Exhibition catalogues and Annuals on standing order at SPH Library

An important part of any library collection that supports art and design are Exhibition Catalogues and Annual publications. These publications showcase work that is notable in the field, record bodies of work of and critical texts about artists and designers, and can act as snapshots of the art and design worlds at certain moments in time.

In order to not miss any important publications from selected galleries and publishers, we have set up standing orders with our supplier Arts Bibliographic, who send us copies of any publications from these places when they are released. If you’re interested in seeing what institutions/publishers  we hold standing orders with, there’s now an Aspire list that contains that information, and you can take a look here. 

 

BST195307 Two Cats. Poster for the Exposition de l’oeuvre dessine et peint de T.A. Steinlen, 1894 (colour litho & w/c on paper, proof before letters) by Steinlen, Theophile Alexandre (1859-1923); sheet 59.1×48.7 cm; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts, USA; (add.info.: exhibition of drawings and paintings; Catalogue Raisonne: Bargiel and Zagrodzki 14 A2;); Bequest of W.G. Russell Allen; via Bridgeman Education.

Using SPH Special Collection material for teaching: Thinking about documentation with year 1 Fine Art Sculpture.

At St Peters House, we’re lucky to have many interesting and unusual items in our Special Collection, however due to their often rare/fragile nature, they’re kept in closed access conditions behind the issue desk and so are not as easily accessible as we’d sometimes like. Being able to use items from the special collection in teaching is great as it allows us to raise awareness of the collection amongst students and staff that use the library.

To this end, I worked with first year sculpture tutor Leah Capaldi to devise a session for her students using material in the special collection. As part of their end of year assessment, students are required to bring together documentation (e.g photographs, recordings, texts) all of the work they have produced over the course of the year. Documenting the work you make is an important part of your time at art school and a good skill to develop for your practice beyond it. Leah was keen to get them thinking about ways they could make their documentation more interesting than a simple portfolio, and thought that showing them some items from the special collections could give them some inspiration. The following material was shown to the students:

Ed Ruscha- Twentysix Gasoline Stations and Thirtyfour Parking Lots in LA

‘Twentysix Gasoline Stations’ by Ed Ruscha

Leah had mentioned that often students tended to see the modes of presentation they used (e.g. a book or a portfolio) as just the vehicle for displaying their documentation, and wanted to get them to think more about how the content and format could be more interlinked. In this respect I thought showing them the Ruscha books was useful. For the first edition of Twenty-Six Gasoline Stations, Ruscha printed 400 copies of the book, and sold them in a wide range of places. The prints in the book could have had been large format, and hung on a gallery wall, and then reproduced in a lavish but expensive monograph at a later date, but instead Ruscha chose the book as an attempt to disseminate his work more widely. As such the format of the book becomes part of the work itself rather than just a mode of display.

Not Yet the Times

As an example of newsprint as a material that could be used for presentation.

2398 gr.: a book about food

This exhibition catalogue is housed in a takeaway container and was selected as a way of getting students to consider using existing packaging/packaging created for other purposes to house their documentation.

Franticham’s assembling box nr 28: visual poetry and Fluxus inspired works from 23 artists from 9 countries

 Shattered Anatomies: Traces of the Body in Performance

 John Dilnot: 1995 Books

Inside ‘Shattered Anatomies’

Using a form like a box also allows for wide range of documentation (including 3D objects) to be incorporated. The Shattered Anatomies box is of particular interest at it contains a varied range of documentation from artists who took part in the exhibition, and documents performance art, which can be hard to capture in more interesting ways. Dilnot’s box of books is also a good example of collecting a body of work together.

Josef Beuys: Multiples: Oeuvreverzeichnis sämtlicher multiplizierten Arbeiten: Objekte, Grafik, Postkarten, Schallplatten, Filme

Josef Beuys produced an incredibly varied range of work throughout his life, and I thought the way documentation of this was gathered in these two binders was a nice example.

Future Fantasteek Zines by Jackie Batey        

Leah said that often her students were concerned with the cost of producing documentation, so I thought it might be useful to show the students something that was created on a low budget to show that there are other less costly options open to them.

Mapping Knowledge- Les Bicknell

Fair Use Notes From Spam- Graham Parker

Marysa Dowling: Selected Projects             

These items were selected as they comprise of multi-volume works and this could be a useful format for students to think about using, as it could allow them to incorporate further documentation to the original documentation over time in a consistent format.

