Home University of Edinburgh Library Essentials
June 18, 2026
Less than one week to go!
With less than a week to go before our first ever Knowledge Exchange Week begins, we are getting excited about meeting all of our participants.
Our programme for the week has now been finalised and you can find it online here.
During the week, you will be able to follow everything that is going on by checking the blog for daily updates and following #EdLibKEW
Current Library Exhibitions
A reminder that there are a couple of exhibitions taking place in the Main Library that you may wish to check out! Read More
Fitba’ crazy, fitba’ mad? A football inspired reading list (again)
Euro 2016 kicks off tonight in France and to mark this occasion we decided to resurrect and update our football inspired reading list that we originally published almost 2 years ago to the day when the World Cup 2014 was just about to begin. These are just a small number of the e-books currently available to staff and students of the University in the Library’s collections that look at different aspects of the beautiful (or not so beautiful) game.
Football’s dark side: corruption, homophobia, violence and racism in the beautiful game by Ellis Cashmore and Jamie Cleland aims to express the views of thousands of football fans on the game they love, but which they know has an unpleasant underside demonstrating that beyond football’s assumed social value, the glamour and the spectacle an array of serious problems and exclusions endure. [This is also available in print in the Main Library at GV943.9.S64 Cas.]
Marketing and football: an international perspective edited by Michel Desbordes and Simon Chadwick examines in two parts the study of football marketing in Europe and the development of a marketing dedicated to football, with the question of the European example being used worldwide. Read More
DATA-X Workshop 2
We are holding our second DATA-X workshop on Wednesday 15 June at the
James Clerk Maxwell Building, Room 3217 and are inviting PhD students
and technologists to come along and participate in what we hope will
be lively discussion and activities.
We aim to engender Art and Science collaborations by offering
micro-funds towards each ‘installation’ as well as the opportunity to
publish in the exhibition catalogue and present at the Pioneering
Research Data Symposium later in the year.
We have over 20 registered participants with a range of research
interests including:
Crystal structure, Raman spectroscopy, Structural biology,
Measurement-Based Power Systems Control, Astrophysics, Polymer-sensors,
Biological data mining, Computational Mechanics,
Internationalization of Higher Education, Bioinformatics, Evolution,
Genomics, Visual sociology, Advertising, National identity, Environment,
Agriculture, Nutrient Management, Soil, Pollen, Farmers, Social Network
Analysis, Food security, Systems biology, Cell level
modelling, Cell physiology, Mobile User Experience, Enviromental
Sustainability, Political science, Human rights, Data materialisation,
Digital fabrication, Practice based research, Synthetic
biology!
To register for the workshop (and get a free lunch) see:
http://data-x.blogs.edina.ac.uk/
To find out more about DATA-X see:
http://data-x.blogs.edina.ac.uk/about/
or watch the short You Tube
trailer: https://youtu.be/NMPPZZc-sZ4
Please get in contact should you require further information.
All best,
Stuart Macdonald
DATA-X Project Manager / Associate Data Librarian
EDINA
Soft Furnishing Upholstery Works
A number of soft seating areas within the library will undergo upholstery work during the summer – these include stools within the study pods on the ground floor, 1st floor and café area as well as other soft seating areas in the mezzanine level and break out areas on some floors.
The colour samples below represent the new colour scheme within the group study pods.
Study Pods – Audio Visual Upgrade
Over the summer, we will also be upgrading the audio-visual kit in the Student Study Pods on the ground and first floor of the Main Library. The refresh will increase the size of the screens as well as moving from analogue to digital, improving the screen image quality.
The Pods will also have Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) connectivity allowing users to wirelessly connect their laptops and smart devices to the screens to show content. The work will be completed before the start of Welcome week.
PC Upgrades – Main Library
We have started on a programme to upgrade all PCs on floors 3 & 4 to new HP EliteOne 800 G2 Models. This work will continue over the summer. The PCs on the 3rd floor have already been replaced and we will now be concentrating on replacing PCs on the 4th floor.
We will also be upgrading a number of DiscoverEd search points on levels 2 to 6 and within the library café.
Media Hopper
If you have not already done so, do check out our new media asset management solution – Media Hopper – a new service that puts video at the heart of teaching, learning, research and public engagement. Read More
Celebrating Shakespeare
With the 400th anniversary this year of the death of one of our greatest and most influential playwrights, William Shakespeare, I found myself cropping images of some of his first printed quartos for the creation of an e-reader as part of the Shakespeare image collection. Now existing as high quality e-readers are the plays Love’s Labours Lost (1st Quarto Edition) and Romeo and Juliet (2nd Quarto Edition), both of which are used as part of the collaborative project concerning Shakespeare’s printed quartos, The Shakespeare Quarto Archive (http://www.quartos.org/index.html). These works themselves have very unique histories and are important in Shakespearean studies for many reasons. Their place in the Special Collections in the University of Edinburgh Library is invaluable.
A Passage to India – Part 1
In this week’s blog, Special Collections Conservator Emily, describes the first stage of conserving a collection of Indian portraits…
I was recently asked to complete a condition report and treatment proposal for a collection of 32 portraits from India, known as a Tasawir, dating from the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century. The images have been pasted onto gold-sprinkled paper, and 7 have examples of calligraphy on the back. They are due to be used in a teaching seminar at the University in the new academic year and are scheduled for exhibition in 2017, but need to be conserved and rehoused before they can be safely handled and displayed. Prior to any conservation work carried out on treasures in the collection such as this, a full condition report is required to document any signs deterioration. This allows the conservator to study the object in detail to understand the materials used, the types of damage found and what may have caused it, ensuring that the treatment proposal put forward is carefully considered and suitable for the item. The brilliance of the pigments used, and the detailed nature of the paintings make these items visually stunning and I was delighted to be given the opportunity to examine them closely.
One of the paintings in the Tasawir
Collections
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Projects
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