Tag: archives

A Quick Note on Archival Research at the British Library

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Salam/Namaskar,

A few months ago, while working at the British Library in the UK for my PhD research, Akshat suggested that I put together a short note, a quick guide, of sorts, on conducting archival research there. I must note at the outset that I remain a novice in this space, learning as I go, and understanding the rhythms of the British Library’s reading rooms. What follows, therefore, is not a definitive directive but a modest, even meandering reflection on my own experience.

1. Registration and Access: Access to the British Library begins with getting a Reader Pass. To do this, you must: Provide a valid identification document with proof of address. Importantly, anyone from anywhere in the world can register, provided they have a valid address and the required documentation. See here for more information.

2. Choosing the Reading Room: Once registered, the next step is to determine which Reading Room is most relevant to your work. The Library has several rooms, including Manuscripts, Newspapers, Rare Books, and the South Asian reading rooms, etcetera. Please note that materials related to your field may not always be limited to a single room. For example, even if you are working on copyright law, you may find useful material in the Newspaper section, Manuscripts, or South Asian collections. You can search them here.  Personally, I usually begin with the South Asian collections, as much of my research relates to colonial and Indian copyright history.

3. Using the Online Catalogue and Requesting Materials: The British Library website and catalogue are central to the research process. You can find all the catalogues in our collection https://www.bl.uk/collection, which holds over 170 million items–something that grows bigger every day. Speaking of my my, here’s how I do it. I begin with broad search terms (for example: “British copyright law,” “Indian copyright,” or “international copyright”) on this Archives and Manuscripts Catalogue, but you can also check the Main Catalogue.

Once you see a relevant document, you can either submit a request online using your account (you have to create one) or, in most cases, you can use this Request form to access the material. Accuracy is crucial when filling out the request form — particularly when selecting the correct “collection area” or designated reading room. See the image below for what I mean by the collection area. If this is entered incorrectly, the request may be rejected. 

It takes around an hour to receive your requested material, so you must submit the request on time. For example, if you request it in the late evening around 3 PM, you may receive it by 4, but you cannot finish reading it, as you will need to return the material by 4.40 PM, as many reading rooms close at 5 PM. 

Of course, you cannot make unlimited requests. As I was informed, you can make up to 10 requests per day. At any given time, you cannot have more than 30 items requested or in circulation. (But do confirm this …) If it’s your first time, don’t worry. The librarians are extremely helpful, especially if you know: the relevant years, the names of individuals, or the type of document you are searching for. Please know that while photography is generally permitted, in some cases, you may obtain permission from the reference staff, but this is not guaranteed.

Final words

Archival work itself can be demanding. Locating relevant sources is surely difficult, confusing, and even taxing. What I typically do is treat each document as a lead: once I see a name, a reference, a date, or a piece of correspondence, I follow it further. One file points to another, and gradually a network of connections and a story begin to emerge.

To give a concrete example: While researching the history of the Indian Copyright Act of 1847, I encountered references to Lord Hardinge, who was the Governor-General of India at the time. While I have yet to investigate this trail fully, a search of the catalogue for correspondence from 1846 to 1849 reveals that files containing his letters do exist. On my next visit, I plan to check the specific letters mentioned in the copyright file discussions. In doing so, I hope to trace the exchanges more closely and see the history(ies) surrounding the drafting of the Act.

In sum, the key is simply to begin ‘somewhere’ — with a topic, a name, a year, or a letter — and then follow the trail with care.

Okay, that’s from my end for now.

À bientôt, de vous revoir.

Some Excerpts from Prof. Jose Bellido’s Paper “Intellectual Property and the Question of the Archive”

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A few days ago, I wrote about my experience at the National Archives of India, and a peculiar feeling which I called “archival anxiety” — or arch-xiety, if you will. Today, I have something in a similar vein to share. But, this time, it’s not from my wandering through dusty documents, but from poring over a piece of writing.

So, I just finished reading an 11-pager, fascinating piece by Prof. Jose Bellido named Intellectual Property and the Question of the Archive from a 2017 open-access handbook edited by Irene Calboli and Maria Lillà Montagnani. And, as with much of Jose’s work, it’s brimming with sharp observations and research gaps waiting to be filled, or at least, explored. I would strongly encourage our readers to check, which demands and deserves a slow reading and reflection. If nothing else, you will come out with some exquisite sentences worth quoting in full and some valuable citations related to IP history.

Finally, before I share the excerpts, I must say something about him. Jose, in addition to being a very generous and supportive scholar, is a professor at the University of Kent and one of the finest scholars working on the history of IP today. You can find more of his work here — and if you haven’t dipped into it before, you really should.

Okay, that’s it for introduction. Below are a few excerpts from his piece.