The Session

As part of the first year of the course, Leah runs ‘breakfast club’ sessions on Monday, which feature activities such as guest speakers, work in progress crits, film screenings. We decided this session would operate as one of these sessions, and so it functioned like a studio based crit, facilitated by Leah where students looked at the material and considered their own work and documentation in that context.  The following issues were discussed:

  • The form of the book as being more than just a way to display your work.
  • Using a form of documentation you can ‘grow’ and add to.
  • How to document time based image work (video, film, animation etc) in 2D.
  • Incorporating texts into documentation.
  • Documenting your work online compared to documenting your work in print.
  • How to find material in the special collections using the library catalogue.
  • Cost effective documentation.

Finding Film Reviews

Image of results screen for search for film reviews about Star Wars

Film reviews can be a useful source of information, and recently one of the Librarians helped a student find reviews of the Star Wars films to aid his research.  He was particularly interested in how critics reviewed the special effects used in the films.

If you know the name of a film magazine then you can check the library catalogue directly and see if the magazine is available in the University of Brighton (UoB) libraries or if it is available full text online.   Two names suggested by the librarian were the academic journal ‘Screen‘ and the popular magazine ‘Sight and Sound‘.

A great starting point to finding film reviews is also to use ‘OneSearch‘ on the Online Library page, provided by the UoB. This searches across a huge range of magazines, academic journals, books, ebooks, book reviews and audiovisual sources.

Into the search box of OneSearch we entered “star wars” review

Putting the quotation marks around the phrase ‘star wars’ keeps those words next to each other in the results that are shown, so makes your search more focused.  Capitalisation isn’t necessary when searching.

There were a lot of results, but by then refining them to only show full text articles, and to just show results from magazines and journals, there were lots of results displayed that contained reviews of the films.  To be more focused, the name of any of the star wars films could be added, and we also added keywords: variations of ‘CGI’, ‘visual effects’, ‘special effects’ etc to try and focus the search more to the research the student was doing.

There is a website St Peters House Library subscribes to called Performing Arts Periodicals Database which contains the full text of the magazine ‘Sight and Sound’ going back to 1932, as well as hundreds of other journals/periodicals.  Here there were many film reviews for the Star Wars films which the student found very helpful.

Some useful titles for film research that UoB provides online access to include:

  • Sight and Sound
  • Screen
  • Science Fiction Film and Television
  • Journal of Popular Film and Television
  • Millimeter: The Magazine of Motion Picture and Television Production
  • Film Quarterly

The Librarian team can help with any research enquiry, just ask at the Library Helpdesk, call us or email us (AskSPH@brighton.ac.uk).

Finding stuff on 1970’s Fashion at St Peters House Library Brighton

Skirt and bustier by Norma Kamali, c.1974 © Christie’s Images;Bridgeman Education

 

Just looking for books? Have a look at the library catalogue here.

Also check the catalogue for Fashion related DVD’s. There might also be relevant AV recordings on the media streaming service Box of Broadcasts. See this post.

You will probably find loads of stuff in our Fashion print journals. They live on the 1st floor of the library.

As a starting point for more extensive research have a look at our Fashion & Textiles subject guide. All nicely put together resources specifically for your study and help with your research.

One of the great resources the University of Brighton subscribes to is the Vogue Archive. UoB students can access this on site or at home.

VADS. This is a useful resource of online images for visual arts including Fashion. See here.

We have also made a guide to university of Brighton subscribed databases for finding copyright cleared images.

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OK just who were the movers and shakers doing their Fashion thing in the 70’s anyway? Check below for a few of the big names whose books we hold on the shelves here at St Peters House.

Halston

Gucci

Yves Saint Laurent

Zhandra Rhodes

Diane von Furstenberg

Vivienne Westwood

Ossie Clarke

Laura Ashley

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Fancy seeing some real examples?

Locally Brighton museum has examples of 1970s fashion in it’s collection.

In London two places you might head for are the Victoria and Albert museum Fashion collections in South Kensington and Fashion & Textile museum in Bermondsey.

 

Hope that helps, and remember…….

Its a Fashion world out there and we all live in it!

