Dear colleagues, 

The Group for Literary Archives and Manuscripts (GLAM) is a special 
interest group for all those engaged, or with an interest, in the 
collecting, preservation, use and promotion of literary archives and 
manuscripts in Britain and Ireland. GLAM now has members drawn from some 
50 institutions, including national libraries and archives, HE libraries, 
specialist repositories and single author centres. 

GLAM's first major project is a groundbreaking survey of acquisition 
policies and recent practice in relation to literary archives and 
manuscripts. The survey questionnaire has already been completed by nearly 
60 institutions with significant literary holdings, and the GLAM committee 
has been able to undertake some initial analysis of the information 
acquired in the earliest phases of the survey. These findings were 
presented last year at the Manuscripts Matter conference - an event held 
at the British Library under the auspices of the UK Literary Heritage 
Working Group (see http://www.literary.org.uk/conference.php).  

However, we would like to ensure that as many institutions as possible are 
given the opportunity to participate in the survey, and would particularly 
welcome responses from local authority archives which are currently under-
represented in our findings. If your institution holds significant 
literary collections, or your collecting policy (either explicitly or 
implicitly) extends to literary papers, please take some time to complete 
the survey form, which is available to download via the GLAM website at 
http://archives.li.man.ac.uk/glam/glam5.html. The website also includes 
GLAM's definition of 'literary', as well as other information about the 
group's activities. 

We hope that the final results of the GLAM survey will, among other 
things: inform an investigation into the feasibility of evolving a 
collecting strategy for Britain and Ireland in the field of literary 
papers; identify significant gaps in our collecting and collecting 
policies; identify patterns in current collecting of literary material; 
highlight problems which have occurred in attempting to acquire; and 
celebrate the literary collections held in Britain and Ireland by 
illustrating some of the innovative uses to which they have been put. 

Please return any completed forms to me at [log in to unmask] by 
the end of June. 

Best wishes,

Fran 

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Fran Baker,
Assistant Modern Literary Archivist 
& Digital Archivist (CAIRO Project),
The John Rylands Library, 
150 Deansgate,
Manchester M3 3EH
Tel: +44 (0)161 275 3541
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