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December 13, 2025
Lexis+ database training: LexisNexis Certification
You may remember last week we posted a reminder about the Lexis+ training we had scheduled. That training took place yesterday and those that attended found it very helpful, so we’re putting the recording and information about how to get certified with LexisNexis up here too.
LexisNexis offers four levels of certification for students in the UK – Foundation level for England and Wales, Foundation level for Scotland, Advanced level for England and Wales, Advanced level for Scotland. Our students can pick whichever is the most relevant for them, or complete all of them if they want to collect the set!
First, you’ll need to watch the Foundation level training video (recorded yesterday by Claire Black of Lexis UK). You can find that on our Media Hopper Channel or by clicking the image below.
Next you will need to log in to Lexis+. The best way to do this is using the link on the Law databases page; it currently says ‘LexisLibrary’ but I’m in the process of getting that updated to Lexis+. If when you’re logged in you arrive at the screen that says ‘Nexis’ at the top of the page, click the nine dots in a square next to the Lexis logo, and you should be able to click ‘Lexis+ UK’ instead.
Then Claire has provided the following instructions:
- Make sure you are logged in to Lexis+ through the University – you will need to use the site to answer the questions.
- In a new tab or window, access the LexisNexis Student Hub: https://www.lexisnexis.co.uk/law-students/overview.html
- Register your details – your choice whether to choose university or personal email. It gives you access thereafter if you need to retake the test or want to do other certifications. Course end date is the date you intend to graduate.
- Once registered, scroll down the page to where it says ‘Get Certified’ and choose Lexis+ UK Legal Research Certification (there is the option for the Practical Guidance one, but given access to practice areas can vary, it’s probably safer to stick to research)
- You will then see a page which lists 6 steps to being certified. Scroll past this to the bottom and there are 4 options: Foundation and Advanced Certifications for either England and Wales, or Scotland.
- You will then enter your email address (which allows you to come back later and will allow you to retake the test if necessary)
- 15 multiple choice questions which are completely randomised. 13/15 correct to pass. You must use Lexis+ to answer the questions.
- You can take the test as many times as you need to pass.
- Certificate will be emailed to you upon passing within 24 hours.
Our thanks to Claire and all at Lexis for making sure our students are well trained and well prepared for legal research! Good luck to anyone choosing to take one of the Certification tests. If you encounter any issues please let us know on law.librarian@ed.ac.uk.
“An epoch in history” – Charles Lyell in Nova Scotia 1842
Guest Blog Author Tim Fedak
We are delighted to welcome Tim Fedak – a Curator and Palaeontologist based at Nova Scotia Museum – to our blog! Tim has been waiting ever so patiently for access to Charles Lyell’s Notebook number 104, documenting his visit to Nova Scotia in 1842 to view the geology and fossil trees at Joggins, and which ushered in a new era of geology….
Today, Nova Scotia is well known among geologists around the world for its important geology. The Joggins Fossil Cliffs UNESCO World Heritage Site has a world class interpretive centre and regular tours of the famous fossil forests. The importance of that site, as well as the Cliffs of Fundy UNESCO Global Geopark on the northern shore of the Minas Basin, both find their beginning in 1842.
Joggins Fossil Cliffs, a UNESCO World Heritage Site on the shores of the Bay of Fundy, Nova Scotia.
In July and August of 1842, Charles Lyell was visiting Nova Scotia for a month of geology, to engage the local geologists and to examine the fossil forest that everyone, including Darwin would come to hear about. The interactions he had and the insights he gained from walking along the shores of the Bay of Fundy shaped his observations and convictions about ancient trackways and life in the Coal Age.
Cliffs of South Joggins, Figure 18 from Charles Lyell’s Travels in North America, Vol 2. 1845.
