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December 16, 2025
Researching the Free Church of Scotland at New College Library
New College’s origins lie in the Disruption of 1843, when over a third of the ministers in the Church of Scotland left to form the new Free Church of Scotland. Over 170 years later New College, and New College Library still have an active relationship with the Free Church of Scotland, whose Edinburgh Theological Seminary students come to use New College Library. As you would expect from our shared history, we have rich historical collections for the Free Church, but we also continue to collect some current material from them.
To research current issues in the Free Church, the Reports to the General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland are now held in Stack II at Per F, side by side with the recent Principal Acts. The Principal Acts of the General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland 1900-2014 are available free to download at http://freechurch.org/. Recent Free Church Assembly Reports are also available to download from http://freechurch.org/resources/assembly-reports.
New College Library Free Church holdings are probably most comprehensive for the earlier period of Free Church history. The Acts of the General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland 1843-1900 are available in Stack I at sLY 50 A, alongside the Assembly proceedings and debates at sLY 50 B. This material is available on open access – please note that the online library catalogue also lists additional copies with individual entries by date which are kept in Special Collections. Researchers looking for browsing access may prefer the General Collections copies available in Stack I.
New College Library also holds the historic periodicals of the Free Church, including The monthly record of the Free Church of Scotland at Per M and the Free Church Magazine at Per F in Stack II. For University of Edinburgh users, these titles, including The Home and Foreign Missionary Record for the Free Church of Scotland and The Free Church Monthly and Missionary Record are also available online via Gale Newsvault.
New College students, late 19thC
When researching Free Church ministers, the key work for the early period is the Annals of the Free Church of Scotland, 1843-1900, held in the New College Library Reference section at Ref. BX9084 Fre. The matriculation records of New College students 1843-1943 are also searchable online at http://www.archives.lib.ed.ac.uk/alumni/. This data is a combination of two different lists drawn up by J. Robb and Hugh Watt and held at New College Library. Together they provide the master list of students who matriculated at New College Edinburgh for the first 100 years of its existence. These have been augmented with information drawn from Annals of the Free Church of Scotland, Annals of the United Free Church of Scotland 1900-1929 and the Fasti Ecclesiae Scoticanae. Useful information about ministers may also be gleaned from the Dictionary of National Biography (available in print and online) and from searching the online archives of historic newspapers such as the Times and the Scotsman (tip : try limiting your search to obituaries).
The Conservation of the Musical Instruments of the MIMEd Collection
The collections of Musical Instrument Museums of Edinburgh (MIMEd) comprise an extensive array of musical instruments from very different periods, geographical regions, and social contexts. Contrary to some of the comparable collections in the world, MIMEd maintains a significant portion of the instruments in playable condition. This provides an invaluable resource for musicians, researchers, and the general public to better understand and appreciate the music played on historical instruments, nonetheless, this involves a great responsibility, and a significant work load to keep the instruments in optimal conditions.
The preservation of such a large and diverse collection involves many challenges: from the understanding and knowledge of numerous materials and their properties; techniques of instrument manufacture through history; treatments to better protect the objects of the collection; to the history of music, musical instruments, and art history.
Jonathan Santa Maria Bouquet, MIMEd Conservator
Previous to my appointment as the MIMEd Conservator, I trained as a musical instrument maker and conservator, as well as a musician. I completed conservation internships and fellowships in distinguished institutions like the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Museo degli Strumenti Musicali in Milan, and the National Music Museum in South Dakota, where I worked as the Conservation Research Assistant. Currently I am working on a PhD in Organology at the University of Edinburgh.
As the MIMEd Conservator my responsibilities include the preservation, conservation, and maintenance of all the objects in the collection. Since undertaking the conservation of the collection, I have had numerous challenging and diverse projects, from cleaning and removing tarnish from trumpets and trombones, getting bagpipes ready for display, to major treatments of a Ruckers harpsichord made in 1609, and a severely damaged mandolin made in 1775.
