Library – Page 3 – Library Blogs Migration

Celebrating Shakespeare

0023593d With the 400^th anniversary this year of the death of one of our greatest and most influential playwrights, William Shakespeare, I found myself cropping images of some of his first printed quartos for the creation of an e-reader as part of the Shakespeare image collection. Now existing as high quality e-readers are the plays Love’s Labours Lost (1^st Quarto Edition) and Romeo and Juliet (2^nd Quarto Edition), both of which are used as part of the collaborative project concerning Shakespeare’s printed quartos, The Shakespeare Quarto Archive (http://www.quartos.org/index.html). These works themselves have very unique histories and are important in Shakespearean studies for many reasons. Their place in the Special Collections in the University of Edinburgh Library is invaluable.

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Jun 2, 2016

A Lengthy Challenge: Photographing the Mahabharata

Recently I was asked to scope the digitisation of a beautiful scroll we have in our collection, Or.Ms 510, or better known as the Mahabharata. Gemma Scott, our former Digital Library intern, says that:

‘the Mahabharata tells the tale of a dynastic struggle between two sets of cousins for control of the Bharata kingdom in central India. One of the longest poems ever written, eclipsed only by the Gesar Epic of Tibet, it is said to have been composed between 900 and 400BCE by the sage Vyasa, although, in reality, it is likely to have been created by a number of individuals. To Hindus, it is important in terms of both dharma (moral law) and history (itihasa), as its themes are often didactic.’

Our scroll dates to 1795 and came to Edinburgh University in 1821 when it was donated by Colonel Walker of Bowland. It is 13.5cm wide and a staggering 72m long, housed in a wooden case, wound around rollers and turned by a key in the side. It has 78 miniatures of varying sizes and is elaborately decorated in gold, with floral patterning in the late Mughul or Kangra style. The text itself is dense, tiny, and underpinned with yet more gold leaf decorations.

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May 24, 2016

3 Additions to the LUNA Book Reader Collection

We kick off 2015 with the addition of 3 new Book Readers added to LUNA. The first two are both music manuscripts that came down to the DIU as part of the Readers Orders trolley. It is not often that we receive volumes to be digitised in their entirety this way, so it seemed a good opportunity. As a result we spared a bit of time to do the additional work to prepare them for the book reader software after the High Resolution images had been delivered to the customers. Continue reading “3 Additions to the LUNA Book Reader Collection”

Jan 22, 2015

Photographing the Josephine Baker Bronze by Eduardo Paolozzi

An exciting new exhibition on the 6th floor of the main library in the Centre for Research Collections opens on the 13th November 2014 and runs until 27th of February 2015. The exhibition will include a selection of Edinburgh Universities collection of Paolozzi plaster maquettes which are wonderful three dimensional drawings of his ideas. The Digital Imaging Unit was tasked to photograph the Josephine Baker Bronze to coincide with this exhibition. We have produced a short day in the life film of the Digital Imaging Unit at work on the Paolozzi Bronze which you can see below. A larger better quality version is available by clicking the vimeo link below the film.

[iframe width=”560″ height=”315″ src=”//www.youtube.com/embed/S5sXEQO5az8″ frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen></iframe]

I first became aware of Paolozzi through an exhibition held at the Royal Scottish Academy for the Edinburgh 1984 International Festival called "Recurring Themes” , I still own the catalogue. His work and life made a lasting impression on me as a young man. The early collage work blew my mind and the way he fed pop culture back to ourselves dismantled and rearranged raising questions about pop culture itself was remarkable. Continue reading “Photographing the Josephine Baker Bronze by Eduardo Paolozzi”

Nov 12, 2014

Iconic Photography

0056795d — Clement Litill’s 1580 bequest charter

Part of our remit in the DIU has been to work through a list of ‘Iconic’ Items from the collection in our spare time. Over the years we have completed the digitisation of some outstanding manuscripts and collections in this way, from the Hill and Adamson photographs (a personal favourite- see http://images.is.ed.ac.uk/luna/servlet/s/jl5w63) to the wonderful Laing Album Amicorum (see http://images.is.ed.ac.uk/luna/servlet/s/6oh338 ). Continue reading “Iconic Photography”

Oct 29, 2014

Welcome to the Main Library

On Monday the 08/09/14 the DIU team set our time-lapse camera up in the main library forum to capture the first day of freshers week. It turned out to be a busy day. Over 4000 people came in through the front doors. As staff we are mostly buried away in work rooms and offices therefore we don’t see the footfall through out the library. What an exciting and happening place!

