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December 15, 2025
Digital Preservation: the search for the silver bullet
It is fair to say that the preservation of digital material, as an issue, it not new to anyone and that was certainly true of those present at our Knowledge Exchange Week event. We all, whether as individuals or as part of a wider group, produce digital content in ever growing volumes. Whilst the majority of that content is arguably ephemeral and irrelevant, some will be of sufficient value to warrant preservation and the effort required to carry that out. However, digital preservation is a discipline that is continually evolving. The global digital landscape, driven by commercial gain, is constantly changing. New tools, new devices and new platforms give rise to new preservation challenges, as does trying to engage with old, out of date technology to salvage content from the clutches of media decay and bit rot. The digital archivist appears to be always working on the back foot.
Whilst the last 30 years has produced a significant shift in efforts to address the issues at hand the distinct lack of drive or acknowledgement from manufacturers or software developers that they have an important role to play or, dare I say it, obligation to help support the security, integrity and accessibility of our digital cultural heritage has meant that the elusive silver bullet remains, for now, just that…elusive.
But its not all doom and gloom. The digital preservation community is striving forward using mutual support and collaboration to achieve its collective goal of long term custodianship of our past, present and future. As a strong and determined community of digital archivists we must pull together the resources and knowledge at our disposal, be it financial, empirical, technical or strategic so that archivists and researchers of the future can benefit and build upon our efforts. At present there is a growing suite of open source systems, microservice tools, platforms as well as international and de facto standards to support the development of frameworks to manage the preservation function. It’s a slightly modular approach but if modular is our only option, in the absence of a ‘silver bullet’, then it’s better than doing nothing at all!
Rationing and a healthy and nourishing diet during the Great War
REFLECTED IN PARTS OF A RECIPE BOOK CREATED BY NINA BALFOUR AND VICTORIA ALEXANDRINE MONTAGU SCOTT (LATER LADY LOTHIAN)
Recently acquired by Edinburgh University Library is a fine bound manuscript volume of cookery and recipes compiled initially by Lady Nina Balfour of Balbirnie and then continued by Victoria Alexandrine Montagu Scott. The volume was gifted by Balfour to Scott in about 1864-65, presumably in anticipation of her coming marriage, and was added to over some eighty years at Monteviot House (the Borders home of the Marquis of Lothian and the Kerr family).
Noted in the ms volume is the date when rationing started during the Great War
Victoria Alexandrine Montagu Scott was a daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch & Queensberry, and she married Schomberg Henry Kerr, 9th Marquess of Lothian on 23 February 1865, becoming Lady Lothian. Lord Lothian was Scottish Secretary, 1887-1892.
Note in the volume of the bread ration for men during the Great War
Spanning the Victorian and Edwardian eras and encompassing two World Wars, the recipes in the ms volume form an interesting chronicle of the Scottish country house diet.The entries for the Great War of 1914 -18 open with notes of rations introduced at different dates, then there are imaginative but parsimonious and largely vegetarian dishes: peelings stock, potato scones, potato bread, vegetable hot pot, savoury parsnips and ‘thrift cake’.
Bread ration for women
Note of rationing of other foods
‘Some Good Receipts’ from Lady Lothian
A few of lady Lothian’s recipes, from the printed insert in the volume
Note in the volume about fresh cream and its use
Note of War dates in the ms volume
Behind the Scenes at the NLS
We have had a busy day today kicking off with a trip to the University Collections Facility at South Gyle where Hannah Mateer gave a tour of the facility and Gavin Willshaw chatted about current library digitisation work. A very exciting trip back to town on a tram followed and a lovely lunch at the Outsider was topped off with a trip to the National Library of Scotland.
A big thanks to our hosts at NLS who provided us with a very interesting tour, including a behind the scenes look at some of the collections and storage areas.
The Knowledge of Dance
Following a busy first two days in the library the Knowledge Exchangers let off some steam on Tuesday night at the The Ceilidh Club at Summerhall. There was some very impressive dancing from the group, particularly from the first timers amongst us.
One of the group danced so much one of her shoes fell apart!
Norman also surprised us with the first, and probably last kilt appearance of the week.
Visit to the Centre for Research Collections
On Day 2 of KEW, we welcomed the participants to the Centre for Research Collections (CRC). The CRC is the main point of access for the University’s heritage and cultural collections. The afternoon was designed to give an overview of the work we do, and explore some of the specialisms that go in to providing access to both physical visitors and remote enquirers.
We started the visit with a chat about how we provide access to the collections and what this involves for the CRC User Services team, including the workflows and processes we use. The diagram below illustrates the workflow from point of request for rare books, manuscripts and archives:
The group then had an opportunity to see some recent acquisitions as Joe Marshall, Head of Special Collections and the CRC, talked them through the decision-making process when considering what purchases to make. A particularly intriguing item is this Batik divination manuscript on bark from Sumatra:
Now we just need to find someone who can read it!