18th Century Guitar during conservation treatment
At present the main focus of my work is directly linked to the Saint Cecilia’s Hall Redevelopment Project. The new displays and layout of the museum will exhibit several hundred objects of MIMEd’s collections, and all of them need to be ready to be displayed for the re-opening of the museum in September 2016. Whilst the museum is closed to the public, I have undertaken the gargantuan task of treating every single object to be displayed: anything from dusting, cleaning, and changing strings, to full treatments that can involve several weeks of delicate and intensive work. To achieve this I have been working with volunteers and interns who can help to carry out those simple but time-consuming tasks, whilst learning and building up their curricula. By the time Saint Cecilia’s Hall re-opens its doors to the public, the instruments will reflect all this work by looking as good as they deserve.
Trumpet before conservation treatment
Trumpet after conservation treatment
To be the conservator of such an important collection is a great responsibility, St Cecilia’s Hall and MIMEd have an extensive common history, and exciting changes will take place in the near future with the redevelopment plan. To form part of the staff team of this great institution is both an honour and a pleasure, and I am looking forward to the many projects yet to come.
Post by Jonathan Santa Maria Bouquet, MIMEd Conservator
Edinburgh DataShare – new features for users and depositors
I was asked recently on Twitter if our data library was still happily using DSpace for data – the topic of a 2009 presentation I gave at a DSpace User Group meeting. In responding (answer: yes!) I recalled that I’d intended to blog about some of the rich new features we’ve either adopted from the open source community or developed ourselves to deliver our data users and depositors a better service and fulfill deliverables in the University’s Research Data Management Roadmap.
Edinburgh DataShare was built as an output of the DISC-UK DataShare project, which explored pathways for academics to share their research data over the Internet at the Universities of Edinburgh, Oxford and Southampton (2007-2009). The repository is based on DSpace software, the most popular open source repository system in use, globally. Managed by the Data Library team within Information Services, it is now a key component in the UoE’s Research Data Programme, endorsed by its academic-led steering group.
An open access, institutional data repository, Edinburgh DataShare currently holds 246 datasets across collections in 17 out of 22 communities (schools) of the University and is listed in the Re3data Registry of Research Data Repositories and indexed by Thomson-Reuters’ Data Citation Index.
Last autumn, the university joined DataCite, an international standards body that assigns persistent identifiers in the form of Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) to datasets. DOIs are now assigned to every item in the repository, and are included in the citation that appears on each landing page. This helps to ensure that even after the DataShare system no longer exists, as long as the data have a home, the DOI will be able to direct the user to the new location. Just as importantly, it helps data creators gain credit for their published data through proper data citation in textual publications, including their own journal articles that explain the results of their data analyses.
The autumn release also streamlined our batch ingest process to assist depositors with large and voluminous data files by getting around the web upload front-end. Currently we are able to accept files up to 10 GB in size but we are being challenged to allow ever greater file sizes.
Making the most of metadata
Example from Geosciences community
Every landing page (home, community, collection) now has a ‘Discover’ panel giving top hits for each metadata field (such as subject classification, keyword, funder, data type, spatial coverage). The panel acts as a filter when drilling down to different levels, allowing the most common values to be ‘discovered’ within each section.
The usage statistics at each level are now publicly viewable as well, so depositors and others can see how often an item is viewed or downloaded. This is useful for many reasons. Users can see what is most useful in the repository; depositors can see if their datasets are being used; stakeholders can compare the success of different communities. By being completely open and transparent, this is a step towards ‘alt-metrics’ or alternative ways measuring scholarly or scientific impact. The repository is now also part of IRUS-UK, (Institutional Repository Usage Statistics UK), which uses the COUNTER standard to make repository usage statistics nationally comparable.
What’s coming?
Stay tuned for future improvements around a new look and feel, preview and display by data type, streaming support, bittorent downloading, and Linked Open Data.
