Dear blog,

I’ve just been shown the database that letters will be typed into for the Calendar of Davy letters that we’re planning. It’s a great piece of work by a University of Salford spin-off company <http://www.edinteractive.co.uk/> who also did the litscimed website for us. The database  is being finesssed to make sure that it’s as easy as possible for the copytypist to use, and was greatly aided by the lists of places and publications that Naz Amin drew up for us from the letters we have currently. The project continues apace and it’s great to be thinking of the next stages — visiting archives and transcribing newly found letters — knowing that the data we have is being captured ready for our use.

I was in Cyprus last week as part of a staff mobility Erasmus exchange. I gave a lecture on James Hogg’s Confessions to third-year students, a research paper to staff and students, and a seminar on Shelley’s ‘Ozymandias’ to first-year poetry students. It was really great fun, lovely to be away from the cold north of England, and a really interesting experience. The seminar, for example, was much larger – to 35 students – and it was a real task to keep everyone engaged on the task at hand, but thoroughly enjoyable. Staff at the University of Cyprus were wonderful, particularly Stella and Evy, and were brilliant hosts.

I’m sad that no-one was interested in the planned interview with Dr Peter Buse on his research into Polaroid (sorry, Josie, you were the only person who even tried to log in to the session). We cancelled it when it became clear that there was no point going ahead. I’m open to suggestions for how to use the social space and encourage more activity on it – please do let me know what we can do.

I’m going to visit the Hull History Centre tomorrow <http://www.hullhistorycentre.org.uk/> to see what can be done with archives in the hope that one day we might be able to do something like this with our archives at Salford.

All best,

Sharon