Getting to know BoB (Box of Broadcasts)

Have you met BoB (Box of Broadcasts) yet? The media streaming service that gives you access to over 65 freeview television and radio channels. BoB allows you to:

  • Request up to 10 recordings per day from over 65 channels – including news channels such as Aljazeera, BBC News, BBC Parliament, CNN; and foreign language channels like BBC Wales Cymru, 2DF (aka ZDF); and ARTE.
  • View programmes from the ever-growing archive – currently at over 3 million programmes.  When searching the archive you are not just searching programme title but also the programme transcript, really opening up the content.
  • Manage your programmes by collecting them into playlists.  You can also create clips from programmes to extract relevant sections.

To get to know BoB better work your way through these video tutorials or contact your local library for further information.

Ebooks in the Library Collection

ebook

You can read thousands of ebooks which the University of Brighton Libraries have subscribed to for your ease of access.

Over 50,000 titles are accessible through the library catalogue and OneSearch with new titles added as they are published.

  • Extensive subject coverage including Humanities, Social Sciences, Science, Technology & Medicine
  • Multi-user access to all Cambridge University Press titles

If you have any questions or feedback, please contact your Information Adviser

Copyright and Lecture Capture at the University of Brighton

Contracts by NobMouse CC-BY

When you record a lecture or presentation to share online, you’ll have to address a couple issues related to copyright.

The UofB generally doesn’t assert copyright in lecturers’ works. However, the university does assert ownership in the video of a lecture. This is because recordings are often reproduced in different formats (podcasts) and made available to the public.

Which means that anyone participating in the lecture will need to sign a copyright waiver form in which the University has explicit permission to release the video online.

This is especially important whenever you’re working with someone external to the University.

Here’s a model consent form but you’ll have to adapt it for your specific use. The University of Kent use this model consent form for guest lecturers and this model consent form for student presentations.

Cover more ground on legal issues related to lecture capture in this JISC guide to lecture capture and legal considerations.

Information about Open Educational Resources (OERS) and IPR  is also available.

If you need further help don’t hesitate to contact the library AskSPH (at) brighton.ac.uk

20th Century British Grassroots Publications

St. Peters House Library provides access to this complete grassroots publications series.

These are alternative press newspapers written in the 20th century by ordinary people across Britain. To read these issues use the microform titled Underground Press Series, which is located on the 1st floor of the library in the AV area (where the DVDs are). Our digital microform reader will allow you to scan and print from the film (instructions on how to use the reader are next to the machine).

Some of the local press papers have already been digitised and are available on the Radical Brighton. You can read:

The Underground and Alternative Press in Britain: a Bibliographical Guide with historical notes / John Spiers

Alternative Brighton (1973)/ Francis Jarman and John Noyce

Attila / Bill Butler

Librarians for Social Change / John Noyce

Accessing Popular News+ Mass Observation Archive + Picture Post + Library Print Journals Collection

Popular Press

Times Digital Archive 1785-2010, Current Times articles and Daily Mail 1998-present

UofB gives you online copies of mainstream press :

  • News Stand for current Times, Times Educational Supplement, Daily Mail 1998- present and Telegraph
  • UK Press online for Daily Mirror

Through the local library

The local Brighton and Hove libraries further provide online copies of newspapers.

News Stand database includes Times, Times Educational Supplement, Daily Mail 1998 — present and Telegraph; accessible from home with your library card.

http://www.brighton-hove.gov.uk/content/leisure-and-libraries/libraries/free-access-subscription-websites

Mass Observation Archive

The digitised Mass Observation archive is accessible at The Keep’s Reference room. Available to anyone visiting The Keep and you do not need a readers card to access it. All of the first phase of Mass Observation has been digitized and is available on this resource.

The Keep offers access to some of the original Mass Observation documents and you will need to register to become a reader to access these. This is also how you can look at the Mass Observation Project which started in 1981.

Information about visiting The Keep

Search the catalogue to the Mass Observation archive on The Keep website 

Click on the “Browse by hierarchy” tab and you can see the whole listing by using the + signs to open up the record. if you click the “View at The Keep” tab, it will let you know whether it is something that can be ordered from store, or is only available on the online resource.

Picture Post

Picture Post 1938 – 1956 is stored at the St. Peters House Library on the 1st floor and in the Special Collections; also at Hove Library up to June 57′ in-person access only.

St. Peters House Library Print Journals Collection on 1st Floor of the Library

Early 20th Century copies of:

  • London Illustrated News
  • Punch
  • Picture Post
  • National Geographic

Journals grouped by subject

These primary resources are further supplemented by our microform collection. We are the only owners of this complete grassroots publications series written in the 20th century. We also have these primary source titles on microform which include Little Magazines and Left News.