From: EFDSS
Marketing <marketing_at_efdss_dot_org>
Date: 14 January 2011 12:09:17 GMT
Subject: Press: National folk archive launches online catalogue
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National folk archive launches online catalogue
The Vaughan Williams Memorial Library is launching an online catalogue at
midday on 25 January 2011. This is the first phase of an on-going programme
to enable anybody around the world to access information about items held by
the library and even browse a library shelf. The catalogue will be found at http://koha.efdss.org
This first phase will make available the Leslie Shepard Collection. The
Shepard collection was chosen as a pilot project to test and tailor the
system to meet the needs of our unique library. Following this pilot,
VWML will continue to convert and upload existing electronic data, as well a
converting its card catalogues and add new additions directly onto the
system.
The Leslie Shepard
Collection
Leslie Alan Shepard (1917–2004) was a passionate collector of books and
printed ephemera on a variety of subjects, including folk song and broadside
ballads. Born in East London in 1917, Shepard moved to Ireland in 1969,
settling in Dublin where he died in 2004. He was a world authority and
prolific writer on street literature, early moving images, the paranormal,
and many other subjects. Towards the end of his life and after his death,
Shepard’s books and printed items were dispersed. His Bram Stoker
collection was given to the Dublin City Library. He donated material of Irish
interest to the Irish Traditional Music Archive shortly after its foundation,
and his books relating to the subjects of broadsides and printing, folk music
and street literature were kindly bestowed on the VWML in 2002. With
the help of several volunteers, this extraordinary collection of 1,471 items
was transported to London, organised, labelled, and catalogued in an internal
database.
The Catalogue
In 2010, with the support of Arts Council England, a project to migrate the
Library’s internal databases to a fully integrated web-based library
management system was begun. Cataloguer Elaine Bradtke, and IT expert and
EFDSS trustee Doug Kingston collaborated on implementing Koha, an open-source
system which was developed in New Zealand ( http://koha-community.org/ ). The
literature collection was deemed the first priority and VWML will continue to
convert and upload all existing electronic data, which currently amounts to
an additional 13,500 items. In due course, catalogues for all media will be
made available online.
Vaughan Williams
Memorial Library
The Vaughan Williams Memorial Library houses a unique multi-media collection
of material on traditional arts and culture, including books, manuscripts,
off-prints, pamphlets, periodicals, serials, press cuttings, broadsides,
prints, paintings, line drawings, photographs, slides, artefacts, ephemera,
records, reel-to-reel tapes, phonograph cylinders, videos, cine films, CDs
and audio cassettes. Along with various other recent initiatives (e.g. VWML
Online and the Take 6 Archive, both accessible through the EFDSS website at www.efdss.org ), this web-based catalogue is
part of an ongoing project to bring information about the contents of this
library to a wider audience and make them more accessible. It represents a
major change in the library’s working methods and is the first step in
converting the catalogue to a more user friendly and accessible system. The
Leslie Shepard Collection itself is a significant contribution to the library
as it augments and supports the existing subject areas and collections.