Tag Archives: 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.

A nineteenth century view of Islam at New College Library

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In this month of Ramadan, I thought I would feature this recently catalogued item from New College Library’s Z-Collection that gives a nineteenth century Western view of Islam.

An history of Muhammedanism : comprising the life and character of the Arabian prophet, and succinct accounts of the empires founded by the Muhammedan arms : an inquiry into the theology, morality, laws, literature, and usage of the Muselmans, and a view of the present state and extent of the Muhammedan religion / by Charles Mills. London : 1818. New College Library, Z.1180

The item is inscribed Ex Libris Bibliothecae Theologicae Edinensis, indicating that it came from the Edinburgh University Theological Library. This library was absorbed into New College Library when New College merged with the University in the early 1960s.

How an Olympic champion became a missionary

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The BBC Scotland programme Eric Liddell: A Champion’s Life http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01lb63b  on BBC2 tonight (Monday 23rd July) at 10pm features items from University of Edinburgh Collections.

RUNNING THE RACE: Eric Liddell Olympic Champion and Missionary. John W. Keddie.

New College Library recently received a donation of a biography of  former Olympic Champion Eric Liddell, by John W. Keddie.  Immortalised in the film Chariots of Fire, Liddell won gold in the 400 metres at the Olympic games in Paris 1924, but famously refused to compete in his best event, the 100 metres, because it was held on a Sunday. He went on to study at the Scottish Congregational College and in 1925 went to China as a missionary with the London Missionary Society.

New College Library holds a  letter (30 June 1940) from Liddell to Mary and George Cameron, Heriot, Midlothian describing his movements during his last trip with his family. After two years in a wartime  internment camp with other members of the China Inland mission, he died on 21 February 1945, five months before liberation.

Liddell’s Olympic medals were donated to Edinburgh University by his daughter Mrs. Patricia Russell. A new Sports Scholarship at Edinburgh University, the Eric Liddell High Performance Sports Scholarship, was launched recently in his memory.

Islamic Collections at New College Library

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Muslims all over the world join together this week for Ramadan, the greatest religious observance in Islam.  Ramadan is the ninth month of the Islamic calendar, when Muslims fast during daylight hours.

New College Library’s collections in Islamic Studies reflect the current teaching and research activities within the School of Divinity’s Religious Studies programmes.  These collections complement the rich collections held at the University of Edinburgh’s Main Library and Islamic Studies Library. Students and staff have access to the online resources for Islamic and Middle-Eastern Studies, including the Encyclopaedia of the Qu’rān.

Recent acquisitions to New College Library’s collections include Women under Islam : gender, justice and the politics of Islamic Law by Christina Jones-Pauly. Another recent addition to the shelves is Jesus and Muhammad : parallel tracks, parallel lives by Francis E. Peters.

Global Missions and Theology Collection online at University of Edinburgh

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In the week of the Yale-Edinburgh Group on the History of the Missionary Movement and World Christianity Conference, a reminder that the Global Missions and Theology Online Collection is now available to University of Edinburgh users.  Part of the Archives Unbound collection from Gale, this collection documents a broad range of nineteenth century missionary activities, practices and thought by reproducing personal narratives, organizational records, and biographies.

Find the link on the Databases for Divinity page on the library website.

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).

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.

Studying away from Edinburgh over the summer?

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If you’re a School of Divinity student moving away from Edinburgh over the summer but continuing to work on your thesis, you’ll be thinking about how to obtain the library materials you need.

All of the University of Edinburgh’s online services remain open to you, of course. Just log in remotely using your EASE user name and password.

As long as you remain a University of Edinburgh student, the Library can continue to process inter-library loan requests for you, and photocopies of  journal articles and book chapters can be posted to you (We can’t supply physical loans of books or microfilms by post). If an electronic copy has been supplied, we will email it to you. You’ll need to register for the ILLiad system first, if you haven’t already done so, and then submit your requests online. 

In the UK, you can usually request inter-library loans using the services available at your local public library. This will depend on the services offered locally, and there may be a charge. Always allow a minimum of two weeks, and more if possible, for an inter-library loan item to be delivered.

If you live within easy travelling distance of a University library, it’s probably worth joining the SCONUL access scheme. This allows University of Edinburgh staff and students to have access to 170+ Higher Education Libraries in the UK. You might find visiting one of these libraries quicker than waiting for inter-library loans. You need to register with Edinburgh University as  your home library first – so do it before you leave Edinburgh.  Use the COPAC Union library catalogue http://copac.ac.uk/ to help you see which academic libraries have the materials you want.

A plea from us to all of you going away over the summer – please keep checking your e-mail notices for library books that have been recalled. We need you to return these books for the benefit of other library users. Thank you!

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.

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.