We had a quick break mid-afternoon to watch a 1968 documentary film about the Main Library. The film was directed by Eric C. A. Lucey and provided students with useful information about how to navigate the building just after it opened. We used this as a starting point for a discussion about how the building has developed over the decades. You can watch the video on the University’s Media Hopper website. It’s amazing how much online discovery has improved students’ access to library resources but interesting to see how some things don’t change!
The rest of the afternoon was spent at conservation and the Digital Imaging Unit, looking at how we balance the preservation of the collections with user access, and the exciting experiments with new technology that the DIU photographers have been doing.
Fran Baseby
CRC Services Manager
Sample Furniture for New Study Areas
We are going to locate an assortment of different study desks and chairs which will form part of the new study areas being created later this Summer on the first floor Mezzanine from Monday 27th June to Friday 1st July.
We would very much like you to try them out and provide feedback on the link below by 5.00pm on 8th July.
Spotlight on Digital National Security Archive (DNSA)
This is the first in an occasional series highlighting some of the online resources available at the Library that will be of interest to students and staff in History, Classics and Archaeology.
The Digital National Security Archive (DNSA) from ProQuest gives you access to a vast collection of important declassified U.S. government documents. This provides valuable primary source material central to U.S. foreign and military policy since 1945 and helps advance research in history, politics and international relations.
Within DNSA are collections that cover U.S. policy towards critical world events, including their military, intelligence, diplomatic and human rights dimensions. Each collection is overseen by a subject expert and they allow researchers to directly access the original documents that shaped responses to these critical world events.
With the recent purchase of the collections U.S. Policy in the Vietnam War, Part I and II the Library now has access to 7 collections via DNSA.
[As of August 2017 4 new collections have now been added.]
Student and Community Engagement
How can libraries, archives, and museums reach out to students, get people interested in their collections, and engage with the wider public? Sometimes it takes doing something completely unexpected. Student Engagement Officer Serena Fredrick and Learning and Engagement Curator Sarah Deters shared how they are working to engaged people with the vast arrays of items housed at the Centre for Research Collections.
![taster-day-300x225[1]](https://libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk/librarykew/files/2016/06/taster-day-300x2251-300x225.jpg)
This presentation explored the concept of ‘engagement’ and how its meaning may differ between institutions; what are the different types of audiences institutions may focus on; and how funding opportunities may impact the types of activities an institution may provide.
An interactive session ended the presentation with participants creating their own event around one of the University’s more gruesome artefacts – a letter written in the blood of the notorious killer, William Burke.
‘In a World full of infinite choice, context – not content – is King’
Yesterday we discussed contextual cataloguing in the group. By this I mean creating meaningful catalogues with interconnections, or a web of relationships so that a collection or item is put in its context and it can be made sense of. Take one side of correspondence out of context or a photograph and this can change its meaning, so there can be a responsibility in trying to represent something as close to what it actually is from provenance and original order as we can.
Having worked for over 16 years in the archives sector I’ve seen the same discussions and hear the same issues being raised about how we provide good descriptions of our stuff, to standards, making them user friendly and discoverable. Part of our investigations and discussion yesterday was to be honest about this and place ourselves in a global context thinking about how we can follow standards, but be open, flexible, experimental and avoid getting tied into one solution. We thought about how we can layer approaches to make it easier but also more user friendly and how to be mindful of mapping catalogues and standards as new ways of doing things will always appear. Stepping back from the technology and thinking like the user, in human terms and for as wide an audience as possible.
We explored some of the work we’re doing here at Edinburgh with open source approaches such as ArchivesSpace, metadata and authority mapping as well as the embedding of images.
What was great was that it showed that this is the tip of the iceberg and opened up a discussion that resonated across the group. This was just the start of the exchange of ideas in this area and we’re keen to see what comes out of the week as we share more.
Here are the prezi slides. Do get in touch if you’re interested in finding out what we’re doing at the Centre for Research Collections, University of Edinburgh
http://prezi.com/jmzbgrxcteq5/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy
Paolozzi: mosaics to maquettes.
Recently Art Collections Curator, Neil Lebeter, and I made a short video interview with Professor Bob Fisher and Phd student Alex Davies of the Informatics Department. Bob and Alex have been working with the images I produced of the Eduardo Paolozzi mosaics within the DIU (for an introduction to the project click here). This cross departmental work seems particularly fitting as Paolozzi had close ties to the Informatics department. This relationship is visible in the form of several Paolozzi sculptures dotted about the Informatics building.
Using their combined expertise, Bob and Alex have been employing a number of image processing techniques on the images of the individual mosaic fragments in line with images of the original mural design, in situ at Tottenham Court Road Tube Station, London. This is to assess what percentage of the original mural we possess and how accurately it could potentially be pieced back together. The interview provides an insight into their work processes, the challenges, and uniqueness, of this particular project and the results they have found to date. It is an interesting watch!
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