Home University of Edinburgh Library Essentials
June 18, 2026
Kirsty Bailey – October 2013
Norman Dott Project Volunteer
From March 2013 I have been volunteering on the Norman Dott project, cataloguing patient case notes using Encoded Archival Description (EAD) in an XML editor (<oXygen/>). I have found my work with this material absolutely fascinating, as each case note is unique and is so full of captivating information. Some of the files which I encounter include letters and cards between Norman Dott and his patients. Other files include drawings by Norman Dott, or photographs, sometimes of the patient, other times of tumours which have been removed. Each file seems to unveil a new insight into Dott himself, or the medical era within which he practiced, enabling you to reconstruct some form of understanding to the way he treated and dealt with his patients. My knowledge and interest in medicine and especially neurosurgery has flourished from spending time with these files; I feel they are just bursting with fascinating information, and each case is just captivating to read. More information about the project is available here: http://www.lhsa.lib.ed.ac.uk/projects/Cataloguingcasenotes.htm
A few of my favourite things…III
In his mid 20s, Thomson found himself studying for a PhD under the formidable talents of Nobel Prize winining physicist, Karl Ferdinand Braun, at the University of Strasburg. Today’s object is from this period, and likely held a great deal of sentimental value to Thomson:
Thomson’s watch fob
The watch fob bears the initials of Thomson’s student ‘verein’ or club, the M.N.St.V, (the mathematical and natural science student verein), which he described as a humble version of the expensive ‘Burschenschaften’, elite student clubs which exist to this day and often involve duals (or Mensur):
In the Mensur…the fighters are protected by goggles and nose-piece, by mattress-like chest and arm protection, must not move or flinch, hold the straight pointed rapiers above the head, touching and at the word…strike at each other’s head and faces. Two seconds crouch with drawn swords and at the first touch they strike up the combatant’s swords. this is repeated until the referee gives a decision, or for a given number of rounds. Often one man gets all the cuts, and the other none. they are mostly on the head, but also on the forehead and cheek and chin, a ‘Durch-zieher’ cutting across both cheeks almost horizontally. Then senior medical students give hasty and not very sterile assistance and stitchings, and the heroes drink beer and swagger (if well enough) through the next few days.
The Education of an Englishman, p.53
Physikalisches Institut, Strasburg, March 1906
The scarring resulting from the dual was, and is, seen as a badge of honour, and students often deliberately irritated the wound, packing it to ensure it was widened. In Thomson’s humbler club, duals were rare and usually in response to an insult or wrong doing. No uniforms were required, but members wore a watch fob with the verein’s arms. Thomson’s Leibbursch*, Carl Andriessen (whose name is engraved on the watch fob with Thomson’s) gave him his.
After World War I, Thomson lost contact with many of his German friends, many of whom were killed or missing. However, the inscription of one book in his collection, Das Deutschland Buch, shows he kept in touch with Andriessen:
Inscription from Das Deutschland-Buch
The book is inscribed with a message to Thomson and his wife Jennie, thanking them for their hospitality, and dated June 1931 – 25 years after Thomson left Strasburg. The more fluent among you might notice he refers to them as ‘Aunt’ and ‘Uncle’, which made me wonder if the giver was in fact Andriessen’s son, though he refers to them as old friends, which would suggest otherwise. It contains many beautiful images of Germany, a country Thomson loved his whole life, despite the ravages of two World Wars:
I found the book rather touching – despite the remaining animosity of their prospective nations after World War I, the two clearly have a strong friendship, and Andriessen is able to give Thomson a book about the beauty of his own country, a country Thomson also loved.
For Thomson, the time he spent in Strasburg was one of the happiest periods of his life. It allowed him to indulge in his passion for research, undertaking intensive work on Herzian waves. His German became fluent, and he immersed himself in German culture. The watch fob, which he treasured for all those years, perhaps served as the perfect reminder of his life there, and a reminder of enduring friendship.
*’A second year student who adopts a freshman, shows him the ropes, and can claim services in return’
With many thanks to Sarah Noble, LHSA Conservation Intern, who patiently spent a morning showing me how to make bespoke museum boxes and made the lovely box for Thomson’s watch fob!
