A Million Pictures: Magic Lantern Slide Heritage as Artefacts in the Common European History of Learning

魔灯是19世纪欧洲最重要的视觉娱乐和教学手段。然而，尽管这项技术在多个科学、教育和流行背景下无处不在，但欧洲公众仍然知之甚少。此外，尽管幸存的魔灯幻灯片提供了一个庞大的泛欧洲遗产材料储存库，以视觉形式概括了19世纪末知识的几乎所有可能的方面，但这个档案在很大程度上仍然没有被学者、利益相关者和普通公众利用。在许多地方和国家图书馆、博物馆和各种档案馆中都可以找到这些迷人而美丽的文物，有些藏品收藏了数以万计的幻灯片，但由于缺乏共同的文献和保存标准，限制了现有倡议的影响，并阻碍了对这些文物的重要性的认识。《一百万张图片》旨在解决这一无价但被忽视的遗产资源的可持续管理问题，并寻求开发重要的新工具，用于记录、保存、数字化和重新利用灯笼幻灯片。该项目通过四个案例研究，分别在英国、荷兰、比利时和西班牙进行，调查在学术团体和教育机构以及受欢迎的场所(剧院、歌剧院、博物馆和天文台)使用魔灯幻灯片的情况，并将调查将这些节目的剧目分类的方法。它将探讨当代博物馆、档案馆、图书馆和其他收藏品对幻灯片图像的访问和重新使用的需求，并将提供幻灯片放映的数字重新工作以及其他形式的重演的例子。它将探讨人们如何增强对幻灯片的了解，从而使他们能够联系到他们共享的欧洲学习史。该项目的英国方面将探索三个具有代表性的公共收藏品：伯明翰图书馆、伦敦皇家地理学会(RGS)和埃克塞特皇家阿尔伯特纪念馆(RAMM)，特别关注1880年至1914年期间的幻灯片集和相关材料。事实上，人们很难找到比神奇的灯笼幻灯片材料更被忽视、但更丰富的国家遗产资源，这些材料散布在众多的大英博物馆、图书馆和档案馆。每个单独的收藏品都代表着非常丰富的视觉档案，涉及国家和地区公共生活的多个方面。据估计，伯明翰图书馆收藏了超过10万张幻灯片，这些幻灯片是在这个大型城市和工业中心活跃的许多教育和公民组织的活动中积累起来的，其规模和意义与其他几个英国藏品相似。RAMM提供了一个较小的地区性收藏的极好例子，其中有许多分布在英国各地，大约15,000张幻灯片来自于在此期间活跃在这个大教堂和集镇的各种组织。RGS过去是，现在仍然是一个国家网络的中心，它收集的大约20,000张幻灯片在首都和英国各地活跃的城市和城镇中的许多社会分支中都被使用。《一百万张图片》将考虑不同的编目实践以及这三个组织的不同用户。更广泛地说，它将宣传这些档案的规模和意义，并就在遗产部门更广泛地使用、管理和推广这些档案的有效工作模式提供见解。

The magic lantern was the most important visual entertainment and means of instruction across nineteenth-century Europe. However, despite its pervasiveness across multiple scientific, educational and popular contexts, this technology remains little known to the European public. Moreover, though surviving magic lantern slides provide a massive, pan-European repository of heritage materials, encapsulating in visual form almost every conceivable facet of late nineteenth-century knowledge, this archive remains largely untapped by scholars, stakeholders and the general public. These fascinating and frequently beautiful objects are to be found in numerous local and national libraries, museums, and archives of all kinds, with some collections holding tens of thousands of lantern slides, but a lack of common standards for documentation and preservation has limited the impact of existing initiatives, and hindered the recognition of the significance of these objects. 'A Million Pictures' addresses the sustainable management of this invaluable, but overlooked, heritage resource and seeks to develop vital new tools for documentation, preservation, digitisation and re-use of lantern slides.Across four case studies, taking place in the UK, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Spain, the project investigates the use of magic lantern slides within learned societies and educational institutions as well as in popular venues (theatres, opera houses, museums and observatories) and will also investigate methods for classifying the repertoire of these shows. It will explore the needs of contemporary museums, archives, libraries, and other collections for allowing access and re-use of slide images, and will provide examples of digital re-working of slide shows as well as other forms of re-enactment. It will examine ways for people to enhance their knowledge about lantern slides and so allow them to connect to their shared European history of learning.The UK-based aspect of the project will explore three representative public collections: the Library of Birmingham, the Royal Geographic Society (RGS) in London, and the Exeter Royal Albert Memorial Museum (RAMM), with a specific focus on slide sets and associated materials during the period 1880-1914.Indeed, one would be hard pushed to find a more neglected, yet substantial, national heritage resource than the magic lantern slide material dispersed across numerous British museums, libraries and archives. Individual collections each represent a remarkably rich visual archive concerning multiple aspects of national and regional public life. The Library of Birmingham possesses an estimated collection of over 100,000 slides, accumulated from the activities of numerous educational and civic organisations that were active within this large urban and industrial centre, whose scale and significance resembles that of only a few other British collections. The RAMM provides an excellent example of a smaller regional collection, of which there are many spread across the UK, with approximately 15,000 slides derived from the various organisations active during the period in question in this cathedral and market town. The RGS was, and remains, the hub of a national network, whose collection of approximately 20,000 slides was used both within the capital and in the numerous branches of the society active within cities and towns across Britain.'A Million Pictures' will consider the different cataloguing practices as well as the different users of these three organisations. More broadly, it will publicise the scale and significance of these archives, and provide insights concerning an effective working model for their use, management, and promotion within the heritage sector more generally.