CURRICULUM
VITAE
Robin
Carfrae Alston
Born:
Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, West Indies.
29/01/33.
Home address: 67 Ocean City, St. Philip, Barbados. Tel: 1-246-416-9097 Email:
r_alston@sunbeach.net
Present Position: Professor Emeritus of
Library Studies, London
University. Formerly
Director, School of Library, Archive & Information Studies, University
College, London, 1990-98; Editorial Director of The Nineteenth Century;
Course Director, The History of the Book, School of Advanced Study, London
University, 1993-98.
Education
Queen's Royal
College, Trinidad,
1940-1942; Lodge School, Barbados, 1943-1946; Rugby School, England, 1947-1951.
University of British Columbia, Vancouver, 1951-1954.
B.A. (Hon) in English Language and Literature; University of Oxford, 1954-1956.
B.A. in English Language and Literature. M.A. 1958; University of Toronto,
1956-1958. M.A. in Medieval English and Comparative Literature; University of
London, 1960-1964. Ph.D. in English Language.
Teaching
Teaching Fellow, University of Toronto,
1956-1958; Lecturer, University of New Brunswick, 1958-1960; Lecturer,
University of Leeds, 1964-1973; Professor of Library Studies, University of
London, 1990-; Course Director, History of the Book, School of Advanced Study,
London University.
Research
1953-1954: Research Assistant to R.E.
Watters on the Canadian Bibliography; 1960. A Bibliography of the
English Language 1500-1800 - to be completed in 22 volumes. 16 volumes
published; 1962-2000. Research Assistant to Professor Kathleen Coburn on the Notebooks
of S.T. Coleridge; 1963. Research Fellow, Newbery Library, Chicago; 1965.
Editor of the Dictionary of Tudor English. Joint project between the
Universities of Leeds, Glasgow and Michigan, and the Oxford
University Press. [Abandoned]; 1967-1973. Associate Editor of the Dictionary
of Early Modern English Pronunciation, [Stockholm University];
1976. Editor of the Eighteenth Century Short Title Catalogue, [The
British Library], 1976-83. Editorial Director of The Nineteenth Century:
a microform library of texts, with MARC cataloguing, published by
Chadwyck-Healey Ltd. in association with the British Library. The MARC records
were made available on BLAISE, RLIN and OCLC in June 1989. 1985-: Founding Member
of the British Book Trade Index, [Newcastle University];
1990-: Founder of the Sir Frederic Madden Society; 1990-: Editor of the Occasional
Publications of the Madden Society.
Editorial
Joint Editor of Leeds Studies in
English, 1965-1970; Joint Editor of Leeds Texts and Monographs,
1965-1970; Editor of Studies in Early Modern English, 1965-1970; Editor
of English Linguistics 1500-1800 - a series of 365 volumes of facsimile
texts published by Scolar Press, [1967-1973]; Editor of European Linguistics
- a series of 25 volumes of facsimile texts, [1967-1973]; Joint Editor of The
Direction Line, [1972-1979]; Editor of The Lantern, [1988]; Member
of the Editorial Board of The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain,
[1989-]; Founder of The Cambridge History of Libraries in Britain &
Ireland, 1994.
Appointments
Member of the Council of the
Bibliographical Society, [1968-]; Publications Committee, [1970-]; Vice
President, [1975-]; President, [1988-90]; Founding Member and Trustee of the Ilkley
Literature Festival, [1973-]; Adviser to the Canada Council, [1981]; the Early
Imprints Project, Australia and New Zealand, [1980]; the Guggenheim Foundation,
[1978]; the Australian Research Grants Committee, [1982]; the
Forschungsgemeinschaft, [1983]; the National Endowment for the Humanities,
[1984]; Member of the Advisory Committee of the Modern Language Association of
America for the Wing Project, [1978-]; External Examiner to the Institute of
Bibliography, Leeds University, [1983-89]; Samuel Pepys Gold Medal, Ephemera
Society, [1984]; Honorary Fellow of the Library Association, [1986]; Honorary
Member of the Grolier Club of Tokyo, [1986]; Honorary Research Fellow,
Department of English, University College, London, [1987-]; Fellow of the
Society of Antiquaries, [1987-]; Cecil Oldman Gold Medal, Leeds University.
