Home University of Edinburgh Library Essentials
April 27, 2024
One Health Academic Engagement
My role in the Wellcome Trust One Health archival project has involved identifying research topics that can be found in archival records, undertaking research AND academic engagement.
We have developed some very fruitful connections internally with Health in Social Science through my work with Alette Willis as well as Dick Vet academics and members of the Environmental Humanities Network.
Some animal studies groups externally have shown keen interest in the One Health archival collections as well, such as Sheffield Animal Studies Research Centre (ShARC) at the University of Sheffield and the British Animal Studies Network (BASN) at Strathclyde University.
There are a few other animal studies networks in the UK that relate to the One Health project:
- University of Manchester, Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine (CHSTM)
- University of Kent, Animal Humanities Network
- University of Exeter, Anthrozoology group
Thanks to those centres and networks we’ve engaged with so far!
The new Library Wellbeing Collection
Looking for ways to look after yourself during your studies and exams? The Library’s new Wellbeing Collection provides resources on all aspects of wellbeing, including but not limited to anxiety, exercise, general wellbeing, happiness, relationships, sleeping well and University life.
The collection of books and e-books is available to borrow for all students and staff. In this blog post we highlight just a few of the e-books available in the collection.
You can explore all the books in the Wellbeing Collection in DiscoverEd or browse a list of books by subject area in the resource list.
To launch our new collection we have a display of Wellbeing Collection books in the Main Library (30 George Square) which is in place until the end of May 2024. In the two weeks since the display was put in place 66 items have already been borrowed!
Wellbeing Collection books on display in the Main Library
What does the Wellbeing Collection cover?
Here we highlight some example e-books from the collection on a few different themes that you might wish to explore:
University life
It’s normal to feel nervous before an exam or overwhelmed with your workload sometimes, but it’s important not to let anxiety or stress have a negative impact on your performance.
- You’ve Got This : A Student’s Guide to Well-being at University and Beyond
- Stay Happy While You Study: Make the most of your student experience
Building good habits
If you have a tendency to procrastinate instead of revising, or want to develop healthy habits in your life, the collection has books to help.
- Procrastination : How to Do It Well
- How to be a productivity ninja : worry less, achieve more, love what you do
Sleep and rest
It’s important to look after yourself at stressful times, and that includes getting plenty of sleep and rest.
- Insomnia: A Guide to, and Consolation for, the Restless Early Hours
- Nothing Much Happens: Calming stories to soothe your mind and help you sleep
Getting more exercise
Keeping active can boost your mood as well as your physical health.
- Mind & Body : Mental Exercises for Physical Wellbeing; Physical Exercises for Mental Wellbeing
- A Philosophy of Walking
Why not pair your reading with a spot of rock climbing or yoga – Sport & Exercise have a whole range of activity running in April and May, from bootcamps to Yoga, from Learn to lift workshops to weekend courses at Firbush, and free gym entry for students and staff next week.
Exploring nature
Exposure to nature has been shown to have a positive impact on physical health and cognitive function. Spring has sprung in Edinburgh, so now’s the perfect time to get out into nature.
- The Natural Health Service: How Nature Can Mend Your Mind
- Gardening for mind, body and soul : how to nurture your well-being with nature
You can read more about using the Library for wellbeing and leisure on our subject guide.
The Wellbeing Collection is managed by a team including Library staff, University Student Wellbeing Advisers and the EUSA Student Opportunities Representative (Wellbeing).
If you are an Edinburgh student and you need to talk to someone there’s lots of help and guidance available from the Student Health and Wellbeing Services, and staff can access support through the Staff Health and Wellbeing Hub.
Digital Curation Interviews project with DCC
In this guest blog post, Clara Lines Diaz reports on last year’s Digital Curation Interviews with University of Edinburgh researchers, conducted by the Digital Curation Centre (DCC) on behalf of Digital Research Services.
The project was initiated by staff in the Research Data Service to gain an overview of the research data and software management practices and challenges across the University through in-depth interviews with researchers. The DCC was selected as best placed to conduct the interviews, given its expertise on the subject matter and location at University of Edinburgh. The information was collected through semi-structured interviews during Spring 2023.
Image by WOCinTech Chat, Flickr
The motivation to collect this information was to help ensure that researchers are supported in their specific needs and to contribute to shaping the research data management (RDM) services. The choice of in-depth interviews as a method was also expected to help build deeper relationships between service providers and users.
For the semi-structured interviews we had some topic blocks as below, and some prepared questions within each of those blocks. This was used more as a check list for us and we gave the interviewees space to focus on or bring up anything they considered relevant.
