The Forbidden Planet International Blog Log

You’ll have to remember, remember the fifth of November this year – as the people of our delightfully eccentric islands set of fireworks and burn effigies of Guy Fawkes (or perhaps just burn bank shares, they’re cheaper than coal) the British Cartoon Archive will be moving to new virtual premises; from the official site:

“Visit us at www.cartoons.ac.uk after 5 November 2008 to use our new, updated website. A grant by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) is not only enabling the BCA to digitise the Carl Giles archive, the single most important archive of British newspaper cartoons, and a key resource for British political and social history, but it is also giving the BCA the opportunity to update its website to significantly increase its accessibility, usability and teaching-related resources.

All the existing content will be moved to www.cartoons.ac.uk and will be available when the site is launched in November 2008. In addition, Over 12,000 new images from the Giles archive will also be available on the new site with more material and functionality being added in the months following the launch.”

I imagine after reading his article on Giles a few days ago Richard for one will be pretty delighted at the thought of a massive Giles archive. Original material held by the BCA at the University of Kent’s Templeman Library date back to 1904 and the archive holds some 120, 000 original works, making it, according to information on the new site, the largest cartoon database in the world. With cartoons, especially editorial ones, often reflecting real problems and concerns of their time I’d think that offers a pretty important historical database too, especially since British cartoonists have been using their craft to comment on the nation and the world beyond in satirical ink since the days of mad Hanoverian kings who talked to trees. When you visit the new site (currently a holding page) make sure to run your cursor around the Tony Blair caricature (by Martin Rowson) on the top right and watch they eyes go all googly in response! (thanks to Matthew Badham for the link)