archives

Library in focus 3: National Galleries of Scotland: Modern Two Reading Room

This is the third post in the Library in Focus series, exploring other libraries that could be useful to ECA students.

Today we look at the archive and library at Modern Two, part of the research facilities offered by the National Galleries of Scotland.

A photo of the reading room at Modern Two
The reading room at Modern Two

The reading room at Modern Two is open by prior appointment Monday to Friday, 10am–1pm and 2pm–4.30pm.

The Library at Modern Two covers the history and theory of art from the early fourteenth century to the present. The library has around 100,000 items accessible in the Reading Room, including monographs, catalogues raisonnés, exhibition catalogues, periodicals, auction sales catalogues, audio-visual material, accession files and ephemera. The gallery accession files (sometimes referred to as dossiers) are a unique curatorial resource on every work in the collection, from Titian to Tanning.

The library has been developed to support research into the Collection and the holdings reflect this, with particular strengths in Scottish and European art, and Dada and Surrealism.

The Archive contains over 140 holdings relating to twentieth and twenty-first century artists, collectors and art organisations, and is particularly rich in papers relating to art and artists in Scotland. These include documents, drawings, sketchbooks, correspondence, photographs, textiles, artists’ materials and tools, diaries, newscuttings, audio-visual material and other printed ephemera. There are significant holdings on Eduardo Paolozzi, Joan Eardley and Richard Demarco.

The archive also includes primary materials of international importance in the Roland Penrose and Gabrielle Keiller collections of Dada and Surrealism.

Over 6,000 artists’ books and special books are also available to view in the Reading Room. This collection contains many of the most significant books by artists of the 20th and 21st centuries, and includes a world class collection of Dada and Surrealist publications drawn from the book collections of Roland Penrose and Gabrielle Keiller.

To book a visit and find out more about the collections click here.

Library in focus: NMS Library

This is the second in a series of guest posts featuring other libraries (external to the University) that ECA students might find useful to visit. Today we are looking at the National Museums Scotland Library.

The NMS Library welcomes researchers, students and visitors to consult the library for reference use, Tuesdays to Fridays, 10am-4pm. Browse our online library catalogue to discover our historic and contemporary collections.

The Library reflects the strengths and variety of the Museum’s object collections and research interests. Anything ‘Available’ at the Research Library can be found at the time of your visit. If an item is at a location other than the Research Library, email ahead so the material can be ready in time for your visit: library@nms.ac.uk

The Research Library is accessible on Level 3 from the Technology by Design Gallery at the National Museum of Scotland. There are several thousand decorative and applied art books for visitors to browse, plus a display of 80 of our most regularly used journals, including The Burlington Magazine, Apollo and Arts in Asia, as well as journals of local arts societies. Many journals held in the Library’s stores are unique within Scotland, and can be requested in advance.

The Library has prominent archaeology and Scottish local history collections, and also excels in the natural sciences. World-wide art and design is the other main collecting strength with material covering everything from fashion, to jewellery and silverwork, to Japanese design and printmaking.

The institutional archive tells the story of the Museum and of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland whose historic library and archive are amalgamated with the Museums’. The Archive can be browsed using the Special Collections & Archives finding guides. The stand-out visual material includes the card index of the Scottish Life Archive (a document of Scottish agricultural and social life in the 20th century), the Daniel Wilson scrapbook (comprising sketches and cuttings of early 19th century Edinburgh’s old town), and the archive of textile historian Margaret Swain (records of textiles contained in Scottish private collections). The Library holds the Graham Gadd collection of 19th and early 20th century furniture ephemera and ceramics artist Majel Davidson’s papers, sketches and designs. There is also the advertising archive of Jenners, Scotland’s former, oldest department store.

To view Special Collections and Archives, complete this booking request form in advance.

This post was written by guest editor Jennifer Higgins of NMS Library.

A class of ECA students visiting the NMS Library in 2023

Subculture Archives database trial now live!

The Subculture Archives from the Museum of Youth Culture is an educational & cultural research resource of primary sources exploring 100 years of youth culture through the scenes, styles, and sounds that forged them. From Rave, Punk, Rockabilly to Grime.
From the world’s leading collection of youth culture history, the Museum of Youth Culture.
You can access the database for the duration of our trial, via the library e-resources trials webpage.

Bloomsbury Fashion Photography Archive

We are delighted to announce a new subscription to the Bloomsbury Fashion Photography Archive. This fantastic visual resource is a sister to the Berg Fashion Library which we have had for a while now.
Bloomsbury Fashion Photography Archive is an online resource containing more than 750,000 newly-digitized and high-quality runway, backstage, and street style images, curated by Editor in Chief Valerie Steele, Director of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology, in New York.
An extensive collection of fashion photographs, for use by students and educators, the archive includes images of international runway shows from the 1970s until the early 2000s, from over 400 designers; key collections from McQueen, Gaultier, Westwood, Chalayan, Galliano, etc; rare backstage and front row shots from fashion shows of the past forty years; and street-style images from global fashion cities. The Archive’s index and interactive time line allow students to compare and trace trends, designers, and seasons.
You can access the Bloomsbury Fashion Photography Archive via the library databases A-Z webpage, or through the library “databases by subject” webpage for Art and Design.
We hope you will find this a useful resource for sourcing fashion and costume inspiration and context.

Resource in focus: Box of Broadcasts

Do you want access to thousands of current and forthcoming TV programmes and an archive going back decades? Then use Box of Broadcasts!

Box of Broadcasts (BoB) National is provided as a subscription service by the British Universities Film & Video Council (BUFVC) for UK higher and further education institutions in collaboration with Bournemouth University.The University of Edinburgh subscribes to the BoB National service which enables all staff and students to choose and record any broadcast programme from over 60 TV and radio channels.
The recorded programmes are kept indefinitely and added to a growing media archive with all content shared by users across every subscribing institution.
The system allows staff and students to record and catch-up on missed programmes on and off-campus, schedule recordings in advance, edit programmes into clips, create playlists, embed clips into VLEs, share what they are watching with others and search a growing archive of material.