Topic blocks:
- A: Introduction: Research line, projects, collaborations
- B: Data provenance, types and reuse
- C: Data/Software management practices
- D: Influences on data/software management practices
- E: Data management challenges and sources of assistance
This type of interview works well for exploratory studies like this because it allows common and maybe unexpected patterns to emerge, but also has some caveats around comparability, as not all interviews cover exactly the same topics in the same level of detail. This means that in the results we were able to indicate, for example, how many people mentioned using a particular service, but we could not infer that the others don’t use it, just because they did not mention it.
To select the participants, we contacted research support staff in the three colleges and asked them to suggest participants or send the invitation around. It felt like there was a high interest to discuss these topics and make the challenges they encounter heard, especially among researchers in the College of Science and Engineering (CSE). The interviewees were all involved in data intensive research, with a mix of senior and early career researchers. The interviews were planned to last around 45 minutes but there was some variation in the duration.
From the 14 interviews, four were with staff from the College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine (CMVM), eight with staff from CSE and two with staff from the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (CAHSS). The oversampling of CSE interviews was intended as the service team was particularly interested to hear about their practices, which are less well known to them.
Once we had all the interview notes, we extracted the comments and classified them by themes. This was the basis for the final project report, which included a selection of the themes and possible points for action for the Research Data Service and the Research Computing Service in five key areas:
- Data sharing and reuse was common practice, but there were challenges and areas where further support would be beneficial.
- Code sharing and collaborative development was widespread and growing, but support and services were perceived as being less mature than that provided for data.
- External collaboration with university-hosted services could be challenging.
- Awareness of FAIR and open science was variable.
- There was an appetite for more training, both for students and staff.
Sharing and reuse had a special focus in the interviews and the first two points are connected to that. Most interviewees had a lot to say about challenges related to sharing and reusing data, especially those working with sensitive data. Some extra advice to help people with those challenges would help. Most interviewees also discussed storing and, in some cases, sharing their code. GitHub is in general preferred for that. Sharing code is in general considered very time consuming.
A briefing was given to the Digital Research Services in August, 2023 and the Research Data Support team was given the transcripts and full results to inform service development.
Clara Lines Diaz
Research Data Specialist
Digital Curation Centre
Identifying research topics across the One Health archival collections
This week, I’m presenting viable research topics that span at least two of the archival collections and could be developed into projects in the One Health space. Here’s a list of what I’ve found (during the course of about 2.5 months, so it’s not exhaustive!):
I introduce some of these in more detail, to give you a better idea of what you can find in the archives, please watch this video clip!
Watch the full version on Media Hopper.
Next week, focus on academic engagement!
A big welcome to our new Student Collections Care Assistants
We are delighted to welcome three new people to the Conservation and Collections Management Team this month. Abigail Miskin, Ella Joyce and Isabela Tapia Hernandez will be joining us as our first ever Student Collections Care Assistants.
Ella, Abigail and Isabela will be working with us until the end of July on a range of different projects and activities. Let’s hear them introduce themselves in their own words:
Isabela Tapia Hernandez
“My name is Isabela, I’m 30 years old and I am originally from Chile. I first came to Scotland on a solo trip in the year 2014, and I instantly fell in love with Scottish culture and its environment. Fast forward to 2024 (wow, 10 years later!), and I am currently completing a master’s programme in Collections and Curating Practices at the University of Edinburgh. I love all things ‘early modern’ and I am passionate about material culture, specifically when it’s related to early modern knowledge and science. I’m looking forward to engaging with the objects from the University Collections and hopefully unfolding some of their hidden stories! When not studying, outdoor exploring, or part-time working, I play field hockey under a sunny or rainy bonnie Scotland.”
Isabela will be working with Senior Conservator, Jonathan Santa Maria Bouquet on a project to barcode labels and improve storage systems for musical instrument collections.
Ella Joyce
“Hello! My name is Ella, and I am a second-year history student. My area of interest is early modern history, specifically the European witch trials.
I’m excited to get started as a Collections Care Assistant, and to develop my understanding of preservation and conservation. I also hope to learn more about different careers in the heritage sector.”
Ella will be supporting the Collections Management team over the coming months to deliver various activities including housekeeping storerooms, rehousing collections and audits of disaster response materials.
Abigail Miskin
“My name is Abigail, and I am a fourth-year Fine Art student. For many years now, I’ve had a strong interest in conservation due to my passion for art history (primarily medieval) as well as practical art. I am very excited to join the department as conservation is something I hope to pursue following my degree, and I am eager to figure out my areas of interest and learn more!”