Robin Rice
EDINA and Data Library
LibraryLabs Pop Up at Central
Following on from the success of our Pop Up Library Metadata Games sessions during Innovative Learning Week, this week we took Metadata Games to the City of Edinburgh Council’s Central Library, the first time the game has been taken off campus since its initial pilot back in August. We battled through the inclement weather and set up stall in the library’s ground floor foyer area then, poised with laptops and lollypops, set about recruiting people to take part in our tagging game.
We were keen to spread awareness of our work – and the university’s collections – beyond the confines of campus and we were also interested in to see if there was any noticeable difference between the sorts of tags that members of the public contributed in comparison to those provided by students, academics and staff (that analysis is yet to be done!). Over the course of the two hour session, 15 players, ranging from teenagers to pensioners, provided us with 776 tags (more than 50 per person) – an impressive total considering there was no free coffee on offer for participants on this occasion!
These tags will now be moderated and then uploaded to our image database, ultimately helping to make our collections more discoverable online. You can see an example of how the tags we have harvested from the game have directly contributed to the improved description of one of our iconic items, Rashid al-Din’s History of the World (http://collections.ed.ac.uk/iconics/record/51419). The crowdsourced tags ‘horses’ and ‘knights’, which were harvested from the game, complement the existing formal descriptive metadata showing author, date shelfmark etc.
We enjoyed taking the game on tour: many thanks to Bronwen Brown, Fiona Myles and all the staff at Central Library for all their help with the event, and to all players who contributed their time to help us improve the description of our images.
Keep on playing at http://librarylabs.ed.ac.uk/games/ (EASE login required)!
Gavin, Claire, Charlie and Paul
Digitisation of the Roslin Glass Slide Collection; complete!
That’s me signing out, 3460 glass plate slides later. It is hard to know where to start. Lots of images of cows, pigs, horses and sheep! I now have the satisfaction of viewing the entire collection on our online digital collections platform – Roslin Slides. Furthermore, I was glad to find out that a selection of the slides will be shown at the Towards Dolly exhibition, here on the ground floor of the main library, in July 2015. With so many rich and diverse images, the best place for them is out in the open, easily accessible to academics and members of the public. This one of the many benefits of digital collections. The images are there to be enjoyed and engaged with; an activity that is not so easy when slides are neatly stacked away on shelves in a strong room! With the latter in mind, here are just a few more of my favourite slides from the collection.
Silver Spangled Hamburghs
Prize Cock and Hen Ostriches, South Africa
Professor Robert Wallace
‘Hiawatha’, Clydesdale horse
Perth Ram Sales
Spy Pig
Jersey Collings Cow
Khonds in Phulbani, Khandmal, Orissa, India
The ‘Wandsworth Lion’
Zebra
John
Project Photographer
‘Science on a Plate’
‘Innovation’: the Emperor’s new clothes?
Scott and I travelled down to Cambridge last week to speak at the Museum Computer Group’s Spring Meeting, ‘Innovation’: the Emperor’s new clothes? It was a very informative day that began with Peter Pavement, SurfaceImpression, giving us a history of digital innovation in museums. Including the first audio guides and the Senster, which was the first robotic sculpture to be controlled by a computer.
First Museum Audio Guides from Loic Tallon Flickr
Peter discussing the Hype Cycle, where would you place new technological innovations?
Sejul Malde, Culture 24, followed on from Peter. He discussed using existing assets and content, as well as small ‘process focused’ innovation rather than innovation through giant leaps. His emphasis on creating a rhythm for change made me reflect on how short sprints enabled us to get Collections.ed online. (Looking at our Github commit history highlights sprint deadlines.)
Scott and I then discussed the work we have being doing at Edinburgh to get our collections online through Collections.ed, which has been an iterative process starting off with four online collections launched May 2014, we now have eight collections online following the recent launch of our Iconics collection. We have also recently made a first import into Collections.ed of 776 unique crowdsourced tags we have obtained through Library Labs Metadata Games and those entered into Tiltfactor‘s metadata games.
The tags can been seen online in these two examples:
Charles Darwin’s Class Card
Bond M., White House in Warm Perthshire Valley
The slides from our presentation are available on ERA http://hdl.handle.net/1842/10415 and have a film theme running through them.
