Remembering ... Bishop Justin Field OP (1899-1969)

Remembering ... Bishop Justin Field OP (1899-1969)

James Field was born on the 6 July 1899 in Down Hatherley, near Cheltenham (England), and, much to his parents' distress, was received into the Catholic Church at the age of 16. Four years later, he entered the Dominican novitiate at Woodchester, taking the name 'Justin' making it his profession in 1921. By the time he was ordained a priest (of Order of Friars Preachers) on 18 September 1926 at the age of 27, both his parents had followed him into the Catholic Church.

Following the completion of his studies in 1928, he was sent to Newcastle to work on the parish,  where he was able to put to use his great musical talent, playing the organ and direct the choir, which enjoyed considerable renown in the North East of England. On account of such musical skill, Bishop Felix Couturier OP, another English Dominican who became bishop of Alexandria in Canada, the following year asked the Provincial to send Friar Justin to Canada to serve as his private secretary and assist him in improving the standard of liturgy in his diocese. During this time, Fr Justin published a book encouraging the use of plainsong in parishes.

After two years in Canada, Fr Justin was sent to the Province's mission in Grenada, where he was to spend the rest of his life. He developed a great loyalty to the island and its people, and it was fitting that, when the Diocese of St George's, Grenada, was founded on 14 January 1957, he should be appointed its first bishop. He received episcopal consecration from Archbishop Finbar Ryan OP, the Archbishop of Port of Spain (Trinidad), where the Irish Dominicans had a mission on 25 March that year. At about this time he became and remained lifelong friends with the Organist and Choir Master John George Fletcher (1931-).

In 1960 Bishop Justin Field, established a foundation on the island of Carriacou at Madonna House. A foundation followed in Victoria, Grenada.


During the following twelve years, the newly founded diocese saw good progress, led by Bishop Justin in his unwavering ambition to spread the Gospel in the island.

He died as he had wished on what was then St Dominic's day the 4 August 1969 at the age of 70. He was professed 48 years, a priest 42 years, and a bishop 12 years: he was buried in his cathedral in St George's.


_______

References:

22/02/1957: "DOMINICAN BISHOP Consecration of Mgr. Field on Monday - MGR. Justin Field. O.P.. Bishop elect of St. George's, Grenada, British West Indies, will be consecrated in, his cathedral on Monday by Mgr. Finbar Ryan, O.P., Archbishop of Port-of-Spain, Trinidad. The co-consecrators will be Bishop Guilty. S.J., of British Guiana, and Bishop McEleney, S.J. of Jamaica.  As a young priest, Mgr. Field was secretary to Bishop Couturier, O.P., also a member of the English Dominican province, who became Bishop of Alexandria in Canada. When Bishop Couturier died he left his precious mitre. his crozier and his ring to the Engilsh Provincial to be passed on to the next Bishop chosen from the English province. They will be presented to his former secretary". Catholic Herold, p.1.

16/07/1959: Field, Justin (A). “The Simplicity of Plainsong”, pref. by Felix Couturier, 8vo; pp. x, 38.

22/07/1960: Letter to Madonna House in Combermere, Ontario, Canada, the apostolate of Catherine de Hueck Doherty. A Invitation to live among the people of Grenada and instruct them in the Catholic faith "It is with great JOY and ENTHUSIASM that FORMALLY INVITE THE MADONNA HOUSE APOSTOLATE..."

Read More

Grenada’s Endangered Archives (part 2)

Grenada’s endangered archives programme (EAP295)

Update: Following a Hurricane – Hope For Our Heritage

by Laurence Brown staff of History department at the University of Manchester (UK)
In collaboration with the University of the West Indies, Dr Laurence Brown is engaged in a project to digitise and preserve the unique historical archives of our island of Grenada (in the Eastern Caribbean). The September 2004 Hurricane ‘Ivan‘ destroyed our Government House and many of our the other public buildings on the island causing substantial losses of historical records dating back to the 1760s, and the displacement and deterioration of surviving material.

