Around the World in 90 years- the Story of Historic Leith Improvement Scheme Photographs When Fraser Parkinson first contacted us about the collection of historic photographs of Leith that he had been entrusted with, my colleagues and I at the Centre for Research Collections …Continue reading →

Getting Reacquainted with Robert Burns Through the Laing Collection The most important manuscript collection at the University of Edinburgh has long been acknowledged to be the Laing Collection. This treasure trove was donated to the University of Edinburgh in …Continue reading →

Celebrating Shakespeare With the 400th 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 …Continue reading →

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 …Continue reading →

Al-Biruni live on LUNA We are thrilled to announce that we now have online the entire manuscript of Abu Rayhan Al-Biruni, his ‘Chronology of Ancient Nations’. Al- Biruni was a famous astronomer and polymath …Continue reading →

Lord Elgin Records 19th Century China One of the works in the ECA Rare Book Collection that places us firmly in a place and time in history is a book of photographs taken around the time …Continue reading →

Dating a Book For the last couple of months I have had the pleasure of both volunteering with the DIU and now working a bit more seriously through my work placement as part …Continue reading →

Instrumental Challenges Last week saw the start of a new project- photographing many of the University’s Musical Instruments while they are in storage at the Library during the re-development of St. Cecilia’s …Continue reading →

A Traquair Treat As there were several separate requests recently for images from the splendid ‘Song School St Mary’ manuscript by Phoebe Anna Traquair, we decided the time was right to digitise the …Continue reading →

Monsters & Maps Printed under the Watchful Dog Last week Mercator’s beautiful Atlas sive Cosmographicae found its way into the DIU, only after it arrived did we discover that it was actually his 503rd Birthday, a fact celebrated …Continue reading →