The new Iconics home page (I think it is my favourite so far):
In the afternoon Lizzie Edwards, Samsung Digital Discovery Centre, British Museum, lead a practical session where we had to think about how we could use new technologies in Museums. Jessica Suess, Oxford University Museums, spoke about their ‘Innovation Fund’ programme and how it had led to new ways of working and new collaborations with colleagues. She mentioned one project using Ipads as Art Sketchbooks http://www.ashmolean.org/education/dsketchbooks/ which was also showcased in a lightning talk.
Lightning talks and a Q&A session with HLF and Nesta finished off the day, you can find out more from Liz Hide’s storify of the day: https://storify.com/TheMuseumOfLiz/the-emperor-s-new-clothes
Claire Knowles and Scott Renton, Library Digital Development Team
William Hunter (1861-1937) & the Order of St. Sava
EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY ALUMNUS SERVED IN SERBIA IN CHARGE OF A MEDICAL MISSION AND EARNED THE ORDER OF ST. SAVA, ONE OF SERBIA’S HIGHEST HONOURS
During the First World War, and just shy of 100-years ago in June 1915, Colonel Sir William Hunter, an Edinburgh University alumnus, was appointed as a Grand Officer of the Serbian Order of St. Sava.
The Serbian Order of St. Sava – Medallion/badge with ribbon. Coll-1146 – Medals, awards and decorations of William Hunter
Hunter had been serving in Serbia with the British Military Sanitary Mission and there he developed de-lousing techniques to control typhus. In Serbia he was associated with the use of the ‘Serbian barrel’ for disinfection and the eradication of lice.
The Serbian Order of St. Sava – Detail. Coll-1146 – Medals, awards and decorations of William Hunter
William Hunter was born on 1 June 1861 in Ballantrae on the Ayrshire coast. He was educated at Ayr Academy, and then studied Medicine at Edinburgh University, graduating in 1883 with M.B., C.M. (1st Class) 1883, and M.D. (Gold Medal) 1886. He served as a house physician at the Royal Infirmary, Edinburgh, and as a Physican to the Western Dispensary, Edinburgh. He had also studied overseas at Leipzig in 1884 with a grant from the British Medical Association, and during the period 1887-1890 he visited Vienna and Strasbourg.
The Serbian Order of St. Sava – Breast Star. Coll-1146 – Medals, awards and decorations of William Hunter
Also during 1887-1890 Hunter worked full time on laboratory research at Cambridge, devoting himself to pernicious anaemia. He was the first person to note that the alimentary and the nervous system were often affected in this disorder. From 1895, Hunter was affiliated with the Charing Cross Hospital and the London Fever Hospital. Earlier, in 1894, he married Beatrice Fielden, daughter of Joshua Fielden MP.
Along with Julius Otto Ludwig Moeller (1819-1887), a German Professor of Medicine and Surgery from Königsberg (now Kaliningrad), he is associated with ‘Hunter’s glossitis’ caused by B12 or folic acid deficiency (‘Moeller-Hunter glossitis’).
The Serbian Order of St. Sava – Detail, with wording in older cyrillic letters ‘One’s own work achieves all’. Coll-1146 – Medals, awards and decorations of William Hunter
In addition to the honour of his appointment as a Grand Officer of the Serbian Order of St. Sava for medical services to Serbia, in January 1916 Hunter was mentioned in Dispatches (Dardanelles) and was awarded the Companion Order of the Bath (CB). He went on to become President of the Advisory Committee, Prevention of Disease, in the Eastern Mediterranean and Mesopotamia (Gallipoli, Egypt, Salonika, Malta and Palestine), and he served with the Eastern Command, 1917-1919, as Consulting Physician. He continued to hold the rank of Colonel.