Sir. William Dawson was born and raised in Pictou, Nova Scotia but he had studied at the University of Edinburgh in 1840-41. He was still just a young man passionate about geology and fossils when Lyell visited the province, and they shared insights and views of geology. When Dawson published his iconic Acadian Geology in 1855, he noted in the introduction:
“The year 1842 forms an epoch in the history of geology in Nova Scotia. In that year Sir Charles Lyell visited the province, and carefully examined some of the more difficult features of its geological structure, which had baffled or misled previous inquirers.“ p6.
Dr. Ebenezer Fitch Harding, a community physician in Windsor, Nova Scotia, was another local geologist that Lyell interacted with, accompanying him to the geology sites and mud flats of the Minas Basin, Bay of Fundy in the summer of 1842.
See more on this important period in Nova Scotia geology, including the links between Nova Scotia and Edinburgh, and Harding’s contributions to science in Tim’s article https://www.erudit.org/en/journals/scientia/2021-v43-n1-scientia05889/1078926ar/
Lyell’s trip to Nova Scotia is well described in Volume 2 of his ‘Travels to North America’ published in1845. However, when I first heard that the University of Edinburgh was attempting to purchase Lyell’s 294 Notebooks for archival research, I was immediately thrilled with the thought of what more he might have written during his visit to Nova Scotia. I then celebrated when the project was successful and have been waiting (somewhat) patiently since then.
In early September this year, I learned that Notebook 104 had been scanned and was now available online. I dropped everything and began to carefully make my initial examination of the notes and drawings of the scanned pages. You can see my short presentation of some of the immediately interesting observations made about Notebook 104 at:
Joggins Sketch
The Joggins cliff sketch on page 48 was immediately of great interest and value. This illustration became the key that unlocked the understanding that the gypsum and limestone layers (now known as the Windsor Group) – were below the coal.
Detail of two preliminary sketches of the Joggins Cliffs in Lyell Notebook 104, p. 48.
Shubenacadie River
The notebook includes many important sketches of the work carried out along the Shubenacadie River, which included contributions from J.W. Dawson, William Duncan, Richard Brown and others.
Field Work, Travel Notes
I am interested in the people of geology and what it was like for them to carry out the work and attain their insights. I was particularly struck by the notes of the bags that Charles and Mary Lyell travelled with, and the supplies that they required. A very personal view into the travelling aspect of field work.
Mary Lyell
Mary Lyell being on this month-long visit to Nova Scotia is also incredibly interesting. It remains difficult to locate any records that describe her activities when they were apart. However, there are notes in Charles’ notebook, as well as in letters he wrote to Dawson that Mary was actively engaged in discussions of geology and conchology.
Extract from Letter from Charles Lyell, to William Dawson, Pictou, Nova Scotia, quoting “…Mrs. Lyell says…”
I am truly grateful for the opportunity that the University of Edinburgh and the project partners are providing in making these notebooks available for research. Here in Nova Scotia, this is a special way to celebrate 180 years since Charles and Mary Lyell where here exploring the geology and natural history of Nova Scotia.
I’ve mapped the Lyell’s travels in Nova Scotia using the information in Notebook 104, descriptions from Lyell’s Travels in North America, and links through to archived letters on this interactive timeline. Follow the hashtag #NS1842 and find additional information in this Tweet Collection #NS1842
Thanks Tim – it’s great to hear more about Lyell’s impact in Nova Scotia. We love your enthusiasm (and patience!).
Since her last blog, Project Conservator Mhairi Boyle has been getting to work assessing and conserving the bound volumes from the R(D)SVS and OneKind archives. In this blog, she explains the assessment process used to evaluate the condition of OneKind’s bound volumes.
In my last blog I was at the Zoo, helping to move the archive on a warm yet rainy summer’s day. It’s now a crisp October and I am stationed back at the Main Library, tasked with conserving the bound volumes in the OneKind and R(D)SVS collections.
