Centre for Interactive Systems Research Information Science
City University

The Athenaeum Projects: Overview

The Athenaeum was a weekly periodical published in London between 1828 and 1923, covering a wide range of topics in literature, fine arts, music, theatre, politics and popular science. Two projects, which ran in the Centre for Interactive Systems Research between 1989 and 1997, have contributed to the task of creating a complete electronic archive for this journal, as a resource for scholars and historical researchers. The material produced so far is now publicly available via the Web.

Index of Reviews and Reviewers

The Athenaeum book reviews were normally unsigned. However, City University library holds the original editors' marked copies of the bound volumes, making it possible to determine the identity of the anonymous contributors, many of whom were well-known literary figures. An index has been compiled of book reviews appearing in the Athenaeum between 1828 and 1870, together with full biographical details of their reviewers.

Summary details and acknowledgements:

Project sponsors: British Library Research & Development Department,
The Pilgrim Trust
Project director: Professor Micheline Beaulieu
Researcher / indexer: Sue Holland
Indexers: Oskar Wellens, University of Brussels,
Marysa deMoor, State University of Ghent
Database software: Tinman
Web data conversion
and search interface:
Simon Powell (IS Research Student, 1992-97)
Publication: Hancock-Beaulieu, M. and Holland, S. "Indexing The Athenaeum: aims and difficulties" The Indexer Vol. 17 No. 3 April 1991

Go to the Index of Reviews and Reviewers

The Science Index

In the course of compiling the reviews index, it became evident that many items in what had traditionally been regarded as a mainly literary journal were in fact related to science, including medicine and what would now be termed the environmental and social sciences. This led to a new proposal to create an exhaustive index of all the scientific material, comprising not only book reviews but news items, articles and reports of scientific meetings. The database currently available covers the period 1828-1830.

Summary details and acknowledgements:

Project sponsor: The Wellcome Trust
Project director: Professor Micheline Beaulieu
Researcher / indexer: Sue Holland
Database software: Idealist
Web data conversion
and search interface:
Thien Do, Ronald Paul, Susan Jones
Publication: Holland, S. and Miller, S. "Science in the Early Athenaeum: a mirror of crystallisation" Public Understanding of Science, 1997

Go to the Science Index


Last updated: October 2001X
By: Susan Jones
sa386@city.ac.uk