1. UK Perspectives on split collections Diasporic Literary Archives Workshop, Pavia, 26 February 2013 Rachel Foss Lead Curator, Modern Literary Manuscripts British Library rachel.foss@bl.uk

2. 2 Overview of talk What do we mean by split collections? BL collaborative projects and initiatives: Acquisition and resource discovery (models of collecting: tranche-based; future accruals etc) Translators papers Digitisation and born-digital collections

3. Modern literary manuscripts collections 1600 onwards; across all genres; drafts and supporting material Actors, theatre agents, literary critics; corporate as well as personal archives; literary trends BL Strategy for Heritage Acquisitions: To be the national hub for personal archives To offer integrated, user-focussed services for BL archives To demonstrate and maximise the impact and value of the collecting of archives To show national leadership in the field of personal archives Dual role of the BL. GLAM context and national distributed responsibility

4. What do we mean by a split collection? Split across collecting institutions Acquisition by a single institution: appraisal and future accruals Models of collecting: Idea of the life archive; tranche-based model

5. Acquisition, cataloguing and resource discovery Ted Hughes Archive BL/Emory Catalogues Access points: Location Register of Twentieth Century English Literary Manuscripts; National Register of Archives; Ted Hughes Society; Dictionary of National Biography entries Networking application; UK Memory of the World Register BS Johnson – BFI DVD release

6. Translators Papers Implications for and challenges to collecting policies: Hidden/ invisible material Territory and appropriateness; pre-eminent individual writer How should collecting be directed? Data protection and sensitive information? BL Conference, Literary Translators (2011); GLAM mapping exercise; user consultation survey

7. Digitisation Collaborative Projects – digital re-unification Jane Austens Fiction Manuscripts Digital Edition: http://www.janeausten.ac.uk/index.html The First World War Poetry Digital Archive: http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/ Europeana 1914-1918: http://www.europeana.eu/portal/ English Online at the BL

8. Digital Lives http://www.bl.uk/digital-lives http://www.bl.uk/digital-lives

9. Enhanced Curation Record and create contextual material around environment: Workroom photography Recording interviews Video conversational tours of a writers habitat Record of the acquisition process itself (John Berger Audioboo diary): enhancement of the catalogue record and extra research resource