general news

Digital skills training

Information Services Group (ISG) at the University of Edinburgh offer a wide range of courses to support digital skills development. Their current programme encompasses a variety of workshops on working with data, including:

  • Creating a Data Management Plan for your Grant Application (Wednesday 12-Oct-2016, 12:00 – 13:30)
  • Good Practice in Research Data Management (Friday 07-Oct-2016, 09:30 – 13:30)
  • Handling Data Management using SPSS (Monday 12-Sep-2016, 09:30 – 12:30; Monday 14-Nov-2016, 09:30 – 12:30)
  • Introduction to NVivo (Tuesday 27-Sep-2016, 09:30 – 12:30; Tuesday 01-Nov-2016, 09:30 – 12:30)
  • Introduction to Visualising Data in ArcGIS (Wednesday 28-Sep-2016, 14:00 – 17:00)
  • Introduction to Visualising Data in QGIS (Thursday 01-Dec-2016, 14:00 – 17:00)
  • Managing your research data: why is it important and what should you do? (Monday 10-Oct-2016, 11:30 – 13:00)
  • NVivo: Beyond the Basics – Queries (Monday 03-Oct-2016, 14:00 – 17:00; Monday 14-Nov-2016, 14:00 – 17:00)
  • Using EDINA Digimap (Wednesday 28-Sep-2016, 09:30 – 12:30; Thursday 01-Dec-2016, 09:30 – 12:30)
  • Working with personal and sensitive data (Friday 14-Oct-2016, 12:00 – 14:00)

All courses must be booked via the Digital Skills website
If you are unable to attend a course you have booked, you should cancel through the Event Booking channel.  Attendance is recorded, and failure to attend without prior notice may affect your future bookings. For over-subscribed courses ISG frequently offer standby places to people on the waiting list, so please ensure you arrive in good time or your place may be reallocated as a standby.
 

RSA Open: ECA Library Prize winner announced

Cecile Simonis awarded the ECA Library Prize at this year’s RSA Open Exhibition.
We are happy to announce that the Royal Scottish Academy judging panel has chosen artist and printmaker Cecile Simonis, as the recipient of the 2016 ECA Library Prize, for her work “Drones”. Cecile has won a year’s free borrowing membership at ECA Library. Cecile studied in Belgium and Italy, and is now resident in Edinburgh. She teaches drawing and printmaking and has strong connections with Edinburgh Printmakers Workshop. More information about her work can be seen at
We look forward to welcoming Cecile to ECA Library.
‘Drones’, by Cecile Simonis, with permission of the artist.

Thought for the day…

“Painting, sculpture, any act of artistic creation, has a special relationship with slowness. As the American writer Saul Bellow once noted, “Art is something to do with the achievement of stillness in the midst of chaos. A stillness which characterizes… the eye of the storm… an arrest of attention in the midst of distraction”.
– Carl Honore, In Praise of Slowness: challenging the cult of speed, HarperCollins, 2005.

Happy National Poetry Day to all our readers

8th October, 2015:
When I am Among the Trees
 
When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness,
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.
I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.
Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.
And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.”
– Mary Oliver.

Residency begins at ECA Library for artist Holly Prentice

Monday 2nd February 2015:
We are delighted to welcome Holly Prentice to ECA Library today. Holly has already begun to explore our 2000 artists’ books and will be producing an exhibition, several workshops and a new book-work, as part of her month-long research residency.
One of the workshops will be a free and open to all drop in session at ECA Evolution House, room 2.15, during Innovative Learning Week, more details here soon…

Holly Prentice chosen as next research resident for ECA Library

ECA Library is pleased to announce that Holly Prentice has been chosen as the successful recipient of the ECA Book Artist  Research Residency 2014/15. Holly will take up the Residency in early Spring 2015 (exact dates to be confirmed), based in ECA Library, Evolution House.
Holly is an artist who graduated from ECA in 2012 with a First Class degree in Drawing & Painting. Her work has been shown in exhibitions across the UK, from Aberdeen to Sheffield, to Ullapool, and at European venues such as the Universitat der Kunst, Berlin.
Holly uses libraries, archives and collections for research and as inspiration for her practice. We look forward to seeing the ways in which her month long exploration of ECA Library collections inspires her own work. More information about Holly’s plans for the residency will be posted here later this month.
We would like to take this opportunity to thank all applicants for the time they took to apply for this award.