The OneKind archive, before rehousing
First, I had to decide where to start. When working on a long-term project, it’s important to establish an efficient workflow. This project is a little bit different than anything else I have worked on because all the collections were either partially catalogued or not yet catalogued. Project Archivist Fiona Menzies is hard at work establishing an order and organising the metadata for each collection, which means that over time many of the items and boxes will change location. To not disrupt the cataloguing and organisational processes, I decided to start with the larger bound volumes in the R(D)SVS and OneKind collections.
Upon initial examination, it was clear that the OneKind volumes needed more attention than the R(D)SVS ones. I decided to undertake a more detailed survey of the OneKind volumes to provide an overview of their condition and identify the most common issues. Surveys often go at snail’s pace in the beginning, as you get to know the collection and the common conservation issues and the extent to which objects are damaged. As I got to know the collection, I was able to create damage categories to assign to each volume. I created Categories 1-4, from ‘Good’ to ‘Fair’ to ‘Poor’ to ‘Severe Multiple Damages’. ‘Good’ volumes are in stable, functional condition and require little/no interventive conservation treatment, and the other categories represent a sliding scale of object condition.
The survey gave me an overview of the condition of the collection
The most common issues were surface dirt; red rot (the deterioration of the leather cover and/or spine); and damaged leather covers and/or spines.
Surface dirt, red rot, and damaged leather are the orders of the day!
However, the most complex issue with the collection is the amount of Sellotape on many volumes. In many cases, extensive tape has been applied to volumes with damaged/detached boards and/or spines, to keep the volume intact. This will prove to be tricky to remove, because whilst in some areas the adhesive has hardened and come away from the plastic carrier, in many areas it is still fully adhered to the leather. Removing it may in fact further damage the leather.
Red rot galore. This deteriorated leather can be consolidated with Klucel G in Industrial Methylated Spirit
The removal of the tape is one of many ethical decisions which must be considered when treating the OneKind collection. Because this is an archival rather than a fine art collection, the preservation of information is of utmost importance. Because the bindings of the volumes are not historically unique, an in-situ and minimally interventive approach to the treatments will be adopted. To maximise efficiency and speed, tape will be left as-is on areas of the volumes where it does not affect the movement and functionality of the volumes. This will not affect the quality of the treatment, allowing me to preserve the whole collection rather than completely rebinding singular volumes.
Tape has held this volume together. Now, it can be replaced with archival-friendly conservation treatments
Did somebody say tape?
In a way, I must be thankful for all the tape that I am going to tackle. A well-meaning person recognised the importance of keeping the volumes intact and put in their best efforts to preserve them in their original formats. It means that no boards or spines have been lost into the ether. I will be sure to update when I begin my tape-laden conservation journey!
Rights retention policy: an update after 9 months
2022 has been a big year for open access at the University of Edinburgh. We started the year off with a bang by introducing a revised Research Publications & Copyright policy in January. This mandatory open access policy applies to all University staff members with a responsibility for research. Going forwards all authors automatically grant the University a non‐exclusive, irrevocable, worldwide licence to make manuscripts of their scholarly articles publicly available under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence.
We are proud that the University of Edinburgh was the first institution in the UK to adopt this type of progressive rights retention open access policy, and we are hugely encouraged to see that many other universities are adopting similar policies. In many ways the policy is just the starting point and most of the hard work actually happens afterwards when supporting members of staff with new publishing processes. This post is intended to give an update of progress so far and to give an account of how the University of Edinburgh policy is having a positive effect on the number of open access publications being immediately available.
Contacting authors
During 2022 the Library in conjunction with Professional Service staff embedded within Schools and Colleges have held an ongoing series of internal seminars for Schools/Institutes. To date the recorded attendance has been 1700 researchers (21.5% of 7,900 total). During these sessions academic staff were informed about the new institutional policy and the support options that are available to them. A second approach was to send All-Staff emails circulated by local College and Schools with information about the new policy and guidelines. This co-ordination between the Library and Professional Service staff was essential in spreading the message about the new institutional policy and getting widespread buy-in from academic staff.