Abigail will be based in the CRC Conservation Studio with Works on Paper Conservator, Amanda Dodd, and Books Conservator, Amy Baldwin. She will be supporting them to deliver interventive treatment to collections as well as working on projects to rehouse collections.
It goes without saying that we are absolutely thrilled to have these three on board. Watch this space to find out what they get up to during their placements!
On trial: Australian Newspapers (1831-2000)
Thanks to a request from staff in HCA the Library currently has trial access to Australian Newspapers (1831-2000) part of ProQuest’s Historical Newspapers series, which covers two of the most influential Australian newspapers: The Age and Sydney Morning Herald.
You can access Australian Newspapers via the E-resources trials page.
Trial access ends 11th May 2024.
Providing nearly 170 years of coverage, Australian Newspapers includes the two leading Australian newspapers: The Age (1854–2000) and the Sydney Morning Herald (1831–2000). Read More
Women and the politics of care in zoo, animal advocacy and veterinary archival records, 1910-1930
LONDON, UK – 4 DECEMBER 2018: A statue of the English suffragist and union leader Millicent Fawcett, an early feminist campaigner for women’s suffrage (Photo: Shutterstock).
Welcome to this series on research for the One Health archival project!
This week, I will present a bit about my current research project with Dr. Alette Willis, Chancellor’s Fellow and Senior Lecturer in the School of Health in Social Science. We have been looking at the roles of women in care practices in the early twentieth century, through evidence we find across OneKind (SSPV), the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland (RZSS) and the Royal (Dick) Veterinary College archival materials. I’ll provide a quick glimpse into what we’ve found so far regarding women’s caring roles during the time period of 1910-1930 in the three organisations.
OneKind (SSPV): women as moral compass and source of compassion
Some women involved in women’s suffrage in the UK in the early twentieth century also became anti-vivisectionists. We found that women were central to the Scottish Society for the Prevention of Vivisection (SSPV), and many also proved active in other social movements. Women in the UK experienced the threat of government-sanctioned and medically applied control over their bodies after the passing of the Contagious Disease Act 1866 (see this article on the Victorian Web for an overview). Women, then, could identify with the suffering of animals whose bodies were controlled completely during acts of vivisection.
Image of Our Fellow Mortals Magazine, volume number 6, February 1913, SSPV
But, the brutality of vivisection was also railed against as corrupting good souls, and women in the SSPV expressed a neo-romanticism that rejected material and impassionate science, apparent in their magazine, Our Fellow Mortals, with volumes published from 1911 to 1925; my previous research of cultural attitudes towards animals in France showed a similar perception in the 19th century of the corrupting power of witnessing or participating in acts of brutality or cruelty towards animals. Examples can be found in the SSPV magazine of women characterised, and characterising themselves, as the moral compass of society, the source of compassion. For instance, the SSPV included a quote from poet George Barlow’s essay, ‘Science and Sympathy’, in volume number 6 of the magazine, February 1913, page 7:
‘More and more, for good or evil, women are beginning to study physiology and to take active part in medical practice … We must remember that the feminine faculty of tenderness is the saving factor in the coarse and selfish world. If we teach women to be cruel, our folly will re-act upon ourselves in unforeseen and terrible ways … No amount of scientific knowledge, no fabulous increase of material comforts or luxuries, would ever compensate mankind for the loss of its one most priceless faculty, the gift of loving-tenderness’ (1618/1/4/2/1)
Thus, women who entered medicine or veterinary medicine, could lose their feminine compassion. This perception of women also laid the burden of caring about and for other animals at their feet; women should care deeply about the fate of animals used in vivisection, as well as animals killed for food and other goods. This positioning of women is apparent in flyers held by the SSPV from the Council of Justice to Animals, in this case an appeal to women regarding humane slaughtering, by the Secretary of the Council, Violet Woods, most likely dated in the early to mid 1920s:
‘It is to the women of this country that we must appeal to bring about this reform. Will they fail to realise their responsibility? The fate of thirty million animals slaughtered every year in these isles is in their hands, and humanity cries aloud to them to do their duty. Another year may prove whether it may be proclaimed to foreign lands that every animal in Britain has a painless death, because the women realised their sufferings, realised their own responsibility, exercised their power, and have done their duty.’ (1618/2/3/2/2)
Women within the SSPV cared about animals but were not necessarily ‘on the ground’ caring for, and they represented the upper classes.
