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December 18, 2025
‘Lotte’: Charlotte Auerbach (1899-1994)
Charlotte Auerbach, date and photographer unknown. (Coll-1266)
Recently I have been cataloguing the various papers we have concerning Charlotte Auerbach (known as ‘Lotte’ to her friends), who passed away 20 years ago this year. Mention has already been made on this blog about how Lotte arrived in Britain from Berlin in 1933, having been dismissed from her science teaching post under Hitler’s anti-Semitic legislation. She remained in the Institute of Animal Genetics for the rest of her life, receiving a Personal Chair from the University in 1967 and being made Professor Emeritus in 1969. Read More
A University Library as a Publisher – Workshop, Discussion and SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis Exercise
The Repository Fringe, an event which has become renowned for its informal, ‘un-conference’ approach and its friendly atmosphere, was held at the University of Edinburgh 30th & 31st July. This year’s event welcomed a record number of 150 attendees and saw over 20 speakers give their time to prepare and deliver innovative presentations and workshops covering various aspects of Open Access repository development and management.
On the second day, Angela Laurins and Dominic Tate led a workshop to explore the idea of Library as publisher. We looked at our experience of managing the University of Edinburgh’s Journal Hosting Service which uses the open-source OJS (Open Journals System) software to host journals on behalf of students and researchers.
Angela provided some background information to the service, highlighting the key milestones and challenges which have shaped the (free) service we offer at Edinburgh. She asked the audience if the Library has evolved, albeit unintentionally, yet, perhaps inevitably, from its role as distributor to become a publisher?
The Library;
- provides training and support
- provides default policy text eg take down policy
- commits to deal with any complaints regarding copyright infringement
- advises on copyright and licensing
- manages ISSN application
- has acquired a DOI prefix (registered with CrossRef as publisher) and manages DOI exports
- advises on & provides journal design
- advises on article layout
- advises on promotion and marketing
- helps analyse analytics
- digitises back issues (See Res Medica – the journal of the Royal Medical Society)
- registers journals with DOAJ
However, there are services which we don’t provide…… yet
The Library doesn’t:
- advise on peer review
- proof read or copyedit content
- check copyright
- intervene if (some) advice is not taken
- do any quality control of new journals or content
What do you think: are we a publisher or a distributor?
To help answer this question, Dominic put the Journal Hosting Service into the wider context of the University and its portfolio of Open Access services. He then presented the Library’s options to the workshop:
- Should we continue as we are?
- Should we start to charge for the service?
- Should we offer the service to other universities?
- Should we formalise our role as a publisher?
There is no question that we have the skills in the Library to provide the additional publisher-related services, the question we wanted to ask the workshop was, just because we can, does that mean we should? So next, it was over to the audience to break into groups and conduct a SWOT Analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities & threats) on the concept of the University Library as a Publisher.
Participants responded enthusiastically to the task and generated a great deal of discussion in their groups. Here’s what we came up with:
Strengths
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Opportunities
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Weaknesses
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Threats
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The University brand was considered to be both a strength and a weakness and confusion with the University Press as a weakness and a threat although there is also opportunity there to share expertise and work together to fulfil the University’s OA aspirations. Scalability was an issue raised, as was the increased responsibility and liability of the Library if it were to formally adopt the role of publisher.
Unfortunately, we ran out of time. However, the SWOT analysis started the beginnings of a conversation that will continue both at the University of Edinburgh but also across other UK campuses as Libraries continue to expand their role in OA publishing.
At the end of the workshop we asked, ‘Based on the evidence, should University Libraries be publishers? The overwhelming majority voted ‘Yes’. Votes counted, the result was: Yes 14, No 2 and Undecided 1.
About the Repository Fringe
The Repository Fringe is an annual event held at the University of Edinburgh which brings together repository managers and developers from across the UK. The event is jointly organised by EDINA, the DCC and Library and University Collections. Repository Fringe 2014
About the University of Edinburgh’s Journal Hosting Service
The University of Edinburgh’s Journal Hosting Service uses the open-source software OJS (Open Journal Systems) to provide a platform for students and academic staff to publish Open Access Journals. Journal Hosting Service
Dominic Tate – Project Manager, LOCH & Angela Laurins, Library Learning Services Manager, University of Edinburgh
RDM Roadmap: Completion of Phase 1
The Research Data Management (RDM) Programme is well underway with planning and pilot activity (phase 0 of the RDM Roadmap), and initial roll-out of primary services (phase 1) completed. Services include:
- DMPonline – an online tool by the Digital Curation Centre that assists researchers to produce an effective data management plan (DMP) to cater for the whole lifecycle of a project
- Research Data Blog – set up by the RDM Action Group to communicate progress on the RDM programme.
