Tag Archives: Special Collections

New College Library welcomes the Yale-Edinburgh Conference

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The Centre for the Study of World Christianity at the University of Edinburgh is hosting the Yale-Edinburgh Group Conference on the History of the Missionary Movement and World Christianity this week, with the theme of  “Religious Movements of Renewal, Revival, and Revitalization in the History of Missions and World Christianity. “

Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758)
The distinguishing marks of a work of the spirit of God : applied to that uncommon operation that has lately appear’d on the minds of many of the people in New-England ; with a particular consideration of the extraordinary circumstances with which this work is attended. Edinburgh : 1742
New College Library B.b.c.17/1

We have set out a small display of pamphlets from New College Library’s Special Collections on the theme of revival in the display case in the Funk Reading Room. The display includes this pamphlet on the  revival & awakening of the Holy Spirit in New England, United States.  The author, Jonathan Edwards, was a prominent American preacher and theologian, who was closely involved in the spiritual revival of the 1730s, the Great Awakening. His pamphlet deals with the revival’s controversial  phenomena : the swoonings, outcries and convulsions of believers overwhelmed by their powerful spiritual experiences.

This pamphlet was catalogued recently as part of the Pamphlets Cataloguing Project, funded by the Funk Donation. A similar item is also held by Yale University. University of Edinburgh users can read it online via Eighteenth-Century Collections Online.

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).

Treasures of New College Library : The Dumfries Presbytery Library

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The Dumfries Presbytery Library is a collection of sixteenth and seventeenth century books that was first documented in 1710, with the acceptance of a substantial donation of books from Dr John Hutton. It was used as a lending library, for the ministers of Dumfries, for which records survive in a ledger in Dumfries’s Ewart Library. Titles are marked : “Ex libris bibliothecae presbyterii Dumfriesiensis”

In 1884, the decision was made to transfer the collection to the General Assembly Library in Edinburgh, following a gale that damaged the roof of the presbytery house letting in rain that soaked the books. With this transfer, at least some of the books were marked by the ownership stamp of the Library of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland : the symbol of the burning bush surrounded by the words “Bibliotheca Ecclesiae Scoticanae”.

In 1958 the General Assembly Library was transferred to New College Library, and the books of the Dumfries Presbytery Library were dispersed by subject as part of the New College Library collection. In 1962, New College Library came under the governance of Edinburgh University Library,  and in 1965 John Howard took over as New College Librarian. He took a particular interest in the Dumfries Presbytery Library and he reassembled c. 1500 volumes from the collection in their original pressmark order as a Special Collection.

In the summer of 2012, a project has begun to catalogue the Dumfries Presbytery Library online in its entirety. This project is one of the Funk Cataloguing Projects at New College Library.

Acta Sanctorum now available online to University of Edinburgh

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The online Acta Sanctorum, published by ProQuest Databases, is now available to University of Edinburgh users. It is an electronic version of the complete printed text of Acta Sanctorum,which examines the lives of saints, organised according to each saint’s feast day, and runs from the two January volumes published in 1643 to the Propylaeum to December published in 1940. The original printed volumes are held in New College Library’s Special Collections.

University of Edinburgh registered users can access the database via the link on the Library’s A-Z Databases page.

New College Theses collection now fully catalogued online

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Over 700 New College theses covering the period 1920-1985 have now been catalogued online as part of the Funk Cataloguing Projects.  Some of these theses have second  copies at the main Library, but many others are unique copies only held in New College Library. The completion of this project means that all of New College Library’s theses are now listed on the University of Edinburgh Library’s online catalogue.

The Theses collection demonstrates the richness and diversity of Divinity research in the twentieth century, with topics ranging from  the Buddhist conception of Man in relation to the Christian conception, to the Church in Shetland during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries – to pick just a few. Current Divinity PhD students now have improved access to the range of previous research done at New College, and New College alumni with PhDs will now be able to find the fruits of their efforts on the online catalogue.

Now that these theses are included in the University of Edinburgh online catalogue, the details of this research will be shared worldwide, not only by researchers looking for University of Edinburgh material but also by researchers using tools such as COPAC, the union catalogue of the UK’s major research libraries.

Summer days at New College Library … and Hymnology collections

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Summer has arrived!  The weather forecast says 12 degrees today –  but it feels much warmer. The School of Divinity’s exams are over, and the bustle of last week’s General Assembly has faded. Inside the  library, only a few dedicated researchers are at work – and the library staff, of course. Here’s a summer themed item from New College Library’s Special  Collections.

The child’s book of song and praise, including 34 pieces of music … [1870]. Hymnology Collection, E15/g 6.

  The child’s book of song and praise [1870] is an item from the Hymnology Collections. The core of these collections was 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 collection of over 5000 items  we have today.