Royal Zoological Society of Scotland (RZSS): unpaid labour and generosity
Red Pandas at Edinburgh Zoo (Photo: Elizabeth Vander Meer, 2024)
Women appear in the RZSS archival records in terms of caring for animals, and plants, in the form of unpaid labour, undertaking keeper work and gardening on zoo grounds. Unpaid labour defines women’s involvement in care practices at Edinburgh Zoo in the early twentieth century, with wives of keepers, architects and garden designers fulfilling these roles alongside their husbands; this was the case for zoo founder, Thomas Gillespie, whose wife, Mary Elizabeth, supported many aspects of zoo animal care and management. Women also cared about animals and the establishment through monetary, food and animal donations. Women who donated money or food could be characterised as inhabiting higher socio-economic strata in Edinburgh, evident in RZSS Annual Reports for the period. Several women appear in paid work as refreshment manageresses, as described in the RZSS Annual Reports.
We can find what could be considered an anthroporphising of animals in the case of descriptions of mothers and mothering found in the RZSS Annual Reports. This example is useful to consider here, from the 1930 Annual Report, page 12:
‘For the first time in the history of the Park a litter of three polar bear cubs was born, but “Sheila” did not prove a good mother, and devoured them as soon as they were born’
Polar bears, usually males, eat cubs when resources are scarce in wild conditions, but females are protective of young (National Geographic has shared footage of a male polar bear killing and eating a cub, February 2016); in this case, the zoo context at the time could be considered carefully to understand what triggered cannibalistic behaviour in the female.
Royal (Dick) Veterinary College: the absence of women
Women are conspicuously absent from the veterinary archival materials, due to the late allowance of women into the College, by 1948. But Alette and I are approaching the archive in terms of this absence and the presence of men who are caring for animals. This research is work in progress, so I will share more in a later blog post!
Skene, Societies and Swedish Serendipity
How often do you walk past a 1000 year old rune stone? The answer is every day, if you work or study near the Main Library!
Earlier this year I completed a project photographing James Skene’s Album of Sketches in greater detail. When I came across his runestone illustration again I was intrigued and did some research, making the surreal discovery that the subject was a 3 minute walk away. At 50 George Square behind the Scandinavian Studies Department, stands a Swedish runestone with a curious history. This 1.3 tonne granite stone found its new home here at the university in 2019, having been moved several times prior.
Archival Provenance Project: a glimpse into the university’s history through some of its oldest manuscripts
My name is Madeleine Reynolds, a fourth year PhD candidate in History of Art. I am fortunate to be one of two successful applicants for the position of Archival Provenance Intern with the Heritage Collections, University of Edinburgh. My own research considers early modern manuscript culture, translation and transcription, the materiality of text and image, collection histories, ideas of collaborative authorship, and the concept of self-design, explored through material culture methodologies. Throughout my PhD, I have visited many reading rooms, from the specialist collections rooms at the British Library and the Bodleian’s Weston Library, to the Wren Library at Trinity College, Cambridge and the Warburg Institute. Working first-hand with historical material has been crucial to the development of my work, and I was eager to spend time ‘behind-the-scenes.’ This internship was attractive to me because of the more familiar aspects – like the reading room environment and object handling – but it also presented an opportunity to expand my understanding of manuscript production and book histories, develop my provenance and palaeography skills, and understand the function of archival cataloguing fields as finding aids through my own enhancement of metadata.
Madeleine (foreground) and Emily (background) in the reading room.
The aim of the project is to create a comprehensive resource list concerning the library’s oldest manuscripts, which contain material from the 16th– 20th centuries, in particular pre-20th century lecture notes, documents, and correspondence of or relating to university alumni and staff, as well as historical figures like Charles Darwin, Frédéric Chopin, and Mary Queen of Scots (to name a few). An old hand-list (dating from 1934 or before) was provided for the shelf-marks under consideration, and, using an Excel spreadsheet with pre-set archival fields, provenance research is being used to uncover details such as authorship/creator or previous ownership, how the volume came to be part the university’s collections, and extra-contextual information, like how the manuscript or its author/creator/owner is relevant to the university’s history.
A collection of black notebooks containing transcribed lecture notes from 1881-1883. The lectures were given by various University staff on subjects such as natural philosophy, moral ethics, rhetoric, and English literature and were transcribed by different students.
A great #shelfie featuring gold-tooling, banded spines, vellum bindings.
In addition to enhancing the biographical details of relevant actors in the history of the university, the research into this ‘collection’ of manuscripts provides a deeper understanding of the interests, priorities, and concerns – political, religious, intellectual, etcetera – of a particular society, or group, depending on the time period or place an individual object can be traced to. Inversely, thinking about what or who is not reflected in this subset of the archive is as informative as what material is present – unsurprisingly, a majority of this material is by men of a certain education and class. Though I would like to think of an archive as an impartial tool for historical research, I have to remind myself that decisions were made by certain individuals concerning what material was valuable or important (whatever that means!) to keep, or seek out, or preserve, and what might have been disregarded, or turned away.
