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January 24, 2026
Winter wishes from the Law Library team
As 2021 draws to a close, we realise this has been another unusual term for staff and students at the University. While the Law Library is still open until 4.50pm tomorrow (Thursday 23rd December), we will then close our doors until Wednesday 5th January 2022. If you are studying or conducting research over the winter break you will find our online resources remain accessible via the usual channels, but should you run into difficulties we will not be able to respond to any messages until we return in January.
On behalf of the team at the Law Library Helpdesk and the Academic Support Librarians we wish you all a restful and restorative break, and hope for your health and happiness during your time away from the University. We look forward to welcoming you back (whether in-person or remotely) in January.
SarahLouise and Donna, festive Law Librarians
Voices, Voices, Voices! Fieldwork, Creative Practice and The School of Scottish Studies
Written by Louise Scollay, Archive & Library Assistant
Back in August, we held an online seminar and Q&A with Dr Hugh Hagan, Martine Robertson and Hannah Wood where they discussed their fieldwork and research into the lived experience of women in the shipbuilding community of Port Glasgow.
Dr Hugh Hagan, Head of Public Records Act Implementation at the National Records of Scotland, is passionate about the shipbuilding communities of Port Glasgow and Greenock on the lower reaches of the River Clyde, particularly in the inter-war period. These towns, being removed by some distance from the large and diverse economy of Glasgow, depended entirely on shipbuilding and they developed a very particular sense of community. This was the subject of his PhD research at the School of Scottish Studies in the 1990s and he drew from that research for the talk, specifically the role of women in these communities.
Martine Robertson and Hannah Wood, of GaelGal Productiions, were undertaking studies at the Department of Celtic and Scottish Studies, when they attended a lecture by Hugh about his Port Glasgow work. They were galvanised to revisit this fieldwork, recording new material with the family of Cassie Graham, one of Hugh’s contributors. They have also been inspired to take these stories to centre stage, lifting the voices and experience of women of the Port Glasgow community and using these recordings in their creative practice. At this event, they presented a post-card sized version of their creative project, What a Voice.
The event was well attended and we had some excellent questions for the panel. However, because our speakers were all connected with SSSA through their studies and fieldwork, we decided to arrange a further conversation for our blog, as part of our ongoing celebrations of our 70th Anniversary.
As Hannah, Hugh, Martine and myself are all alumni of The School of Scottish Studies, you can imagine that there was a lot of shared memory and a lot of enthusiasm for oral history – we talked for over an hour and so we have split this conversation into three parts to be more digestible. Included throughout these are extracts of the original fieldwork recordings and excerpts from Hannah and Martine’s work What a Voice.
A point to consider: This is a zoom recording, so we were at the mercy of connections. As such there are one or two frozen images and moments of patchy audio.
If you are a University of Edinburgh Ease-user, you can also view these on our Media Hopper Channel.
Memories of The School of Scottish Studies and studying at The University of Edinburgh
Fieldwork Practices
Creative use of Oral History Recordings and the future for OH in Scotland
It is always incredible to see how people interact and respond to oral history recordings in the archive.
As we discuss here, the experiences of women in Port Glasgow aren’t found in official statistics or in public records. Memories and lived experience can only be captured by talking to someone from that community, someone who experienced that life. It is an incredible privilege to have these recordings in the collection at SSSA and it is thrilling to see how archive material can be used creatively – opening up the lives and experience of Port Glasgow women to new audiences.
As we stand on the cusp of Scotland’s Year of Stories in 2022, whose are the voices and what are the stories that you want to hear or draw out of archives? Indeed, whose are the voices and stories you wish to put into the archives, with your own fieldwork or creative practice? Do you have a story to tell? We would love to hear from you. Contact us via email , or leave us a comment on this post.
New feature in Edinburgh DataShare: the REST API
Ever wanted to get a table of the details of all the datasets on DataShare to do with Scottish history? Or matching some other criteria, possibly on specified fields? If so, the new API (Application Programming Interface) can help.