In the introduction, he writes (footnotes omitted)-

“Classified documents, patent files, disclosures, trademark records, originals, copies, collection agencies, registries, bureaucracies, proceedings, intangible properties, and access (or not)— the stuff of intellectual property (IP) is deeply connected to the institution of the archive. From family to corporate archives, from local to national and diplomatic offices, the trajectories of the intangible can be traced through such paper trails and holdings. The question— ‘What is the point of copyright history?’— was the subject of an academic conference some years ago. The answer to that question was that the point of copyright history, which could be extended to IP history, is ‘evidently’ archival. The archive— often the product of time- consuming, painstaking, frustrating, expensive, and unassuming labour— with all its literal and metaphorical potential, is full of contingencies and hazards, a repository of hopes and documents frequently leaving a mark or scar on the subject. Not recommended for those in a rush, the archive is a slow and deliberate medium, requiring one to wait for the rare opportunity to capture the ‘phantom’ of IP. Such an intimate link to a nebulous subject matter situated between the past and the future initially made its custodians, the archivists, wary of copyright law.4 While the digital environment transformed earlier fears into risk assessments, the relationship between the archive and IP history remains crucial as it goes beyond specific terms and conditions.

One of the most interesting things about archival research is not what has been found here or there but how IP scholars have approached the question of the archive in different ways. Socio-legal, economic, cultural, anthropological, and legal historians have all dipped into archival records with diverse assumptions about IP— empirical, theoretical, or otherwise. While some immediately found archival challenges to their epistemic endeavours, others continued the search, blurring disciplinary boundaries and becoming less concerned about orthodoxy and convention than in how and to what extent different archival orders determine our historical research. This chapter explores how these varying approaches culminated in remarkable projects undertaken by different scholars in the history of IP. It highlights not just the importance of such undertakings but also their inherent limitations. The constraints of those projects are not seen as negative features but as a reflection of the elasticity of the archival function and its connection to the history of IP law; and this chapter considers both the ways of conducting archival research and the questions that might arise from such work.“

In conclusion, he notes

“The question of the archive and its relation to IP history has been approached differently by scholars, not only reflecting their personal research interests and agendas but also their diverse takes on the relationship between law and history. While some describe their work as having been influenced by different archives,40 others recall their archival encounters as the key to helping bring ‘[trademark] registrations to life’. What seems to unite these remarks is an overall sense of gratitude towards archivists and those who helped with the tracking down of sources. Seduced by the archival function, IP scholars have even started recording their own conversations on history. With that said, most archival work in IP scholarship still attempts to embody the ideal of positivism, that is, ‘merely to show what actually happened’. The problem with such an approach is that it obscures the archival function, representing the archive as a neutral and uncontentious historical tool. Even the most meticulous contextualization tends to ignore how its condition of possibility is conjured up in previously deposited archival productions. More to the point, this unquestioned historiographical manoeuvre often serves to fix a past, which is otherwise indeterminate. Precisely because of the capacity to open or close historical junctures, the archive remains significant not just as a repository of the past but as an enabling device to trace the coming into being of different explanatory narratives of IP law.Therefore, archival research allows us to problematize our taken- for- granted assumptions and the narratives that guide them. In so doing, the archive stands not only as a historical resource but as a way to reflect on the shifting operations of IP law and its different histories. It also makes us aware of the contingency of historically significant IP milestones— for example, how there was ‘nothing inevitable about the success of the Berne Convention, nor about the shape that it should necessarily take into the future’. For, as has been recently noted, the archive ‘is not simply a repository of the past. It is also the principle of formation of the past, the present and the future’.”

Hopefully, these excerpts will tempt you to dive into the whole piece. Who knows — you might just find a research thread worth pulling.

See you in the next post.

Archival Anxiety (or Arch-xiety, if I may) and the Ghosts in the National Archives of India …

Ghosts in Literature: Symbolism and Representation - The Writing Post
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Dear Dosts,

The other day, I wandered into the National Archives of India for my PhD research. But what I found there wasn’t just documents (an interesting trove of records) and dust. I also found something much more… twitchy.

Yes. ‘Twas a strange kind of anxiety. Archival anxiety, or Arch-xiety, if I may.

While many researchers/scholars would tell you about methodology, rigour, citations, and “the archive”, and it would be helpful too to listen to them, I wished to intellectualise my feeling/confusion—hoping it would comfort my being, and liberate me from them. Or at the very least, it would let me join the club of those with a similar twitchy feeling. As J. Krishnamurthi once said, Freedom is to be a light to oneself. Perhaps, so I hope, intellectualising my experience will liberate and free me from feeling it alone.

