October 2013 – Library Blogs Migration

Marking the Millennium?

This week’s images all come from a lovely photograph album commissioned by the University in 1900 (Shelfmark EUA CA1/2). We don’t have much information about this volume but we think it was made to hail the start of the 20^th century. It contains 25 photographs of University buildings and views in and around Edinburgh, including some are fascinating scenes of Edinburgh life – when was the last time you saw people skating on Duddingston Loch?

Thanks to the Lost Edinburgh Facebook team Digital Imaging Unit images have appeared on the Lost Edinburgh Facebook page. As a result of this each image has received 1,331 + 1294 likes respectively and 216 + 161 individual shares. Also around 80 comments per image were generated and this has brought the CRC Facebook page an additional 76 new likes since appearing on the site. The Lost Edinburgh Facebook page currently has 66,296 likes, probably making this the biggest audience for our images.

Susan Pettigrew

Oct 30, 2013

New Photography for Main Library Exhibition – Collect.ed

The Digital Imaging Unit have been working on an amazingly diverse range of material recently thanks to a new exhibition being prepared for the Main Library by exhibitions intern Emma Smith. Collect.ed is the title of the exhibition described as “Curiosities from the University’s collections”. This work has presented the challenge of photographing a cast of the serial killer Burke’s brain, seven prehistoric shark’s teeth and a fabulous box of shells collected by Charles Darwin himself. Collect.ed will open on 5th December 2013 and run until 1 st March 2014, Monday to Friday 10.00am – 5.00pm, Saturday 10.00am – 1.00pm, Free Admission!

Malcolm Brown

Oct 23, 2013

Gems from the ECA Rare Books Collection

The CRC Assistant Rare Books Librarian has been busy cataloguing books from the Edinburgh College of Art Collection again, and has sent a few our way to photograph for upcoming talks and publications.

An amazingly diverse collection from 15^th C. Sermons to etchings of Italian landscapes to 19^th C. Japanese artistic review magazines and on to detailed plates of British Ferns, each book contains its own wonders.

Susan Pettigrew

0055609d — RECA.MS.26 Calico Samples Album, pp.200v-201r

0055628d — RECA.F.157 Le Japon Artistique, vol.3, no.17, pl.ABD

0055638d — RECA.FF.210 British Ferns, Moore, Thomas, pl.XVI

0055644d — RECA.MS.8 China, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Macao: Photographs Taken on Lord Elgin’s Diplomatic Mission and Military Campaign in China 1857 – 1861, p.52

Oct 16, 2013

Final selection of images of “Old Edinburgh” by Baldwin Brown.

This is the Digital Imaging Units final instalment of images from the Centre for Research Collections Baldwin Brown images of “Old Edinburgh”. Many thanks to those who have responded with information regarding geographical locations and general information. The feed back has been very welcome and useful! This set has a few obvious locations but yet more mystery. We will add the data collected to our metadata records for the images enriching that data for continued research.

Malcolm Brown