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Caribbean Views: Personal Selections by Mike Phillips

In this online gallery of the British Library, they have taken an interesting approach to highlighting one of their collections. They asked Mike Phillips, an author and historian born in Guyana, to comment and react to their large British West Indies collection. There are illustrations, maps, and pages of text from books written during the period of colonization, all with explanations and responses from Phillips. Although the images are interesting, Phillips' narrative is far more so, and it's like having your own curator walk you through this exhibit. And a curator, no less, who knows firsthand the painfulness of what the images represent. Interestingly, in his narrative in the section titled "A Personal Journey" he points out that while the illustrations of the slave trade in the books in the collection, are rather "sanitized" and don't depict the brutal reality of the treatment of slaves, the text of the books is very honest in its description of the brutality toward the slaves. Visitors can zoom in on each image as well as navigate with great ease within the image. Each image is of excellent quality, and can be printed out at full size. Finally, visitors who are interested in reading a brief description of Mike Phillips can click on a link at the bottom of the homepage.
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