Historically Grenada was at the intersection of the British and French Empires during the second half of the eighteenth century, and the surviving records provide a rare vision of how the societies of the Caribbean experienced the revolutionary 1790s and later transition from slavery to emancipation.

Grenadians feel that their government ministers care very little for their heritage

Grenadians feel that their government ministers care very little for their heritage – especially when  millions were found to build the new ‘nutmeg’ shaped parliament building – yet nothing could be done to repair or protect the National Archives housed in the hurricane damaged National Library building on the Carenage waterfront:


Our National Library and Archives, a World Heritage listed building of old brick, once a shipping warehouse from the early colonial period – totally inadequate and inappropriate for it’s current role now stands closed and since hurricane Ivan of September of 2004 it’s roof had looked like this…
This elegant Georgian building with civic proportions is the property of the Grenadian people, like every other State property; and is maintained or refurbished, as the case may be, by the government of the day.

The building was constructed circa 1720 in brick and stone with its fish scale clay tile roof, and was originally used as a merchant’s office on the first floor and a warehouse at ground level. Up to 1985 the warehouse remained functional, as the metal rails on the ground floor which conveyed the commodities on large metal trolleys across the road, to and from the storeroom (warehouse) to large wooden “lighters,” were still in existence. In the early days the lighters were berthed up to the water’s edge, which took the commodities to and from the waiting cargo ships in the outer harbour, as there was no pier in the inner harbour at that time.

From about 1950, through the tireless effort of then Acting Librarian – the late Sheila Buckmire (nee’ St. Bernard wife of barrister F. L. A. Buckmire), the interior of the first floor of the building was remodelled to house the Public Library, and much later in 1986 the warehouse on the ground floor was included for library purposes, as the need for such services expanded.

In about 1985 the government received funding from the European Union, and the interior of the entire building — (Ground and First floor), was redesigned and repaired together with exterior walls and roof, and became the Grenada Public Library building.

Twenty-seven (27) years on, as far as we’re aware, no major maintenance by the Ministry of Works was undertaken, the effects of which, has resulted in the building now designated as “not fit for human occupancy”, and was abandoned in July 2011.


Remember to check out the latest by joining our Facebook Group at Grenada’s Endangered Archives
« Prev Page | Next Page »

Read More

Conservation: Digitisation

Create a custom-made book cradle to minimise risk during the digitisation process

Introduction

When in 2009, as part of the long-term digitisation strategy, the British Library digitised 250 early Greek manuscripts as the first phase of an ongoing externally-funded project to digitise the entire Greek manuscript collection. The manuscripts chosen for digitisation ranged in condition from fair to good. Of course all those in poor condition were excluded from digitisation and sent to be treated or put aside for later conservation.



But one very important piece of equipment that became essential to the project was a humble book cradle designed for the handling of manuscript during the digitisation process and here we provide instructions for its assembly.



The need for a book support for the digitisation process was highlighted during the making of a risk assessment that was made at the beginning of the project, the framework of which will form part of a possible further article. This collection care risk assessment was aimed at identifying possible causes of harm to the manuscripts and to help mitigate such risks, whilst enabling the ease of project workflow. To manage these collection care requirements, the project included the work of a full-time book conservator to evaluate the risks attached to the digitisation of this collection.



It was established quite early that the main risk factors were around the handling processes, particularly during

1. Transport



2. Digitisation in studios



3. Storage

The main focus of this assessment was to evaluate the risks to manuscripts through the process of mechanical handling during the whole project and some aspects of storage.



As handling presented the highest risk overall, it was imperative that all those involved in the process of handling should first observe some of the basic preservation handling rules, such as clean hands, ensuring the correct handling mechanisms were in place such as trolleys, cradles and establishing safer access routes before moving items from one place to another.



Handling during the actual digitisation process was identified as presenting the highest risk of all. It was important to consider the worst-case scenario for digitisation handling, as handling during this process is not always in the presence of the collection care staff.



In order to mitigate those risks and as a result of the primary risks identified during the risk assessment phase of the Greek Manuscripts Digitisation Project, it was decided to design and develop an easy-to-use and adaptable book cradle the cradle was intended to support manuscripts whilst they were being digitised.