Happy Halloween/Samhuinn from the Annexe
The results of our now annual Annexe pumpkin carving competition.
Ohh spooky.
Stephanie Farley (Charlie), Library Annexe Assistant
Marking the Millennium?
This week’s images all come from a lovely photograph album commissioned by the University in 1900 (Shelfmark EUA CA1/2). We don’t have much information about this volume but we think it was made to hail the start of the 20th century. It contains 25 photographs of University buildings and views in and around Edinburgh, including some are fascinating scenes of Edinburgh life – when was the last time you saw people skating on Duddingston Loch?
Thanks to the Lost Edinburgh Facebook team Digital Imaging Unit images have appeared on the Lost Edinburgh Facebook page. As a result of this each image has received 1,331 + 1294 likes respectively and 216 + 161 individual shares. Also around 80 comments per image were generated and this has brought the CRC Facebook page an additional 76 new likes since appearing on the site. The Lost Edinburgh Facebook page currently has 66,296 likes, probably making this the biggest audience for our images.
Susan Pettigrew
Open Access Futures in the Humanities and Social Sciences
Last Thursday I attended a particularly interesting session on Open Access Futures in the Humanities and Social Sciences at Senate House in London. Organised by the LSE Public Policy Group and SAGE, in association with the British Academy and the Academy of Social Sciences, this event provided a timely opportunity to discuss the impact of Open Access and its likely impact on HSS subjects.
The event was well attended with a good mix of academics and Open Access practitioners as well as representation from scholarly societies and funding bodies. The debate was lively and engaging, with some very good points being made by all the speakers and panel members.
I was particularly impressed to see that there was general agreement in the room that Open Access is a desirable outcome, and that the debate has moved on from OA vs. Subscription. The discussion is now around the finer points of the implementation of Open Access, which is refreshing and constructive.
The morning session was interesting, but ended up being a little hooked on the application of the CC-BY licence in HSS subjects, something which is doubtless proving difficult in some circumstances. That said, I was pleased to see some of the myths dispelled that persist around notions of plagiarism and Open Access.
The afternoon kicked off with David Sweeney talking about Open Access from a funder’s perspective. It was interesting to note that one of the drivers behind HEFCE’s proposals for OA in REF2020 is to stimulate ‘green’ open access by increasing deposits in Institutional Repositories. Monographs are excluded from these requirements because it would be premature to include them.
There was a fair amount of discussion about monographs later in the afternoon session. Many of the issues had already been discussed at July’s Open Access Monographs in the Humanities and Social Sciences Conference, hosted by JISC. The report on this conference has now been released and is well worth a read if you are interested in developments in this area.
Dominic Tate – Scholarly Communications Manager
Open [access, data, source]: science & data in the 21st century
Organised by Jo Young and Graham Steel of the Informatics Forum to mark Open Access Week this event drew a diverse audience from inside and outside the University.
In his keynote talk, “The Humanities, Cultural ‘Data’ and the Problematic Resistance to Openness’ Dr Martin Paul Eve (Lincoln) gave a view of Open Access from the Humanities’ perspective and explained that it was in our mutual interest for those working outside the Academy to understand and help their Humanities colleagues struggling to embrace Open Access.
Eva Amsen of F1000Research, a well-known open science journal, gave an overview of modern Open Access publishing – rapid publication, transparent peer review and data deposition and sharing.
Dominic Tate, Manager of the Scholarly Communications Team at Edinburgh, emphasised Edinburgh’s long-standing commitment to Green Open Access and explained the services the SCT offers to respond to Open Access, such as paying article processing charges and running the Edinburgh Journal Hosting Service using the Open Journal System (OJS).
A full list of events including video:
http://figshare.com/blog/Open_acces/107
Science as an open enterprise – Prof. Geoffrey Boulton
As part of Open Access Week, the Data Library and Scholarly Communications teams in IS hosted a lecture by emeritus Professor Geoffrey Boulton drawing upon his study for the Royal Society: Science as an Open Enterprise (Boulton, et al 2012). The session was introduced by Robin Rice who is the University of Edinburgh Data Librarian. Robin pointed out that the University of Edinburgh was not just active, but was a leader in research data management having been the first UK institution to have a formal research data management policy. Looking at who attended the event, perhaps unsurprisingly the majority were from the University of Edinburgh. Encouragingly, there was roughly a 50:50 split between those actively involved in research and those in support roles. I say encouragingly as it was later stated that often policies get high-level buy in from institutions but have little impact on those actually doing the research. Perhaps more on that later.
