![]() It’s an exciting project and I’m really happy to have the opportunity to work with such a rich source of historic information. I’ll produce a finding aid for the Bulstrode Newsletters, oversee the digitization of the letters by HRC digitization technicians, create rich descriptive metadata for the digital assets and encode transcriptions for the first 300 letters. My capstone project is going to involve a lot of the things I’ve learned at the UT iSchool: cataloguing, digitization, metadata standards, digital collection management, and good old research and reference work. One of my favourite letters talks about how “disappointed” the French were after one of their warehouses of supplies for their war in Sicily was burned down. The letters as a whole deal with day-to-day events at the British court and in Parliament, but there are some other rich tidbits related to the activities of other countries (particularly France) and sensational or unusual trials. Coleman was convicted of being part of a Catholic plot to kill the king and the only evidence that exists that Coleman the traitor and Coleman the newsletter-writer were one and the same person is in our collection in the form of a note asking Bulstrode to send return letters via the Duchess of York’s house in London. However, part of the Bulstrode collection includes letter that were sent by Edward Coleman, the secretary of the Duchess of York. Williamson’s newsletter office was highly regulated and almost acted as a propaganda outlet for the state, with a moderated system meant to keep certain aspects of government out of the eyes of the citizenry. ![]() Most of the letters in the collection were sent by a newsletter office run by Sir Joseph Williamson, the Secretary of State. After the Glorious Revolution in 1688 which resulted in the deposition of James II and the accession of William and Mary, Bulstrode remained in Brussels and continued to work as a loyal agent of James II. Eventually he became James II’s ambassador to Brussels. In July 1674 he was appointed an agent for the English crown in Brussels and was knighted. While in prison, Bulstrode converted to Roman Catholicism. Bulstrode was implicated in two thefts in 1665 and fled to Bruges, where he was captured and imprisoned for two years. The collection that I’m working with is comprised of letters that were mostly sent to Sir Richard Bulstrode, an English diplomat and writer who fought in the English Civil War for the king and as part of the Prince of Wales’ horse. The address of Sir Richard Bulstrode in Brussels and the wax seal from Edward Coleman’s office. The newsletters represent the “correspondence journalism” of the time period: gentlemen living in the countryside or abroad could subscribe to a newsletter office for an annual fee and receive updates by letter from a journalist reporting current events in London as well as transcripts of speeches and presentations in Parliament. It is made up of a series of manuscript newsletters written between 16 from journalists in the London metropolitan area to several recipients. The subset of the larger Pforzheimer collection that I’m working with is called the Bulstrode Newsletters. My project is to work with an archivist and medievalist in the Harry Ransom Center to catalogue and digitize part of the HRC’s Pforzheimer Manuscript Collection. As I’m closing in on my MSIS program at the UT School of Information (holy wow, has it really been two years already?), I’ve started working on the “capstone” professional experience project that is meant to bind up all the skills I’ve acquired over the past four semesters and bring them all together into one demonstrable project that I will complete over the course of this semester.
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