click here for the power point presentation that accompanied this talk.

     First of all, I should thank Yale University and my ex-boss at the British Library, Dr. Alice Prochaska, in particular, for inviting me to attend this conference and address you this morning.

     This session is about traditional media, and there are many topics we could very usefully discuss relating to the collecting of traditional media in support of international and area studies, such as how do we measure the effectiveness of our selection and acquisition of current printed materials, particularly in foreign languages, in the absence of regular and reliable statistical data on publishing output, country by country, worldwide? When we do have such data, how do we decide how much and what categories of that output should be collected to support research needs? If we talk about collecting primarily research-level publications, how do we define what research-level means, when, as they say, "today's trash is tomorrow's treasure"?

     If we agree that the best librarians and archivists are ‘takers’ (users) of collections as well as ‘keepers’ (curators), then don't we need to ensure that the old scholar librarian tradition, which is tending to disappear, is dusted off and reinvented and reinvigorated for the digital era? When we review our collection development policies and decide, on very sound library use grounds, as well as maybe costs, that foreign-language materials should be a priority for reductions, might we not reflect that in eleventh-century Europe the language of modernization, of science, technology, and medicine, was Arabic, and if anyone had suggested that English would eventually assume that role, they'd have been laughed out of court? In other words, how do we solve that knottiest of problems in collection development, keeping short-term and longer term demands in balance?

     But I'm not going to talk about any of those topics. Let me turn to the Endangered Archives Program and start with one crude, over-arching over-generalization: that in area studies in particular, researchers can either go on revisiting and reinterpreting the collections that are nearest and most easily accessible to them, in their home institutions or home countries primarily, as new research approaches and methodologies kick in. One thinks of the enormous influence of Edward Said and orientalism as an example of this. Or researchers can seek to expand their collection horizons to less-explored collections farther afield and draw on a wider knowledge-base and research pool. I suppose the ideal scenario is a combination of the two? More revisiting of old coupled with first visits to new collections.

The desire for a widening of research resources has been shown, at least in the UK, by a survey of academic researchers' current and future use of libraries commissioned by the Higher Education Funding Body. This survey, conducted in 2002, showed that in area studies and languages, 65 percent of researchers already used photographs and still images; 50 percent used moving images and sound recordings; and 20 percent even used artefacts. There has been an undeniable shift in exploring new kinds of research evidence, much more use being made of audiovisual, alongside textual resources. And I think we all know that's true. And there are even the beginnings of a trend towards looking at museum and gallery 3-D resources, alongside the 2-D materials of libraries and archives, as one inter-linking spectrum of research resources.

     So, as librarians, we don't only need to try and collaborate amongst ourselves - and we all know the practical difficulties that can be involved in that - but we need to begin to think more about cross-sectoral collaboration with museums and galleries, which is also necessary if we are to support research as effectively as possible in the future.

     The same UK survey showed that 78 percent of area studies and languages researchers already use libraries outside the UK. Or, put another way, it's no longer acceptable, if it ever was, to write the history of nineteenth-century India based solely on the India Office Records at the British Library, however voluminous, detailed, and fairly, but certainly by no means perfectly, accessible they may be. In using such a research ‘gift’, researchers must also be aware of what view of history that archive represents and, in this case, find unofficial ‘counter-voices’ to offset the sheer physical, as well as intellectual, weight of that official view. Such ‘counter-voices’ are much harder to find, but it is the librarian’s or archivist’s ‘inside knowledge’ of the network of collections world-wide, and how they interlink and complement each other, that can often play an important role here in facilitating research.

     We have to respond to these research trends for access to collections worldwide, much more directly and effectively as librarians than perhaps we've been used to doing. We need to develop international strategies to respond more effectively and in a more focused way. At the British Library, we are just putting together such a strategy for the first time. We are trying to identify strategic partners worldwide and to decide on which areas of the world should take priority with us in seeking to enter into partnerships. The deciding of such priorities for the national library of a former colonial power may be dictated by different factors from those of a major US research library. For instance, the skeletons of cultural restitution that regularly rattle around in our cupboards may not be such a problem for you, but I think we all have to think about our international working much more than we have done hitherto.

