Author Archives: cloverodgers

Jewish scholarship on display at New College Library

Posted on by
Reply
Babylonian Talmud. Sulzbach,1766. Folio, in 12 volumes

Babylonian Talmud. Sulzbach,1766. Folio, in 12 volumes. Longforgan Collection.

In celebration of the public lecture on The Bible and the Mishnah by Professor Shaye J D Cohen, Harvard University on Tuesday 5 May, we currently have Jewish texts from our Special Collections on display in New College Library.

This Babylonian Talmud is part of the Longforgan Free Church Ministers Library, an extremely well preserved example of a Manse library which came to New College in the 1960s. It is currently being catalogued as part of the Funk Donation projects. As well as this 12 volume Babylonian Talmud, works by Maimonides and Isaac ben Jacob Alfasi ha-Cohen are evidence of the importance of Hebrew scholarship to the Scottish Church.

Seder Ṭohorot Mishnayot mi-Seder Kodashim im perush / ha-Rambam. Venice : Daniel Bomberg, 1528.

Seder Ṭohorot Mishnayot mi-Seder Kodashim im perush / ha-Rambam. Venice : Daniel Bomberg, 1528. New College Library Dal-Chr 58

This image is from Maimonides’s commentary on the Mishnah which was one of the first to be published. It is part of the the Dalman-Christie Collection, which was transferred to New College Library in 1946 from the Church of Scotland Hospice in Jerusalem. This collection was recently catalogued as part of the Funk Donation Projects.

Mischna, sive, Totius Hebraeorum juris : rituum, antiquitatum, ac legum oralium systema. Amsterdam : Gerardus & Jacobus Borstius, 1698. New College Library Dal-Chr 45

Mischna, sive, Totius Hebraeorum juris : rituum, antiquitatum, ac legum oralium systema. Amsterdam : Gerardus & Jacobus Borstius, 1698. New College Library Dal-Chr 45

This is the frontispiece from one of the volumes in this six volume set of the Mishnah with text in  Hebrew and Latin. It also contains commentaries of Maimonides and Bertinoro in Latin. New College Library holds copies in both the Dalman-Christie and the Longforgan Collections.

Christine Love-Rodgers, Academic Support Librarian – Divinity

Rare New College Library book is an international success

Posted on by
Reply

Perush ha-Torah / leha-Rav rabenu Mosheh bar Nahman ... [1514]

Perush ha-Torah / leha-Rav rabenu Mosheh bar Nahman … [1514]

 A rare and early commentary on the Pentateuch from New College Library has just arrived back in Edinburgh, after travelling all the way to Latvia to be part of the exhibition “1514. The Book. 2014“. New College Library staff worked together with exhibitions, museum and conservation staff from Library & University Collections to ensure that the volume has a safe journey. The exhibition was held until April 2015 at the National Library of Latvia. It included 80 books drawn from the collections of 18 different European libraries with rich collections of sixteenth-century publications. They were all published in 1514, a year of great change, 60 years after Gutenberg and on the cusp of the Reformation in Europe.  Opened by two presidents – Latvian HE Andris Berzins and Austrian HE Heinz Fischer, the exhibition received more than 101,200 visitors over the year, including other political leaders of EU countries such as Angela Merkel. 

This work,  Perush-ha Torah, is just one of the early works of Jewish scholarship in the Dalman-Christie collection of Hebrew books, which was recently catalogued as part of the Funk Donation Projects at New College Library.  The Dalman-Christie Collection was transferred to New College Library in 1946 from the Church of Scotland Hospice in Jerusalem.

Christine Love-Rodgers, Academic Support Librarian – Divinity

New digital access to Divinity theses collection

Posted on by
Reply

New College Theses

I’m delighted to announced that nearly two hundred and fifty theses dating from 1921-1950 from the New College Library collection are now available online in the Edinburgh Research Archive, part of the Divinity Dissertation and Thesis Collection. While later theses are held in 2 copies, one at the Main Library, we believe that New College Library holds the only copy of theses from this early period.  The New College Theses collection was catalogued online in 2012 as part of the Funk Projects.