While there is a growing list of what I, and my project partner, Emily, refer to as ‘Objects of Interest’ (read as: objects we could happily spend all day inspecting), there are some which stand out, either for their content – some concern historical events pertaining to the university or Scotland more generally – or their form.
Dc.4.12 ‘Chronicle of Scotland’, front cover; Centre for Research Collections, University of Edinburgh.
Dc.4.12 ‘Chronicle of Scotland’, ‘Mar 24 1603’; Centre for Research Collections, University of Edinburgh.
This manuscript (above), ‘Chronicle of Scotland from 330 B.C. to 1722 A.D’, is notable for its slightly legible handwriting (a rarity) and its subject matter – the featured page recounts the death of Elizabeth I, James VI and I’s arrival in London, and later down the page, his crowning at Westminster. Mostly, its odd shape – narrow, yet chunky – is what was particularly eye catching. To quote an unnamed member of the research services staff: ‘Imagine getting whacked over the head with this thing!’
Of interest to the history of the university is this thin, red volume (below) containing an account written by William Playfair concerning the construction of some university buildings and the costs at this time (1817-1822). This page covers his outgoings – see his payment for the making of the ‘plaster models of Corinthian capitals for Eastern front of College Museum’ and his payment for the ‘Masonwork of Natural Histy Museum – College Buildings.’
Dc.3.73 Abstract of Journal of William Playfair, binding, cover; Centre for Research Collections, University of Edinburgh.
Dc.3.73 Abstract of Journal of William Playfair, expenditures; Centre for Research Collections, University of Edinburgh.
Of course, you cannot understand the scope of the history of the University of Edinburgh without considering its ‘battles’ – by this, I mean the ‘Wars of the Quadrangle’, otherwise known as the Edinburgh Snowball Riot of 1838, a two-day battle between Edinburgh students and local residents which was eventually ended by police intervention. This manuscript is a first-hand account from Robert Scot Skirving, one of the five students, of the 30 plus that were arrested, to be put on trial.
Dc.1.87 Account of the snowball riot; Centre for Research Collections, University of Edinburgh.
Finally, this object (below), from the first day of research is particularly fascinating – a box, disguised as a book, used to hold deeds granting the university with six bursaries for students of the humanities, from 1674-1678. The grantor is Hector Foord, a graduate of the university. The box is made from a brown, leather-bound book, that was once held shut with a metal clasp. The pages, cut into, are a marbled, swirling pattern of rich blue, red, green, and gold. The cover is stamped in gold lettering, with a gold embossed University library crest. There are delicate gold thistles pressed into the banded spine. Upon opening the manuscript, it contains two parchment deeds, and two vellum deeds, the latter of which are too stiff to open. You can see still Foord’s signature on one of them, and the parchment deeds are extremely specific about the requirements that must be met for a student to be granted money.
Dc.1.22 Deeds by Mr. H Foord, cover; Centre for Research Collections, University of Edinburgh.
Dc.1.22 Deeds by Mr. H Foord, inside of ‘box’ with all four deeds; Centre for Research Collections, University of Edinburgh.
The project has only just concluded its second month and we are lucky that it has been extended a month beyond the initial contract. Despite how much material we have covered so far, we are looking forward to discovering more interesting objects, and continuing to enhance our resource list. Stay tuned!
New to the Library: Archive of Celtic-Latin Literature and Monumenta Germaniae Historica
I’m happy to let you know that after a successful trial last year the Library now has access to 2 Brepolis databases: Monumenta Germaniae Historica and Archive of Celtic-Latin Literature.
These can both be accessed from the Databases A-Z list and DiscoverEd.
Monumenta Germaniae Historica (eMGH)
Collections
Archival Provenance Project: a glimpse into the university’s history through some of its oldest manuscripts
My name is Madeleine Reynolds, a fourth year PhD candidate in History of Art....
Rediscovering the Poetry of Louisa Agnes Czarnecki, a 19th-Century Edinburgh Writer and Musician
Today we are publishing a blog by Ash Mowat, a volunteer in the Civic Engagement...
Projects
Giving Decorated Paper a Home … Rehousing Books and Paper Bindings
In the first post of this two part series, our Collection Care Technician, Robyn Rogers,...
The Book Surgery Part 2: Bringing Everything Together
In this blog, Project Conservator Mhairi Boyle her second day of in-situ book conservation training...