The book cradle was designed to be used only where one page at a time was being photographed or digitised. It was used with a common photographic stand with the camera placed perpendicular to the page to be digitised. The book support is also adjustable depending from the type of the spine the book to be digitised has.



The resulting cradle enabled a safe and faster digitisation of many of the manuscripts so far and has also been used recently for other digitisation projects.

Book support: construction and use

The following instructions are intended to explain and show clearly and easily the construction of the book cradle. They are offered to anyone wishing to make a cost-effective cradle for use in their institution.

Book supports for digitisation.

Fig 1 Book support with holding strips



The book support is made of three components,

1. A base formed of two boards covered with Buckram (Fig 1)



2. Two Plastazote^® supports covered with the same archival cloth (Fig 2)



3. Strips of Velcro placed on the edges of the support (Fig 3)

Fig 2 The components of the support



1. The base is formed by two 3mm identical boards. The boards are covered with buckram or any suitable archival material that join them together creating a central hinge of approximately 10mm.







Fig 3 The base (component 1 above)



2. The Plastazote^® supports are made from a piece of Plastazote^® and a 3 mm board of the same dimensions. They are covered in such a way as to create a slit at the back of each Plastazote^® support into which the base board is inserted. To create this slit place the piece of Plastazote^® on the cover material to the left and the same dimension piece of board on the right leaving between them a gap equal to the thickness of the Plastazote^® plus the thickness of the covered base board (5mm).







Fig 4 Diagram of template for the covering material for the Plastazote® bases



Next, secure the Plastazote^® and the board bases to the cover material. Place the Plastazote^® on A without gluing it but securing it with a weight. Glue the board on B aligning it with the Plastazote^®.







Fig 5 Diagram of folding sequence or the Plastazote® support covering material



Glue verso 1 to the Plastazote^®, do the same with 2 (head and tail) to the board and finish attaching 3.



Close B onto A placing a compensatory thickness equal to the thickness of the covered base board (the base board itself can be easily used for this) to create the slit. Place the glue on 4 and fold it over the verso of B at both sides.







Fig 6 Diagram (tail view) of the book support



Now place the strips of self adhesive Velcro (hook side of the Velcro) onto the Plastazote^® supports at head and tail (short sides) of the Plastazote^® bases and onto their thickness (see following diagram).







Fig 7 Diagram of strips of self adhesive Velcro (hook side)



To adjust the groove.



To adjust the groove to accommodate different sizes of the raised spine of the book it is necessary to secure the left side of the Plastazote^® support at different heights.



This is achieved by placing 3 strips of self adhesive Velcro (loop side) on the verso of the left part of the base board. These strips need to be placed at 1 or 2 cm interval parallel to the groove.



Cut a strip of board of the length of the base board or slightly shorter and 40 mm wide.



Adhere to the strip a new strip of self adhesive Velcro (hook side) and use the strip to support the Plastazote^® base at the desired height (see following diagram and images).







Fig 8 Diagram of holding strip







Fig 9 Adjustable groove for housing different size spines







Fig 10 Pronounced spine properly housed ready for digitisation



 



Book supports with book in place.



3. The book is held in place by strips that can be made of linen tape, or conservation paper or even Melinex^® or Mylar ^® or Tyvek^®. These strips are secured to the base with Velcro (loop side of Velcro) at each end to secure the books to the book support during digitisation. These strips both gently hold the left part of the book block out of the camera range and also provide an easy and fast way to change the page. These strips, placed behind the page to be photographed can also help to secure the right side of the book block (as shown in the following illustration) in place during the photographic process. To hide the strips, a sheet of archival paper can be placed behind the page being photographed as a blending background.







Fig 11 The book support is now ready to be used







Fig 12 The book in use







Fig 13 Book support with book in place with different opening angles



The opening angle of the book support can be changed as necessary. Different thicknesses of foam wedges can be used behind the book support to achieve a different opening angle. The opening of the book should not to be more than 120 degrees and the book should never be forced to open further than it will naturally.



