Event at the Newsam Library and Archives

The Library and Archives are holding a one day event on Wednesday 6th February to encourage people learn more about our teaching resources and the day will feature a talk about the NUWT archive and how it can be used in teaching and research.

Covering subjects from using textbooks for propaganda in Germany in the 1930s to creating controversy by debating history in the 1970s the day aims to open up the library’s collections to help new and existing users with their own teaching and research.

The day will feature talks by Dr Toby Simpson of the Wiener Library on the content of German textbooks prior to the Second World War, and Bernard Barker, a history teacher who developed teaching resources to encourage debate amongst pupils and created a controversy in the media by doing so.

The IOE’s Librarians and Archivists will be on hand to provide information and guidance on the our collections with ideas on how these historical collections can be used in new ways. There will also be presentations by two IOE PhD students who are currently using library and archive collections for their research.

Full programme:

10.00 – 10.30	Becky Webster Welcome and introduction to collections held by the Library and Archives
10.30 – 11.30	Dr Toby Simpson How were German children taught Nazi values? The use of textbooks as propaganda, 1933-1945 (talk followed by   questions)
11.30–12.00	Nazlin Bhimani Research and the historical textbooks   collection at the IOE
12.00–12.30	Antony Daws The Inner London Education Authority as an educational publisher. (followed by questions for Nazlin & Antony)
12.40–13.30	LUNCH (bring your own)
13. 30–14.30	Bernard Barker History Teaching & Controversy in the   1970s (talk followed by questions)
14.30–15.00 15.00-15.30	Alice Kirke (MPhil/PhD student) ‘Fresh air and morality’: landscape and environment in the history of education (talk followed by questions) Sean Curran (MPhil/PhD student) A feminine touch: the potential for   using women’s collections for outreach, with reference to the NUWT collection in the IOE Archives (talk followed by questions)
15.30–16.00	Archive and Special Collection showcase

For further information, or to book your place, please contact Rebecca Webster : rebecca.webster@ioe.ac.uk

 

Post-project round up

Although the NUWT project came to an end some time ago (the original funding was from April 2011 – June 2012) you may have noticed that I’m still here! Part of that time was spent re-organising the NUWT collection and the rest of the time was spent on a variety of archive activities.

However I was never able to stay away from the NUWT collection for very long!

So the additional work I have done on the NUWT collection is:

• Creating a guide on using the collection using our libguides system
• Continuing to blog about finds from the collection
• Working with a volunteer who carried out fantastic research on individual women in the NUWT and the administrative history of the organisation
• Answering enquiries about the collection
• Continuing to scan in images from the collection – photographs and documents – that can now be used by all archive staff, for promotional activities, and for researchers (see next point for more information)
• Locating NUWT-related material held elsewhere
• Beginning to add images to our Flickr account and creating a set of images of individual members of the NUWT – Women of the NUWT

Although the NUWT cataloguing project is at an end, and I am moving to a new post at London School of Economics, work on the collection will continue as part of the general activities of the archive. And of course now that the collection is on the online catalogue it is easily accessible for anyone who would like to come in to the Institute of Education Archive to use the collection.

The project blog and twitter will be coming to a halt for the moment but plans for using the NUWT collection as an educational resource continue and any future developments will be reported.  If you would like to get involved then you can email arch.enquiries[at]ioe.ac.uk.

I feel so privileged to have spent so much time cataloguing the NUWT collection and thank you all for sharing the experience with me through this blog and through twitter.

National Union of Women Teachers members standing in front of campaign banners

 

Happy Christmas!

Wishing all of you a very Happy Christmas and a very happy, healthy and joyful New Year.

N.B. The Christmas card was designed by the National Union of Women Teachers to be sold to branches and members to raise funds for the union. ©Institute of Education Archive

Dating photographs

… or not dating them as the case may be! Recently I’ve been trying to identify the individual members of the NUWT in the photographs in the Collection.

Identifying the women has been a lot tougher than I’d originally thought it would be so I’m hoping some of my you might be able to help!  Many of the group photographs contain large numbers of women, often wearing hats which partially obscure their face, and some of these photographs are a bit faded with age. Ah the age – there’s another problem, many of these photos are not dated!  As these are often more casual shots the women are not always looking directly at the camera, making it more difficult to identify.  For some women, generally members of the Central Council, we have official portraits.  However even these are problematic as they do not always give the name of the individual or the date.

So here’s two photographs/one individual I’ve been puzzling over – let’s see what you think.

Photo 1 ©Institute of Education Archive

Photo 2 ©Institute of Education Archive

• Is the women in photo 1 the same as the women on the left in photo 2?
• What date would you give these photos?

Unlike most of the collection the photograph section was already on the catalogue system when I started this project.  Some are catalogued individually, others in groups.  Photo 1 is dated 1918/1919 on the catalogue but has no date on the photo and photo 2 is dated 1920s on the catalogue entry, again with no date on the photo itself.  On the back of photo 1 it says Miss [Cutten] – I’m pretty sure it’s Cutten but the writing is quite hard to make out.  I’m sure the women on the left in photo 2 is the same as photo 1 but the problem here is that if photo 1 is Miss Lizzie Cutten she died in 1920.  So either the name is wrong, one or both of the dates are wrong, or I have two different women. [Are you confused yet? I'm confusing myself here with trying to work this out so please bear with me!] Lizzie Cutten was born in 1888 so it could be that photo 1 was taken  much earlier than 1918 but I don’t know enough about historic fashion and hairstyles to even take an educated guess. Can anyone help me out here with dating these based on the fashion and hair styles?

And I’ve not even started trying to figure out who the women on the right is in photo 2!

Women’s Educational Union, Scotland

I couldn’t let St Andrews day pass without a blog post! Last year I talked about ‘The Word’ - the  journal of the United Socialist Movement which was edited and published by Guy Aldred in Glasgow. This year I’m going to stick to women teachers as I found a folder of material on the Women’s Educational Union.  They were the nearest equivalent to the NUWT in Scotland, fighting for equal pay for women teachers, and from the looks of their journal Pass It On they similarly campaigned on a range of feminist and equal rights issues.

©Institute of Education Archive

The comment from the NUWT member reads

Just [received] from Scotland.  Good isn’t it. What do you think of a monthly sheet of [pass] like this! Beginning of paper.

From this you can see that it met with the approval of the NUWT! It might even have been part of the inspiration behind the NUWT starting The Woman Teacher just one year later in 1919.

This is just a quick post and the real purpose of it, asides from it being St Andrews Day, is that I can’t locate any archive collection of the Womens’ Education Union. So if anyone knows where their papers are held I’d love to know.  I can’t find any clues to where they’re held online – I do so hope they have survived!