Primarily 18th & 19th century printed volumes (some with very nice pictorial publishers bindings),  there are also some older books,  a few scores and some LPs and cassettes. The collection covers sacred songs and poetry as well as hymns, including  many items intended for children, both for Sunday School and home use. This verse from The child’s book of song and praise is just one example:

“Peace be around thee, wherever thou rov’st’ / May life be for thee one summer’s day …”

A project to catalogue the Hymnology Collections online has just begun – just one of the Funk Cataloguing Projects which are opening up the Special Collections here at New College Library.

Medieval manuscript on display at New College Library …

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Now on display at New College Library : the Athanasii Opuscula.

This fifteenth century Italian medieval manuscript has a beautiful painted and gold tooled frontispiece and a neat humanistic script. In the lower margins cupids hold a gold hoop.  (Details taken from Medieval Manuscripts in British Libraries, N.R. Ker, Oxford: Clarendon 1977, p. 532)

New College Library possesses five medieval manuscripts in its manuscripts and archives collection. This item was given to the Library by F. Sargent, probably before 12 Nov 1844.

Treasures of New College Library : the Pamphlets Collection

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 “… but that religious pamphlets, especially if they had a shade of allegory in them,  were the very rage of the day.”[1]

In the days before radio, television and instant news pamphlets allowed theological debate and comment to be carried on in cheap, portable and accessible print. New College Library has an exceptional Pamphlets Collection with over 30,000 items. Spanning the development of the Scottish Church from the time of the Reformation to the present century, the sermons, theological debates and reports of Church government and discipline which are contained in this collection are a reflection of the parallel development of Scottish history, and of the establishment and disestablishment of a national Scottish Church.

The Church of Scotland’s lament. Pamphlets Collection, New College Library B.c.4.28/9

  “The Church of Scotland’s lament over the Pride of Her Ministers, with their Top Wiggs, and Long Gravates …” is just one example of the Pamphlets in this collection. Dating from the 1700s, it is a humorous poke at a well to do Church of Scotland minister, with the writer contrasting the minister’s comfortable existence with the struggles of the Covenanters in times past.

As I write the 2012 General Assembly is in full swing, and many Church of Scotland ministers are coming and going – but I haven’t spotted any wigs or ‘Gravates’  (cravats, I think). Nevertheless comment, discussion and criticism of the Church’s activities will be just as much in the news as when this pamphlet was written.

This pamphlet  is newly catalogued online as part of the Funk Cataloguing Projects at New College Library, which has enabled the cataloguing of over 12,000 pamphlets. 

[1] Hogg, James The private memoirs and confessions of a justified sinner (London: A.M. Philpot Ltd., 1824)

 

Early Bibles at New College Library

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New College Library has rich and distinct Bible collections. This  Geneva Bible, printed in 1599 with an illustrated frontispiece is just one example.  Called a Geneva Bible because it was produced by a group of Protestant scholars who fled to Geneva during the time of Queen Mary I of England (1553 – 1558), it was innovative in being a  mass-produced Bible which came with a variety of scriptural study guides and aids.

Bible, Book of Common Prayer and Psalter. London, 1599. New College Library B.r.438/1

 This 1599 edition also inclues the new “Junius” version of the Book of Revelation, in which the notes were translated from a new Latin commentary by Fransiscus Junius on Revelation. It was the Bible used by John Knox and Oliver Cromwell, making it hugely important to the study of sixteenth and seventeenth century Britain.

University of Edinburgh Edinburgh Divinity students on programmes such as the Masters degree in  Theology in History have the opportunity to handle rare books like this as part of their studies.

 This Bible is newly catalogued online as part of the Funk Cataloguing Projects at New College Library, which has enabled the cataloguing of 631 early Bibles.

Treasures of New College Library : the Acta Sanctorum

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Down in the depths of New College Library’s Stack III, one of the first rows of shelves that faces you when you enter contains the Acta Sanctorum. This huge Latin work in sixty-eight volumes examines the lives of saints, organised according to each saint’s feast day in the calendar year.  Fifty-three of the volumes were published between 1643 and 1794 by the Bollandist Fathers in Antwerp. Hugh Watt, in his New College Library : A Centenary History (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1946), relates a story that Cardinal Hume had intended to purchase this set of the Acta Sanctorum for himself as a birthday present, but arrived at the bookseller’s only to find that Dr William Cunningham, second Principal of New College, had beaten him to it and purchased the volumes for New College Library.

University of Edinburgh users have trial access to the online Acta Sanctorum Database until 24 May 2012.  The Acta Sanctorum Database contains the entire Acta Sanctorum, including all prefatory material, original texts, critical apparatus and indices. Bibliotheca Hagiographica Latina reference numbers, essential references for scholars, are also included.