What secrets can the skills of a cataloguer unlock about a book collection? In this blog, Kathryn Downing, MSc student in Book History and Material Culture at the University of Edinburgh, shares some fascinating insights from her experience working with some of the oldest books in the Museum of Childhood’s …
Introduction “The way that you start reading as a child is the way that you will read for the rest of your life.” (Emily Howarth, interviewee) SELCIE worked alongside the city’s Museum of Childhood to curate the Growing Up with Books. A History of Children’s Literature exhibition. This ran from …
Certain things stay with you. I have always been touched by this description which I came across a long time ago. It’s from a narrative of the life of Mary Magdalene — found in a late 14th century Scots collection of saints’ lives — and portrays a moment of child’s play. …
SELCIE is delighted to announce that a new publication – The Land of Story-Books: Scottish Children’s Literature in the Long Nineteenth Century, edited by Sarah Dunnigan and Shu-Fang Lai (Association for Scottish Literary Studies, 2019) – will be launched on Friday 14th June at 5pm at Edinburgh University, kindly hosted …
In today’s blogpost, Michelle Anjirbag shares a personal reflection about childhood ‘reading memories’ – the particular stories which have had a formative and longlasting influence, shaping who she was then and now…. * My PhD might be on Disney and fairy tale adaptations now, but the princess I looked …
In this blogpost, Niamh Keenan presents a personal perspective on what the Museum of Childhood exhibition, Growing Up With Books, means — and how it can be a space for our personal reflection on the books that made us, and a way of connecting us with others. Unless …
There are many elements of the Museum of Childhood collections that reflect what was happening in the world at the time they were made – fashion can be followed in the costume collection, technology in toy manufacture and popular film stars in dolls and magazines. The book collection, however, offers …
As preparation for Growing Up With Books, opening at The Museum of Childhood on June 1st, busily continues, Niamh presents a personal reflection on the art of writing about the collection’s treasures. * This week finds the SELCIE team typing up museum-appropriate labels for our respective cabinets at the exhibition. …
While working in the book archives of Edinburgh’s Museum of Childhood, we sometimes find books that hold traces of their authors. This usually takes the form of an authorial inscription, as is the case with the charming Mr Barnacles and His Boat book that appeared in a previous blog post. It is …
At times it is clear in our archives that a group of books was donated by the same person or institution, and often they have a paper trail of some sort – a letter included in the book or a note made by the librarian who received them as a …
