Preserving Palm Leaf Manuscripts This week’s post comes from Works on Paper Conservator, Emily Hick, who is currently working to conserve a collection of palm leaf manuscripts… When you imagine the archives held at …Continue reading →

Preserving People, Not Just Paper: My Internship Conserving the New College Collection Today’s blog comes from Katherine Richey, an Edinburgh student who undertook a five-month internship with Heritage Collections from March to the end of July 2025. The internship focused on the …Continue reading →

An ever-green collaboration: working with the University of St Andrews to identify arsenical bookbindings TAGS: arsenic | book conservation | Centre for Research Collections | health and safety | rare books | University of Edinburgh In this post conservator Amy Baldwin talks about working with the University of St Andrews to help develop their new arsenic identification tool.

Documentation Challenges in Practice: Art Collection Barcoding Project TAGS: Barcodes | collections care | Collections Management | Disassociation | Documentation | Edinburgh University Art Collections | Labels In this week’s blog, our Art Collection Documentation Assistant Gaby Cortes discusses some of the challenges involved in auditing the Art Collection and how the addition of barcode labels is …Continue reading →

Exploring Historic Bagpipes: A Six-Month Journey Zexuan is a PhD candidate at Queen’s University, and recently completed a six-month placement with the musical instrument collection of the University of Edinburgh. In this post, Zexuan shares the …Continue reading →

Giving Decorated Paper a Home … Loose-leaf Material TAGS: book conservation | Centre for Collections | collections care | conservation | decorated paper | paper conservation | Preventative Conservation | rare books | rehousing | technican | University of Edinburgh In this post, Technician Robyn Rogers discusses her bespoke mounting and rehousing of loose-leaf papers from the University’s decorated paper collection. Robyn’s first post about working through the collection’s bound …Continue reading →

An Explorer’s Legacy: The Journey of the John Rae Collection TAGS: Collections Management | collections registrar | Loans As part of ongoing work on the University’s historic loans, Collections Registrar, Morven Rodger, investigates the history and provenance of the University’s John Rae collection. In July 1926, the University …Continue reading →

Managing Collections: Edinburgh College of Art TAGS: Archives | Archives Appraisal | cataloguing | Edinburgh College of Art | reboxing | rehousing | university archives One of our largest and most complex collections is that of the Edinburgh College of Art (hereafter named ECA). Transferred to Heritage Collections in 2012 following the merger of the …Continue reading →

Collections Care Task Days TAGS: Collections Management | paper conservation | Preventative Conservation | rehousing | surface cleaning | technician In this post, Technician Robyn Rogers discusses the first events in series of Collection Care Task Days at the University of Edinburgh Heritage Collections.

Shuffling the Corson Collection TAGS: appraisal | Archives | rehousing | space management In this week’s blog Collections Management Technician Jasmine Hide talks about the rehousing, repitching, and condensing of the Corson collection, and the space saving possibilities of optimal shelf use.