{"id":1812,"date":"2014-02-24T12:26:29","date_gmt":"2014-02-24T12:26:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/newcollegelibrarian\/?p=1812"},"modified":"2014-02-24T12:26:29","modified_gmt":"2014-02-24T12:26:29","slug":"behind-the-scenes-at-new-college-library-ilw2014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/newcollegelibrarian\/2014\/02\/24\/behind-the-scenes-at-new-college-library-ilw2014\/","title":{"rendered":"Behind the Scenes at New College Library #ILW2014"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Objects<\/a>A guest post from Liz Louis, student on the MLitt in Museum and Gallery Studies at the University of St Andrews and volunteer at New College Library Object Strongroom. Liz presented on a selection of New College objects as part of the Behind the Scenes\u00a0at New College Library Innovative Learning Week event.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I want to show you some of the highlights of the collection and also how\u00a0the resources which New College Library can provide us with are invaluable to my research.<\/p>\n

New College Library’s impressive holdings on Thomas Chalmers, chair of theology at Edinburgh University and first Principal of New College\u00a0include many portraits of Chalmers in the\u00a0form of\u00a0paintings, photos and\u00a0prints. As\u00a0an art historian, the Wax Relief Portrait of Thomas Chalmers<\/strong>\u00a0is interesting because it is intensely sculptural and ‘photorealistic’:\u00a0with wax best suited to imitate human skin and most eerily similar to the moment of arrested life.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0No paper trail for the original paper has been discovered as of yet, although I have\u00a0found a label which suggests that the portrait was made by Mme Tussaud\u2019s. We do know that it was\u00a0given to Prof Hugh Watt (Principal 1946-50) by Margaret Macphail, who was given the\u00a0object by her friend who inherited it from Chalmers\u2019s goddaughter.<\/p>\n

Many objects in the strong room reflect\u00a0the nineteenth century\u00a0interest in sciences. The album with dried plants<\/strong> has a handwritten inscription on first page: In Memoriam <\/span>\/ A Flower, a Plant, or a Weed, \/ gathered from every place\/ mentioned in the Bible \/ which I visited in Palestine \/ 1852 \/ W.D. (William Dickson) 1852.\u00a0\u00a0This makes it particularly interesting for us: we’re not often lucky to have name and date of objects ON an\u00a0object. We know that it was donated by his sons\u00a0to complete New College\u2019s Dickson collection of objects related to Middle East. It was\u00a0addressed to John Duns (Professor of Natural Science at New College, 1864-1909). To a modern eye one thing that stands out is that the\u00a0names written in pencil next to the plant never refer to the plant itself, but always to the place where it was found, e.g. \u2018Place where they stoned Stephen\u2019; ‘Gethsemane’.<\/p>\n

New College Library’s objects collection contains other\u00a0objects collected by travellers to\u00a0 the East, and the written accounts of their experiences are equally marked by the influence of their reading & knowledge of the Bible. One of these is Bonar\u2019s Bible, a<\/strong> Bible dropped in\u00a0(and subsequently retrieved from)\u00a0 Jacob\u2019s Wellin Samaria near the city of Sychar (north of Jerusalem).\u00a0We know about this because the owner,\u00a0Andrew Alexander Bonar, documented the event in his Narrative of a Visit to the Holy Land, and Mission of Inquiry to the Jews[1]<\/a><\/i> This\u00a0trip to Middle East in April 1839 was the first mission sent by Church of Scotland to Palestine,\u00a0making Bonar’s Bible part of the\u00a0story of the Church of Scotland’s efforts to convert the Jews. [2]<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Casket\"<\/a>And finally one of our favourite objects,\u00a0a casket presented to the Rev. John Sinclair McPhail<\/strong>. \u00a0It contains an illuminated<\/b> letter from the Members of the United Free Presbytery of Skye <\/b>congratulating McPhail on his 50th<\/sup> anniversary of being ordained,\u00a0<\/b>praising his devotion<\/b> and adherence to the Church\u2019s Principles\u00a0as well as his personal qualities<\/b> and \u2018sound wisdom\u2019.
\nIt’s one of the few objects in the collection\u00a0that we know when and\u00a0where it was made thanks to the marks. We know where because of the\u00a0Assay mark is applied by the Assay Office as a guarantee\u00a0for the purity of the precious metal (here: silver) according to national and international\u00a0\u00a0standards. The casket’s mark has\u00a0three towers with one at front and two at back, the symbol of the Edinburgh Assay Office. We know when from the assay mark, \u00a0indicated by a single letter and\u00a0font – here, \u00a0sans serif Y: probably 1880-1. And we know who made it from the maker\u2019s mark MC&Co = Mackay,Cunningham and Company, Edinburgh, in the second half of the nineteenth century. In addition, the sovereign\u2019s head, (in this case profile of Queen Victoria) aka duty mark certifies payment of tax to the Crown; Scottish thistle=silver standard mark: Sterling .925 for Edinburgh.<\/p>\n

All of this shows how objects can begin to tell us stories if we know how to read them. So why are we doing all of this?<\/b>
\nFirstly, to establish and record the collection that New College Library holds. This\u00a0should enable collaboration with other institutions through shared knowledge and resources, and also\u00a0enable preservation of sensitive objects and information about them as ethical obligation towards future generations (so nobody has to do my job all over again). Revealing the\u00a0hidden stories should\u00a0enable\u00a0the\u00a0University student and staff community\u00a0to access basic information on objects as part of\u00a0their own research, and make objects available to researchers for exploring new topics.<\/p>\n

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[1]<\/a> Rev. Andrew A. Bonar, D.D., & Rev. R. M. M\u2019Cheyne, Narrative of a Visit to the Holy Land, and Mission of Inquiry to the Jews<\/i> (Edinburgh: William Oliphant & Co., 1878), pp.211.2<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Michael Marten, Attempting to Bring the Gospel Home. Scottish Missions to Palestine, 1839-1917<\/i> (London & New York: Tauris Academic Studies, 2006), pp.9-26.12.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A guest post from Liz Louis, student on the MLitt in Museum and Gallery Studies at the University of St Andrews and volunteer at New College Library Object Strongroom. Liz presented on a selection of New College objects as part … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"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":[199],"tags":[202,46,97,124,130,182],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p42UaT-te","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/newcollegelibrarian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1812"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/newcollegelibrarian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/newcollegelibrarian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/newcollegelibrarian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/newcollegelibrarian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1812"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/newcollegelibrarian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1812\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1820,"href":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/newcollegelibrarian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1812\/revisions\/1820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/newcollegelibrarian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/newcollegelibrarian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/newcollegelibrarian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}