- RDM Website – a One Stop Shop for all university RDM materials (FAQs, key messages, RDM planning guidance, service guides)
- Research Data MANTRA – an online course designed for researchers or others planning to manage digital data as part of the research process
- Edinburgh DataShare – the online digital repository of multi-disciplinary research datasets produced at the University of Edinburgh
- DataStore – a new central facility to store data actively used in current research activities. DataStore provides all researchers with a free at point of use allocation (currently 0.5TB). Researchers can assign up to 50% (0.25TB) of their free individual allocation to shared project spaces. Additional capacity can be purchased above this, with support for very large data (>1PB) hosting available.
Phase 2: (June 2014 – May 2015) will see continued rollout and maturation of services. Services in development include:
- the Data Asset Registry (DAR) – a catalogue of data assets produced by researchers working for the University of Edinburgh to aid discovery access and reuse
- the Data Vault – a secure, private and long-term ‘vault’ of data that is only accessible by the creator or their representative
We are currently gathering requirements to inform design of the DAR and Data Vault services. Upcoming Roadmap milestones will subsequently tackle requisite interoperation between existing and planned RDM services.
There are a number of different groups within the university and outside with whom we need to communicate our RDM programme. These include research active staff, support and administrative staff, university committees and groups (research policy group, library and IT committees, knowledge strategy committee) as well as external collaborators and stakeholders such as funding bodies etc. This is being done through a variety of communication activities including a range of training programmes on research data management (RDM) in the form of workshops, seminars and drop in sessions to help researchers with research data management issues along with formal and bespoke awareness raising sessions within schools for research and support staff. The clear message that we want to communicate is that the University is committed to and has invested in RDM services, training, and support, and that the University is supporting researchers, encouraging good research practice, and effecting culture change.
The RDM Services will be formally launched by the Principal on 26th August, 2014 along with an associated conference ‘Dealing with Data’ which offers researchers the opportunity to present on any aspect of the challenges and advances in working with data, particularly research data with novel methods of creating, using, storing, visualising or sharing data.
Stuart Macdonald
RDM Services Co-ordinator
Photographists and the Grand Tour
One of my daily problems in this job is being drawn into the objects we are digitising- it is always too tempting to start reading, and yesterday was one of the toughest challenges I have faced! A reader had requested a book-scan copy of a transcript from a Diary of John Shaw Smith and his wife Mary as they did the Grand Tour of the Mediterranean and Middle East between 1849-1852 (see http://www.archives.lib.ed.ac.uk/catalogue/cs/viewcat.pl?id=GB-237-Coll-20&view=basic ). Perhaps it was that John Shaw Smith was one of the earliest photographers to visit these regions (see http://www.luminous-lint.com/app/photographer/John_Shaw__Smith/A/), or perhaps it was because I have visited many of the places they travelled to, however once I started I became fascinated by the lively, sharp witted pair and their adventures. Read More
New books for SPS – July
This month we’re featuring a small selection of new titles purchased to support the area of Politics and International Relations in the School of Social and Political Science.
Democracy and the limits of self-government by Adam Przeworski. (shelfmark: JC421 Prz. Also available as e-book.)
The United States, Israel, and the Search for International Order by Cameron G. Thies. (shelfmark: JZ1242 Thi.)
Europe and the Governance of Global Finance edited by Daniel Mügge. (shelfmark: HG186.A2 Eur.)
New data curation profile in History
Margaret Forrest, Academic Liaison Librarian for the School of History, Classics and Archaeology, is the latest to contribute a data curation profile. She has interviewed researcher Graham J. Black, who is a PhD candidate in the School. His subject is the aerial bombing during the Vietnam War and he has thousands of government documents, articles and pictures to manage.
The profile has been added to previous ones on the DIY RDM Training Kit for Librarians web page created by other librarians participating in the RDM librarian training. The librarians covered five RDM topics in separate two-hour sessions,where they reinforced what was learned in MANTRA through group discussion, exercises from the UK Data Archive, and listening to local experts.
Each librarian was encouraged to complete an independent study as part of the training: interview a researcher and write up a data curation profile. This was designed to test their self-confidence at talking to researchers about RDM, as well as give them the opportunity to ‘share their data’ by publishing the profile on the website.
Margaret described her experience to Anne Donnelly, one of the trainers:
This was definitely the most enjoyable part of the training and I learned so much from this interview process and the writing up (mainly because of the value of what I had learned from the MANTRA course).
The final group of eight academic service librarians completed their training this summer. This completes a deliverable in the University’s RDM Roadmap. More curation profiles are welcome; we may put them in a collection in Edinburgh DataShare. They could be useful learning objects for others doing training in research data support, in terms of thinking critically about RDM practices.
Robin Rice
Data Librarian
GeoRef and GeoScience World now available
GeoRef and GeoScienceWorld have now been added to our General A-Z list and Geosciences A-Z list.
GeoRef contains 3.4 million bibliographic records to the geosciences literature. Over 3,500 journals are reviewed for indexing in the GeoRef database as well as books, maps, government reports, conference papers, theses and dissertations. It is hosted on the GeoScienceWorld platform where we now have access to the full text of 45 e-journals published by 28 publishers. A list of these can be browsed here and have been added to our catalogue and Searcher.