For those that don’t know Prof. Boulton, he is a geologist and glaciologist and has been actively involved in scientific research for over 40 years. He is used to working with big things (mountains, ice sheets) over timescales measured in millions of years rather than seconds and notes that while humanity is interesting it will probably be short lived!
Arguably the way we have done science over the last three hundred years has been effective. Science furthers knowledge. Boulton’s introduction made it clear that he wanted to talk about the processes of science and how they are affected by the gathering, manipulation and analysis of huge amounts of data: the implications, the changes in processes, and why evenness matters in the process of science. This was going to involve a bit of a history lesson, so let’s go back to the start.
Open is not a new concept
“Open is not a new concept”
Open has been a buzzword for a few years now. Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Prof. Nigel Shadbolt have made great progress in opening up core datasets to the public. But for science, is open a new concept? Boulton thinks not. Instead he reckons that openness is at the foundations of science but has somehow got a bit lost recently. Journals originated as a vehicle to disseminate knowledge and trigger discussion of theories. Boulton gave a brief history of the origins of journals pointing out that Henry Oldenburg is credited with founding the peer review process with the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. The journal allowed scientists to share their thoughts and promote discussion. Oldenburg’s insistence that the Transactions be published in the vernacular rather than Latin was significant as it made science more accessible. Sound familiar?
Digital data – threat or opportunity?
We are having the same discussions today, but they are based around technology and, perhaps in some cases, driven by money. The journal publishing model has changed considerably since Oldenburg and it was not the focus of the talk so let us concentrate on the data. Data are now largely digital. Journals themselves are also generally digital. The sheer volume of data we now collect makes it difficult to include the data with a publication. So should data go into a repository? Yes, and some journals encourage this but few mandate it. Indeed, many of the funding councils state clearly that research output should be deposited in a repository but don’t seem to enforce this.
Replicability – the cornerstone of the scientific method
Geoffrey Boulton, mid-talk.
Having other independent scientists replicate and validate your findings adds credence to them. Why would you as a professional scientist not want others to confirm that you are correct? It seems quite simple but it is not the norm. Boulton pointed us to a recent paper in Nature (Nature v483 n7391) which attempted to replicate the results of a number of studies in cancer research. The team found that they could only replicate 6, around 11%, of the studies. So the other 81% were fabricating their results? No, there are a number of reasons why the team could not replicate all the studies. The methodology may not have been adequately explained leading to slightly different techniques being used, the base data may have been unobtainable and so on but the effect is the same. Most of the previous work that the team looked at is uncorroborated science. Are we to trust their findings? Science is supposed to be self-correcting. You find something, publish, others read it, replicate and corroborate or pose an alternative, old theories are discounted (Science 101 time: “Null Hypothosis“) and our collective knowledge is furthered. Boulton suggests that, to a large degree, this is not happening. Science is not being corroborated. We have forgotten the process on which our profession is based. Quoting Jim Gray:
“when you go and look at what scientists are doing, day in and day out, in terms of data analysis, it is truly dreadful. We are embarrassed by our data.”
Moving forward (or backwards) towards open science
What do we need to do to support, to do to advise, to ensure materials are available for our students, for our researchers to ensure they can be confident about sharing their data? The University of Edinburgh does reasonably well but we still, like most institutions, have things to do.
Geoffrey looked at some of the benefits of open science and while I am sure we all already know what these are, it is useful to have some high profile examples that we can all aspire to following.