Contacting publishers
In parallel to informing academic staff the University undertook an exercise to formally write to and inform the most popular publishers that University staff submit their work to. Solicitors from our Legal Services department sent a Notice of Grant of Licence by recorded delivery and email to 170 publishers we identified. These publishers we selected covered in the region of 95% of the University’s publication outputs.
Many publishers have introduced restrictive publishing agreements which require embargo periods, and some publishers even assert that their licensing terms will supersede any other prior agreements. We dispute this and if challenged the University will be able to bring a legal claim against the publisher as they have willingly procured a breach of contract against our pre-existing rights.
For a claim of procuring a breach of contract to succeed it must be shown that the defendant knew about the prior contract and intended to encourage another person to break it. Our solicitors have prepared a sworn Affidavit confirming service on all the recipients which will be sufficient to confirm that all the named publishers were indeed advised of our position ahead of article publication and that they have subsequently asked an author to breach the terms of their employment contract by accepting a publishing licence. Most of the time these publishing agreements are click-thru licences that are impossible to edit or change.
With a prior licence granted and publishers contacted the University can now deposit the accepted manuscript of articles in our digital repository, with the article metadata usually available immediately upon deposit and the scholarly article made accessible to the public on the date of first online publication under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence.
A snapshot of open access statuses
So with the policy in place, and the majority of authors informed, how effective has the policy been over the first 9 months?
Using data from our Current Research Information System (CRIS) we can track progress on articles published and their open access status. However, we have to be aware of some of the limitations about the health of the metadata extracted from the CRIS. Sadly around 5% of research output records do not have complete metadata allowing us to determine their status. Another point to note is that individual research outputs records in the CRIS commonly have information about both the accepted manuscript version and a final published version. Due to the data model of the CRIS it is not easy to disambiguate between the green versus gold OA statuses when running reports.
Bearing this in mind the table below shows the current open access status of 2022 journal articles:
| Open status | Count of OA status | Percentage |
| Closed | 219 | 5% |
| Embargoed | 576 | 12% |
| Indeterminate | 226 | 5% |
| Open | 3519 | 78% |
| Grand Total | 4540 | 100% |
For the 2022 calendar to the present date (mid-Oct) University staff members have written and published 4737 journal articles, of which 197 are not yet published so we’ll discount those. This table includes journal articles that are published via all types of OA route – including fully Gold OA journals and Gold OA via Transformative Agreements (Read & Publish deals). If we remove the journal articles that have been published under a Transformative Agreement or in a fully open access journal we will be left with the number of Green OA articles. We have determined that 958 journal articles have made open access via the repository (Green OA) route in the first 9 months of 2022. It is interesting to note that a Rights Retention Statement (RRS) was only included in 103 articles.
Timing of Open Access
By comparing the dates we have recorded for the official publication date and the date of earliest online access via the repository we can tell something about the timing of open access. The table below shows the available data for articles published in 2022.
| Timing of OA | # of Green OA articles |
| Before publication | 157 |
| Within 1 month of publication date | 644 |
| Between 1-3 months of publication date | 58 |
| Between 3-6 months of publication date | 16 |
| Greater than 6 months of publication date | 83 |
The majority of articles released before official publication in the journals are preprints that have been deposited in arXiv (or similar) and share a single research output record for the preprint version and journal article.
Around two-thirds (67%) of the Green OA articles were deposited and made OA within 1 month of the date of publication. This time period is the one recommended by UKRI to comply with their 2022 Open Access policy. Around 16% of Green OA articles were made open access after this 1 month deadline so technically would not comply with research funders policies, like the UKRI. Looking at the data more closely reveals that the majority of these seemingly uncompliant articles were submitted before 2022 so actually would not need to follow the immediate OA requirements.
