New College Library is open throughout the Edinburgh Festival 2017

Edinburgh Festival time is coming, and the Assembly Hall on the Mound will once again be a Festival venue. As well as the Assembly Hall, the Rainy Hall and various other rooms at New College will be used during this year’s Festival Fringe from Friday 21st July to Friday 1st September 2017.The Quad will also be in use as a bar and the box office will be located on Mound Place.

New College Library remains open throughout the Festival season.   Should you see any sign at the gates saying ‘This Venue is Closed’,  this will apply only to the Festival Fringe venues and will not restrict your own access to the Library, which you can enter as usual. During Fringe performance times, access to the Quad will be controlled by Fringe staff and you are advised to carry your staff or student card, to facilitate your entry and to minimise any inconvenience.

If you are visiting Edinburgh, you are welcome to register for visitor reference access to New College Library. Please bring two forms of identity with you. We require photographic proof of identity, confirmation of current address, and a passport size/style colour photograph to register for a reference card.

How an Olympic champion became a missionary

The BBC Scotland programme Eric Liddell: A Champion’s Life http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01lb63b  on BBC2 tonight (Monday 23rd July) at 10pm features items from University of Edinburgh Collections.

RUNNING THE RACE: Eric Liddell Olympic Champion and Missionary. John W. Keddie.

New College Library recently received a donation of a biography of  former Olympic Champion Eric Liddell, by John W. Keddie.  Immortalised in the film Chariots of Fire, Liddell won gold in the 400 metres at the Olympic games in Paris 1924, but famously refused to compete in his best event, the 100 metres, because it was held on a Sunday. He went on to study at the Scottish Congregational College and in 1925 went to China as a missionary with the London Missionary Society.

New College Library holds a  letter (30 June 1940) from Liddell to Mary and George Cameron, Heriot, Midlothian describing his movements during his last trip with his family. After two years in a wartime  internment camp with other members of the China Inland mission, he died on 21 February 1945, five months before liberation.

Liddell’s Olympic medals were donated to Edinburgh University by his daughter Mrs. Patricia Russell. A new Sports Scholarship at Edinburgh University, the Eric Liddell High Performance Sports Scholarship, was launched recently in his memory.

New College Library is open throughout the Edinburgh Festival

Edinburgh Festival time is coming, and the Assembly Hall on the Mound will once again be a Festival venue.   As well as the Assembly Hall, the Rainy Hall and various other rooms at New College will be used during this year’s Festival Fringe from Thursday 19th July to Friday 31st August.

New College Library remains open throughout the festival season. Between 17 and 27 July there will be set up activities in New College and the Quad which may cause noise and disruption – although the Library itself is not involved. You may wish to allow a little extra time for travelling to the Library as there may be crowds and queues. Please also remember, as always, to bring your University smart card for entrance and identification.

If you are visiting Edinburgh, you are welcome to register for visitor reference access to New College Library.

Please bring two forms of identity with you. We require photographic proof of identity, confirmation of current address, and a passport size/style colour photograph to register for a reference card.

Studying away from Edinburgh over the summer?

If you’re a School of Divinity student moving away from Edinburgh over the summer but continuing to work on your thesis, you’ll be thinking about how to obtain the library materials you need.

All of the University of Edinburgh’s online services remain open to you, of course. Just log in remotely using your EASE user name and password.

As long as you remain a University of Edinburgh student, the Library can continue to process inter-library loan requests for you, and photocopies of  journal articles and book chapters can be posted to you (We can’t supply physical loans of books or microfilms by post). If an electronic copy has been supplied, we will email it to you. You’ll need to register for the ILLiad system first, if you haven’t already done so, and then submit your requests online. 

In the UK, you can usually request inter-library loans using the services available at your local public library. This will depend on the services offered locally, and there may be a charge. Always allow a minimum of two weeks, and more if possible, for an inter-library loan item to be delivered.

If you live within easy travelling distance of a University library, it’s probably worth joining the SCONUL access scheme. This allows University of Edinburgh staff and students to have access to 170+ Higher Education Libraries in the UK. You might find visiting one of these libraries quicker than waiting for inter-library loans. You need to register with Edinburgh University as  your home library first – so do it before you leave Edinburgh.  Use the COPAC Union library catalogue http://copac.ac.uk/ to help you see which academic libraries have the materials you want.

A plea from us to all of you going away over the summer – please keep checking your e-mail notices for library books that have been recalled. We need you to return these books for the benefit of other library users. Thank you!