Referencing and Publishing
No one relishes the thought of referencing, so we’ve done everything we can to make referencing MO material as easy as possible! Golden rule? Remember the writer’s number and the Directive you’re working with!
Referencing
Abbreviations for all MO references
MOA: Mass Observation Archive
MOP: Mass Observation Project
MO: Mass Observation
Early MO material
File Reports
Abbreviate to FR, followed by report number, title, year of publication and page(s) you are quoting or paraphrasing from.
Example: FR 601, ‘The Bristol Blitz’, April 1941, pp.5-7.
Diaries
Abbreviate to D, the diarist’s number, the month and year of the diary you are quoting from, followed by page(s).
Example: D 5234, diary for March 1943, p3.
Directive Responses
Abbreviate to DR, the respondent’s number, the month and year of the Directive they’re responding to.
Example: DR 2890, reply to May 1945 Directive.
Day Survey Responses
Abbreviate to DS, the respondent’s number, the day, month and year of the Directive they’re responding to.
Example: DS 88, for to May 1945 Directive.
Topic Collections
Abbreviate to TC, followed by the followed by the file number and letter, if accessed via the keep cite the reference number.
Example: MOA: TC Air Raids,23/3/C or SxMOA1/2/23/3/C
Mass Observation Project material (1981 – ongoing)
Quoting from Directive replies
If you are quoting from Directive replies, you need to specify which Directive each quotation comes from. You can use the date and the title of the Directive to do this.
Example:
Mass Observation Archive (University of Sussex): Replies to Spring 1991 directive
At the end of a quotation, add the number of the M-O correspondent you have quoted, e.g. [F3341].
Example:
[F3341, male student aged 22 from Birmingham]
or [R4216, hairdresser, female in her thirties, from London]
You could also use a pseudonym but you must ensure that the number is also included.
Special Reports
Use the MO correspondent (and other details as above if desired), the Special Report number, title, if there is one, and date.
Example: [V1324, Special Report 204, “Visit to hospital”, May 1985].
Publishing
Confidentiality
The Mass Observation Archive (the Archive) contains a large amount of personal and sensitive material that has been contributed by volunteers. It is essential that the privacy of these volunteers, past or present, is not infringed. No real names or any other identifiable information about volunteer Mass Observers may appear in public. No attempt may be made to contact volunteers directly or to use the materials to derive information relating specifically to an identified individual. Where a study concentrates on specific writers and uses substantial amounts of their individual contributions please contact us for guidance.
Dissertations, theses and academic articles
Material from the Archive may be reproduced in student essays and MA dissertations, subject to acknowledgement. Permission to reproduce material from the archive in PhD or other non-published research theses or academic journal articles needs to be obtained from the Director of the Mass Observation Archive. Please email requests.
Commercial Use
The Trustees reserve the right to charge fees both for consultation of the Archive and for reproduction of Mass Observation material outside the scope of fair dealing in books, newspapers and non-academic journals, radio and television programmes, exhibitions,
microform and electronic publications. Charges will generally be made for any use of material for commercial purposes.
Applying for a reproduction licence
Licensing is arranged on the Trustees’ behalf by Curtis Brown. Permissions requests are submitted via their portal.
Gordon Wise, Curtis Brown Group Ltd,
Haymarket House, 28-29 Haymarket, London SW1Y 4SP
Tel +44 (0)20 7393 4420 Fax 020 7393 4401 email: wiseoffice@curtisbrown.co.uk
All those seeking permissions to reproduce MO material or with proposals for publication should write (or, where appropriate, should require their publisher to write) to Gordon Wise with details of their proposed usage sending a copy of their letter to the Archive:
moa@sussex.ac.uk.
Acknowledgements
Where research at the Archive results in publication based partly or wholly on Mass Observation papers, acknowledgment should be made to “the Trustees of the Mass Observation Archive, University of Sussex”