The True Echoes research project launches its new website today, providing access to in-depth research on the British Library’s extraordinary collection of Oceanic wax cylinders. The website, true-echoes.com, was originally planned as an output for the end of the project. However, due to the impacts of COVID-19, particularly on international…

Jonnie Robinson, Lead Curator of Spoken English, writes: In a move described as ‘unprecedented’ (a word we’re all too familiar with in 2020), the OED this year declined to nominate its Word of the Year choosing rather to provide a list of potential candidates. But, like the BBC Sports Personality…

Robert Cox By Jonathan Summers, Curator of Classical Music Robert Ferdinand de Lesseps Cox was born into a family of gelatine and glue manufacturers based at Gorgie Mills in Edinburgh where they established their company in 1725. Robert was born in Edinburgh on 12th June 1884. From Whitaker’s Red Book…

Above: A selection of the wax cylinders recorded in Papua New Guinea in 1898 and 1904. This month marks the mid–point in the True Echoes research project, launched in July 2019. True Echoes is centred on the British Library’s Oceanic wax cylinder collections, recorded by British anthropologists in the late-19th…

This week’s selection comes from Camille Johnston, Oral History Assistant Archivist. Julia Slingo at the Meteorological Office in Exeter as its Chief Scientist, 2013 In her oral history interview Professor Dame Julia Slingo describes many aspects of her life and work as a climate modeller. Her research has focused on…