Beyond the obvious – studying lifestyles at the British Library

Ian CookeSocial Science Collections and Research

Studying Lifestyles: resources past, present and futureMonday 9 March 2009

2

Getting started – www.bl.uk

3

4

Archival Sound Recordings - examples

From Millennium Memory bank:C900/02595 – Schoolchildren talk about earning and spending moneyhttp://sounds.bl.uk/View.aspx?item=021M-C0900X02595X-0700V0.xml

From Jewish survivors of the Holocaust: C0410/061 – remembering secondary school in Glasgow, pocket money and sources of incomehttp://sounds.bl.uk/View.aspx?item=021M-C0410X0061XX-0300V0.xml

5

British Library Newspapers

19th C digitised Newspapers:

Free to HE and FE

50 titles, 10 million articles

Focus on regional

Study how stories were reported across the country

6

19th C Newspapers – Advertising search

“Look and feel” of newspapers preserved

Full-text searching

Search for advertisements – source for informal economy in 19thC Britain

Be aware of language change

7

Newspapers, comics, fanzines, underground press …

Collecting news from across the world

Types of publications include: Comics; fanzines etc

See our Learning pages for a discussion on the underground press in Britain

8

Intellectual property, market research, trade literature

Market research – study of what people are doing; a good compliment to government surveys; demographic information.Eg Walls Pocket Money Monitor, our shelfmark (XP) AL 90 – E(12)

Intellectual Property and Trade Literature – worldwide collection, from mid 19th C. Use this to study:

Development of brands

Changing consumer behaviour and aspirations

History of businesses

9

Official Publications

Subjects:

Social conditions

Education

Health

Finance

Trade and industry

Media and culture

Transport

Types:

British state papers

Official publications from around the world

Reports from departments and agencies

Parliamentary papers

Legislation

Inter-governmental organisations

10

British Parliamentary Papers

Read statements given by witnesses, and other evidence collected for presentation to Parliament

Statistics and commentary on all aspects of people’s lives

House of Commons Papers online: free to all Higher Education institutions

Ask for help when starting to use Parliamentary Papers

11

Inter-Governmental Organisations

The organisations’ internal affairs (minutes of committees, conferences, resolutions etc )

Diplomatic affairs (peacekeeping, mandates, mediation etc)

Social issues (health, women and children, drug trafficking, refugees, human rights)

Economic issues (unemployment, labour conditions, transport, trade)

Statistics

Evidence from expert groups and witnesses

12

Web Archive

Informal publishing – websites can be “lost” very quickly

Personal interest and non-commercial sites can be most at risk (and of great interest to study of people’s lives)

Eg compare Choice and Voice, saved in the Web Archive:http://www.webarchive.org.uk/wayback/archive/20060511113743/http://www.choiceandvoice.com/index-2.html

With the URL today

http://www.choiceandvoice.com

13

Guides and support

Reference services: reading room, telephone, email

Help for Researchers web pages

Collection guides, eg for government publications:http://www.bl.uk/reshelp/findhelprestype/offpubs/guides/govtguides.html

Topical bibliographies, eg Globalisation and employment, Gang culture and knife crime …

Welfare Reform on the Web

How do you use these collections?