This week our project archivist gives us the inside view from our Body Language Archives project, bringing us on (the project management) board, with a review of project progress and highlights how archives cataloguing projects prepare the way new research.

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The images above are a selection of some of the slides that we shared with our project board from our project progress report presentation at our virtual project management board meeting on Tuesday 11 August 2020.

At the end of our virtual meeting on Tuesday afternoon this week, our project board unanimously enthused over our project progress. We thought we would share some of the highlights.

• Scottish Gymnastics collections catalogue complete and online
• Dunfermline College of Physical Education Old Students’ Associaiton complete, online 
• Dunfermline College of Physical Education 90% complete
• Dunfermline College of Physical Education, 447 student files rehoused and listed.
• Dunfermline College of Physical Education audiovisual / film – 180 new catalogue descriptions converted from legacy electronic data-set to online catalogue
• Margaret Morris Collection Photographs – expanded the existing data-set from 406 catalogue descriptions to 1738 descriptions, uploaded to ArchivesSpace (online catalogue)
• Margaret Morris Collection 2534 / 3596 catalogue descriptions completed on ArchivesSpace
• Technical infrastructure for test project website in place with draft content

All of this work means that these collections will become more accessible and open up new areas of potential research around health, well-being, movement, dance, the history of sporting apparel, the history of sport management and so much more.  All of which afford us the opportunity to develop a greater understanding of these subject areas, their interrelationships, and the human experience as a whole.

We are helped greatly in our work by some fantastic volunteers. It is always a pleasure to report positive stories to our project board about the range of work we do to support new archive professionals. This was easy for me to do, as I had the pleasure of being supported by two up and coming professionals on the Body Language project. One of whom is just about to complete an MSc Information Management and Preservation and the second is now working as a fully qualified archivist with the Centre for Research Collections at the University of Edinburgh. Well done to both Emma and Elise, and a great big thank you to both of them for their wonderful work on the project.

Our project board is made up of a group of academics, and curatorial and archive professionals with research and collection care interests in movement, dance and physical education collections. Together they make sure that our project stays on track, and help us to think outside the day to day activities of the archive cataloguing work. I always enjoy meeting with our project board as they are so incredibly supportive of our work and inevitably bring something surprising and valuable to the table that we hadn’t thought of. It usually starts with “what about…..?”  A huge thank you to Professor John Ravenscroft, Dr Wendy Timmons, Dr Matt McDowell, Dr Tiffany Boyle, Rhona Rodger, and Rachel Hosker for their continued support.

Elaine MacGillivray
Project Archivist

July was a busy month for the Sir Charles Lyell Collection, and the Centre for Research Collections.

After much planning and advice, the CRC passed inspection, and we opened again for University of Edinburgh researchers on 8 July with new ways of working, but offering access to our collections once again. This has also meant that we were able to welcome in new acquisitions whose delivery was paused during the nation’s lockdown. Which means, at long last, we are able to share the news of a very exciting addition of papers, correspondence, and rare manuscripts to the University’s Sir Charles Lyell Collection.

Rachel Hosker assists with off-loading the material in auction boxes, and moving them to be condition checked by Katherine Richardson.

This new collection includes over 900 letters to and from Sir Charles Lyell (including additional letters from Darwin, Joseph Dalton Hooker, John Murray, etc.); intimate correspondence between Lyell and his wife, Mary Horner Lyell, and his wider family; autograph manuscripts of a number of lectures delivered both in the United States and in the United Kingdom; a part of the autograph manuscript of Principles of Geology; maps commissioned for lectures and publications; and heavily annotated editions of Principles of Geology and other works marked up for later editions. This additional collection was allocated to the University of Edinburgh Library in 2020 by HM Government under the Acceptance in Lieu of Inheritance Scheme, from the estate of the 3^rd Baron Lyell.

Daryl Green, Head of Special Collections, inspects a hand-drawn geological map of Kinnordy Estate and its district from the newly acquired Sir Charles Lyell archive. Photo © David Cheskin

Daryl Green, our Head of Special Collections and Deputy Director of the CRC, has had a chance to have an initial dive into this collection in order to check its inventory and gauge its quality. Here’s some initial reactions:

“Having arrived in March to my new post as Head of Special Collections, one of my first tasks was to oversee the transfer of this material from its holding location in London to the University. Lockdown prevented our best laid plans, however, and the Acceptance in Lieu material finally arrived on a warm and quiet day mid-July. Sifting through this material in an initial ‘getting to know you’ session, I was struck at how thorough the correspondence archive was. There are folder and folders of correspondence with Charles Bunbury, Joseph Dalton Hooker, John Murray and many others, but also transcripts of letters going out that were copied by one of Lyell’s sister-in-laws, Katherine Murray Lyell. Here, too, is a lifetime of correspondence between Charles and Mary Horner Lyell, from initial courting, to full blown intellectual romance, to letters later in life. 

Letters from Sir Charles Lyell to his fiancée, Mary Horner, from the newly acquired Sir Charles Lyell archive. Photo © David Cheskin

As I sorted through folders I came across diagrams for how Lyell wanted his lecture theatre laid out for his tour of the States, I found hand-drawn maps and illustrations, both by Lyell and commissioned from others, including alluring diagrams, a gorgeous watercolour map of Etna, and a huge geological map of the Kinnordy Estate and its district.

Detail of a hand-drawn map of Mount Etna from the newly acquired Sir Charles Lyell archive.

 “This archive is by all accounts an amazing resource in its own regard.”

Letters upon letters between geologists, students, and admirers have all been beautifully preserved and organized by the Lyell family, and included in the archive was some of the work done by a member of the Lyell family in the 20^thcentury to track down and copy correspondence, especially between Lyell and Charles Darwin, which had ended up in other collections. This archive is by all accounts an amazing resource in its own regard and, when paired with the notebooks, the further archive material, the publications and the geological samples, gives a more complete picture of how science was conducted in the 19^th century than any other archive I am aware of.”

Conservation and archival description work is ongoing in order to provide public access to this collection. To support these activities and digitisation, read more here.