Big Week
Edinburgh has changed from being its normal – albeit busy and excited – summertime to in Festival mode. It is always a sudden change, and always very exciting. Both the Reid Concert Hall and St Cecilia’s Hall will be open on each weekday as of August 4 – St Cecilia’s in the mornings from10.30 – 12.30, and the Reid Concert Hall from 2pm – 5pm.
The week has also been significant in that it marked the retirement of long-time Assistant Curator John Raymond who started at the Collection in 1984. It was a very different collection and time then – our two museums were under separate management, and the keyboard instruments numbered less than half of what we have at present. Unlike the busy galleries of today, they were then somewhat sparse – there was room to set up drawing boards in the galleries at a time when technical drawings were done by pen rather than computer. Much of John’s work – like much museum work in general – is not the stuff of highlights. If things go according to plan the visitor or audience member should be virtually unaware of his presence. We attend concerts, and the hope (and expectation) is that the instrument behaves perfectly and the tuning holds. It is a mark of John’s skill that only very rarely was he ever called to intervene during an event.
John Raymond working on the 1668 Stephen Keene spinet.
But many things have happened at the Hall and Collection over the intervening years that are highlights. There were several major restorations – the Hitchcock spinet and John Broadwood harpsichord being great examples. There were also two superb technical drawings – the Hitchcock spinet and the Francis Coston harpsichord. The Coston drawing even led to John being an exhibited artist when it was included in an exhibition held at the University’s Talbot Rice Gallery. There were also a number of recordings – three compilation CDs of Collection instruments each with 9 examples, and others using one or two collection objects. There were a number of important performances – perhaps none more so that during the 2013 Edinburgh International Festival when the Goermans/Taskin harpsichord was used at the Queens Hall and two further concerts took place at St Cecilia’s itself, all by the French harpsichordist Christoph Rousset. These were so widely regarded that the instrument was given a “Herald Angel” award – again where much of the credit should go to John’s preparation and tuning.
During the last dozen years the two museums have been taken under the wing of Library and University Collections, combined into a single collection structure, expanded in number by individual acquisition plus the Shackleton Collection bequest and the Rodger Mirrey keyboard collection gift. All these (and other) things have led us to the position we are at now with the St Cecilia’s Hall Redevelopment Project. We wish John well in his retirement, and are presently advertising for a Conservator to cover the whole collection (as well as for a Learning and Engagement Curator) – another example of how things have changed greatly over the past three decades.
Treasures of New College Library – Andrew Melville’s Bible
Biblia sacra utriusque Testamenti … [1529]. New Collegel Library, Knox 3.
This item is part of a small collection which at one time was housed at John Knox House in Edinburgh, although our provenance documentation records the ownership as being Church of Scotland.
Born on 1 August 1545 Andrew Melville (1545–1622), theologian, Biblical scholar and Presbyterian leader, had a scholarly career as Principal of Glasgow Unviersity and Principal of St Mary’s College, St Andrews University. He followed in the footsteps of John Knox as a defender of Reformation and Presbyterian principles, which at times set him in opposition with King James I of England and VI of Scotland.
James Kirk, ‘Melville, Andrew (1545–1622)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/18543, accessed 24 July 2014]
Christine Love-Rodgers, Academic Support Librarian – Divinity
Employ.Ed Hidden Collections Intern – Weeks 7 to 8
It is all over now! Or at least, very soon now. The 8 weeks flew past, my internship is nearly over and now all that is left is to take a look at what has and has not been done in the meantime.
What is done is a very nearly complete listing of the New Zealand House collection that has already started making its way into the catalogue (although it will take a while), but the process has now been set in motion; here is a sample:
Report by the Right Hon. the Earl of Jersey, G.C.M.G., on the Colonial Conference at Ottawa
A list of House of Lords items to assist an NLS digitisation project and a stock-check of Special collections material are also things that are done. However there are still lots of highlights of the internship that I haven’t had the chance to share.
My little side project, Oroboros the Caterpillar had a sudden metamorphosis – not into a butterfly but into this:
Oroboros the Caterpillar metamorphosises into a beautiful… Viking longboat
By the way I still don’t know who added the mast, and wouldn’t mind finding out (but good job whoever!)
Also, amusing old advertisements:
The Central Hotel and its hydraulic passenger lift
…and oh, so wrong slightly more current ones:
New Zealand: not all about trout fishing
Pretty pictures of New Zealand from a booklet on the 1907 international exhibition:
Images from the New Zealand Collection: Milford Sound and Mount Cook
So much more I want to share, but better be reasonable and stop.
These past eight weeks were lovely, and who knows what comes next?
In any case: farewell from me, at least for now.
Nik Slavov, Hidden Collections intern
Collections
Hill and Adamson Collection: an insight into Edinburgh’s past
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Cataloguing the private papers of Archibald Hunter Campbell: A Journey Through Correspondence
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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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