About the project
Liverpool Mechanics’ Institution
Founded in 1825 as Liverpool Mechanics’ School of Arts, LJMU can trace its origins to the educational reform movement of early nineteenth century Britain. Today, the university operates as a single entity, but this has not always been the case. Comprised of at least thirteen antecedent colleges, this online archive documents a particular moment in LJMU’s developmental history.
It is concerned with a period of roughly twenty years, from 1840 to 1861. This was a time when LJMU was formerly known as “Liverpool Mechanics’ Institution.” It was a time also when the commercial and artistic status of the organisation was being radically advanced by its board of directors, most significantly, via the staging of four public exhibitions.
Until now, this aspect of LJMU’s past has been overlooked. ‘Exhibiting Empire’ seeks to remedy that. Funded by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, the project has digitised close to 800 pages of rare archival material. Some of this material is damaged and fragile. Some, especially the printed ephemera, has likely not been viewed for at least a hundred years.
This also includes the original exhibition catalogues, complete versions of which are not known to have survived in any other U.K. repository beyond Liverpool Record Office. Finally, the material reveals a previously unrecognised aspect of LJMU’s past: the ‘othering’ of peoples and cultures presumed different or obscure for the purpose of commercial gain.
The material
In this collection you will find three interrelated groupings of material, including:
- the descriptive catalogues printed by Liverpool Mechanics’ Institution (LMI) to accompany the exhibitions (four in total)
- bound ephemera, both manuscript and printed, produced either by LMI or by individuals as supplementary guides to major exhibits
- single sheet ephemera, the majority of which was produced for advertising and commercial purposes
At all times, the project has sought to uphold the highest possible standards of archival practice whilst also finding ways to enhance original materials through digital means.
Images were captured in temperature and light-controlled conditions, and no strain or tension was placed on objects during the imaging process. Because of this, not everything you see reproduced on this site will be visually perfect.
This is intentional and reflects the two-hundred-year history of the material, including how it might have first been created, and how it has been subsequently collected, stored, and conserved by a range of individuals.
At the same time, ‘Exhibiting Empire’ allows you to see objects in granular detail, often in ways not readily accessible to the naked eye. An ultra-high-resolution, full-frame DSLR camera was used to capture images. As a result, you can magnify, rotate, and download materials to suit their research needs.
“Page Turning” software has been applied to the main exhibition catalogues to mimic the physical reading experience. Text searchable, the catalogues have also been indexed using optical character recognition technology (OCR), facilitating keyword and data mining techniques.
Lastly, this resource has digitised approximately sixty single sheets of ephemera produced for the exhibitions by LMI or by its exhibitors. In its original state, this material had previously not been catalogued at item level. Substantial research has therefore been undertaken to identify, describe, and to arrange these materials in line with current archival standards.
Research into this collection remains ongoing. As a result, there may be gaps, errors, or omissions in some of the data presented on this site. We welcome all contributions that may enable us to better understand this material.
The original material digitised as part of this project is owned by Liverpool Record Office.
The class marks for this material are as follows:
- 373/INS/12/3
- 373/INS/12/4
- 373/INS/3/8
- 373/INS/17
LJMU Enslavement and Empire project
Research for this project was undertaken as part of a wider LJMU initiative to better understand its historical links to transatlantic slavery and empire.
For more information about the LJMU Enslavement and Empire project, visit our webpage.