[1989]; Member of the Editorial Board of the Cambridge History of the Book. [1989-];
Member of the Editorial Board of the Cambridge History of Libraries in Britain
& Ireland [1995-]; Member of the Governing Board of Common Knowledge, a
public domain information database in the United States, [1989-93]; Elector,
the Munby Fellowship, Cambridge University, [1985-]; Organiser of the Munby
Fellowship Seminar, Cambridge, 1994; Editor of the proceedings, Order and
Connexion, published by Boydell & Brewer, 1997; OBE. [1992]; Gold
Medal, Bibliographical Society, [1996]; Chairman, Friends of the University of London Library, [1997].
In addition to the above official appointments,
adviser on national retrospective bibliographical projects being undertaken by
the National Libraries of Canada, France, Germany, Sweden, Holland, South
Africa, and Pakistan [Report on the development of the National Library
published in 1989]; Library Committee, Society of Antiquaries, [1993-].
Publications
Anglo-Saxon
Composition for Beginners. University of New Brunswick,
1959; Materials for a History of the English Language. University of New Brunswick,
1960. 2 vols.; An Introduction to Old English. Toronto, 1961. Chicago, 1962; A Bibliography of the
English Language 1500-1800. Leeds, 1965-.
15 vols. [To be completed in 22 vols.]; Alexander Gil's Logonomia Anglica
(1619). Edited jointly with B. Danielsson. With a translation into modern
English. Stockholm,
1979; Bibliography, Machine Readable Cataloguing and the ESTC. Jointly
with M.J. Jannetta. British Library, 1978. Translated into Japanese. Tokyo, 1987; Eighteenth-Century
Subscription Lists. Jointly with F.J.G. Robinson and C. Wadham. Newcastle, 1983; The
Eighteenth Century Short Title Catalogue: the British Library Collections.
British Library, 1983;. British Library, 1986 A Topical Index to the
Pressmarks in use in the British
Museum Library, 1843-1973;
Index to the Classification Schedules of the Map Collections in the British
Library. 5 vols. British Library, 1987; The British Library: Past
Present Future. British Library, 1989; Catalogues of Libraries and Lists
of Books in the Department of Manuscripts: a Checklist. British Library,
1990; A Checklist of Women Writers 1801-1900: Fiction - Verse - Drama:
1801-1900. British Library and G.K. Hall, Boston., 1990; The
Classification of Books in the British
Museum Library, 1843-
1973. (With Subject Index). British Library. Cambridge,
1990; A Handlist to Unpublished Finding-Aids for the London Collections of the British Library.
British Library, 1990; A Handlist of Library Catalogues and Lists of Books
and Manuscripts in the British Library Department of Manuscripts.
Bibliographical Society, Occasional Publication, No. 6, 1991; Books with
Manuscript in the British Library. The British Library, 1993; A
Catalogue of Books printed on Vellum in the British Library. The British
Library, 1996; Order and Connexion: Studies in Bibliography and the History
of the Book. Cambridge,
1997.
In addition to the above are numerous
articles in periodicals, reviews, and printed lectures on lexicography,
phonology, historical linguistics, bibliography and the use of computers in the
humanities. Contributions to the revised Cambridge Bibliography of English
Literature and the Sphere Books History of English Literature.
Reviews and articles have appeared in TLS, The Library, Studia
Neophilologica, Publications of the Bibliographical Society of America,
Modern Language Review, Philological Quarterly, The Book Collector,
Publishing History, The British Library Journal, &c. A report
undertaken at the request of the Consortium of University Libraries [CURL] and
OCLC was published in Nos. 27-35 of Research Libraries in OCLC [1988-].