Refinements can be made to the design when you have made the basic cradle; for instance, the Plastazote^®bases can be bevelled at the edge close to the groove where the book spine will be placed to follow the shape of rounded book spines. Also, where natural hollow or tight back spines need support a rolled linen cloth can be used to fill the groove to support the book block from behind, as illustrated in the image below.







Fig 14 Natural hollow spine supported with rolled linen cloth



 

List of materials

BOOK SUPPORT

• Board



• Buckram cloth



• Plastazote^®



• Strips of linen tape or Tyvek^®, the length depending on the dimensions of the book support plus the space for the book block.



• Self adhesive Velcro strips.



• Foam wedges

Conclusion

The book support cradle was designed to reduce the handling of the books during the digitisation process. The book is secured on a non abrasive surface that keeps a suitable constant opening angle and allows the book to be positioned on the photographic table without further direct handling as the book rest itself can be moved with the book already in place.



The dimensions of the supports can be varied depending on the dimensions of the books to be digitised, more than one dimension should be available to the photographer/imager and the book support needs to be bigger then the book to be digitised.



The strips made of conservation-grade material (Tyvek^® and linen tapes were the more suitable choices due to their properties of strength and non-abrasive surface) keep the books open and reduce the risk of damage to delicate paper or parchment surfaces. The use of Velcro to secure the strips to the book support means they can be secured with a slight tension to prevent the angled opposing pages from slipping. The Velcro also means that the page turning operation is quicker and safer.



The adjustable space in the centre of the book support between the covered Plastazote^® bases enables the safe positioning of the spine of the books placed on the support. Different book sewing structures open in different ways during use, for example: hollow back books need space to accommodate the spine which is detached from the text block. Positioning books properly on the support enables the pages to be turned more easily and the adjustable cradle enables the dimensions of the gap to be increased or decreased to accommodate books of different thicknesses safely.



The increase of book digitisation projects has meant that the involvement of conservation/preservation departments is an essential part of successful project planning. Never before has so much emphasis been placed solely on the books as mere textual carriers. Much of the funding for these projects is awarded towards the accessibility of this textual information alone. For this reason, book conservators have a vital responsibility to contribute to these projects by supervising the safety of the physical items through the stressful process of digitisation.



Books now, more than in any other period, need to be preserved for future generations as artefacts and museum objects too. Important features of the artefacts can be lost, simply because they are presently undervalued due to pressing work schedules and other agenda, but it must be remembered that they are carriers of information on many levels, not just intellectual content.



Experience at the British Library has demonstrated that the involvement of the conservation/preservation element in digitisation projects must be factored-in at the beginning of the planning process. The early assessment of condition and risks is vital for the future conservation and safety of our irreplaceable heritage.

Read More

Archiving the Caribbean & Latin American

The Latin American and Caribbean Cultural Heritage Archives (LACCHA, established 2008), with the Society of American Archivists (SAA, founded 1936) are to have their Roundtable Meetings this August.



They will have a guest speaker Kent Norsworthy, Content Director of Latin American Network Information Center (LANIC).  His talk is on:

Archiving the Latin American Web: Challenges and Opportunities

LAGDA seeks to preserve and facilitate access to a wide range of ministerial and presidential documents from 18 Latin American and Caribbean countries. The Archive contains copies of the Web sites of approximately 300 government ministries and presidencies. Capture of sites began on multiple dates in 2005 and 2006, and will continue with regularly scheduled captures.



Content in the Archive includes not only the full-text versions of official documents, but also original video and audio recordings of key regional leaders. Archive contents include thousands of annual and "state of the nation" reports; plans and programs; and speeches by presidents and government ministers. Content can be accessed via full-text search (search help), or by browsing by country or by specialized sample collection, such as "Presidential Messages" or "Ministerial Documents".



LAGDA is a joint project of the University of Texas Libraries, The Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection, and the Latin American Network Information Center at The University of Texas at Austin. Web archiving services are provided by the Internet Archive's Archive-It service.



