Using funding awarded by the Institute of Sedimentologists, Lizzie Freestone worked during the Summer of 2024 as the Charles Lyell Web Development Intern. Read on to learn all about her work, that combined metadata with Neolithic tools, and spanned teams from Digital Libraries, archives and museums, and included a particularly troublesome team member – Vernon!

I started as the Charles Lyell Digital Collections Intern on the 3^rd of June 2024. The goal was to develop processes so that specimens from the Charles Lyell collection, part of the Cockburn Geological Museum, could be more easily transferred into Vernon, the University’s collection management system for museum holdings. Once in Vernon, the specimen records can be automatically fed through to a more public-facing website, Collections.Ed; however, there are many significant steps required to get the data to that stage. Using processes developed by my line manager, Senior Systems Architect Scott Renton, my job was to connect that specimen data with high quality photographs of specimens taken by the University’s Cultural Heritage Digitisation Service, which are hosted separately on the University’s image hosting website, LUNA. Linking the specimen data to the images means that we could then have both the data and the associated images feed through to the public website.

 

I began working on the images collection of the Cockburn Museum, which include around 200 teaching slides with a wide range of images including a series about an expedition to Spitsbergen, Svalbard; portraits of famous geologists; and photos of the natural landscape of Edinburgh, including Arthur’s Seat and the surroundings of Kings Buildings. Under Scott’s guidance, I learned how to run XML imports into Vernon. Working on batches of twenty or so records, I started getting to grips with the software and how it worked. Around this time, I also met with  Gillian McCay, Curator of the Cockburn Geological Museum, who showed me the vast array of physical specimens the museum holds and explained the challenges of trying to get them into digital format. The Lyell specimens represent a complex set of records, reflecting their custodial history of nearly 100 years, so to get my eye in for more specifically geological specimens, I worked on drawers from the Currie collection, restructuring the spreadsheets and configuring Vernon to accept their contents. The Lyell specimens’ records have very long, complex descriptions – including research references, context, and loans – which would need to be broken down into distinct fields before they could go into Vernon. I spent a significant amount of time talking to Gillian and Pamela McIntyre, Strategic Projects Archivist on the Lyell project, about their thoughts on best ways to break up the description information, acceptable under Vernon’s demands.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I found it really rewarding to work on specimens with such a long history and to get to talk so much with Scott, Gillian and Pamela, who all went above and beyond to answer my questions and concerns as they arose and to give me new ways to think about things. Learning how to use Vernon over the course of the summer was also really satisfying, as I went from zero knowledge to being able to use some of its most complicated functions, thanks to Scott’s explanations and a lot of practice. I also really enjoyed the opportunity to work as part of an IT development team and to have the opportunity to develop my technical skills. I was proficient in using Excel before, but had a minimal background in computer science. I now feel much more confident in learning how to apply new tools and to use programming to achieve a goal. Programming is now something I’m interested in doing more of going forward.

In all, I processed around 500 specimen records, of which around 150 were part of the Lyell collection. My work has developed processes for importing both new Currie and Lyell specimen records into Vernon including spreadsheet templates, setting up Vernon configurations, and created detailed guidance on to how to use them (including on how to set up and use new templates if needed). This means that getting further geological specimen records out of the basic excel spreadsheet stage, and into Vernon is much easier, which will make them more stable and more widely accessible. I also got to work on the Collections.Ed website, adding images and changing the ways some metadata was displayed, making the collections pages more visually appealing and navigable. It will take some additional technical work to get these specimens onto the new Lyell website (more details on that to come!) – for that, the team are using IIIF to link data and images – but it’s great to know that my work will support that next stage.

This internship has been a very rewarding experience, and I am really grateful to have had the opportunity to contribute to the digital preservation of these historically significant geology specimens. I’m looking forward to seeing how the digital collection grows over time!

Thank you so much Lizzie, Scott, Gillian – and Vernon! And thank you to the Institute of Sedimentologists – this funding has allowed us to fill a knowledge gap which will be of huge support to staff going forward – and has provided Lizzie with great work experience in a field outwith her main degree. This internship completes the final allocation of all the funding secured by the Lyell Project, with special thanks to David McClay, Philanthropy Manager, Library and University Collections, who has been its champion since the outset. As the project nears the final stages, forthcoming blogs will focus on access, discovery and legacy. 

