LLAS Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies

Michael Peto photographic collection

Michael Peto came to Britain from Hungary in 1939. He was a freelance journalist with the Observer newspaper, and travelled extensively, covering the work of the Save the Children Fund around the world. Other aspects of his work involved the arts, especially the London ballet scene. Major topics covered by the collection (which consists of some 130,000 items) thus include Eastern Europe, Israel, India, ballet and theatre and Scotland, as well as leading political, literary and entertainment figures.

Middle Eastern Studies research materials in Arabic and Persian

The aim of this project is to assist researchers to locate, in UK university libraries, works written in Arabic and Persian. At present tracing such material can be difficult, particularly as much of it is still only represented in local manual catalogues. Under this project, the participants will add records for around 60,000 Arabic and Persian items to local, national and international catalogues. The records will be created on RLIN, the bibliographic database of the U.S.-based Research Libraries Group, with the bibliographic description entered in both romanised (transliterated) script and in the original Arabic script. Not all libraries are currently able to make use of the Arabic script in their local system, but the aim is to 'future proof' the conversion work at a time of rapid change in the area of computer handling of non-Roman script. Records for over 38,000 Arabic and Persian items had been added to local catalogues. Two of the partner libraries, Durham and SOAS, have recently implemented the Innopac Arabic script module, and so are able to display records in the original script.

DOMIC: Documentaries on modern international conflict

DOMIC is a two-year project launched to improve cross disciplinary access to television documentary archives held in the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, King's College London. The project supported by Research Support Libraries Programme (RSLP) began in January 2000. The archival collections to be covered relate to the Vietnam, Falklands and Gulf Wars, the Cold War, the Arab-Israeli Wars, conflict in the former Yugoslavia, chemical and biological testing and the development of nuclear technology and its impact on international relations and defence policies. Summary guides and detailed catalogues covering some 92,000 items are available on line.

Retrospective conversion of Asian and African collections 1978-1989

Based at the School for Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) project will facilitate the exploration of this research material by researchers and enable them to plan research visits to London more efficiently. It will facilitate the inter-library lending of material which is eligible for such use. It will reveal the wealth of resources that are held on closed access, such as microform and pamphlet literature. It will enable greater work on collaboration with other Libraries collecting in the same subject fields. Searchable through the SOAS web catalogue.