LAGDA Basics



• Collaborative effort



– Latin American Network Information Center - LANIC

– Benson Latin American Collection

– University of Texas Libraries



• 2003: CRL-Mellon grant, Web archiving political communications

• 2005: One of original five Archive-It Pilot Partners



Collection Focus



• Ministry and Presidency Web sites from Latin America & the Caribbean

• All major Spanish-speaking countries in the region, plus Brazil

• Sample of ministries: health, economy, defense, agriculture, etc.



Collecting Objectives #1



• Supplement Benson print collection

• Born digital, no longer printed at all

• Brief life on publishing entity’s site



Collecting Objectives #2



• Platform for research

• Numerous types of scholarly & applied research supported

• Important to recreate the “look and feel” of the original, ability to browse, etc.

• Historical record



LAGDA by the Numbers



• 280 Archive-It seeds in one collection

• 18 Latin American & Caribbean Countries

• Quarterly crawls, six to date

• Linking to LAGDA: Over 100 sites, mostly libraries



More LAGDA Numbers



• Over 24.8 million files archived to date

• 2.4 million PDF documents archived



• Largest site archived (by file): Ecuador Ministry of Industry 120,000 URLs

• Largest site archived (by size): Colombian Presidency, 20GB



Why Web Archive?



• Governments come and go. . .



Live Archived



• Disk drives fill up . . .

Live:	Archived:

Ideologies evolve . . .

Live:	Archived:

Challenges



• In Web archiving, Latin America is a “moving target”

• “Best Practices” in Web design = consistent Web archiving quality

• Overuse: JavaScript menus; IFrames; Redirects; Flash, https; cookies; etc.

• How to make more researchers aware LAGDA exists



Quality Control



• Systematically separate crawl issues from playback issues

• Immediate corrective action on crawl issues (fix or eliminate seed)

• Address playback issues through user interface and documentation



Quality Control #2



Proxy Mode



• Eliminates many playback problems

• Confronts some provenance issues

Web Archives and Large-Scale Data: Preliminary

Techniques for Facilitating Research

History of archiving Latin America at UT Austin



• Benson Library collected gov docs in print since 1920s

• Latin America began moving to digital gov docs around 2000

• Download, print and curate

• Latin American Government Document Archive begins 2005

• Crawl entire websites, compress and curate data

• Provide access to digital content directly



Latin American Government Document Archive



LAGDA = 280 seeds, about 15 government ministries per each of 18 countries crawled quarterly since 2005

• Files crawled and archived to date in LAGDA • Data archived • Items added to collection per year • HTML pages archived per crawl • PDF documents archived per crawl • Monthly average pageviews on LAGDA

70 million 5.9 TB 9-10 million 1.6 million 260,000 2,918

Latin American Government Documents





LAGDA: challenges to data mining



• Heterogeneous corpus

• Various languages

• Data formats (HTML, Word, PDF, Other)

• Document characteristics

• Variety of sources (countries, governments, departments)



LAGDA: motivating problem



• Goal:

• Automatically attach labels to documents in a large collection based on training documents

• Challenges:

• Keyword search is ineffective due to lack of consistent words

• Training documents may cover broad subject areas



LAGDA: techniques for data mining



• Break documents into n-grams

• 1-gram {The, quick, brown, fox, jumps, over, the, lazy}

• 2-gram {The quick, quick brown, brown fox, fox jumps}

• 3-gram {The quick brown, quick brown fox…}

• Identify one or more subsets of n-grams with significant high usages in the training documents

• Evaluate all documents in the corpus using these n-grams



LAGDA: techniques for data mining



• Use this score and others to create a composite score

• The company you keep - Examine the text and the links that point to our documents

• Natural language processing

• Named entities & Part-of-Speech tagging



LAGDA: technology for large-scale computing at TACC



• Corral data storage system (6 Petabyes)

• Longhorn High Performance Cluster

• Paradigms for distributed computing (MPI and Hadoop)

• Nodes work in parallel and combine their results

• Allows us to divide and conquer the problem

• Open source libraries (Heritrix, Tika, Lucene, OpenNLP)



