{"id":772,"date":"2023-10-13T11:05:46","date_gmt":"2023-10-13T11:05:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/lyell\/?p=772"},"modified":"2023-10-13T11:10:32","modified_gmt":"2023-10-13T11:10:32","slug":"time-traveller-charles-lyell-at-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/lyell\/2023\/10\/13\/time-traveller-charles-lyell-at-work\/","title":{"rendered":"Time Traveller: Charles Lyell at Work"},"content":{"rendered":"

Free exhibition in the Main Library Exhibition Gallery (ground floor), <\/strong><\/h4>\n

Open from 27th October 2023 \u2013 30th March 2024, <\/strong>Monday to Saturday, 10am to 6pm\u00a0<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Over the last few months, our efforts have been focussed on pulling together all the work to date associated with the Charles Lyell Project, into an exhibition. It has taken a small army of experts, staff, interns, and volunteers to get us to this stage \u2013 and we are nearly there. Here is a look behind the scenes\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

Getting down to writing \u2013 what will be in effect \u2013 the first major exhibition on Sir Charles Lyell was a fairly daunting task. The science Lyell is writing about was new; today it can be recognised as ecology, climate and Earth studies, but in Lyell\u2019s time it encompassed several different disciplines \u2013 geology, archaeology, geography, conchology, botany, zoology and palaeontology. The terminology is crucial, and, still under significant debate. Working in an era of imperial exploration and expansion Lyell\u2019s travel through the slave plantations of the American South was controversial and remains disturbing. Despite his life\u2019s work to gather, share and advocate for precise and authentic evidence in science, Lyell struggled to accept his friend Charles Darwin\u2019s work on evolutionary theory. This exhibition explores these themes providing an unprecedented insight into how Lyell worked to establish a science that abridged deep divides of religion, race, culture, and politics.<\/p>\n

Given these complexities, getting the right people on the exhibition team was vital, and it has been an absolute pleasure to work with Jim Secord, Director of the recently completed Darwin Correspondence Project. As Jim says, the reality is,<\/p>\n

\u201cgetting into the 1830s is relatively easy, it\u2019s the getting out that\u2019s the problem\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

Jim has contributed a wealth of knowledge and experience , selecting rare books held by the University that add context to Lyell\u2019s life and career, including motivators, Isaac Newton and James Hutton, and contemporaries such as Frederick Douglass. It has been fascinating to see how books held within the Library collections connect to Lyell\u2019s work.<\/p>\n

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University Library books, that have been used by students over the years, contribute context to Lyell’s work.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Robyn studies her successful trial to create a bespoke stand for the notebooks; re-useable and recyclable.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Jim and Will during ‘object selection’ day, working on choosing what items to feature.<\/p><\/div>\n

Having completed his dissertation on Lyell\u2019s contribution to prehistoric archaeological study, Will Adams has also been our Lyell Research Intern, tasked with curating a series of case studies, demonstrating how Lyell researched and gathered evidence to support his theories. Five display cases later, look out for Lyell as a \u2018Principle<\/em> Investigator\u2019 (play on words intentional!) as he searches for evidence to support his theories on Volcanoes, Niagara, and Sea Serpents.<\/p>\n

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Will\u2019s work has been supported by that of Lyell Summer Intern, Harriet Mack, and a crew of <\/span>remote volunteers – Drew, Beverly, Bob and Ella – are are currently working to away using the digital images to transcribe notebook indexes. In the course of trying to understand them, we\u2019ve googled, mapped, fact checked, and reached out to local people, familiar with where Lyell was working.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Notebooks are used in the exhibition to show how Lyell worked to gather evidence to support his theories.<\/p><\/div>\n

The volunteer’s work has really opened up that section of the archive, producing rich descriptions that have highlighted previously unseen sections in the notebooks that will feature in the exhibition. We have worked to include their reflection on this experience, enabling us to shine a contemporary light onto the notebooks, and all the different hands that appear within their pages.<\/p>\n

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Team ‘Lyell Finds’ -Will, Dr. Gillian McCay, & Hattie at the Cockburn Geological Museum.<\/p><\/div>\n

Lyell\u2019s specimens were a key tool for him, and Dr. Gillian McCay of the Cockburn Geological Museum has been an integral part of our progress to understand how they connect to the archive. From the outset, everyone has been on the lookout for references to collection items (fed into and logged in a very lively teams chat \u2018Lyell Finds\u2019) and Will, through his dissertation, has been able to re-establish the events that link notebooks and specimens to Lyell\u2019s work on the antiquity of man. There is much more work to be done in this area \u2013 and we hope the exhibition will encourage this.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Today Lyell\u2019s questions are still relevant, and the ways in which he worked (not always successfully) to answer them can add to our own understanding. Travelling relentlessly, and often accompanied by his wife, Mary, Lyell spent his life putting time to work, chasing volcanoes, visiting coastal, industrial and heritage sites, exploring strata, caves, waterfalls, quarries, and mines. The resultant rich data contained in his archive transports us through time.<\/p>\n

In working together on the project to open up Charles Lyell\u2019s comprehensive archive, and in preparing this exhibition, we find we have walked in his footsteps \u2013 creating a network of experts and local people, and using different tools to consolidate our understanding.<\/p>\n

Pamela McIntyre, Strategic Projects Archivist, Heritage Collections, University of Edinburgh<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Free exhibition in the Main Library Exhibition Gallery (ground floor), Open from 27th October 2023 \u2013 30th March 2024, Monday to Saturday, 10am to 6pm\u00a0 Over the last few months, our efforts have been focussed on pulling together all the work to date associated with the Charles Lyell Project, into an exhibition. It has taken […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":198,"featured_media":798,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":true,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[3,19,37,29,40,41],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/lyell\/files\/2023\/10\/Lyell-image-for-social-media-scaled.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pcnwkP-cs","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/lyell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/772"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/lyell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/lyell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/lyell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/198"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/lyell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=772"}],"version-history":[{"count":43,"href":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/lyell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/772\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":826,"href":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/lyell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/772\/revisions\/826"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/lyell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/lyell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/lyell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/lyell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}