J.C. Beaglehole Room – Special Collections at the Victoria University of Wellington Library

Greetings

After existing in the ether for a year or so while waiting to iron out some technical difficulties, the J.C.Beaglehole Room blog is now able to come out into the open.  If you haven’t come across us before, you can find out a bit more about us here and on our web page.

We’ll be aiming to post every couple of weeks or so on exciting discoveries from our collections, new acquisitions and upcoming events.

If you look at our archive , you will notice that we seem to have been posting since 2004.  Last year, while waiting for the all clear, we took the opportunity to populate the blog with information about past Three books, three scholars seminars, which we had not been able to incorporate in the new web architecture introduced in 2009.  Three books, three scholars continues, although less frequently than before.

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All the best
Sue Hirst
Special Collections Librarian

Kia ora koutou

We have had a very lucky find.

Last week, the Library received a donation from an estate.  In looking thorough the books to see if any were likely candidates for the J.C.Beaglehole Room.  I found a number of interesting books, but the most interesting by far was a handwritten dairy dated 1734-36. 

The writing in the front pages indicated that it was the diary of Sarah Savage.  It then passed to her daughter Sarah Newnham, who left it to Catherine Hayter, granddaughter of Sarah Savage and probably daughter of Sarah Newnham.  Catherine left it to her niece Ann Savage, a great grandaughter of the original Sarah.  It came into the hands of Sarah Morrison (another great granddaughter) who gave it to Peter Bannell (great great grandson) in 1840.  There we lose the trail – for now.

My inner terrier perked up.  What else could we find about Sarah Savage?  We found that she was the daughter of one Philip Henry, “incumbent of Worthenbury, in the County of Flint, who was ejected therefrom by the Act of Uniformity in 1662″ (1).  Her notebooks are held in the Library at Harris Manchester College, Oxford, which itself has an interesting history. It was originally  the Warrington Academy, a dissenting academy, then moved to Manchester and later – after an 1889 Act of Parliament abolishing religious tests at Oxford – moved to Oxford, but it was not until 1996 that it was granted a Royal Charter and became the 39th college of Oxford.

But I digress – back to Sarah.  I e-mailed the Librarian at Harris Manchester College about the diary, who put me in touch with the Director of the Dr Williams Library in London, which also has Sarah’s letters and one of her diaries.  He is keeping track of the various holdings and copies around the world, and was quite excited by this one.

As are we!  I think it has potential as a candidate for digitisation, although I think the OCR software might struggle a bit with her handwriting.

All the best
Sue

(1) Lawrence, Sarah, 1844.  The descendants of Rev. Philip Henry incumbent of Worthenbury, in the County of Flint, who was ejected therefrom by the Act of Uniformity in 1662.  Leamington: Simpkin, Marshall, and Co. John Merridew, 1844

Talofa lava

We so enjoyed the discoveries we made while creating the Samoan Independence exhibition, many of which we didn’t have display capacity to include, that we wanted to give others a sense of what we found.   So we will be presenting a lunchtime seminar – with a working title of Four archivists, one collection in keeping with the 3B3S idea.  Come along and be introduced to some unique and fascinating resources, both published and archival, which almost came out to meet us as we looked into the collections for material realted to Samoan history.

If anyone is interested in the possibility, we can have another try at setting up a Scopia link to other sites.  Just let me know and I’ll follow up with our IT people.

I hope to see some of you next Thursday.

All the best

Sue

Kia ora koutou

In order for the JCBR team to undertake training, we need to close the Reading Room on Friday 22nd June.

In the morning we will be trained in the University’s corporate archive systems, which  better fit us to retrieve material from corporate archives to meet the needs of researchers.

In the afternoon, Triptych Conservation will be training us in disaster response and recovery procedures for records and archives, so that in the unlikely event of an emergency, your crew will know what to do.

If you will need to use JCBR material on Friday 22nd, please let us know in advance and we’ll do what we can to make that possible.

We try to avoid closing the room, and apologise for any inconvenience it may cause.

All the best
Sue

Kia ora koutou

Linking in with a display in the Main Collection, the JC Beaglehole Room has mounted a display of material related to early astronomy in general and the Transit of Venus in particular.  Because of other demands on our display space coming up, we are getting in a bit early on this one and will run it from now only until Sunday 27th May inclusive.

The earliest title on display is Thomas Burnet’s –  delightfully understated, I think 🙂  – 1697 The theory of the earth : containing an account of the original of the earth, and of all the general changes which it hath already undergone, or is to undergo till the consummation of all things.  Those old chaps certainly didn’t bother the pithy one liners today’s publishers go for!  The most recent is Awa Science’s compilation of Radio NZ lectures from 2007: The transit of Venus : how a rare astronomical alignment changed the world.  (OK still not quite pithy, but the format is very “now” don’t you think?)

In between we have the astronomical observations from Cook’s voyages on the Resolution and the Adventure, as compiled by Messrs Wales and Bayly, who devised a seriously good portable observatory; Ferguson’s Astronomy… where “…” = explained upon Sir Isaac Newton’s principles and made easy to those who have not studied mathematics : to which are added, a plain method of finding the distances of all the planets from the sun, by the transit of Venus over the sun’s disc, in the year 1761, an account of Mr. Horrox’s observation in the transit of Venus in the year 1639; and of the distances of all the planets from the sun … (and that’s just the title page!), and a few other goodies besides.  Ferguson even includes a map of the path of the Transit of Venus in 1761.

Hope you are able to drop by and have a look.

Sue