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

在19世纪的欧洲，神灯是最重要的视觉娱乐和教学手段。然而，尽管它在多种科学、教育和大众环境中无处不在，但欧洲公众对这项技术知之甚少。此外，尽管现存的幻灯幻灯片提供了一个庞大的、泛欧洲的遗产材料储存库，以视觉形式封装了19世纪晚期知识的几乎每一个可以想象的方面，但这个档案在很大程度上仍未被学者、利益相关者和公众所利用。这些迷人而美丽的物品在许多地方和国家图书馆、博物馆和各种各样的档案馆中都能找到，其中一些收藏有成千上万的幻灯片，但由于缺乏记录和保存的共同标准，限制了现有倡议的影响，并阻碍了对这些物品重要性的认识。“一百万张图片”解决了这一宝贵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来记录、保存、数字化和再利用灯笼幻灯片。通过在英国、荷兰、比利时和西班牙进行的四个案例研究，该项目调查了在学术团体和教育机构以及流行场所（剧院、歌剧院、博物馆和天文台）中魔术灯幻灯片的使用情况，并将调查这些表演的分类方法。它将探讨当代博物馆、档案馆、图书馆和其他收藏对幻灯片图像的访问和再利用的需求，并将提供幻灯片放映的数字重新制作以及其他形式的重新制定的例子。它将研究人们如何提高他们对幻灯片的了解，从而使他们能够将他们共同的欧洲学习历史联系起来。该项目以英国为基地，将探索三个具有代表性的公共收藏：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博物馆（RAMM），特别关注1880-1914年期间的幻灯片集和相关材料。事实上，人们很难找到一种比分散在众多英国博物馆、图书馆和档案馆的神奇灯笼幻灯片更被忽视，但却更重要的国家遗产资源。每个单独的藏品都代表了一个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，这些幻灯片来自于活跃在这个大城市和工业中心的众多教育和民间组织的活动，其规模和重要性与其他几个英国馆藏相似。RAMM提供了一个小型区域收藏的绝佳例子，其中有许多分布在英国各地，大约有15,000张幻灯片来自于这个大教堂和集镇活动期间的各种组织。RGS过去是，现在仍然是一个全国性网络的中心，它收集了大约2万张幻灯片，这些幻灯片既用于首都，也用于活跃在英国城镇的社会的众多分支机构。“一百万图片”会考虑这三家机构的不同编目做法，以及不同的用户。更广泛地说，它将宣传这些档案的规模和重要性，并就如何在文物界更广泛地使用、管理和推广这些档案提供有效的工作模式。

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.