- Rapid response – some scientific research is reactive. This is especially true in research into epidemiology and infectious diseases. An outbreak occurs, it is unfamiliar and we need to understand it as quickly as possible to limit its effects. During an e-coli outbreak in Hamburg local scientists were struggling to identify the source. They analysed the strain and released the genome under an open licence. Within a week they had a dozen reports from 4 continents. This helped to identify the source of the outbreak and ultimately saved lives.(Rohde et al 2011)
- Crowd-sourcing – mathematical research is unfathomable to many. Mathematicians are looking for solutions to problems. Working in isolation or small research clusters is the norm, but is it effective? Tim Gowers (University of Cambridge) decided to break with convention and post the “problems” he was working on to his blog. The result; 32 days – 27 people – 800 substantive contributions. 800 substantive contributions! I am sure that Tim also fostered some new research collaborations from his 27 respondents.
- Change the social dynamic of science – “We are scientists, you wouldn’t understand” is not exactly a helpful stance to adopt. “We are scientists and we need your help,” now that’s much better! The rise of the app has seen a new arm of science emerge, “citizen science”. The crowd, or sometimes the informed crowd, is a powerful thing. With a carefully designed app you can collect a lot of data from a lot of places over a short period. Projects such as ASHtag and LeafWatch are just two examples where the crowd has been usefully deployed to help collect data for scientists. Actually, this has been going on for some time in different forms, do you remember the SETI@Home screensaver? It’s still going, 3 million users worldwide processing data for scientists since 1999.
- Openness and transparency – no one wants another “Climategate“. In fact Climategate need not have happened at all. Much of the data was already publicly available and the scientists had done nothing wrong. Their lack of openness was seen as an admission that they had something to hide and this was used to damaging effect by the climate sceptics.
- Fraud – open data is crucial as it shines the light on science and the scientific technique and helps prevent fraud.
What value if not intelligent?
However, Boulton’s closing comments made the point that openness has little value if it is not “intelligent” so this means it is:
- accessible (can it be found?)
- intelligible (can you make sense of it?)
- assessable (can you rationally look at the data objectively?)
- re-usable (has sufficient metadata to describe how is was created?)
I would agree with Boulton’s criteria but would personally modify the accessible entry. In my opinion data is not open if it is buried in a PDF document. OK, I may be able to find it, but getting the data into a usable format still takes considerable effort, and in some cases, skill. The data should be ready to use.
Of course, not every dataset can be made open. Many contain sensitive data that needs to be guarded as it could perhaps identify an individual. There are also considerations to do with safety and security that may prevent data becoming open. In such cases, perhaps the metadata could be open and identify the data custodian.
Questions and Discussion
One of the first questions from the floor focused on the fuzzy boundaries of openness and the questioner was worried that scientist could, and would, hide behind the “legitimate commercial interest” since all data had value and research was important within a university’s business model. Boulton agreed but suggested that the publishers could do more and force authors to make their data open. Since we are, in part, judged by our publication record you would have to comply and publish your data. Monetising the data would then have to be a separate thing. He alluded to the pharmaceutical industry, long perceived to be driven by money but which has recently moved to be more open.
The second question followed on from this asking if anything could be learned from the licences used for software such as the GNU and the Apache Licence. Boulton stated that the government is currently looking at how to licence publicly-funded research. What is being considered at the EU level may be slightly regressive and based on EU lobbying from commercial organisations. There is a lot going on in this area at the moment so keep your eyes and ears open.
The final point from the session sought clarification of The University of Edinburgh research data management policy. Item nine states
“Research data of future historical interest, and all research data that represent records of the University, including data that substantiate research findings, will be offered and assessed for deposit and retention in an appropriate national or international data service or domain repository, or a University repository.”
But how do we know what is important, or what will be deemed significant in the future? Boulton agreed that this was almost impossible. We cannot archive all data and inevitably some important “stuff” will be lost – but that has always been the case.
The audience for Geoffrey Boulton’s talk as part of Open Access Week at UoE
My Final Thoughts on Geoffrey’s Talk
An interesting talk. There was nothing earth-shattering or new in it, but a good review of the argument for openness in science from someone who actually has the attention of those who need to recognise the importance of the issue and take action on it. But instead of just being a top down talk, there was certainly a bottom up message. Why wait for a mandate from a research council or a university? There are advantages to be had from being open with your data and these benefits are potentially bigger for the early adopters.
I will leave you with an aside from Boulton on libraries…
“Libraries do the wrong thing, employ the wrong people.”