Thank you to guest blogger, Andrea Edwards, who shares her experience of spending the ‘summer’ working on the Charles Lyell correspondence…

Hi! My name is Andrea Edwards. I am an undergraduate student at the University of Wyoming (UW), majoring in History and Environmental Studies, and minoring in Museum Studies. I travelled to Scotland to do a month-long internship, funded my university’s ‘UW in Scotland’ program. On securing funding, I had to find myself a placement, and I contacted Heritage Collections staff at the University of Edinburgh, and agreed a placement based with the Centre for Research Collections (CRC) in order to learn about and gain experience in UK archives.

 

During my time there, I learned a lot about how archivists work in the UK, which combined with my knowledge and experience of collections management in the US, really extended my understanding. We talked about the current state of the heritage sector, discussing topics such as budgeting, colonial legacies, the climate crisis, and changes in best practice. It was fascinating to see how the staff at Heritage Collections are dealing with these global issues, compared to the US.  I was able to meet and work with lots of amazing people, specifically my supervisor Pamela McIntyre, archivist extraordinaire. I also visited many other heritage organizations, such as the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh archives and the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, to learn about they manage their collections.

 

My main project during my time in Scotland was cataloging Charles Lyell’s American correspondence. Charles Lyell travelled extensively throughout the UK, Europe, and Scandinavia, in order to conduct his research. Lyell also visited North America, 4 times, between 1841-1853. During those trips, Lyell made several connections with prominent American scientists and politicians, and continued to stay in touch with many over the years, generating quite a bit of correspondence.

The recent revision of the Lyell collection based at the University of Edinburgh, has identified much more correspondence from American born or based correspondents than perhaps previously has been understood. A lot of this has come from the increase in names ‘agents’ (the writers of the letters) being identified, and extended from 40 to 308; as well as extended by an additional tranche of records coming to the University in 2020. The purpose of my project was to add more detail to the catalogue for Lyell’s American correspondence. I was assigned 19 folders, and went through each, counting the number of letters and making notes of significant people, places, or subjects mentioned in each individual letter, allowing me to create a comprehensive scope and content on each file. I was able to catalogue 93 individual letters, with dates ranging from 1841-1875.

Through spending time with these records, I got to understand the extent of Lyell’s personal and professional network abroad. Lyell corresponded with people that headed American society: politicians, doctors, university professors, and naturalists. Some characters that he corresponded with include naturalist and conchologist Augustus Addison Gould, and Charles Thomas Jackson, a New England physician and scientist, with a reputation of accusing others of claiming his discoveries. His correspondence with Lyell perhaps confirms Lyell’s position as an ‘authenticator of fact’. Twenty letters to Lyell from George Ticknor, an academic and Hispanist, document his feelings about the Mexican American War, his gossipy tone revealing the friendship between them. William C. Redfield, a meteorologist who gets very excited about fossil fish— content which now flags up another potential topic of investigation in the Cockburn Geological Museum! The correspondence creates a mosaic not only of Lyell’s personal relations, but of the United States’ fledgling academic community, a very tight knit community where everyone writes for the Benjamin Silliman’s journal, is related to a Boston Brahmin family, and knew and extensively talked about each other— the work of Louis Agassiz being regularly mentioned throughout.

 

Lyell travelled throughout this life. I felt encouraged by him to explore Scotland, and it lived up to every expectation. I spent most of my time in Edinburgh, exploring all of its nooks and crannies, and absolutely fell in love with the city. It has such a charming and intimate atmosphere, and despite this being my first solo trip, it felt like a home away from home. I took the time to visit Glasgow, Inverness, and bits of the Highlands, all of which were amazing places that I would love to visit again. I loved the public transportation! Throughout my travels, I loved how climate conscious Scotland is, and I was impressed with their mindfulness about waste and their carbon footprint. It was especially interesting how Heritage Collections strive to apply this thinking to their work.

Everyone I met was so nice and welcoming. Everything was so beautiful, from the winding medieval streets of Edinburgh to the lush green peaks of Glencoe. I will always treasure my time spent there. But it’s also gratifying to know that I’ve also made an impression on Scotland. Due to the work that I have done, Lyell’s American correspondence has been enriched— taking their detail from a scant skeleton entry, to exact dates, extent, content and related agents. This had made this special subset of study more accessible to researchers. I wish them luck on their journey.

 

We also want to express our gratitude to the University of Wyoming for supporting Andrea’s cross-cultural internship, which has enhanced our understanding of Lyell’s global connections. A special thank you to our colleagues at Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh, the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh and all the staff at Heritage Collections for their warm welcome and mentorship, which made Andrea’s experience both educational and memorable. But, most of all, thank you for all your efforts Andrea.