Progress: snapshot of licensing formats
Looking at the licence details on the open access research output records in the CRIS (which includes Gold OA and Transformative Agreements) show that the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) licence is the most popular. It is worth noting that many scholars have opted to choose the more restrictive Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) licence. The licence field is not mandatory in the CRIS which means that often is it not completed. This is reflected by the high ‘unspecified’ response recorded for 1311 records.
| Row Labels | Count of Licenses to electronic version documents |
| All Rights Reserved | 56 |
| Creative Commons: Attribution (CC-BY) | 2433 |
| Creative Commons: Attribution No Derivatives (CC-BY-ND) | 10 |
| Creative Commons: Attribution Non-Commercial (CC-BY-NC) | 244 |
| Creative Commons: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) | 551 |
| Creative Commons: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA) | 20 |
| Creative Commons: Attribution-ShareAlike (CC-BY-SA) | 1 |
| GNU GPL | 1 |
| Other | 55 |
| Unspecified | 1311 |
| Grand Total | 3519 |
Summary
During the first 9 months of this year professional service staff in conjunction with the Library have been rolling out a massive advocacy push to let authors know about the new research publications policy. This has led to widespread engagement with academic authors who have made 90% of their research outputs open access, mostly within one month of publication. So far we have been informed that only three academics have opted-out from the institutional policy. This relatively low drop-out rate when considered alongside the fact that only 10% of accepted manuscripts have included the rights retention language (RRS) may mean that more outreach activities are required.
We note that the majority of these outputs have been made open via a combination of Transformational Agreements and Gold Open Access journals. However, where this has not been possible, the open access policy has enabled the remaining 27% to be published via the repository Green OA route mostly without embargo. We believe the rights retention policy is an important mechanism to allow authors to publish their research immediately, regardless of whether they have research funders mandates or not.
Lexis+ database training: Thursday 20th October
We’ve got a training day for the new Lexis+ database coming up which we highly recommend for students of all levels. The new platform from Lexis replaces LexisLibrary and LexisPSL so it’s well worth getting to know, whether you’ll be using databases for assignments, dissertations, research or as a legal practitioner. In each of these sessions Lexis trainer Claire will take attendees through training and tips for using the platform at either foundation or advanced level.
If you book the 10.30am or 2pm slot you will also gain the chance to sit your Lexis Certification test, which means you will gain a certificate perfect to put on your CV – future employers will be impressed if you come to them with certified research skills!
Book using the links below or search for ‘Lexis+’ on the MyEd Events Booking system.
- Foundation level (training only): 9.30 to 10.30am
- Foundation level (training and Lexis Certification): 10.30 to 12.00pm
- Advanced level (training only): 1.00 to 2.00pm
- Advanced level (training and Lexis Certification): 2.00 to 3.30pm
If you can’t make the sessions but still require help using the Lexis+ database, you can view our video (38 mins) recorded by Lexis trainer Claire specifically for our Diploma students. It provides a great all-round view of the database and where to find key items.
Please contact SarahLouise on law.librarian@ed.ac.uk if you have any questions or concerns about the live sessions or getting help with any of our databases.
Welcome! Key library resources for 2022/23
It’s been a bit quiet here on the ASL blog for the past couple of months and that’s because August and September are always spent preparing for the start of the new semester. Now that we’re well underway we’ve been busy doing inductions and welcome sessions to highlight some of our excellent services to new and returning students. In case you’ve missed any of the vital information we like you to have, here are some helpful links!
Library pages: You can find loads of helpful information about our services and library sites here. Look for opening hours, information on borrowing, and how to request resources here.
DiscoverEd: what we call a ‘library discovery tool’ is really what you might call the library catalogue. Look here for readings and research or just to explore the library collections! There’s a great guide on using DiscoverEd here. It’s a Microsoft Sway document but if you need a more accessible version please get in touch with us.
Resource Lists: online reading lists to help you find the core material for classes. Your course organisers have curated these to make sure you can easily access what you need. This link will take you to guides and videos for using Resource Lists too.
