A recent addition to my London books collection is Pictorial London: Views of the Streets, Public Buildings, Parks and Scenery of the Metropolis, published 112 years ago in 1906 by Cassell & Company. It’s a hardcover green cloth-bound monster of a tome, containing 500+ black and white images, and part of a job lot I brilliantly …
Warning: if you’re a London enthusiast, this post may sidetrack your day. A previous blog post was primarily about digital collections of London in images (photographs, prints, drawings, etc.). This post looks at the wider world of digital collections about London, including maps, in ten outstanding examples. As a parameter, I’ve included only collections that do not …
Starting to explore an amazing digital collection is like falling into a black hole. Or a time warp. In a good way. This month I’m taking an online professional development class on managing special image collections and starting digitization programs. In the first week, we examined the user interfaces of various digital collections. Searching for …
Step back in time 110 years. You’re visiting London, England, in 1908, maybe for the first time. You want to know everything. Luckily you have a guidebook with you. Beyond the opening hours of the British Museum and the location of Sir Christopher Wren’s tombstone in St. Paul’s Cathedral, what is your guidebook telling you …
Like many people, I love watching history on television. Bring on the Lucy Worsleys, the David Starkeys, the Tony Robinsons, Dan Snows, Michael Woods, Simon Schamas (especially the Simon Schamas), and the Horrible Histories too. The medium does have its downsides, including potentially invoking the stereotypical Famous Historian in the 1975 film Monty Python and the …
Living outside the UK, audio podcasts about London have been a lifeline supporting my interest in the city. In the mid-2000s, Rev. Robert Wright’s free London Walks series in particular was a joy (see Londonist’s 2006 review). I followed him vicariously on his 65 live-recorded itineraries (smiling when he’d say to “… cross over at the crossing, …
One of my recent tweets received over 25,000 impressions (views on peoples’ feeds) in the first 48 hours, which is astonishing and wonderful. Why did this happen, and what can be learned from it? For Londonites: #DidYouKnow the colourful @MuseumofLondon logo is the city limits at various times?? https://t.co/7jm2CGO2Bu pic.twitter.com/4EVeCmuEiv — Sarah J. McCabe (@Sarah_McCabe_) …
