With Reference to ...

Synopsis

A series of five 15-minute Radio 4 programmes each recorded on location at a unique or definitive collection of some sort (eg teeth, plants, ice, recordings of English dialects). With the help of the resident curators and visiting experts, presenter Quentin Cooper explores the highlights (and oddities) within each collection. He discovers each collection’s value as a resource for answering any number of research questions - from how to treat tooth decay in pandas to what spoken English sounded like in the time of Chaucer.

Language

English

Country

Great Britain

Year of release

2005

Year of production

2002

Subjects

Librarianship

Keywords

archives; museums; research libraries

Online availability

URI

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/withreferenceto.shtml

Price

free

Delivery

Streamed

Sections

Title

Diageo Drinks Archive, The

Synopsis

Quentin Cooper goes to Stirling to visit the archive of the world’s spirit drinks manufacturer, Diageo. The archive’s manager Christine Jones explains how the company uses its 250 year old heritage in its marketing and brewing today and how historians refer to the collection to chart the economic and social history of the British drinks industry.

Duration

15 mins

Title

British Antarctic Survey, The

Synopsis

Quentin Cooper visits the British Antarctic Survey’s vast archive of polar ice cores, held in a commercial freezer warehouse. These ice samples range in age from one year to half a million years. Rob Mulvanney and his colleague Dr Eric Woolf describe the various insights that analysis of the ice can reveal about past climatic and environmental events and changes in Antarctica and around the world. For example, the ice contains air bubbles trapped at the time the ice fell as snow. So the levels of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide in the global atmosphere can be measured as far back as 500 000 years. The levels today are 25% higher than at any time in that period, which demonstrates the scale of the global impact humanity has had since the Industrial Revolution. The ice can also reveal the average temperature at any time in that period. The traces of past giant volcanic eruptions and nuclear bomb tests are also present in the polar ice.

Duration

15 mins

Title

Natural History Herbarium, The

Synopsis

Quentin Cooper joins Natural History Museum botanist Sandy Knapp among the six million plant specimens in the museum’s herbarium. Dr Knapp leads a tour of the cabinets and files devoted to tomatoes, potatoes and their close relatives. She explains the value to science and society of all these countless dried, squashed specimens from all over the world, and describes the excitement of discovering a new species.

Duration

15 mins

Title

Survey of English Dialects, The

Synopsis

Quentin Cooper talks to Dr Clive Upton of Leeds University about the history and uses of the Survey of English Dialects, a massive linguistic research project undertaken in the 1950s and 60s. The aim was to create a comprehensive database of the dialects spoken in rural communities the length and breadth of England. Its purpose was to be a resource by which linguistic historians could then unearth the sounds, vocabulary and grammar of English in Medieval times and earlier. Clive Upton also explains that the Survey is not only an invaluable resource for linguistics - actors wanting to perfect a specific accent pay visits, as do police involved in forensic linguistic investigations.

Duration

15 mins

Title

Odontological Museum, The

Synopsis

Quentin Cooper visits the Odontological Museum, housed in the Royal College of Surgeons in London, which houses the world’s largest collection of teeth, jawbones and skulls from both animals and humans. It was founded by a Victorian dental surgeon to enable study of how teeth grew and how dental diseases developed, and thereby help dentists treat their patients more effectively. He also explains that the collection can illuminate subjects as diverse as the history of venereal disease, dental treatment in pandas and Winston Churchill’s speech impediment...

Duration

15 mins

Distributor

Name

BBC Radio 4

Web

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4 External site opens in new window