Library Subject Guides: these are curated pages of information that our team make up to help you with your studies. There are guides available for a huge range of subject areas and topics of interest.
LibSmart: this is our online information literacy course that you can enrol on any time throughout your time at University. We know not everyone comes to uni feeling confident about finding information, especially online, so this course has been built to guide you through some foundation skills. Follow the five modules in LibSmart I to help you get used to finding information and using the library’s collections, and dip in and out of LibSmart II’s modules on any subject that interests you!
These are just some of our top tips to help you get started during your time at the University of Edinburgh, but if you have questions at any time you can contact our team of librarians to help you get what you need. There’s a list of who deals with each subject on our website so please do get in touch, or leave us a comment on this post.
Check in with our blog regularly as we’ll be posting throughout the year about the upcoming Dissertation Festival, top features of LibSmart, new training sessions we offer, and much more!
Information skills throughout the year
If you read our last post, you’ll have heard all about the top information we like our students to have early in the semester; about inductions and key resources we want to make sure you can access. Now we’re a few weeks in we’ve had some more questions about what we have coming up next.
We have made up two documents here (one for undergraduate students, one for postgraduate students) which outlines the key training events we’ll be offering during 2022/23. This includes some law specific materials and some training that is open to all UoE students. Click on the documents below to download the PDF you need:
Information Skills sessions for Law (UG)
Information Skills sessions for Law (PG)
We’ll write more about specific training sessions nearer each event but in the mean time we hope this is useful. If you want to get in touch to discuss any library or research related questions, you can always reach us via law.librarian@ed.ac.uk.
Image from Moritz320 via Pixabay
New data archiving unit in MANTRA
Summertime is always a good time to renew and refresh – including open educational resources like Research Data MANTRA, https://mantra.ed.ac.uk, a free online course “for those who manage digital data as part of their research project.”
MANTRA’s lead editor Bob Sanders, in Library Research Support, has been busy in between his summer holidays getting all the topical units fit for new postgrads and early career researchers.
In particular each of the units’ links, images, videos, activities and further reading sections have been renewed, following a rolling revamp of most of the sections’ written content over the last couple of years. Two of the units, ‘Files, formats and transformation,’ and ‘Documentation, metadata and citation’ have been retired and replaced by a new ‘Preparing your data for archiving’ section, covering why and how to publish your data in a trustworthy repository.
We are also aware that the data handling tutorials, separate from the other units, have become more or less outdated and while we decide how to address this, users should be aware of the last update date on each set of those downloadable materials.
Of course we practice what we preach in terms of archiving, and so previous units that have been revamped have been archived on the Zenodo site, (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1035218), along with the retired ‘DIY RDM Training Kit for Librarians’ (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6532049).
I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Bob for acting as lead editor for MANTRA in recent years and for stewarding it through so many new developments in the field of research data management, and to wish him well in his new role as SCADR Training Manager in the School of GeoSciences.
For the complete set of RDM training by the Research Data Service, including live sessions, see https://www.ed.ac.uk/is/data-training.
Robin Rice
Data Librarian and Head, Research Data Support
Roper iPoll and Health Poll Database – on trial
*The Library now has access to Roper iPoll. See New! Roper iPoll.*
Thanks to a request from staff in SPS the Library currently has short-term trial access to both Roper iPoll and Health Poll Database.
Access Roper iPoll and Health Poll Database via the E-resources trials page.
Access is available on and off-campus.
Trial access ends 18th October 2022. Read More
Considering labels
The Cockburn Geological Museum at the Grant Institute holds an extensive collection of over 130,000 geological specimens that reflect the whole spectrum of earth science materials, including minerals, rocks and fossils. Most of these specimens have labels – some have multiple labels, some of these labels are loose paper in the bottom of specimen boxes, while others are glued directly on to the rock or mineral. Some information is written on with red or blue paint. Some specimens have all of the above – some don’t have any labels at all.
