Mass-Observation Online

The University of Sussex's archive of Mass-Observation, the British movement I wrote about for the New Yorker in the fall, has been digitized by a company called Adam Matthew Digital. The database looks quite fun: all the day-surveys, all the diaries, all the directives, and all the books. And yet, somehow, there is "no overlap with the microfilm series," or so the snazzy pamphlet claims. There are also some Humphrey Spender photographs---rather nice ones, if what's visible in the pamphlet is representative. The price tag, alas, is $49,500, but I can always hope that Columbia or the NYPL buys a subscription.