This week’s selection comes from Jonnie Robinson, Lead Curator of Spoken English. The Oxford English Dictionary categorises the use of while [= ‘until’] as northern dialect and, as this contributor to the Evolving English WordBank explains enthusiastically, such subtle distinctions in the way dialects assign prepositions can cause both confusion…

Cheryl Tipp, Curator of Wildlife and Environmental Sounds, writes: There are plenty of positives when it comes to digitising archival sound recordings. Long term preservation and improved access are top of the list, however the opportunity to easily explore thousands of freshly digitised files is a curator’s dream. The library’s…

Leonard Bernstein in the 1950s (Unknown photographer [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons) By Jonathan Summers, Curator of Classical Music Leonard Bernstein was born 100 years ago this month. During the second half of the twentieth century he was the one figure that brought classical music to the general public in…

This week’s collection comes from Jowan Collier, Acquisitions Support Officer. To me, sea shanty singing is as nostalgic and drippingly lovely as a freshly pulled pint of real ale. As a teenager, I used to huddle into the back room of the Jacob’s Ladder Inn in Falmouth with a few…

Anwar Brett (1966-2013) was a freelance film critic and the author of the book Dorset in Film (Dorset Books, 2011). For around 25 years, from his early 20s onward, he wrote for a broad range of different national and regional newspapers and magazines. He also contributed to The International Directory…