LAGDA: initial results



• Traditional classification approaches are unsuccessful

• Our n-gram approach for classification based on training set outperforms traditional Bayesian Inference Classifier

• Results from our composite scores demonstrate additional improvement



“big data” and libraries: going forward



• Challenges posed by web-archived data

• Size, heterogeneity and limited metadata

• Data access that is more dynamic and flexible

• How big data can create data-driven research

• Development of use cases and research examples

• Technology at the service of social sciences, humanities and other fields whose research could benefit



About LANIC - The Latin American Network Information Center (LANIC) is affiliated with the Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies (LLILAS) at the University of Texas at Austin. Live on the internet since 1992 LANIC's mission is to facilitate access to Internet-based information to, from, or on Latin America. Its target audience includes people living in Latin America, as well as those around the world who have an interest in this region. While many of its resources are designed to facilitate research and academic endeavors, its site has also become an important gateway to Latin America for primary and secondary school teachers and students, private and public sector professionals, and just about anyone looking for information about this important region. LANIC's editorially reviewed directories contain over 12,000 unique URLs, one of the largest guides for Latin American content on the Internet.



One of LANIC’s initiatives is the Latin American Government Documents Archive (LAGDA). LAGDA seeks to preserve and facilitate access to a wide range of ministerial and presidential documents from 18 Latin American and Caribbean countries. The Archive contains copies of the Web sites of approximately 300 government ministries and presidencies. Content in the Archive includes not only the full-text versions of official documents, but also original video and audio recordings of key regional leaders. Archive contents include thousands of annual and "state of the nation" reports; plans and programs; and speeches by presidents and government ministers. LAGDA is a joint project of the University of Texas Libraries, The Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection, and the Latin American Network Information Center at The University of Texas at Austin.



nwoodward@mail.utexas.edu

http://lanic.utexas.edu/project/archives/lagda/

http://www.archive-it.org/public/collection.html?id=176

Read More

Heritage: The French Battle of Grenada and the Comte d'Esta

 

The Battle of Grenada and the Comte d'Estaing

         Once the French joined the American Revolutionary War, it became a more global conflict as they began to send reinforcements to the Revolutionaries and to challenge British naval dominance.  Setting sail in April 1778, the Comte d’Estaing sat at the head of a significant fleet and expeditionary force sent to come to the aide of the beleaguered Americans.  After a few defeats and setbacks in the north, most notably a failed attack on New York and another failed move against the British in Newport, RI, d’Estaing repaired his fleet in Boston for some time before setting out to the Caribbean.  This move was so that d’Estaing could recuperate his forces at the French island of Martinique and capture British posts at Grenada and St. Vincent while reinforcements from France were being gathered.  Moving with a force of 25 ships and 5,500 troops, d’Estaing easily captured the two islands, along with 30 merchant ships that were docked in the Grenada harbor, but holding on to these prizes was another matter.



British Vice Admiral John Byron with 21 ships quickly mobilized against the French fleet.  Due to changing wind conditions, faulty intelligence, and the general difficulty of communication at sea, the ensuing battle progressed with much confusion on both sides.  Thinking that half the French fleet was at Port Royale rather than at Grenada, Byron believed he had a numerical advantage, and ordered his ships on in a general chase of the perceived disorderly French fleet, which quickly disrupted the British battle formation as each ship eagerly pressed forward as fast as it could.  The French were in a much better position than Byron had presumed.  With their entire fleet present and in good order, they managed to form a proper battle line and were able to inflict significant damage to a number of British vessels as they attempted to form up.  Byron was unable to get his forces fighting properly, as his change in orders in response to learning the French full numbers only served to further disorder his fleet.



