Tag Archives: library catalogue

Once in a blue moon? Surprises in the New College Library stacks …

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The Romance of Modern Astronomy by Hector MacPherson. New College Library Stack II C4/a2

The 31st of August is scheduled for a ‘blue moon’ over Scotland. A blue moon traditionally occurs whenever two full moons happen in a single month – an unusual occurence, hence the saying ‘Once in a blue moon’.

Dedicated users of New College Library may have made their way down to the depths of Stack II at basement level, and discovered the sequence of older monographs known as the ‘unclassified sequence’.  These books date from the pre-1930 existence of New College Library, and the variety of the content covers a much wider scope than the theological curriculum of the time. I was surprised to find this one :  The Romance of Modern Astronomy (1911), by Hector MacPherson.

This collection is currently part of an online cataloguing project funded by the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Edinburgh.

New books at New College Library – August

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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.

Currently in the display is Why there almost certainly is a God : doubting Dawkins, by Keith Ward. This book was purchased to support the Atheism in Debate course at the School of Divinity, University of Edinburgh.

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 or in the display just yet.

The ‘Z’ Factor : New College Library’s rediscovered Special Collections

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What are Special Collections? At New College Library we have Special Collections of books, archives  and manuscripts and a small collection of portraits and objects. Much of the book collections have been housed in Special Collections for decades, but we also have a growing collection of ‘new’ Special Collections.

This is the Z Collection, which is formed out of recent donations and out of New College Library books formerly in the General sequence  which were identified as Special Collections during a stock management exercise. We follow the critieria used by the Centre for Research Collections here at the University of Edinburgh, in particular that all books published before 1850 should be classed as Special Collections. The Z Collection, which numbers over 3,500 items, is currently being catalogued online as part of the Funk Cataloguing Projects.

One example from the Z Collection is the Biographia scotica, a biographical dictionary compiled by John Stark of Edinburgh.  It contains engraved portraits of notable Edinburgh figures such as George Drummond, a Lord Provost of Edinburgh, George Heriot, whose name is still carried by one of the well-known schools in Edinburgh, and John Napier of Merchiston, the inventor of logarithms. The book bears the inscription of one Alexander Fortune with the date 1820 at the head of the title page and a bookplate presenting the book to New College from the library of the late James Wilson, merchant, 3 South Bridge (Edinburgh).

New books at New College Library – June

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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.

Currently in the display is The origin of the Roman Catholic Church in Korea : an examination of popular and governmental responses to Catholic missions in the late Chosôn dynasty  by Jai-Keun Choi. This was a recommendation from a postgraduate student.

Also new is Petri Cantoris Parisiensis Verbum adbreviatum, part of the Corpus Christianorum series that the Library subscribes to.

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.

Finding New College theses on the online catalogue

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In response to your questions, here’s some tips for finding New College theses on the University of Edinburgh Library catalogue.

Personally, I find using the Aquabrowser version of the catalogue quite useful for a quick (if dirty) search of what’s available. Type in theses + another search term – e.g. christianity, New Testament etc – into the search box. I searched for eschatology theses. Once you’ve got your list of results make sure that you select ‘New College Library’ from the list of library locations and you should get New College Library results only. One health warning here : you will also get books with the word ‘theses’ in the title and you may get theses from other universities if we have them in the library.

For more precision, you can use the ‘classic’ library catalogue interface. Go straight to the advanced search. Type theses into the search box . Add any additional keywords into the remaining search boxes. Make sure you choose a year of publication option – click one of the radio buttons. For instance you can click the first radio button and choose to search the last 50 years. Now go down to the Library location box and choose New College Library only. 

 Another tip – when you click the search button at the bottom of the form, choose the search button next to where it says ’10 records per page’. Don’t click the word ‘Search’ which is on the tab at the bottom of the page next to Saved Searches. If you do – as I’ve found to my frustration – it thinks you want to start a new search and you end up having to start over again.