[PW] Ralph Henry Bassett "The Mechanised Historian" (1950)

[Bye, Dan J]

Perhaps worth trying the Royal Asiatic Society?  Bassett was involved with them, and they have a library.  (They also had a Ceylon Branch).
http://royalasiaticsociety.org/site/

He seems to have been living or working in Gloucestershire in the 1950s, so I did wonder if perhaps he had anything to do with the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society. They've published their "Transactions" for many years and they all seem to be online, but I couldn't see any reference to a 1950 publication of his, or indeed any mention of him having died in 1962.  So maybe he wasn't involved.  http://www.bgas.org.uk/.  Contents pages of transactions: http://www.bgas.org.uk/tbgas/bgl.htm.
  
Dan

> -----Original Message-----
> From: project-wombat-bounces at lists.project-wombat.org 
> [mailto:project-wombat-bounces at lists.project-wombat.org] On 
> Behalf Of Dennis Lien
> Sent: 17 July 2008 21:18
> To: list at project-wombat.org; ssircar1 at yahoo.com.au
> Cc: SSircar1 at yahoo.com.au
> Subject: Re: [PW] Ralph Henry Bassett "The Mechanised 
> Historian" (1950)
> 
> At 06:40 PM 7/15/2008, you wrote:
> >I am looking for bibliographical details for the following 
> item.    I 
> >would be grateful if any replies were sent directly to 
> >SSircar1 at yahoo.com.au Thank you.    In _Who Was Who_, vol 6   the 
> >entry under Ralph (Periera [sic]) Henry BASSETT (M: 1896 Feb 
> 16 - 1962 
> >Jul 18)   lists the work, not in Copac or LofCongress,   "The 
> >Mechanised Historian" (1950). Â  Bassett does include 
> "archaeology"in 
> >his list of interests & pastimes. Â  Sanjay Sircar
> 
> 
> Negative evidence:  the only mention of the title in the 
> TIMES OF LONDON ARCHIVE is in Bassett's obituary there in 20 
> July 1962 issue, page 17, where it is spelled "Mechanized" 
> rather than "Mechanised" but otherwise gives no details other 
> than the 1950 date.  (Presumably WHO WAS WHO took their 
> information from that obit.)
> 
> The 1948-1951 cumulation of ENGLISH CATALOGUE OF BOOKS lists 
> neither the author nor the title.  My guess if it's not a 
> complete hoax would be that he may have published a journal 
> article of this name which got mistakenly cited as a book, 
> but I've not been able to find a journal article either, per 
> search in print indexes:
> 
> C.R.I.S. : the combined retrospective index set to journals 
> in history,
> 1838-1974
> (and) the British Library Association's SUBJECT INDEX TO 
> PERIODICALS (vols. for 1950 and 1951; there are no author or 
> title indexes so finding anything requires one to outguess 
> the subject heading assigner -- I scanned entries under words 
> starting with Bassett, Historians, History, Mechanical... , 
> Ceylon, Research, and Calculating Machines (their 
> then-preferred term for Computers) with no luck;
> 
> nor online indexes:
> PERIODICALS INDEX ONLINE (formerly PERIODICALS CONTENT 
> INDEX); JSTOR; or a cited reference search in WEB OF SCIENCE.
> 
> Given his career in what was then Ceylon, I also checked the 
> online catalog of the national library of Sri Lanka for books by him.
> 
> http://www.natlib.lk/
> 
> Besides the expected
> ROMANTIC CEYLON, it lists a couple of government reports he 
> authored, and one
> 2002 title subject headinged as "Folklore" :
> Pembara Lanka : ithihasaya janapravada ha visthara -- but 
> this turns up to just be a translation of ROMANTIC CEYLON again.
> 
> I'm out of ideas.
> 
> Dennis Lien / U of Minnesota Libraries // d-lien at umn.edu
> 
> 
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