Any views expressed within media held on this service are those of the contributors, should not be taken as approved or endorsed by the University, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the University in respect of any particular issue.
Pidgeon Digital archive trial now available from the University of Edinburgh Library!
Listen to the greatest minds in modern architecture. Access hundreds of illustrated talks and interviews with major twentieth century architects within this online audio-visual collection. Founded by Monica Pidgeon, editor of influential radical magazine Architectural Design. Fully searchable illustrated talks and transcripts. Notable speakers include 17 Pritzker Prize winners and 15 RIBA Royal Gold Medal winners, including Zaha Hadid, Ted Happold, Serge Chermayeff, Richard Rogers, Cedric Price, Norman Foster and Felix Candela, to name but a few.
Free 60 day trial access using this link to our current library e-resources trials.
Do you LOVE FILM? Would you like to be able to watch the best in UK and international film, curated by experts? Then the BFI Player is for you!
All students and staff of the University of Edinburgh (including ECA!) can register for free access to the BFI Player subscription, thanks to the University of Edinburgh Library.
To access this fantastic resource, follow the guidance here.
BFI Player is included in our library catalogue DiscoverEd and on our list of film databases. Enjoy!
The 20 volume set has been described as the “first great modern-day compendium of the world’s Buddhist arts”, it contains nearly 10,000 entries and over 14,000 full-colour images, exploring art, architecture, sculpture, cave and rock painting, caligraphy, decorative arts and more.
Want to boost your library research skills? Find out more about the library resources for your research question? Or about managing your bibliographic and research data? Find out what the Library can do to help you succeed with your dissertation or thesis at our Dissertation and Thesis Festival 2025.
Sessions include:
Finding Academic Literature
Spotlight on: Research Planning
Enhancing Your Dissertation Literature Search With GenAI
Study resources for literature reviews
Introduction to Reference Managers
National Library of Scotland presentation & tour
Live session times don’t suit you? Online sessions will be recorded and available for viewing after the event.
In addition, Festival sessions are complemented by modules in the LibSmart II online course which can be undertaken at any time to build your knowledge and skills for library-based research.
For Dissertation and Thesis Festival programme details click here.
The works of Ian Hamilton Finlay (1925 – 2006) are the focus of our new display at ECA Library, Evolution House, “Evening will come…”, marking the centenary of this renowned artist, poet and garden-maker.
The display features book-works, cards and ephemera by Finlay and artists with whom he collaborated, with his imprint the Wild Hawthorn Press, which Finlay set up in 1961.
Finlay’s works explore themes such as boats, sailing and shipping, the French Revolution, concrete poetry, the pastoral, Classicism, and the Enlightenment, and have not been without controversy. Over his long lifetime he had fallings out with local government, arts funding organisations, and European cultural organisations, and even now causes some critics to become enraged.
From 15 September 2025 changes will be made to the opening hours of some of our libraries, these changes are set out below. Please check the library opening hours webpage for full details of all University of Edinburgh library opening hours.
Semester opening times of four site libraries – Law, ECA (Evolution House, West Port) Moray House, Noreen and Kenneth Murray – will be: Monday to Thursday 9.00am-8.00pm; Friday 9.00am-5.00pm (9.00am-7.00pm for Law, and Noreen and Kenneth Murray) .
New College Library will close at 5.00pm Monday-Friday .
Weekend opening hours of the following libraries – Law, ECA, Moray House, Noreen and Kenneth Murray and New College – will be standardised to 12.00pm-5.00pm.
The Art & Architecture Library (Minto House, Chambers St) will close for University Christmas and Summer vacation periods, with a Click and Collect service in place for accessing that collection during those 2 vacation periods. (i.e. A&A Library will be open for each Easter vacation period).
Changes at the Main Library, George Square:
From 1 September, the EdHelp service desk in the Main Library will close at 7.00pm weekdays and 5.00pm at weekends. This does not affect the opening hours of the Main Library building itself, which remains open 24/7.
Changes at the Western General Hospital Library :
The Western General Hospital Library will convert to a self-service Student Study Area from 1 September.