     The global record is, by definition, a global creation. So its preservation, inevitably selective to a greater or lesser degree, needs a global response. Libraries and archives in the Western world will have to develop closer real working relationships with their equivalent institutions in the Emerging World to secure the future of international scholarship. IFLA - the International Federation of Library Associations - decades ago promulgated two absolutely fundamental goals: UBC and UAP - Universal Bibliographic Control and Universal Availability of Publications. These aims still seem very distant and maybe they always will be, but they remain the two essential ‘building blocks’ for the facilitation of research access to the global record.

     The interests of researchers in the West, as well as those worldwide, will best be served as the library networks in other countries develop, as legal deposit legislation is effectively implemented, as national and regional bibliographies are regularly published, and so on. Under the Global Resources Network umbrella, the Digital South Asia Library Project - that I know a little about - is one fine example, it seems to me, of how such partnerships can work well and start to ‘deliver the goods’ for research within a reasonably and surprisingly short timeframe. A true partnership, based on mutual respect, I think, is fundamentally important, as are an awareness of the difficulties faced by our professional library colleagues in other parts of the world, a willingness to transfer professional skills and technology, and helping to develop local library infrastructure.

     It is in this context of building partnerships with research institutions, libraries and archives in the Emerging World that I now want to introduce the Endangered Archives Program, which we recently started at the British Library and which, hopefully, will make its own small contribution to the emergence of closer international ties. The Endangered Archives Program (EAP) is sponsored by the Elizabeth Rausing Charitable Fund. If you wish to know more about the Fund please visit the web-site at www.lisbetrausingcharitablefund.org, but I have to warn you that the Fund makes approaches based on its own ideas rather than inviting applications. The Fund has also sponsored a project that some of you may know about, the Endangered Languages Project at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London – see www.hrelp.org.

The Endangered Archives Program is administered by the British Library with a part-time Director, which is me, backed up by a Grants Administrator, to be joined by an Endangered Archives curator this autumn. The Program is run in liaison with Professor Barry Supple, again, some of you may know him, who is the academic consultant to the Elizabeth Rausing Charitable Fund and former Head of the Leverhulme Trust, a major research-giving grant body in the UK.

     We have a ten million pound sponsorship of the Program, extending over eight to ten years. The eight to ten years bracket is there because, obviously, most of the money that we receive will be given away in the form of grants, but how long that money will last depends on the level of successful applications each year and how much each individual application is requesting.

     The Program was launched last October, with a first call for both research grant and bursary applications, and the first awards will be made at the end of April 2005. The Program has two principal objectives: to contribute to the preservation of mankind's documentary heritage particularly in those less well-developed regions of the world where collections may be more at risk and where the availability of funding may be limited; and to help foster professional standards in cataloguing, preservation, etc. and so assist in safeguarding the longer term availability and accessibility of heritage collections worldwide. There's not much point in just copying and transferring material into an archival home in the country of origin if there isn't going to be the profession there to support, maintain, and preserve it in the longer term. Indirectly, the Endangered Archives Program also hopes to heighten awareness of the problem of endangered archives and so encourage other funding initiatives to combat their loss and destruction.

     Why ‘endangered archives’ as the Program’s focus? Well, I've borrowed a quote from the UNESCO Memory of the World initiative which fits very nicely with our aims: "Documentary heritage reflects the diversity of languages, peoples, and cultures. It is the mirror of the world and its memory, but this memory is fragile. Every day, irreplaceable parts of this memory disappear forever."

     While the appreciation of the importance of archives may never have been greater, there is a growing awareness that archives around the world are in real danger. At the 2004 ICA Congress -- the Congress of the International Council on Archives -- 2000 delegates from 116 countries no less discussed how better to preserve the world's documentary heritage. I think some of what now follows repeats some points Professor Spence made yesterday, that archives are endangered not only by the forces of nature – floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, fires - but maybe even more by the actions of mankind. War, for instance, may have catastrophic consequences for archives. I can still remember the TV footage of documents fluttering across the ground outside the burnt-out National Library and Archives building in Baghdad.

     Apart from those kinds of catastrophes, there are other problems such as the fragility and inbuilt obsolescence associated with the physical formats to which we have entrusted our documentary heritage. One thinks, for instance, of acidic paper, audiotapes, and digital data. Archives not kept under a proper legal system may be susceptible to neglect or destruction. Political ideology can impact directly on archives. As the ICA Congress noted: “Archives are fundamental to ensuring the survival of truth, memory, and justice”.

