your creative work printed and published in a brand new short story collection AND win some fantastic prizes into the bargain? Then the You is for University contest is for ‘you’!

Run by the Student Wordsmith website and aimed at universities, students and young people thinking of coming to university,  the competition is inviting new poetry, short prose fiction, or short dramatic piece on university life. All selected entrants will have their work featured in the collection and receive their own signed copy of it to see their work in print, and prizes will be awarded to the best overall entries.

The Student Wordsmith is an online creative, literary platform, for budding writers, set up by creative writing Postgraduate student, Sophie-Louise Hyde. This year, it aims to print, and publish, its first collaborative collection – providing students with help and advice on university life and what to expect of higher education.

The closing date for this competition is Friday 14th June 2013. For further entry details and terms & conditions, visit the Student Wordsmith site here.

If your creative writing juices are a bit clogged up, though, don’t forget that we have a large number of books on the subject offering helpful hints and advice down among our literature section on Level 2 that should help stir your creativity back into action.

On the Record with Scott Fitzgerald

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F_Scott_Fitzgerald_circa_1920The University of South Carolina have recently made available an archive that offers a unique insight into one of the leading American novelists of the 20th century, F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Between 1919 and 1938 Scott Fitzgerald kept a concise journal in a 200-page handwritten ledger encompassing a year-by-year record of his life and achievements including publication details of all his works and the income of both himself and his wife Zelda, revealing for instance that he made merely $2000 on The Great Gatsby on its first publication in 1925, but earned a more princely $16,666 on selling the film rights to the novel the very next year!

The ledger has been thoroughly digitised, including full-text access and is keyword-searchable. It occupies pride of place in the University’s Matthew J. & Arlyn Bruccoli Collection of F. Scott Fitzgerald, the most comprehensive research collection of the author’s life and work.

We have a large collection of works by and about Scott Fitzgerald among our own literature collection, including The Great Gatsby and his other novels, plus you can access a vast store of online articles and essays about the man through English literature databases such as Literature Online through Library Catalogue Plus.

F. Scott Fitzgerald portrait, circa 1920, reproduced under CC License from the Minnesota Historical Society.

Democracy in Action – UK Style

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secretlond123This Thursday the country goes to the polls as council elections are held in 35 local authorities in England and Wales, including Loughborough’s Charnwood Borough.

These elections are of particular note for some areas which are undergoing significant boundary changes, which will result in a decrease in the number of seats on certain councils. As it stands, more than 2300 seats are being contested. The Conservatives and Labour are putting up candidates in most seats, with 2,263 and 2,168 candidates respectively. The Lib Dems have 1,763 candidates, closely followed by UKIP with 1,745 candidates and the Green Party with 893 candidates. Other parties standing include the BNP, with 99 candidates and the English Democrats, with 38 candidates. There are around 900 independent candidates.

The BBC have a handy list of all the political parties on their politics website here, including links to all the various government ministries and departments as well as the House of Lords, the Scottish & Welsh Assemblies and the European Commission.

We also have access to a broad range of national and international governmental and political information among our databases on Library Catalogue Plus, notably the Worldwide Political Science Abstracts and the British Humanities Index. Why not have a browse today?

Image by Secretlondon123, reproduced under CC License from Flickr.

Help Us Celebrate World Book Night

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Tuesday April 23rd is World Book Night and after the roaring success of last year’s event (pictured above) we’re cordially inviting everyone to help us celebrate it again this year!

We’ll be running a stand between 11AM-1PM in the foyer inside the entrance to Open 3 where you will be able to partake of free homemade cakes & snacks and take part in a prize draw to win a copy of a thriller novel by a award-winning writer (in the true tradition of thriller fiction we’ll keep you in suspense as to what it is!). Our ever friendly and obliging staff will be hand to discuss all things literary and hopefully incline your attention towards our ever expanding Leisure Reading range!

See you there!

Preserving the Nation’s Digital Memory

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computers by jisc

An ambitious project has just been launched by the British Library to collect and preserve everything that is published online in Britain.

The archive will cover 4.8 million websites encompassing books and academic journals as well as alternative sources of literature, news and comment including popular blogs, web forums and social media sites including Facebook and Twitter.

Six ’Legal Deposit Sites’ led by the British Library and including the National Libraries of Scotland and Wales and the Bodleian Libraries in Oxford will be allowed to collect and store anything that is published online in the UK web domain. This archive will then be made available to future generations of social historians and researchers who will doubtless be looking to find some arcane meaning to our ‘Google’ age!

To start the ball rolling, the participating Libraries have come up with a list of what they deem to be the 100 most important and notable websites to archive – and they’re keen to get the British public in on the act too! So if you’d like to suggest your nominations, or just browse the list they’ve come up with, visit the British Library site here:

http://www.bl.uk/100websites/index.html

Computers image by Jisc, reproduced under CC License from Flickr. 

Jane Austen – Teacher’s Pride!

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pride and prejudice cover by thalita carvalho

Jane Austen’s classic Pride and Prejudice celebrated its 200th birthday back in January and was honoured with its own Royal Mail stamp. Now a Times Educational Supplement survey has revealed that the novel is a classroom favorite too!

500 teachers were asked in an online survey to name their favorite books to help form a top 100, and Pride and Prejudice was pride of place at the summit among a list crammed with literary heavyweights including Dickens, Orwell, Tolstoy – and The Very Hungry Caterpillar!

The top 10 was as follows:

1. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

2. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

3. The Harry Potter series by JK Rowling

4. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

5. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

6. Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell

7. The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien

8. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

9. The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien

10. The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald

Needless to say we have copies of all these works in our collection (oh, and The Very Hungry Caterpillar too!) so if you want to take a leaf out of teacher’s book, why not have a browse among our literature and Leisure Reading collections today?

To view the full Top 100, visit the TES website here:

http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6327545

Pride & Prejudice cover image by Thalita Carvalho, reproduced under CC License from Flickr.