Once the smoke settled, the fighting proved somewhat indecisive.  The French had suffered more casualties, 190 killed and 759 wounded to the British 183 killed and 346 wounded, but the French had managed to defend their captured position at Grenada.  In the fighting, the British had also suffered heavy damage to a number of their ships’ riggings, so that for a time after, the British fleet was only able to form a defensive line due to a loss of tactical mobility.  D’Estaing had achieved a tactical victory but did not press his advantage and pursue any more action against the British.  Instead, he moved the French fleet off to Georgia for his ill-fated Savannah Campaign.  The loss of productive sugar plantations in the West Indies caused wealthy British merchants to pressure Parliament, and of the next shipment of 7,000 reinforcements, 3,000 were sent to Jamaica to continue the fighting in the West Indies.



D’Estaing himself would be largely forgotten in popular memory of the Revolution, as his attempt on Savannah would end in a clear defeat due to his own overconfidence.  His contribution to the cause, however, was much more than a string of French failures as he played a significant role in persuading the French government to send the forces that would later fight at Yorktown, the battle that ensured American success.  His contribution did not go unnoticed, however, as he was given citizenship and a grant of 20,000 acres of land from the State of Georgia.  He was executed during the French Revolution on 29^th April 1794.  The land did acquire a bit of fame when legends grew that d’Estaing used the land to base the operations of a group of bandits, the first case of organized crime in the south.  Regardless of whether or not the land was actually the base of the first southern crime syndicate, d’Estaing deserves to be remembered as a key contributor to the success of the American Revolution.

 

Hue, Jean-Francois, Naval Combat off the Isle of Grenada, 6th July 1779.  1788

Read More

Grenada and UNESCO: Caribbean Media and Communication

Grenada to host UNESCO Caribbean Media and Communication Conference

The Grenada National Commission for UNESCO in collaboration with the the Media Workers Association of Grenada (MWAG), Caribbean Broadcasting Union (CBU), Association of Caribbean Media Workers (ACM), and the UNESCO’s Office in Kingston, organized the 12th Annual Caribbean Media and Communication Conference (CMCC) in St. Georges, Grenada, on 13 and 14 May 2009.

The Conference saw over 53 participants from 10 countries in the region, ranging from policy makers, journalists, media entrepreneurs, educators and media managers, who gathered to formally celebrate World Press Freedom Day 2009 (observed on 3 May). The theme of the Conference was “Media and Dialogue”.



Among the issues discussed at the Conference were:

• Media’s internal dialogue: Training, standards and ethics in the profession;



• Caribbean in a global world: Media perspectives;



• Public service broadcasting and social issues reporting;



• The future of media: Electronic and new media;



• The future of the Caribbean newspaper;



• Media’s role in sustainable development; and



• The media and intercultural dialogue.

The main speaker at the opening ceremony was Tillman Thomas, Prime Minister of Grenada, who urged Caribbean journalists to be impartial in the exercising of their profession. He also stressed the important role of the media in educating and informing Caribbean people about issues relevant to the region, such as governance. Also speaking at the opening ceremony was Franka Bernadine, Minister of Education of Grenada. She welcomed all regional participants and thanked UNESCO for its efforts in promoting freedom of the press and freedom of expression.



In his address to the Conference, Isidro Fernandez Aballí, UNESCO’s Advisor for Communication and Information in the Caribbean, thanked Prime Minister Tillman and the people of Grenada for hosting the conference and stressed UNESCO’s role as a primary defender of press freedom. He also invited members of the audience to observe “one minute’s silence” in memory of all journalists who had died in any part of the world in the past year in the exercise of the profession.



In addition, Mr Fernandez-Aballi reiterated the call of Director General of UNESCO, Koichiro Matsura, to “strengthen our efforts to build a media that is critical, tolerant of alternative perspectives, a media that brings challenging narratives into a common story of interdependence; a media that responds through dialogue”.



Representatives of MWAG, CBU and ACM thanked UNESCO for its continued sponsorship of the Conference and pledged to go on working with UNESCO for the defense of press freedom. They also expressed their commitment to maintaining the dialogue between media, governments and civil society.

From left to right: Erika Walker and Isidro Fernandez-Aballí of UNESCO; Tillman Thomas, Prime Minister of Grenada; Franka Bernadine, Minister of Education of Grenada; and Eugene Gittens, Secretary General, Grenada National Commission for UNESCO.