DataShare now has a REST API, which you can use to query our metadata. An API makes the database’s contents accessible for requests from external servers, through a command-line, which allows external users to script such requests. The DSpace API also provides its own web-based query client and report client. These pages allow users to use a graphical interface to quickly build a query and see the results in a table, all in the browser.
The DataShare REST API page starts with a link to our plain-English explanation of how the API can be used:
Edinburgh DataShare DSpace REST API
We would like to hear from anyone who wants to use the API. Please try it out and let us know what you find useful! Email us at data-support@ed.ac.uk .
Examples using the graphical query builder
I wanted to find datasets where I could add a link to the associated publication. This is a bit of a challenge for us, since users typically deposit their data with us under embargo before the associated paper has been published, and we do not have an automatic way to detect when or whether an associated publication has appeared. I used the query builder to find the IsReferencedBy value for deposits accessioned in 2017. The plain-English guide on the wiki provides the steps I went through to do so:
How to use the DataShare REST API
This feature may be of use to colleagues who support organisational units at University of Edinburgh which don’t align precisely with the Collections structure of DataShare – the API lets you query on multiple collections through the reporting tool. We’d love for colleagues to contact us if their teams have published a new paper containing a data citation of their DataShare deposit, so we can add the details of the publication to the DataShare Item’s metadata, resulting in a hyperlink appearing on the dataset landing page.
I wanted to find datasets with an embargo date in December. This is a challenge for us because users often set their embargo expiry date to Hogmanay, which means their one-week reminder would arrive on Christmas Day right in the middle of the university’s winter break. But many other fields contain dates with December in them, so it has not been practical for me to search for this using the graphical interface. So I used the API to search specifically in the dc.date.embargo field. See the screenshot below. The API helped me find the datasets whose embargo date we needed to extend, or else lift the embargo outright, allowing us to contact the depositors in good time to ask them whether a paper had been published or more time was needed.
Results showing datasets with an embargo date in December 2021
Thirdly, to demonstrate the power of this tool relative to the non-specific Search I chose a topic with very common words to show how to use the query builder to focus in on results avoiding spurious matches.
Using the existing ‘Search’ function on the homepage I searched for ‘history Scotland’. This produced 39 matches, some of which have nothing to do with historical research or Scotland, but merely mention a funder “NHS Research Scotland”, and mention the history of the research field in passing to provide a little context. Most of the matches are interesting, but some are not relevant.
Whereas when I set the API query builder to search for ‘history’ in the research area (subject classification), and ‘Scotland’ in the field for geographical metadata ie dc.coverage.spatial. This provided me with a short list of high quality matches, three datasets of historical research to do with Scotland – see the screenshot. This is a useful tool for narrowing a search.
A search for two very common words in specific fields produces high quality results
Enabling the API
The REST API is a feature of the underlying DSpace repository software. Our sysadmins configured the API with great care to block certain commands and enable only the ‘GET’ commands that are needed for appropriate queries using DSpace config settings (further info DSpace 6 Documentation on the Lyrasis wiki ).
The Future
In the international DSpace repository community, we’re aware the API is used for integration with at least one CRIS (Current Research Information System) and quality tool applications (Andrea Bollini, 4Science, private communication). We understand the API of the newer DSpace 7 contains significant changes compared to that of DSpace 6, which we’re using for Edinburgh DataShare.
We’re aware of only a few examples of the API being used by individuals for occasional metadata queries. But we will watch with interest to see how the DSpace 7 API will be used.
Pauline Ward
Research Data Support Assistant
Library and University Collections
University of Edinburgh
Celebrating a 70th Anniversary Acquisition!
Earlier this year, the School of Scottish Studies Archive and the Centre for Research Collections teamed up with renowned Scottish photographer, Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert, to add a landmark collection of photos to the School’s documentary collections. Sutton-Hibbert has worked as a freelance photographer and photojournalist for over 30 years and in 2012 co-founded Document Scotland – a collective of Scottish documentary photographers.
Photo 1 Tam Gay repairs torn nets aboard the Mairead, North Sea, February 1993 SSSA/JSH1/20
Sutton-Hibbert’s documentary work focusing on Scotland filled a natural gap in the Archive’s extensive photographic holdings, and the team worked with him to identify three series of photographs which would best suit the collection. Selections were made from his North Sea Fishing (1992-1995), the recently demolished Longannet Colliery (2001), and Paddy’s Market (2000) which echoed with coastal working life, Scottish industrial cultures, and urban living which can be found throughout the School’s archive.