Just as haunted sites—so often portrayed in films and books—are marked by flickering lights, elusive presences, inexplicable sounds, and the eerie uncertainty of whether something is in our mind or the house/room, archives too can feel like haunted spaces. You open a box of old files (or open the not-very-user-friendly website) expecting to find truth, clarity, and maybe a little enlightenment.

Instead, what we see is torn pages, vanishing ink, brittle paper, and someone’s handwriting that looks like a doctor having a seizure during a storm. (Pardon me for the stereotype joke.) Both archives and haunted places carry the same unsettled atmosphere, the same lingering sense that someone/something was—or still is—there. The feeling is of the same kind, only differing in degree.

I feel archives, unlike libraries, are like archaeological sites—places where something is buried, or at least presumed to be. Except in such archaeological sites, we dig not with shovels, but with forms, stamps, and utmost politeness, patience, and sincerity. For we assume something is waiting to be read, ruminated, and written out. We don’t know what or where. But we dig anyway. And it’s fun.

These layered, dusty, and fragile archaeological sites (just like haunted places) are inhabited by gods, ghosts, and most importantly, their salient silences. But, I feel, these silences we conjure only in our minds. They make noise in (y)our head, trying to speak for things that were never written, things that were erased. Things you’ll never know.

Like broken paintings, shattered mirrors, or cracked necklaces—objects said to be haunted—the silence of these ghosts and gods of archival sites dwells in torn pages, digital dust, colonial tongues, disappearing ink, hard-writen texts, glitchy or not-so-friendly websites/databases, and, of course, the foe-ish bureaucratic apparatus.

But if you look closely at these sites, you (at least I am) are not only haunted by the past (as these places often claim through the sense of ‘gone’), but also by what remains unresolved, untranslatable, illegible, or most importantly, absent. This absence is both appalling and appealing. Why?

‘Tis appealing because something remains unknown, unrecorded, hidden from the public sphere. And for this very reason, it appeals to us, entices us to delve into them.

And it’s appalling because we can never fully know what happened. And we know that we cannot. At best, we construct truths—the truths that are often ours, and therefore, always in motion. Yet we dress them up, refine them, cite them, footnote them. Still, they flicker—like a romantic candlelight in the wind.

We know, deep down, that we’re playing the sense-making game—sometimes fully aware, sometimes only half—yet always conscious of its limits, and our own. After all, what we call “research” today—the very impulse that draws us to these sites in the first place and something gives us the courage to endure the anxiety (and even intellectualise it, as I’m doing now)-the archival document is never truly a piece of the past. It is nothing but a figure of the future (a future document it is), perpetually relative to our present inquiry.

Take the Berne Convention—the primary site of my inquiry. I am tracing the genealogy of the “balance” discourse in copyright law, examining how and why copyright law is understood and approached today. Yet as I parse these 19th-century documents, I do not encounter a static historical truth.

Truly, and in a literal temporal sense, I engage with them as future documents—artefacts animated not by their past, but opened for the questions I carry from the present. Put differently, it is not the archive that leads me to my research; it is my research that sends me to the archive. The Berne Convention, thus, becomes a sense-making safari, not a destination of discovery but a site I visit to make the present intelligible.

Nevertheless, I sat (and enjoy sitting) there, in that archive, not just reading and searching but feeling —a strange mixture of dread and delight.

And here I realised: this isn’t just an archival research problem. It’s a condition that causes archival anxiety, which is more than a methodological challenge.

One can experience arch-xiety in two flavours:

One, at the physical/material/infrastructural level. This occurs when the archive resists access—the website’s server is down, the scanner is broken, files are not digitised or can’t be opened, or a document cannot be downloaded. It’s the anxiety of absence, of infrastructure, of not being allowed in, of not knowing where to begin. In this kind, you’re not locked out, yet you’re also not really in.

Two, at the hermeneutic or epistemic level. Here, even when I do get in, I find myself lost or feel un-reached. This feeling is uncomfortably confusing as it arises from a problem that can be easily termed common sense or applicable to all. E.g., it can stem from an unfamiliar language (not necessarily a colonial language), the non-pagination of the document, illegible handwritten pages, cryptic or half-written notations or signatures. Sometimes, a heartbroken person would say, even presence feels like absence! 😦

Funnily, just like in a haunted house, where the light is rarely fully on. The information is an archive flicker too—it speaks and un-speaks. A visitor/researcher is both a witness and an outsider. 

And that, dear friend, is what I came to feel: archival anxiety—not merely as a barrier to research (or truth?), but as a structure of feeling, a condition of thought, a fount of knowledge, a slight pressure in the rib, a site of ghosts.

Have you also come across such ghosts?

If not, maybe let’s go together next time. Perhaps we’ll find a torch and a ghost, too. Who knows?