There are several specimens at the Cockburn that are clearly marked ‘Sir C Lyell’ – in what looks to be his own handwriting – a good indication that they were originally part of his own collection.
Now that the University of Edinburgh has acquired Lyell’s 294 Notebooks, for the first time, in a long time, both the specimens and the documentary records, can be brought together to share the same space. The notebooks offer the chance to enrich our knowledge of the specimens, adding valuable context and insight into when and where they were collected, and what they were potentially used for.
Using our now well-developed Lyell ‘next level’ palaeography skills, we feel ready to explore the links between specimens and the written information – but to get us started, we brought in the label expert!
Postgraduate researcher Kate Bowell is exploring the stories the National Museum of Scotland has told in their collection of 20,000 exhibition labels and how these stories have changed over time (See Kate’s blog here https://blog.nms.ac.uk/2021/12/14/a-history-of-exhibition-labels-and-the-stories-they-tell/ ). Her experience in studying the stories behind labels means she is the perfect person to help us start formulating a plan.
We were also pleased to have undergraduate student Will Adams join us. Currently in 4th year Archaeology at the University of Edinburgh, Will’s interested in archives and how they relate to archaeological collections – he is also on the quest to find a dissertation topic.
Could we join forces to help each other out? What followed was a joyous 3 hour discussion – exploring the history of labels, the history of collections, why people collect, how people use labels, personal collection administration, split and movement of collections, the rise and purpose of museums – and how museums subsequently label items, both for use and for public enjoyment.
Lyell’s administration throughout his collection – his page numbering, indexing and the labelling of his specimens – show that he actively used them as a resource for his work. No actual catalogue exists – and so we have to start slowly working out how he kept his collection in order, and how he used specimens to aid his understanding. Now that the collections are together, it should be possible to start to see how it all linked up – and there is huge potential to learn much more about the specimens.
For example, one of the Cockburn’s specimens, and part of Lyell’s original collection is this amazing Agate, labelled in Lyell’s own handwriting:
We recognise Lyell’s distinctive ‘e’ – and the place name Mount Horne points us to British Columbia[1]. The specimen’s original owner is noted by Lyell as the Honourable C.A. Murray. In many ways similar to Lyell, Charles Augustus Murray was an author and diplomat,. He attended Oxford University, and spent several years travelling across Europe and America from 1835 and 1838, describing his experiences in popular books on his return [2].
We know Lyell visited British Columbia several times; the collection includes both Charles and Mary’s certificates recording their passing behind Niagara Falls to Termination Rock dated the 7th June 1842; and a card representing Columbia College dated 1853. As we are able to identify critical information – names of people, places, mineral types – on the labels – these can be cross-referenced to text in the notebooks, allowing us to focus in on the history of the specimens. Creating this framework of knowledge allows us to develop our hypothesis about how travel, collaboration, and collecting (or trading) specimens fed into the larger ideas of the time relating to “how the earth systems worked”.
Will’s presence also helped us see how he can add archaeological detail to the specimens. Lyell’s interests where wide ranging, and his exploration of the history of man resulted in him collecting neolithic objects ranging from tools to beads. Of course, we cannot be experts in everything, and with the collection of specimens being held by the Grant Institute, they have been categorised very much as geological specimens. Will’s contribution proved how collaboration with people who can view the objects with an “archaeological eye” adds significant detail to the objects. Our meeting provided him with the perfect opportunity to dive in and begin to think about a project combining his interest in archives and collections. Inspired, Will has booked into the CRC Reading Room to start looking at the collection in more detail, and is talking to his dissertation advisor to firm up a plan.
The benefits in bringing both the collections and experts together are tangible. Collaborative work will really enhance the Lyell collection – indeed, our afternoon spent considering label gave us a practical insight into how he himself worked and used the collection.
Collections
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Projects
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