Miscellaneous
Invited to give public lectures at
universities in Britain, America, Canada, and Japan; a series of lectures in
1981 to Australian and New Zealand universities; the annual lecture of the
Bibliographical Society of America in 1981; the David Murray Lecture at the
University of Glasgow in 1983; Tokyo, 1985; the Cecil Oldman Memorial Lecture
at the University of Leeds in 1989. Founder, Chairman and Managing Director of
Scolar Press, 1965-1973. Published over 2,000 facsimiles of texts in
literature, linguistics, history, philosophy, religion, art and science.
Pioneered gammatype facsimile [the Trinity manuscript of Milton's poems], and the introduction of
computerised photography in the production of lithographic facsimiles.
Developed the Prismascope, now in use in several research libraries in Europe
and North America. Founder and Managing
Director of Janus Press, 1973-1980. Published original lithographs by
contemporary artists from Britain
and Europe, in collections of major galleries.
While the emphasis was on British artists, the Janus studio promoted the work
of artists in Europe (Benita Bammer, Bernard Etienne), Japan (Tadamichi Tsuzuki), and America (Wendy
Wilson). Developed various new techniques for lithography using modern
materials, for recording watermarks in paper, and for reproducing documents
without the use of a camera. This technique was used in reproducing over two
hundred previously unrecorded drawings by Rossetti in a private collection.
Developed a new technique for producing continuous tone with lithographic
plates, and was awarded the International Prize for Lithography in 1975. Much
of the work produced between 1973 and 1976 at Janus Press involved commissions
from artists and can be found in collections in England and Europe (the
lithographs by Etienne are in the Bibliothèque Nationale), Janus also produced
in 1977 Roxburgh Club volume, printed in ten colours using the then novel
technique of laser colour separation. A series of six portfolios illustrating
the art of J.A.C. Harrison (in the collections of the Philatelic Department)
were published by the British Library between 1978 and 1982. These portfolios
represent photographic techniques which have never been used before. From 1974
to 1977 a member of the Advisory Committee for the Reference Division of the
British Library. In 1976 appointed as Consultant to the British Library, and
Editor-in-Chief of the Eighteenth Century Short Title Catalogue,
responsible for establishing the principles and methodology for creating a
machine-readable file of records for English printing (1701-1800) in the major
libraries of the English-speaking world. The project now has editorial offices
in America, Canada, Australia,
New Zealand, South Africa and Germany, and the bibliographical
file (over 450,000 records) is held on two databases (BLAISE and RLIN). The
number of libraries contributing to the project exceeds 1,000. In June 1984
appointed as consultant to the British Library on a wide range of issues,
including the conversion of the General Catalogue to machine-readable
form; automation within the Reference Division [now Humanities and Social
Sciences] (including special collections such as Newspapers, Music, Maps and
Manuscripts). Organised the British Library Microcomputer Symposium,
Microcomputers and Libraries, (proceedings published in 1987). Founder (1990)
of the Frederic Madden Society and Editor of the Journal of Sir Frederic
Madden. Between 1976 and 1990 member of various Committees in the British
Library, including those concerned with cataloguing and cataloguing standards,
the South Asian and Burma Retrospective Bibliography, the National
Union Catalogue, Conservation, and computer-assisted research services in
the new British Library building at St. Pancras. Since 1990, as Director of the
School of Library,
Archive & Information Studies at University
College and Director of the M.A. in
the History of the Book in the School
of Advanced Study, member of various
committees in the University
of London, including the
Vice Chancellor's review body on the future of the University Library.
Since retiring from London
University in 1998 completed research
on the history of libraries in the British Isles
to 1850, incorporated in a large Website entitled The Library History
Database, with evidence for the existence of over 27,000 public and private
libraries. The database is consulted in numerous countries and is the largest
resource of its kind available on the Web. [Address:
www.r-alston.co.uk/index.htm]. Volume XIII of the Bibliography of the English
Language was published in April 1999, Volume XIV in April 2000; Volume XV in
April 2001; Volume XVI (two volumes) in April 2002. Volume XVII (two volumes)
in 2003; Volume XVIII (in 9 volumes) 2004-2006; Volume XIX (two volumes) 2007.
Volumes XX-XXII in preparation.
Who’s Who [2007]
Debrett’s People of Today [2007]
Barons 500 [2000]
February 10, 2007.