     The lack of professional training, coupled with a lack of resources, poses a constant threat. It is the unintentional which can often be the most damaging, the sheer neglect of documentary heritage for want of awareness of its significance. Lastly, perhaps the most insidious threat of all, our gradual cultural homogenization, everywhere becoming a little bit more like everywhere else, day by day, sometimes referred to as the McDonaldization of world culture. How important it is for us to locate, preserve and celebrate the differences of world cultures in the face of overwhelming pressures towards sameness before it is too late.

     But it's not all doom and gloom. In the Asian and African studies fields that I know best, there are various recent initiatives that are showing what can be done. At Timbuktu in Mali, there are various projects underway combining to preserve a large part of its important Islamic heritage. There are many thousands of manuscripts there. At the great mosque of Sana'a in the Yemen, some of the earliest vellum and paper Qur’an fragments have been recovered. At the monastery of Tabo on the India-China border, an Austrian-led project has been piecing together manuscripts from an otherwise lost tradition of Western Tibetan Buddhism. The Nepal-German Manuscript Preservation Project has concentrated on the Sanskrit heritage of the country for some years. It has had its problems, but it's done a great deal of good work. In Bangkok, the Fragile Palm Leaves Project to preserve Buddhist manuscripts from Southeast Asian traditions has been underway for a decade now.

     Well, we know that preserving the world's documentary heritage is an enormous, long-term task. And whatever we do, again, as Professor Spence reminded us, in the end, inevitably, only a selection will be preserved. The British Library Program will only be able to make a small contribution. So it is, therefore, focusing on archives relating primarily, but not exclusively, to the pre-modern or pre-industrial stages of any society's development. The time period involved will vary from society to society. Any subject will be considered, across the whole range of the arts and humanities, traditional sciences, technology, and medicine. Any regional interests will be considered, although applications relating to the Emerging World will be particularly welcomed: Asia, Africa, Latin America, etc.

     Private collections are a particular focus because they are at even more risk than those already in publicly accessible archives. It is very interesting that our sponsor initially wanted to concentrate solely on private collections, but I was at pains, along with my Library colleagues, to stress that many archival collections in publicly accessible and publicly funded archives are equally at risk. Despite the Fund’s wish not to supplant government funding or rather perhaps to encourage governments not to provide an adequate level of funding for libraries and archives, nevertheless it was agreed that we could have various scenarios where we will entertain projects that do concentrate on archival collections in publicly accessible repositories.

     How do we define archives? Well, we've tried to take the broadest possible interpretation, to embrace rare printed sources - books, serials, newspapers – and ephemera, manuscripts in any language, visual materials, drawings, prints, paintings, posters, photographs, audio or video recordings and film, digital data, and even other objects and artefacts. But since we don't really want to get too far into ‘museum territory’ in this Program, we will only entertain objects and artefacts where they are found in close relationship with a documentary archive.

     How will we try to achieve our objectives? Well, primarily by annual awards of research grants up to a guideline maximum of 50,000 pounds sterling, although we're prepared to be flexible about that. The awards will be made to individual researchers or librarians or archivists to locate significant collections; to arrange their transfer to a suitable local archival home; to make copies, microfilm or digital; and deliver those copies to the British Library. This collection-building will be one of the benefits to the British Library in return for administering the Program. I hasten to add that we are not going to insist on archival quality microfilm or digital copies. Some – hopefully many - of the copies made will be of archival quality, but when operating a worldwide Program where we have researchers undertaking copying in the field, potentially in difficult circumstances, to insist on this would be going too far. We will be setting minimal standards, and we will be doing some quality control, but the primary purpose of the copies we receive is access, not the creation of archival copies by proxy. We are not there to supplant the archival role which, quite properly, should be carried out by the country of origin. We are there to make material accessible. So, under this Program, satisfactory working copies will be our aim. Some of you may think we are not taking the right direction there, but that is what we've chosen to do.

     Smaller-scale grants, maybe up to 10,000 pounds sterling, are also available for pilot projects to investigate the survival of archival collections in a discrete region, on a specific subject, or in a distinct format, and to assess the feasibility of their recovery. We haven't had many applications for those in the first year. I think such surveys are potentially particularly valuable pieces of work, where people have a sense or have heard that there are good archival collections in a specific locale, but nobody's actually gone there and spent weeks or months to investigate resources on the ground. These pilot projects could also, of course, then lead on and make possible major grant applications in future years. We're also awarding bursaries, four a year initially, to overseas archivists and librarians to cover the costs of six-month work attachments at the British Library in their areas of interest.