Photo 2 Miners getting on the trolley train to the underground of Longannet Colliery, Fife, April 2001 SSSA/JSH3/3
The SSSA70 acquisition includes over 50 beautifully hand-made prints by Sutton-Hibbert and digital files of each of these images which can be viewed on our digital image database. Our teams have been busy behind the scenes to catalogue this collection and make the digital images available in our anniversary year.
“I have immensely enjoyed listing the 50 photographic prints acquired from Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert,” say Elliot Holmes, Archives & Library Assistant, School of Scottish Studies, “The collection has been listed in original order to three series, which includes the life aboard seine-netter boats within the North Sea Fishing prints, the historic Paddy’s Market in Glasgow, and depictions of the life of people working underground at Longannet Colliery. Each itemed photograph depicts such a dynamic portrayal of the social and working lives of Scottish people that you can clearly see and feel the emotion of each photographic subject through the prints. Being from a mining town in south Wales, I particularly enjoyed listing the images of Longannet Colliery as that is a history and way of life that I grew up with and will always feel a grand connection to. Each individual print is a valuable addition to our collection as they are such a clear portrayal of the dynamics of Scottish working life and people.”
In May of this year, Jeremy sat down with our Head of Special Collections, Daryl Green, to talk about his work and this new collection. As part of this acquisition, we’re very pleased to make this conversation available to all, too:
In Conversation with Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert
You can also see some of our photographic collections digitised online, including the Robert Atkinson collection of St. Kilda photographs here: St. Kilda
To stay in touch with the School of Scottish Studies Archive and Library, you can find us on Twitter at @EU_SSSA
Our information and contact details can be found here: School of Scottish Studies Archive
Finding International Legal Resources
Following on from our last post about Finding Material for your Research and Study, we’ve just recorded a new video to introduce some of the databases we subscribe to for international law. If this is an area that is relevant to your study, grab a cup of tea and spend eight and a half minutes finding out more about how library subscription services can support your work.
Is there an area of legal research you’d like to know more about, or would like to find resources for? Email us on law.librarian@ed.ac.uk to discuss, or book a one-to-one appointment with us via the MyEd booking system; search for “Literature search clinic” and select the Law specific event, or search for “Law” and select provider group “IS Library and University Collections” to find all our Law related training.
Finding material for your research and studies
It is nearing the end of semester and the pressure to complete dissertations and study for exams is on. The Law Subject Guide is one place where you can find quick links to useful resources.
As well as linking to the databases we also have a section on where to find the key eBooks and Law Reports. This provides a helpful at-a-glance guide to where to find particular reports or statutes, and we’ve also added a document which shows which books are available via each of our databases.
TIP: When you download the PDF, open the document use the CTRL+F shortcut on your keyboard to search for the name of the book you’re looking for to see which database has it!
Don’t forget there are also videos demonstrating how to use the law databases more effectively available on the Law Librarian Media Hopper Channel, and you can always email for advice if you encounter any issues: Law.Librarian@ed.ac.uk
LibSmart: Popular modules
By now we hope the name LibSmart is familiar to you. Whether you’ve seen a slide in a presentation from an Academic Support Librarian, a page on the display screens in the library, or you’re just an avid reader of this blog, we hope you know that our online information literacy course is up and running, ready for any staff or students at the University of Edinburgh to self-enrol via Learn.
You may also know that for every module you complete in LibSmart you receive a Digital Badge, issued to you by the ASL team via Badgr. We’ve been keeping an eye on the number of students enrolled and also the number of badges we’ve issued for each module, and we’re starting to see some trends emerge even though it’s still early in the academic year.
