Author: jfurnes1

Stone Archive at Edinburgh College of Art Library

ECA Library holds various special collections and one of those is the Stone Archive. This dates from an Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded project led by Professor Jake Harvey from 2007 to 2011, and the resulting research archive is held in the ECA Library at Evolution House, West Port.

Items from the archive on permanent display are a case of stone cutting tools and instruments (on level 0 of the library) and a display table of stone samples, on level 1 of the library. There is also a collection of images gathered from travels around the world, sound recordings and stone-related publications which have been catalogued, the 2 volume printed catalogue can be consulted at the ECA Library Helpdesk.

A book was published after the completion of the project, “Stone: a legacy and inspiration for art“, and is held in the ECA Library lending collection on level 0.

For more information about the origins of the Stone Archive, click here.

Winter vacation opening and closing times for A&A and ECA Libraries, 2025

The Art & Architecture Library at Minto House, Chambers Street, will close for the winter teaching vacation from 5.00pm on Friday 19th December until 9.00am on Monday 12th January 2026. A fetch service will be in place for accessing the A&A Library book collection during the period 5th – 9th January; details will be published beforehand on the Art and Architecture Library webpage:

Art and Architecture Library | Library | Library

The ECA Library at Evolution House, West Port, will close for the winter teaching vacation at 5.00pm on Tuesday 23rd December until 9.00am on Monday 5th January 2026.

Listen to the greatest minds in modern architecture

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.

Free access to world cinema greats!

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 logo

BFI Player is included in our library catalogue DiscoverEd and on our list of film databases. Enjoy!

Encyclopedia of Buddhist Arts donated by the Manchester Fo Guang Shan Temple

October 3rd, 2025:

We are delighted to have been able to accept a generous donation from the Manchester Fo Guang Shan Temple, of an extraordinary 20 volume Encyclopedia of Buddhist Arts, which will now find a home in the Main Library collection.

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.

You can use the website here to search the volumes digitally before visiting them in person. This valuable resource will support our Edinburgh Centre for Buddhist Studies, as well as students studying History of Art, or Asian Studies.

 

 

Dissertation and Thesis Festival: 27 – 31 October 2025

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. 

Ian Hamilton Finlay centenary display at ECA Library: September 2025

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.

Decide for yourself with our wee display.

Changes to Library opening hours from September 2025

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 Winter 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 Spring (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.

 

 

Bookworks by Peter Liversidge

ECA Library Artists’ Books Collection has recently acquired a set of books by UK artist Peter Liversidge.

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].