The digitisation project was managed by Gavin Willshaw, Digital Curator in Library & University Collections, who explains : “We worked with the digitisation company Restore to digitise 250 unique theses from New College – these are now available open-access for anyone to download at: https://www.era.lib.ed.ac.uk/handle/1842/133“
The theses are fully searchable on the ERA platform but also discoverable via Google, making New College scholarship accessible to a much wider audience.
The collection includes a wide variety of research topics, such as Comparison of Chinese and Hebrew wisdom, as exemplified in the Book of Proverbs … [1933] by Elizabeth G.K. Hewat, or The Christian Inscriptions of North Africa … [1943] by Ian Thomson Gillan. Do you recognise any of the authors? We’d love to know more about what happened next to these Divinity alumni.
  • Gavin Willshaw, Digital Curator
  • Christine Love-Rodgers, Academic Support Librarian – Divinity

Divinity student book recommendations now available

Posted on by
Reply

 

All these books (and more) were recommended by Divinity students and are now available to University of Edinburgh Library users – more details on the library catalogue. 100+ book recommendations from Divinity students have been received over since August 2014, via the student recommendation form on the Library website.

Christine Love-Rodgers, Academic Support Librarian – Divinity

 

Easter Greetings from New College Library

Posted on by
Reply

New College Library is open as usual for semester time over the Easter period, see Library Opening hours for more detail. When visiting, take a moment to look at our Special Collections display, which currently features a 1637 Book of Common Prayer written for the use of the Church of Scotland, edited by Archbishop William Laud, open at the readings for Easter Day. We also have on display a 1602 New Testament, open to show a map of the Holy Land and the beginning of St Matthew’s Gospel.

In the Funk Reading Room display case, you can see a selection of more modern titles relating to Easter.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Christine Love-Rodgers, Academic Support Librarian – Divinity

 

 

 

Unwrapping the Martin Hall Collection

Posted on by
2

This January we began cataloguing work on the MR Collection from New College Library’s Special Collections. This sequence contains much early and rare material, and carries the shelfmark MR because at one time these books were housed in the Martin Hall in New College.

Image courtesy of Paul Nicholas

Image courtesy of Paul Nicholas

We were really excited to find this lovely item, Historia apostolica illustrata : ex actis apostolorum et epistolis Paulinis. Published in seventeenth century Geneva, the author Louise Cappel writes about the works of the apostles, and Paul in particular. What’s immediately striking about it is that it is covered with a vellum wrapper (waste parchment) with beautiful manuscript lettering.

Image courtesy of Paul Nicholas

Image courtesy of Paul Nicholas

While further research is required on the wrapper, it appears to be a medieval liturgical text. The back cover (pictured) is in honour of St. Nicholas, with his name appearing in the line with the musical notation.

Christine Love-Rodgers – Academic Support Librarian, Divinity

Paul Nicholas – Funk Cataloguer

Elizabeth Lawrence – Rare Books Librarian

 

 

 

Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology now on trial

Posted on by
1

main-banner

New on trial for University of Edinburgh users from 3 March to 31 March is the  Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology.

The Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology is the replacement for the Dictionary of Hymnology produced by John Julian in 1892, with a supplement in 1907.

It is an essential reference resource for scholars of global hymnody, with information on the hymns of many countries and languages, and a strong emphasis on the historical as well as the contemporary. It includes articles on individual hymns, authors from many countries, hymnals, organisations, and themes, as well as information on hymn tunes and their composers. Covering a multitude of hymn traditions from around the world, it is ecumenical and international.

You can access the trial via the link at : http://www.ed.ac.uk/is/databases-trials. Please give us your feedback as this is a key part of making a case to subscribe to resources like this.

Christine Love-Rodgers, Academic Support Librarian – School of Divinity

Tackling a Library time capsule : The Longforgan Free Church Ministers Library

Posted on by
Reply

Longforgan LibraryRegular visitors to New College Library have probably walked past the Longforgan Free Church Ministers Library many times. It sits in custom made glazed bookcases, which are sited on the landing of the entrance to the Library Hall and in the David Welsh Reading Room. The cataloguing of this collection is in progress as part of the Funk Projects, and we’ve recently been pleased to welcome Patrick Murray as our cataloguer, replacing Finlay West who has moved on to new projects.

The Longforgan Library is an attractive part of the New College Library environment, but it’s probably true to say that for many years it has been just that – the books themselves have rarely been consulted. This may have been so from the very beginning – we’ve noticed that books being catalogued recently are in mint condition, some with pages uncut, as though they have never been read.  This may fit with the Longforgan Library’s provenance as a gift to the Free Church at Longforgan, Dundee by Mr David Watson, owner of Bullionfield Paperworks at Invergowrie. Part of the Longforgan Library could have begun life as a showpiece collection for David Watson to illustrate his skills in printing and binding to clients.