     It is always important to tell people what you won't fund as well as what you will. In the Endangered Archives Program we won't cover the costs of new buildings or the renovation of existing buildings; infrastructure or other routine running costs, staff salaries, for instance. As for the full-time replacement salary for academics involved in a project, we'll only fund the time they actually spend in the field. As I was saying earlier, we've chosen a surrogate path for access. We will not fund the physical conservation of original materials on any large scale. That's expensive and time-intensive. Of course, there may be occasions where some remedial work is necessary in order to make copying possible, and that we will fund. But our preservation path is via surrogate creation. And we won't fund the actual creation of a new archive of endangered traditions, such as oral literature, or the transcription of an existing archive. We had several people apply thinking that we would cover those costs.

     Well, what are the British Library's responsibilities? Apart from directly administering the Program, the British Library will receive and retain the surrogate copies of all of the collections rescued under the Endangered Archives Program. It is an operating principle of EAP that no original archival material should leave its home country. As I said, we have enough skeletons rattling around in our cupboards. We don't need to add to them. We will document the surrogate collections received and make them freely accessible to researchers. We will seek partnerships with library and archival consortia worldwide to facilitate the dissemination of those collections into the international research domain and we will seek funding to continue and expand the program beyond its initial eight to ten year period.

     What has been the interest so far? Well, we’ve had grant applications covering a wide variety of subjects, formats, and countries. Examples include archives on minority peoples in China and Chile; twentieth-century political papers in Liberia, East Timor, and Yap in Micronesia; photographic collections in Iran, Southern India, and Siberia; newspapers and periodicals in Hindi, Urdu, Nepali, and Mongolian; home movies of Chinese family life in colonial Java; radio archives in the Balkans and Iran; church archives in Jerusalem, Cairo, India, and Ecuador; manuscripts in Arabic, Armenian, Marathi, Hebrew, and Tibetan; and official records in the National Archives of Georgia, Madagascar, and Tuvalu. So we're quite pleased at the range of inquiries we've been getting.

     Thirty-four grant applications have been invited through to the full stage. It was interesting where they came from: 11 from North America; 11 from the UK and Western Europe; 4 from Asia; 2 from Latin America; 2 from Australia and Micronesia; 2 from Africa; 1 from Eastern Europe and Russia; and 1 from the Middle East. The proposals largely focused on collections in Asia, 12; 8 in Africa; 6 in the UK and Western Europe; 4 in Latin America; 2 in Eastern Europe; and 2 in Micronesia. In April, an International Advisory Panel, trying to reflect a worldwide scope, a mix of academics and archivists, will meet to decide on the awards to be made. I suspect that almost everything that is halfway decently presented to us in this first year, given that scale of response, will get funded.

     How can you help? Well, when you start any Program like this, the principal problem is actually getting yourself known worldwide. So any help you can give in spreading the word about the Program's existence to all your fellow faculty, students, academic contacts, web groups, library users, inquirers, and librarian and archivist contacts and putting them in touch with us will be greatly appreciated. Letting us know of any collections that are in danger, for whatever reason, both those in public institutions, but, particularly, those in private ownership. And by keeping a watch on the Program's web pages for news of award timetables and any changes in scope as the Program develops.

The Endangered Archives Program is, I think, an inspired initiative that offers wonderful opportunities for researchers and librarians alike. Thank you very much for this opportunity to talk about it.

Graham Shaw is Head of Asia, Pacific and Africa Collections at the British Library, London. After graduating in Hindi and Sanskrit from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, in 1969, Graham worked at the Library of the School for some years before beginning his career in the British Library - now extending over 30 years. He has held various posts there, dealing with Western language materials relating to South Asia, as well as books and manuscripts in North Indian languages. He has been responsible for overseeing the complete moves of collections, staff and services between buildings, and has participated in many high-level reviews within the library including collection development, document supply and preservation.

He describes his present position as the best in the British Library, presiding as he does over the world's greatest documentary resource for the study of Asia, its history, literatures, religions and cultures - from Hebrew and Arabic to Chinese and Japanese; from books, newspapers, maps and manuscripts to government records, prints, drawings and photographs. Despite a heavy administrative load, Graham continues to pursue his research into the history of the book in South Asia, a topic on which he has published a number of books and articles.

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