As the Ingleby Gallery curators explain: “Every element in an exhibition of work by Peter Liversidge begins at the artist’s kitchen table with Liversidge sitting alone writing proposals on an old manual typewriter. These hand-typed pages, present an array of possible and impossible ideas for performances and artworks in almost every conceivable medium. In a sense the first realisation of every work is in Liversidge’s head, then on the page, then in the mind of the reader, and finally (perhaps) as a physical object or happening. In every case, the first ‘artwork’ from any series of proposals is the bookwork that presents the collected ideas.”
The books include:
Proposals for Printed Matter Inc.
Proposals for Reykjavik
Proposals for the Flag Club
Proposals for East Quay
Proposals for Lancaster Arts
Proposals for Frome
Proposals for Hong Kong
Proposals for Huntly
Proposals for Kiasma
Proposals for Brussels
Proposals for Town Hall Hotel and Apartments
Proposals for the Berggruen Institute
Proposals for Basis
Proposals for CGP London
Proposals for Santarcangelo
Proposals for Liverpool
Proposals for Sean Kelly Gallery
Proposals for Antarctica
Proposals for SNGMA
Proposals for Barcelona
Proposals for Bonniers Konsthall
Proposals for Royal London Hospital
Liversidge has himself said: “In a sense they are all possible and the bookwork that collates the proposals allows the reader to curate their own show, and because of its size and scale the bookwork allows an individual to interact with each of the proposals on their own terms, one to one.” [Cell Project Space, 2005].
Our display in ECA Library, Evolution House, on the archive of Fluxus artist Takako Saitō, closed on 25th August 2025. Following that, our next display will explore the work of Ian Hamilton Finlay in his centenary year. This display will open on 1st September and will continue until 30th November 2025.
There are lots of other suggestions from bloggers such asZapier,Altexsoft, or Cnet.
Do you know about the image resources provided by the University of Edinburgh? Our high quality image databases are available to students and staff here
Resources external to the University include:
Shutterstock
Pixabay
Unsplash
Pexels
Coolers.co (colour palette generator)
Familiarise yourself with the University of Edinburgh guidance on AI here.
ELM is the University of Edinburgh’s AI innovation platform, a central gateway providing safer access to Generative AI via access to Large Language Models (LLMs).
The moral issues around AI, eg the carbon footprint of AI – the massive amounts of water and electricity that are used every single time you use it, plus the exploitation of labour from the global south in training the AI LLMs (large language models).
It is a moral issue when we know that authors and artists have had their work used to train the AI tools without their permission and with no payment or compensation or acknowledgement.
The importance of citing correctly and making it very clear in any work you do that you have used GenAI to help you plan, ideate or create.
Make sure you are very clear on what your School or department’s stance is on AI in course work or dissertations. You can find the guidance by Professor Sian Bayne here.
Use Cite Them Right to check how to reference AI in your chosen referencing style. Access Cite Them Right via DiscoverEd.
Critical thinking is even more important now, when engaging with GenAI (or deciding whether to experiment with it, or to reject it).
Learn more at the LinkedIn Learning training courses: “Generative AI Imaging: what creative Pros need to know” and “Ethics in the age of Generative AI”. Access LinkedIn Learning via MyEd.
“To say that AI on its own will be able to produce art misunderstands why we turn to the art in the first place. We crave things made by humans because we care about what humans say and feel about their experience of being a person and a body in the world.” – see The Guardian
The viral reach of a social media post by sci-fi/fantasy author Joanna Maciejewska seems to demonstrate that her sentiments are widely shared:
“You know what the biggest problem with pushing all-things-AI is? Wrong direction. I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes.”
Further reading:
“Artists should exploit AI’s capabilities, says creators of new Tate Modern show”.
Be critical! Ask yourself “who profits? who is exploited?”
This blogpost should not be taken as approved or endorsed by the University, and does not necessarily reflect the views of the University in respect of any particular issue. This blogpost is based on a library Bitesize training session developed by the Academic Support Librarian team, and delivered online in March 2025. For more Bitesize sessions and how to sign up, go to the events channel on MyEd.
