Westcountry Studies newsletter, issue 15, May 2020

Westcountry Studies a bibliographical newsletter on Devon and its region Issue 15 May 2020

Covid-19

The updated Devon bibliography page for 2020 publications has a new look. The notes on sources for Covid-19 in the last newsletter have now been incorporated into the listings, extended and placed at the start of the listings. So far, locked down in isolation, it has not proved possible to locate anything in printed format, nor do many of the items listed fall strictly into the categories covered by a bibliography, which is a work of record rather than a current awareness service. In a rapidly changing scene however there is a risk of missing much information. Websites will change and archives may become difficult to locate and search in the future. For this reason note has been taken where web pages have been archived. Comprehensiveness is of course unachievable but it is hoped to cover as many aspects of the community as possible. Two areas in particular deserve to be recorded: the research that is being undertaken into Covid-19 and its effects, even where reports and the results of surveys have yet to be published, and the contribution of charities and the voluntary sector. The compiler would be grateful to receive notes of any significant information that may help to fill the gaps. Four main sections are required: the name of the organisation or the author, the title of the page referred to, the URL and the date accessed. Where the item is printed the publisher or periodical title should be given with details of pagination. Records should relate to the Devon experience rather than national guidance - or misguidance. 

Imaging Devon
There was originally no intention to include images in the Devon bibliography, and, apart from the inclusion of books which contained collections of old photographs, there was no attempt at coverage and certainly no links to individual image files. This changed with the launch of the Etched on Devon's memory project when the format of bibliographical description adopted was based on that used for in the library for books and periodical articles. Thus it was that published engraved and lithographed topographical prints covering the period 1660-1870 were included in the Westcountry Studies Library's on-line database. A start was also made to cover engraved portraits but although, like photographs, they were included in the library catalogue, they were not included in the bibliography.

John Somers Cocks's coverage of  engraved prints ceased in 1870 but already in  the 1860s photographers such as Francis Bedford and Francis Frith were publishing topographical images of Devon in competition with the steel engraved vignettes. They appeared as individual albumen prints in a variety of sizes, as stereoscopic views or were issued in albums. Often negative numbers were given, in much the same way that William Rock and Henry Besley assigned numbers to their engraved vignettes. In 1894 the Post Office gave permission for publishers to sell picture postcards, although the divided back postcard, allowing a message to be written on the same side as the address thus leaving more space for the photograph, was only introduced in 1902. This was extremely popular and soon a wealth of cheap images of all parts of Devon flooded the market and, the social media posts of their day, were being rapidly distributed across the country. While any attempt to be exhaustive in coverage would derail the main thrust of the bibliography, this important published source of information form the start of the 20th century can be no more ignored than the availability of the digital record in the 21st century. It has therefore been decided to include the work of a limited number of publishers where information is available, through negative numbers, to date the images. For Francis Bedford, dates have been assigned from the knowledge of his annual visits to Devon, combined with the distinct waves of negative numbers appearing on his prints. For Francis Frith information is available on the Frith website and there is also information available for the Valentine archive in Dundee, with a useful key on the Historic Coventry website. A local postcard publisher, Chapman and Sons of Dawlish, has listings with dates on the Devon Record Office catalogue.

With this in mind, a page of 1224 Devon photographs from the 1920s has been added to accompany the "Devon in the 1920s" project which is being undertaken by the Devon History Society under the direction of Dr Julia Neville. The majority link to watermarked images in the Francis Frith archive but, if this listing is successful, it is hoped to extend coverage to other publishers and take it forward and backward in time. The arrangement is by place subdivided by subject. Record formats are based on the International Standard Bibliographical Description (ISBD) while subject descriptors are based on the format devised for Devon local studies collections, deriving ultimately from Derek Austin's PRECIS format, as used by the British National Bibliography before it moved to Library of Congress subject headings. Links to the Frith images were not individually verified but in those cases where they have been checked to ascertain subject content they do seem to work. There is also a selection of  records for the Dawlish publisher Chapman and Sons held in the Devon Heritage Centre, but there is no link to images for these items.

Our region revealed
Talk of images brings us to another project currently in progress at the Devon and Exeter Institution.  Our region revealed: unlocking the treasure of the Devon and Exeter Institution illustration collection is a project to digitise their large collection of 9,000 illustrations, previously uncatalogued. The collection of illustrations consists of prints, drawings and watercolours which had been largely unprotected and stored in non-archival boxes. To begin the project a team of volunteers supported by the Devon Heritage Centre systematically cleaned and rehoused items. The Digitisation Coordinator then surveyed the materials, examined the items and noted anything that needed to be undertaken to make the items safe for digitisation, making note of any special information that needed to be captured for scanning. The first batch sent for scanning was the Edward Ashworth collection of seven sketchbooks from which a total of 257 images have been uploaded and catalogued on PastView. Best practice was established for the digitisation of different items such as sketchbooks, wax seals and illustrations. The second batch sent for scanning included Exeter Diocesan Architectural Society images, election posters, plans and local illustrations, 274 illustrations in all. Volunteers are cataloguing the illustrations, researching, labelling and rehousing the collection. Treasures discovered include Exeter trade cards, wax seals, intaglio moulds and illustrations of buildings and landscapes of Exeter and Devon. Digitising these collections will make these items more accessible both to members and a wider audience. The digital metadata will allow items to be searched thematically and across collections on the website which will be launched in June 2020. It is to be hoped that the record structure will be compatible with the Devon bibliography, which already has records for some 4,000 topographical prints. The sudden taking down of the Devon County Council website has meant that only skeleton records of many prints have been retrieved and the project could enhance many of the records and also give links to illustrations.

