Resource guide for women’s history launched for International Women’s Day

Special Collections and Archives is marking International Women’s Day 2013 with the launch of its latest resource guide on women’s history and gender studies. The guide covers sources from the 16th-21st centuries, including:

• Bibliographies and reference works on British women’s history and writing;
• Biographies of the lives of women;
• Gendered children’s literature and comics;
• Conduct, etiquette and advice manuals;
• Broadsides and ballads relating to women as both victims and perpetrators of crime;
• Memoirs, diaries and autobiographies of women;
• Sources relating to women teachers, and girl’s eduction;
• Journals, magazines and ballads on fashion and dress;
• Historical works on women’s health and medical treatment, including the history of midwifery, gynaecology and obstetrics; the history of nursing as a profession; and reports of the Medical Officer for Cardiff, including data on maternity and child welfare;
• A range of material relating to women’s lives around the world, including newspapers from Indian women’s organisations, Spanish Civil War sources related to women, sources relating to women in Australia, European Union and United Nations reports on women, and papers of female slavery abolitionists;
• A wide range of women’s journals and magazines, from society pages to radical suffragette publications;
• Literary works by women, including the papers of Ann Griffiths (poet), Joan Reeder (journalist), Maria Edgeworth (novelist), Felicia Hemans (poet), Mary Tighe (poet), and Lady Sidney Morgan (novelist). Information on female applicants to the Royal Literary Fund, and women writers published by Longmans;
• Musical scores and archives from Morfydd Llwyn Owen (1891-1918), Grace Williams (1906-1977), and Nancy Storace (1765-1817);
• Press cuttings from late 20th century Welsh newspapers on women’s issues;
• Political papers from the British Labour Party and Newport Labour Party on women’s issues; papers of the Labour MPs Ellen Wilkinson and Marion Phillips; the diary of social reformer Beatrice Webb; archives of the Women’s Labour League, journals by Sylvia Pankhurst, and a range of suffragette magazines;
• Books by and archives belonging to female travellers;
• Papers relating to the history of female students at Cardiff University and its predecessors;
• Sources on witchcraft and those accused of its practice (commonly women), in Europe and America;
• Sources on women’s societies

Lunchtime workshops: women’s history and gender studies

Special Collections and Archives’ series of lunchtime workshops continues in December with sessions on women’s history and gender studies sources. The workshops are intended to raise awareness of the breadth of material available to support research in this area, and as a general introduction to using Special Collections and Archives.

The second workshop on women’s history sources will be led by Assistant Archivist, Alison Harvey. Topics will include: biography; children’s literature; conduct/advice manuals; crime; diaries and autobiographies; education; fashion; health and medicine; international affairs; journals and magazines; literature and journalism; music; newspapers; politics, suffrage and the labour movement; travel; University history; witchcraft; and women’s societies.

Workshops will be held in Special Collections and Archives, on the lower ground floor of the Arts and Social Studies Library, Corbett Road, Cardiff. The women’s history workshop is scheduled for 12-1pm on Thursday 6 December, and will be repeated at 1-2pm on Friday 7 December.

Workshops are open to all, but places are limited, so if you would like to attend either session, please email HarveyAE@cf.ac.uk, stating your preferred time.

Cardiff Music Lecture - hits a high note !

Reblogged from Music Collections at Cardiff University:

The first of this year's series of Rare Books and Music Lectures was presented by Dr Loukia Drosopoulou, the academic specialist who is working on the cataloguing of the Music historical collections in the JISC funded project in Cardiff. Her lecture title - '18th and 19th Century Music Collections at Cardiff', was subtitled: 'Travelling Collections', and this was a major strand in her talk, relating the complex and compelling historical story of the provenance of these collections, and their journey from printer, publisher or family owner, to the public and university libraries which have held these music scores and manuscripts for the last two centuries and more.

Read more… 174 more words

Restrictions lifted on musical performance

SCOLAR recently received a request to perform a piece of music by Welsh composer Morfydd Owen at the Machynlleth Music Festival. This handwritten musical score is held in SCOLAR; it is perhaps the only copy, and has never been published.  Despite being nearly 100 years old, the piece is still in copyright. Under current legislation, copyright in unpublished works is held by the descendants of the creator until 2039. Where descendants cannot be traced, the work is classed as orphan. Orphan works cannot be reproduced – whether by photocopy, photograph, or in the case of a musical or dramatic work, performance, until 2039, regardless of their age.

Anyone who has tried to trace relatives will know that the process is very complex. In the case of Morfydd Owen, the search was aided by the existence of a number of renowned family members.

We knew from a marriage certificate in the archive that Morfydd married psychoanalyst and biographer of Freud, Ernest Jones. Morfydd died childless at the age of 27, but Ernest went on to have four children by a later marriage. One of them was writer Mervyn Jones, who died last year. Fortunately, due to Mervyn’s renown, he had a literary agent, who kindly passed on the contact details of Mervyn’s daughter. As the granddaughter of Morfydd’s husband’s second wife, she was very surprised to find out that she had responsibility for granting copyright permission for Morfydd’s work. We are very grateful to her, not only for permitting the performance at Machynlleth, but also for allowing SCOLAR to grant copyright permission on her behalf for the collection in future. Not only will the performance go ahead, but Morfydd’s wartime compositions are now able to feature in an upcoming bid to JISC to digitise Welsh World War One archives.

We are very pleased to announce that Morfydd’s Piano Trio will be performed by the Milos Milivojevic and the Juritz Quartet at the Machynlleth Music Festival, which runs from 21-28 August 2011.

SCOLAR will shortly be reporting on recently announced proposed changes to copyright law which will hopefully lessen the burden on researchers wishing to reproduce or perform orphan works.