For good reasons we’ve been centralising libraries. But perhaps we have to reverse that. Publications are increasingly online but soon it will be the data that we seek and tomorrow’s librarians should be skilled data analysts who understand data and data manipulation. Discuss.
Some links and further reading:
- Slides from the presentation
- Royal Society Report – Science as an open enterprise
- Nature Paper – Nature Volume 483 Issue 7391
- Climategate – an overview from the Guardian
- MANTRA – Research data management best practise
- UoE research data management policy
- Video: Geoffrey Boulton on Science as an Open Enterprise – from University of Minho Open Access Seminar & OpenAIRE Interoperability Workshop, February 2013
Addy Pope
Research and Geodata team, EDINA
Alan Greenwood’s ‘Mexican Misadventure’
Many of the scientists who feature in our collections were extremely well-travelled, and their archives abound with information about the conferences, congresses and conventions which they attended all over the world. However, it’s not often that we come across a real-life adventure story which very nearly didn’t have a happy ending…
Among the papers of Alan Greenwood (director of the Poultry Research Centre in Edinburgh from 1947 until 1962) there is a press cutting from the Poultry World & Poultry magazine, dated 13 November 1958 under the headline ‘Mexican Misadventure: Full Story of Missing Congress Delegates is Disclosed’. The article goes on to tell the harrowing experience of Alan Greenwood and his colleague, veterinary surgeon James Ebeneezer Wilson, whilst journeying to a congress on poultry in Mexico City. Writing a personal account, Greenwood paints a vivid picture of the severe floods in Mexico which hit the country after a seven-year long period of drought. Arriving at El Paso ready to cross the Rio Grande to Juarez by train, all seemed to be going swimmingly: with the Chief Customs Official at the railway station providing them with free Mexican beer. The train departed at 10.30 on 18th September carrying 1,200 passengers, but got stranded at Jiminez the next morning when the rains hit. The delay was supposed to be around 10 hours, but as Greenwood reports: ‘in reality we spent four nights and four days on that train under circumstances which were not in the least bit comfortable.’ This is an understatement: with no hot water or light, limited sanitation and an infestation of cockroaches, the enforced confinement on the train was hardly pleasant. An attempt to cross a bridge by foot was aborted when it was discovered that the bridge in question had been swept away in the floods, so the confinement continued with the food situation growing ‘desperate’. At last, Greenwood and his colleague were able to get seats on a two-coach train trying to get from Jiminez to Chihuahua, but the drama continued:
It was a nightmare journey in many ways with the raging river torrents covering the trestle bridges over which we crawled at the rate of about a yard per minute. It was raining heavily all the time, and electrical storms were continuous. At times the carriages were jumping up in the air and leaving the tracks.
Greenwood and Wilson finally arrived in Chihuahua at 1am four days after they had left El Paso. After some days of rest and recuperation, the pair began the return journey to Houston. They continued to travel throughout America before returning to Scotland, and the Greenwood archive contains a book of postcards which Greenwood collected from around Mexico and America on this trip.
We probably all have travel ‘horror stories’, but probably none quite so hair-raising as this!
New journal for World Christianity
Recently added to the collections for Divinity at New College Library is the Journal of African Christian thought : journal of the Akrofi-Christaller Memorial Centre for Mission Research and Applied Theology. This journal was requested for World Christianity at the School of Divinity. The University of Edinburgh is the only location in Scotland for this journal.
Display of new purchases today
Today at 2pm there’s an opportunity to see new purchases in rare books and manuscripts, made with support from the College of Humanities and Social Science in 2012-13. Everyone is welcome – please just turn up at the Centre for Research Collections front desk.
Collections
Hill and Adamson Collection: an insight into Edinburgh’s past
My name is Phoebe Kirkland, I am an MSc East Asian Studies student, and for...
Cataloguing the private papers of Archibald Hunter Campbell: A Journey Through Correspondence
My name is Pauline Vincent, I am a student in my last year of a...
Projects
Cataloguing the private papers of Archibald Hunter Campbell: A Journey Through Correspondence
My name is Pauline Vincent, I am a student in my last year of a...
Archival Provenance Research Project: Lishan’s Experience
Presentation My name is Lishan Zou, I am a fourth year History and Politics student....