The Serbian Order of St. Sava – Detail, oval enamelled portrait of the Prince Bishop St. Sava (Rastko Nemanjić). Coll-1146 – Medals, awards and decorations of William Hunter
St. Sava is most important saint of the Serbian Orthodox Church and the patron saint of Serbia. The Order of St. Sava was a decoration instituted by the Serbian King, Milan I (1854-1901), in 1883. The Order was established to recognize civilians for meritorious achievements to the Church, to arts and sciences, the royal house and the state. In 1914 a change was made permitting military personnel to receive the honour for military merit. After the ending of the First World War, the Order of St Sava was awarded by the king of then-Yugoslavia until the abolishment of the monarchy in 1945 (Serbia had been a part of the Kingdom then Republic of Yugoslavia between 1918 and the early 1990s).
The Serbian Order of St. Sava – Detail, Serbian Eagle and Cross. Coll-1146 – Medals, awards and decorations of William Hunter
Five grades of the Order of St. Sava were awarded: Grand Cross, Grand Officer, Commander, Officer and Knight. Other very varied recipients of the Order were Nikola Tesla (electrical engineer, physicist 1856-1943), Peter Norman Nissen (mining engineer, developer of pre-fab’ shelter 1871-1930) and Helen Keller (author, political activist, lecturer 1880-1968).
Hunter’s published work includes: Oral sepsis as a cause of ‘Septic gastritis’, ‘Toxic neuritis’ and other septic conditions (1901); Pernicious anaemia: its pathology, septic origin, symptoms, diagnosis, and treatment. Based upon original investigations (1901); A research into epidemic and epizootic plague (1904); Severest anaemias. Their infective nature, diagnosis and treatment (1909); Historical account of Charing Cross hospital and medical school (University of London): original plan and statutes, rise and progress (1914); and, The Serbian epidemics of typhus and relapsing fever in 1915: Their Origin, Course, and Preventive Measures employed for their Arrest (1920).
The Serbian Order of St. Sava – Medallion/badge with ribbon. Coll-1146 – Medals, awards and decorations of William Hunter
William Hunter was a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians (FRCP London 1896) and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE).
Letter from William Hunter acknowledging the award of Hon. LLD. to be conferred on him by Edinburgh University. EUA INI/ADS/STA/15 1914-1930. Acceptances of Honorary Degrees
In 1927 he was awarded an Honorary LL.D. by Edinburgh University, and acknowledging the notification of award in a letter dated 8 June 1927, Hunter offers his ‘most grateful appreciation […] of the great honour’ his alma mater has conferred on him.
Letter from William Hunter acknowledging the award of Hon. LLD. to be conferred on him by Edinburgh University. EUA INI/ADS/STA/15 1914-1930. Acceptances of Honorary Degrees
The letter goes on: ‘It will be a great pleasure to me to be at the Graduation on July 20th’.
Colonel Sir William Hunter died on 13 January 1937.
Dr. Graeme D. Eddie, Assistant Librarian Archives & Manuscripts, Centre for Research Collections
Sources used included online medal sites, and: (1) University of Edinburgh. Roll of Honour 1914-1919. p.383, Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1921 (2) Serbia under typhus in 1915. p.219. The British Journal of Nursing. 10 April 1920 (3) Bosiljka M. Lalević-Vasić. History of dermatology and venereology in Serbia – part III/2 ; Dermatovenereology in Serbia from 1881-1918. p.162. Serbian Journal of Dermatology and Venereology 2009 (4), pp.159-165
Here comes the summer!
The weather may not be able to quite make up its mind whether (!) we are heading into summer or skipping it entirely and going straight to autumn but this Friday, 22 May, is the end of semester 2 and the beginning of the summer vacation period at the University.
Whether you will be staying in Edinburgh and continuing your studies over the summer period or if you will be away from Edinburgh for the summer here are a few things to bear in mind:
1) This summer both the Library Catalogue and Searcher will be replaced by DiscoverEd.
John Knox and the Scottish Reformed Kirk
At 4pm today, Tuesday 19 May, in the Assembly Hall, Prof Jane Dawson will address the General Assembly on the topic of John Knox, following publication of her recent biography. Prof. Dawson’s new book is on display in the Funk Reading Room and in the main display case we have early printed books from the time of John Knox selected by Prof. Dawson to illustrate key themes about his ministry and the development of the Scottish Reformed Kirk from 1560 onwards.