Pop Up Library season begins

The University Library is holding a series of Pop Up Library events at the Main Library, George Square, for the next 8 weeks. All sorts of info sessions will be taking place to promote different aspects of the many diverse services and collections that the University Library offers.
There will be two sessions on ECA-related matters: a pop up hands-on session on the ECA Artists’ Books collection, at 3.00pm – 4.00pm on Monday 3rd November, and a more general session on what the ECA Library can offer you, at 11.00am – 12.00 noon on Thursday 6th November.
There are dozens of other sessions throughout the Pop Up Library season. These include sessions on the Centre for Research Collections, the University Art collections, the musical instrument collections, and all aspects of services and collections of the University Library. The sessions will be a chance for you to meet library, archive and museum staff from the University, to chat about the collections and services, and to find out more about what it is like to work with and care for the amazingly rich and diverse collections that the University Library holds.
For more info about the Pop Up Library season take a look at the blog at http://libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk/popuplibrary/

Inter library loans: a reminder for post-grads!

Attention all Researchers looking for slightly more obscure or hard to track down items! Don’t forget you can make use of your free allocation of inter library loans! This is where the Library tracks down and gives you access to items held at other research libraries.
For more info see http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/information-services/library-museum-gallery/using-library/request-resources/ill/ill-about
Taught Post-grads are entitled to 20 free loans per year and Research Post-grads qualify for 30 per year!
 

Win an i-Pad mini!

Would you like to be in with a chance to win an i-Pad mini? Do you use Jisc MediaHub? If so, a new survey has just gone live to gather views on Jisc MediaHub:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/FKMQKVL
As part of Project Enriched Playlists, a new Jisc-funded project, Jisc is looking into how audio-visual collections in Jisc MediaHub might be developed for Higher Education (HE) into ‘enriched playlists’:
http://bufvc.ac.uk/projects-research/project-enriched-playlists
This project will help Jisc understand and document how HE would like to use and get the most out of Jisc MediaHub’s moving image, audio and stills collections.
EDINA would be grateful for your help: please do complete the survey by 13th June 2014.
All participants who submit a completed survey will be entered into a prize draw to win an iPad mini 16GB (Wi-Fi).
To find out more about the project or this survey, please contact Hetty Malcolm-Smith, Jisc Project Manager (Content), Project Enriched Playlists (020 7393 1520 /  hetty@bufvc.ac.uk).

ECA Artists Book Maker Residency Bursary 2014 award winner announced

ECA Library is pleased to announce that Julie Johnstone has been chosen as the successful recipient of the ECA Artists Book Maker Residency Bursary 2014. Julie will take up the Residency in May, based in ECA Library, Evolution House.
A Book of Hours, [detail], Julie JohnstoneJulie is an established book artist and editor of the Essence Press. Her work is held in collections at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, the Tate, the V&A, and elsewhere, and she appears regularly at artists book fairs, and is experienced in the curation of exhibitions.
Julie has proposed a discussion group / reading group format as part of her residency as well as being keen to curate a display of the works held in the ECA Library artists’ books collection that she finds most inspiring. The new book work that she makes as the focus of the Residency will be accessioned into the Library’s permanent collection of artists’ books.
It is intended that this Residency opportunity becomes an annual feature at ECA Library, and anyone who applied this year would be eligible to apply again in future years. We would like to take this opportunity to thank all applicants for the time they took to apply for this award.