Malcolm Brown Deputy Photographer

[iframe src=”//player.vimeo.com/video/106162353″ width=”500″ height=”281″]

Welcome to the Library from DIGITAL IMAGING UNIT FILM on Vimeo.

Sep 15, 2014

A lot of scanning and a little context

I am now coming to the end of my internship here in the Digital Imaging Unit. Over the past twelve weeks I have been responsible for digitising a large number of documents as part of the Godfrey Thomson Project. Collecting the project documents from Neasa, the Godfrey Thomson Archives Intern, I would then be required to capture every document individually using the Bookeye 4 Scanner (a machine that I have got to know very well lately, and one that behaves rather well, all told!).

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Sep 1, 2014

RASHID AL-DIN 1314 Library Exhibition Time Lapse Film

For the past month or so the DIU have been capturing our first ever time lapse footage of the installation of the current library festival exhibition RASHID AL-DIN 1314. We filmed over several weeks trying to capture the main installation events. This included the prep work by conservation, the delivery of objects from the National Museum, swathes of discussion over the exhibition, hard core carpentry skills and an insane press pack in full flight all leading up to the opening night. What we captured is only part of the story in that all the planning had been completed and work scheduled before shooting began including our own part of supplying the images for the display boards and background supports. It has been a huge revelation to see and document the level of application that goes into creating a Library exhibition. The overriding impression is of a truly massive collaborative effort involving many departments across institutions. Definitely worth a watch if only for the wonderful music by our very own Art Collections Curator Neil Lebeter.

RASHID AL-DIN 1314 Library Exhibition Time Lapse Film from DIGITAL IMAGING UNIT FILM on Vimeo.

Malcolm Brown, Deputy Photographer.

Aug 12, 2014

Making the Most of the Intern(et)

Our wonderful Intern Gemma is leaving us today, but she has managed to squeeze in one more post before she goes. Gemma has done some really amazing work for us, after completing her cataloguing project of Oriental Manuscripts (her work can be seen here http://images.is.ed.ac.uk/luna/servlet/UoEsha~4~4 ) in record time, she has helped out with Flickr, Walter Scott and a new project about not yet officially started too. I’d like to say a very big thank you to Gemma for all her hard work- we’re going to miss her! Over to Gemma…

Since I finished my project with the Oriental Manuscripts Collection a few weeks ago (see my blog below for more info http://libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk/diu/2014/07/02/discovering-the-orient/#more-931 ), I’ve been working on a few other projects to make the most of my remaining time here at the CRC. Of these, one of my main tasks has been to update the department’s Flickr account (https://www.flickr.com/photos/crcedinburgh/).

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Jul 25, 2014

The Staff Portrait V’s the Selfie

Over the years the Digital Imaging Unit have grown into the role of photographing official Library staff portraits. These images are used by the Library online to identify teams and in publications like the Piper when there is a focus on a department. In general terms the prospect of a staged portrait sends most staff fleeing for the Pentland hills. Some staff point blank refuse using colorful metaphors to explain why they will not do it and certainly most staff are guaranteed to be unhappy with the resulting image. It is without a doubt the least popular aspect of the the work we do in DIU. However most staff accept the formal portrait as a necessary evil a bit like going to the dentist. There are also a minority who are comfortable with the concept. What I have come to realise in this role is that I almost always only have about three shots right at the beginning of the session to capture a reasonable portrait. After those first three clicks the sitters brain goes of to an unusual place and we end up with overly self conscious faces that are beginning to do weird things with their facial muscles resulting in contorted bizarre expressions ending with an uncomfortable grimace. In this dominant age of the selfie I feel there is still a role for an official staged portrait and we don’t need to look any farther than the University of Edinburgh’s historic collection of staff portraits to see why they are an important record of individuals at work. Maybe the staff selfie should replace the staff portrait? Lets discuss………..