Knox, John. Sermon on Isaiah. London, 1566. New College Library LR1/7
This sermon by Knox was preached on 19 August 1565, in St Giles’ Kirk where Knox was minister and is the only full text of one of Knox’s sermons to have come down to us. It was printed because Knox had been given a temporary preaching ban having offended King Henry [Lord Darnley and husband of Mary, Queen of Scots] by Knox’s pointed use of the Old Testament story of Ahab and Jezebel.
Psalmes of David [Henry Charteris ] 1596 New College Library tUR 1596
Knox, John. An Answer Geneva, 1560. LR1/7
Knox’s ‘Answer’. This was Knox’s longest book and dealt with the doctrine of predestination. It was published in Geneva in 1560 after Knox had returned to Scotland. Following the lead of John Calvin on predestination, Knox refuted an anonymous author who had championed free will. As was common practice, Knox challenged each of his opponent’s arguments in turn – this makes the book long and not an easy read!
*With thanks to Prof Jane Dawson for this blog post text*
Christine Love-Rodgers – Academic Support Librarian – Divinity
‘The County Surveys 1793 – 1817: Exploring Considered Digitisation’
Those familiar with the Statistical Accounts of Scotland will be aware that they belong to a greater body of works initiated and supervised by Sir John Sinclair, forming the base of what he envisaged as a grand ‘pyramid of agricultural enquiries’. An extensive and ambitious survey of ‘the existing agricultural state of England and Scotland respectively, and the means by which each might be improved’, the pyramid comprised four levels. Scotland’s parishes were the focus of the Statistical Accounts, while the ‘General View…’ series covered a much broader geographical area by focusing on the counties of Scotland, England and Wales. Then came The General Report of the Agricultural State, and Political Circumstances of Scotland, published in 5 volumes in 1814 and, at the pinnacle of the pyramid, Sinclair’s Code of Agriculture, published in one volume in 1817. This, as historian Heather Holmes explains, “combined all the enquiries into one code ‘for the purpose of rendering, a general knowledge of the principles of husbandry, more easily accessible’.”
The Statistical Accounts of Scotland service makes the full text of the accounts available through searchable digitised copies which provide important reference sources for researchers across numerous disciplines and fields of study. Over the years, we have also built up a fantastic collection of related resources including maps and illustrations, correspondence, manuscripts and information about Sinclair’s other works.
We are therefore delighted to report that EDINA is currently undertaking a project to assess the potential of a similar virtual collection of the County Surveys, the second layer of Sinclair’s pyramid.
The County Surveys recorded comprehensive information on the agriculture, rural economy and political economy of each county in Great Britain between 1793 and 1817. They provide a unique insight into the innovation and agricultural improvement during a significant period in the making of Britain as the first industrial nation. Despite its remarkable historical interest, this resource is currently under-used because very few surveys are available in digital format, and printed copies are difficult to locate and access.
‘The County Surveys 1793 – 1817: Exploring Considered Digitisation’ aims to explore how the creation of a virtual collection can unleash the potential of the County Surveys for discovery. The project is funded by EDINA, University of Edinburgh and scheduled for completion in July 2015.
Our approach of “considered digitisation” involves:
- Reviewing extant digital fragments of the County Surveys to assess their availability for public access, the quality of their digital image, OCR text and metadata, and their suitability for computer automated text analysis, search and retrieval
- Supporting re-digitisation when appropriate to offer public domain content of sufficient quality
- Identifying sources of printed copies for the County Survey and encouraging digitisation
- Engaging with organisations holding copies of the County Surveys to encourage and support digitisation and re-digitisation efforts, and sharing openly our experience of “considered digitisation”.
Find out more about the project and its progress here.
Collections
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Projects
Cataloguing the private papers of Archibald Hunter Campbell: A Journey Through Correspondence
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Archival Provenance Research Project: Lishan’s Experience
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