As an example, for Somers Cocks catalogue 1563 visit the revived Etched on Devon's memorywebsite and scroll down the listings. Then compare the detail with the page for this print on the WayBack Machine where there is much more detail - even an image in this instance, although this is not always the case. Other images can be searched for on the archived website by substituting the sc0123.html number - although it may be easier to go direct to the printed catalogue, Devon topographical prints 1660-1870 : a catalogue and guide, and transcribe the details from there.

Devon bibliography phase 2?
Work with the Devon in the 1920s project has led to discussions with the Devon History Society about mounting the records for the 1920s on an integrated on-line database which could provide listings to researchers in a similar way to JISC Discovery hub. This has meant revisiting the record formats and checking their compatibility with standards such as the International Standard Bibliographical Description (ISBD, mentioned above), upgrading records as far as possible to Resource Description and Access (RDA, which is replacing AACR2) and assessing data exchange protocols such as Research Information Systems (RIS) and Zotero. This has meant some restructuring of the data formats and measures are in hand to make the contents of fields consistent across all types of record. Files are also being merged and the format for archiving and storage of data assessed. JISC and BNB have been approached and are being very helpful in investigating ways of supplying records of Devon relevance which could help to flesh out the many skeleton records in the files and also fill in many gaps. BNB has provided a file of 38,000 records with potential Devon content. It might even be possible to contribute Devon records to these national resources and for local individuals and organisations to report new records. The 1920s data could serve as a model for the mounting of the remainder of the records onto the database, which would make it much more accessible than it is at present. It would also mean that, when I cease to maintain the Devon bibliography, a ready-made package can be handed over to the institution that (hopefully) will carry the torch onward. 

Devon bibliography phase 3?

Inspired by Philip Pullen, who in 1815 published a detailed index to the writings of Exeter's millenarist Joanna Southcott (1750-1814) complete with a verse listing of her 65 publications, it has been decided to attempt the entire bibliography in verse. It will be a pleasant change to discuss the appropriate poetic meter rather than the merits of RDA, hexameters rather than pagination, rhyme schemes rather than ISBNs. But, judging from the next section of this newsletter, it will be an epic work that will dwarf even the Mahabharata.

Lies, damned lies and statistics. 
For several years I had estimated that the Devon bibliography contained almost 100,000 records but the recent work tidying up in preparation for the database has led to a reassessment. The results are presented n the table below:

Type	Section	Records
Books	1500-1799	2621
Books	1800-1899	7409
Books	1900-1979	19733
Books	1980-1999	17120
Books	2000-2020	9287
All books	1500-2020	56170
Articles		10779
Collections		302
Etched on Devon's	Memory	4299
Portraits		115
Photographs	Bedford	219
Photographs	Chapman	65
Photographs	Frith	6690
Photographs	Valentine	70
All images		11458
Maps	OS	17524
Maps	Not OS	2432
All maps		19956
Newspapers		465
Periodicals		2700
Modern manuscripts	and typescripts	2400
Manuscripts	medieval	1200
All manuscripts		3600
Theses		568
Web pages		1300
Web pages	WSL archive	5000
All Devon bibliography records		112298

So, the grand total of records in the bibliography is more than 110,000 rather than 95,000. There is certainly  be some duplication, but there are also many records waiting to be matched against those already included. Nor do the figures include records for collections not primarily relating to Devon but which are held in Devon libraries and are not otherwise adequately catalogued:

Baring-Gould	Ballads BL	4650
Baring-Gould	Ballads DRO	346
Baring-Gould	Ballads NLW	487
Baring-Gould	Ballads Rylands	254
All Baring-Gould records		12564
Exeter Library	Children's	2250
Exeter Library	Pre-1801	1700
Exeter Library	Heber Mardon	420
Exeter Library	Pocknell	525
Exeter Library	Kent Kingdon	560
All special collections		18019

There postcards in the UK in 1894.  

There are also a gazetteer of more than 700 Devon communities and a thesaurus with more than 3,000 terms in preparation as well as extensive bibliographical listings covering France, Germany and Precolumbian Mesoamerica and listings of book trade personnel covering Devon, the Westcountry and the rest of the world over five millennia. But even adding these to the mix cannot rival that bibliographical leviathan stranded in the Devon Heritage Centre: the Burnet Morris Index, compiled between 1915 and 1940 for the Devonshire Association with more than a million cards relating to Devon and Devonians. And we have not even dared to look at that to see what might have been missed by the Devon bibliography.