Starting the year on a high, The Georgian Papers Programme (GPP) has been awarded the Digital Resources Prize from British Society of Eighteenth-Century Studies (BSECS) at the society’s annual conference. The news comes alongside the announcement that the Society and GPP will join forces for a new fellowship at the Royal Collection Trust.

 

The Digital Resources Prize

This prize awards digital resources with the highest standards of development, utility and presentation, and which assist scholars in the field of eighteenth-century studies. GPP received the award for their collection of websites, which are co-produced by King's College London, the Omohundro Institute and the Royal Collection Trust. 

GPP is a ten-year interdisciplinary archival project that provides the public with access to over 425,000 pages from the Georgian period (1714-1837), found in the Royal Archives and Royal Library.  

Caroline Warman, President of BSECS, said, “I am delighted that the judging panel have decided to award to 2019 prize to the GPP websites. We felt it was an ambitious and wide-ranging project, and that it was of substantial scholarly and wider public utility. There was a very competitive pool of applications this year, so I think this says all the more about the quality and scope of the GPP.”

Arthur Burns, Academic Director of the GPP, said, “We are delighted to receive this recognition from the BSECS. Their goals are very closely aligned with our own project, which seeks to make available the Georgian papers to the widest possible range of approaches and audiences

“Our website offers free access to all which is of key importance as we seek to develop a new relationship between the work of scholars, archivists and digital humanities specialists, and winning this prestigious award will bring this work to the attention of a global audience.”

The BSECS Fellowship 

The BSECS conference also marked the announcement of a new fellowship with the Georgian Papers. The fellowship worth £1,000 will be jointly funded by King’s and BSECS.  

Caroline Warman added, “BSECS is delighted to be partnering with the GPP to support a new Fellowship Award for a researcher to work with the archive. We look forward to making the first award in spring 2019.”.

Previous fellowships have involved GPP working internationally with the programme's primary US partners, Omohundro Institute of Early American History & Culture (OI) and William & Mary, joined by the Library of Congress  and the Washington Library Mount Vernon. A visiting professorship at King's has also been made possible by The Sons of the American Revolution. 

Such fellowships have led to important new discoveries, such as that by OI-GPP Fellow Nicholas Foretek, PhD student at University of Pennsylvania, who identified the Prince Regent as the first known purchaser of a Jane Austen novel, which received international press attention. 

 

 

The programme so far... 

Four years into the programme, Arthur Burns said, “2018 was a really exciting year for the GPP, as the project gained new momentum and maturity. Digitizing over 100,000 images for the online catalogue has been a landmark achievement for GPP this year. We now look forward to an even more exciting year of events and initiatives in 2019.”

Last year also saw the launch of the programme’s first digital exhibitions after visits from award-winning actor actors Michael Jibson, who played King George III in London’s West End staging of Hamilton; and Mark Gatiss, who also portrayed the King in Alan Bennett’s The Madness of George III  at Nottingham Playhouse.  

The GPP share their progress with a community of over 400 ‘King’s Friends’; an international network of researchers, librarians, archivists and others whose work will benefit from the unique digital resource. 

 

Become a King’s Friend today: https://georgianpapersprogramme.com/kings-friends/ 

 

Further reading: 

• https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/spotlight-article.aspx?id=a8a4e10f-ac50-4307-be40-aa0c3b722c3c 
• https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/spotlight-article.aspx?id=7dc3120c-84a7-4025-a90a-d01165e92937  
• https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/spotlight-article.aspx?id=703b363b-387d-41b6-b224-bf273b67b14e   
• https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/24/books/jane-austen-prince-regent.html   
• https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/09/30/royal-family-teams-hamilton-stars-improve-image-king-george/