Longforgan2All this is changing with the benefits of online cataloguing. The Longforgan Library contains many volumes of the Acts of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland from the seventeenth century onwards and the reports of the General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland in the nineteenth century. For the first time these are being requested by readers, with telltale paper slips the evidence that the volumes are in use.

More than that, online cataloguing has revealed the richness of this collection of patristic and theological books, the earliest text printed in 1618. The works of Eusebius of Caesarea and Irenaeus of Lyon sit alongside those of Jean Calvin and John Foxe in  a microcosm of New College Library’s historic collections as a whole. And it’s held surprises for us – one of them being that we discovered additional books hidden in concealed compartments in the back of the bookcases.

Castori romanorum cosmographi : tabula quae dicitur Peutingeriana / recognovit Conrad Miller. Ravensburg : Otto Maier, 1888 New College Library LON. 416

Castori romanorum cosmographi : tabula quae dicitur Peutingeriana / recognovit Conrad Miller. Ravensburg : Otto Maier, 1888
New College Library LON. 416

 

This included this fantastic facsimile of the Tabula Peutingeriana or Peutinger’s Tabula. Based on an early fourth or fifth century original, the map covers the area roughly from southeast England to present day Sri Lanka and shows the Roman road network. When we unfolded the map it stretched the length of the office!

 

map2

The Longforgan Free Church Ministers Library still has treasures to discover. There are cupboards yet to unlock which have books stacked back to back in them, plus there is a further sequence of Longforgan books in a more secure location which includes three early editions of the Babylonian Talmud. Watch this space.

Christine Love-Rodgers – Academic Support Librarian, Divinity

 

New books at New College Library – January

Posted on by
Reply

The invention of GodFood, sex and strangersAn anthropological theme to our featured new books this month. The invention of God in indigenous societies / by James L. Cox. is now available in the Reserve section BL380 Cox. at New College Library.  Food, sex and strangers : understanding religion as everyday life  by Graham Harvey is also available at BL48 Har.

These titles were purchased for Religious Studies at the School of Divinity, Edinburgh University.

New College Library has a regular display of new books at the far end of the Library Hall, close to the door to the stacks.You can see an regularly updated list of new books for New College Library on the Library Catalogue – choose the New Books Search and limit your search to New College Library. Here’s a quick link to new books arriving in the last few weeks. A word of caution – some of the books listed here may still be in transit between the Main Library (where they are catalogued) and New College Library, so not on the shelf just yet.

Christine Love-Rodgers, Academic Support Librarian – Divinity

Christmas is coming at New College Library

Posted on by
Reply

We’ve started getting ready for Christmas at New College Library! The Christmas tree is now up in the Funk Reading Room, and we have a display of Christmas carol books from the Hymnology Collections in the entrance to the Library Hall.

The Hymnology Collections grew out of the gift in the 1880s of two thousand hymnbooks from James Thin, the founder of the famous Edinburgh bookshop. This collection has been added to by gift, purchase and the re-organisation of other library books of a similar nature to form the special collection of over five thousand items we have today, which are currently being catalogued online as part of the Funk Donation Projects. Primarily 18th & 19th century printed volumes, the collection covers sacred songs and poetry as well as hymns, including many items intended for children, both for Sunday School and home.

Currently on display we have :

 Hymn 2578Husk, W.H. Songs of the Nativity ; being Christmas Carols, Ancient and Modern … London : J.C. Hotten, [1867]. Hymn 2578.

 

 

Hymn 2591

 

 

 

 

Christmas carols, hymns, etc. London : F. Pitman [18–?] Hymn 2591 With music for four voices, tonic sol-fa edition.

 

 

Hymn 2129

 

Hotten, John Camden. A garland of Christmas carols ancient and modern. Including some never before given in any collection. London : J.C. Hotten, 1861. Hymn 2129.  A bookplate marks this item as having come from the original James Thin Collection.

 

 

 

 

Hymn 2590

 

A booke of Christmas carols : illuminated from ancient manuscripts in the British Museum. London : Joseph Cundall [1846] Hymn 2590