LibSmart badges
For LibSmart I, we’ve definitely seen the most badges issued for the first module Getting Started With The Library. This isn’t a great surprise as it is the first module and therefore a logical place for people to start. We’re also seeing great numbers in our Your Information Landscape module which helps students orientate themselves with the resources that are helpful for their subject area. We’ve also seen the most growth month-to-month in our Referencing and Plagiarism module, perhaps because we’re getting close to assessment time now and people are making sure they’re familiar with how to reference correctly for their assignments.
When it comes to LibSmart II, we’ve had a nice even spread of badges being awarded across all modules. The most popular so far has been Data mindfulness: finding and managing data for your dissertation, which shows a real appetite for assistance with dissertation and thesis work. This is great news as this is exactly what we hoped LibSmart II would do – help those at an advanced stage of study complete the big pieces of work! We’ve also got a three-way tie in second place for the Health Literature, Digital Images and Special Collections Fundamentals modules all having the same number of badges awarded. Because we assume these would appeal to students of quite different disciplines, it’s great to see the word is getting out to different schools!
Have you had a look to see what LibSmart can offer yet? Check the website for more information, or watch our self-enrol demonstration video to help you get started.
Law Library: Changes to opening times
As the end of semester approaches, you may be concerned about the hours the library will be open in the run up to exams. We’ve increased weekend hours as we get closer to the exam period by opening later on Sundays in December:
Monday 29th November 2021 to Monday 20th December 2021
| Monday – Thursday | 9am – 9:50pm |
| Friday | 9am – 6:50pm |
| Saturday | 9am – 4:50pm |
| Sunday | 12 noon – 6:50pm |
There will also be changes to the opening hours over the winter break, as follows:
Tuesday 21 December 2021 to Sunday 16 January 2022
| Tuesday 21 – Thursday 23 December 2021 | 9am – 4:50pm |
| Friday 24 December 2021 – Tuesday 4 January 2022 | Closed |
| Wednesday 5 – Friday 7 January 2022 | 9am – 4:50pm |
| Saturday 8 & Sunday 9 January 2022 | Closed |
| Monday 10 – Friday 14 January 2022 | 9am – 4:50pm |
| Saturday 15 & Sunday 16 January 2022 | Closed |
Normal semester opening hours will resume on Monday 17th January 2022.
If you find the times above don’t suit your schedule for study, you may want to look at the Main Library opening hours, or for a complete list of library opening information please check the Library website.
Finding Resources: Subject Guides
Where to start?
Following on from my general tips for finding resources and navigating the online library, this blog post will cover why you should check out Subject Guides, and highlights some resources, old and new, that you may not already know about for studies.
When you are looking for resources, remember not everything in the Library collection is on DiscoverEd, so it’s best to check out your Subject Guide.
Subject Guides bring together all the most relevant library resources for a subject or topic. These guides, put together by Academic Support Librarians (ASLs), are always a good place to start when you’re looking for resources. Read More
Mixed Methods Reviews
Most researchers have heard of and understand the needs of a systematic review (SR), however the concept of a mixed methods review (MMR) can be confusing. The types of questions students and researchers ask can include:
- Can I do this type of research?
- How do I combine the data?
- My quantitative and qualitative data are different – how do I make sense of this?
MMRs differ from the traditional model of SR as they aim to answer complex interventions and social policy type questions. They go beyond what works and look to highlight the complexity of what is happening, to explain why things make an impact and what may influence how an intervention works, offering context to interventions.
To answer such questions MMRs need to draw from both quantitative and qualitative material (Pearson et al, 2015), but this does not mean they cannot be systematic!
To be systematic they should demonstrate the same transparent and explicit approach that established SR methods require – so have a protocol, as well as detailed reporting of methods. There would need to be appraisal and analysis of the included literature. They would need to show a rigorous research process (Gough et al, 2017).
There are different review approaches included in this type of research, but it is important that the research question uses both qualitative and quantative data. If the research question does not then it may be better to use another type of review method. An overview of review types can be found in an article by Sutton et al (2019).
How the types of data are combined depends on the research objectives of the review.
The resource SAGE Research Methods (which is available to all staff and students at the University via our Library Databases pages) has lots of information and advice on the ways that the differing data can be analysed and combined, as well as an overview of this family of research methodology.
Donna Watson
Academic Support Librarian
Collections
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Projects
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