* The United Nations Organization for Education, Science and Culture (UNESCO) was founded on 16 November 1945 and currently has 195 Members and eight Associate Members, its headquarters are in Paris.

Read More

Grenada family history: Sources at the UK National Archives

Introduction

The UK National Archives does not hold the locally created records of Grenada such as church registers, civil registration registers, wills, or censuses etc. Where these survive they are to be found in Grenadian Archives, Register Offices and individual churches. You will need to contact the following addresses for information:

Badly Damaged Grenada Baptism Records

• Public Library/National Archives, 2 Carenage, St George’s, Grenada, tel: (473) 440-2506
• Registrar General, Church St, St George’s, Grenada, tel: (473) 440-2030

Some Grenadian records have been microfilmed by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and may be ordered to be viewed at their Family History Centres (FHC). Locations of their centres and information on their holdings is available at www.familysearch.org; many Caribbean records are available at their London Family History Centre, however the sad fact is although the Mormons do have Churches on many if the Caribbean islands – none of them offer Family History Centres. The  FHC’s elsewhere in the world, for example, will hold copies of Grenadian civil registration returns of births, marriages and deaths (1866-1940), and deeds registers (1764-1931), which include information on property transactions, wills, mortgages, conveyances, and sales and manumissions (grants of freedom) of slaves.

Useful websites and publications

There are also a couple of web sites which contain useful information:

• www.rootsweb.com/~caribgw
• Moving Here

You may wish to read the following guides for information:

• G Grannum, Tracing your West Indian ancestors (Public Record Office, 2002)

Sources at the UK National Archives

The UK National Archives holds the records of the Colonial Office and related departments and these include correspondence, reports, newspapers and other papers relating to the administration of Grenada. The most important series for genealogists with Grenadian ancestry are:

CO 101 & CO 321, Original Correspondence, 1747-1951 – correspondence and reports from the governor, other government officials and individuals on all matters relating to the social, economic and military affairs of Grenada. Information includes petitions, application forms for colonial civil servants, land grants, manumission returns, lists of land owners, censuses (mostly statistical but some include names of heads of households), court records and lists of prisoners.

CO 103, Acts, 1766-1965 – local legislation including private acts of naturalization, sales of land for payment of debt, grants of manumission, and appointments.

CO 104, Sessional Papers, 1777-1965 – minutes of the local government and include petitions to the house of assembly and grants of manumission.

CO 105, Government Gazettes, 1834-1975 – official government newspapers. The information varies but can include sale of crown lands, naturalizations, lists of jurors, constables and other public servants, probate and grants of administration, voters lists, tax lists, lists of people granted licences to hold guns, or sell alcohol or drugs (as in chemists).

CO 106, Miscellanea – these include newspapers for the 1830s to 1850s and Blue Books of Statistics, 1821-1945. Newspapers can include obituaries, and birth, marriage and death notices. Blue Books contain vital statistical information relating to the colony but also have staff lists of public servants arranged by department and lists of government pensioners.

T 71, records of the Slave Registry and Slave Compensation Commission, 1814-1842. The slave registers cover the period 1817-1834 and are arranged by parish, they include lists of slaves by owner with such information as name, age, where born, occupation and colour. After the first return most only show increases and decreases on the slave population but show births, deaths, gifts, sales, purchases and manumissions (grants of freedom). For slave owners they can show deaths, marriages and details of family members. Slaves were bequeathed, inherited and gifted to family, on marriage slaves were often given as dowry and the slaves of the wife were transferred to the husband. The Grenadian slave registers have been digitised and indexed by Ancestry and can be searched and access free of charge (this link takes you to the search screen) – see slave registers and How to use the slave registers on Ancestry for more information.

The records of the Slave Compensation Commission have very little information on individual slaves because the information gathered was used to establish the value of slaves and compensation payments. However slaves who were born after the last registration or were not registered are often named during claims, there are also series of sales (called Exhibits in the Catalogue) used to assess the general value of slaves and these often name slaves.

Read More