Author Archives: universitycollectionsvolunteers

Volunteer of the Month – February 2014

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Claire Rochet, Musical Instrument Museum Edinburgh Volunteer

I have been working with the Musical Instrument Collection since October and I had the chance as a volunteer to explore different areas of their two museums, St Cecilia’s Hall and the Reid Concert Hall.  During the first 3 months, I was a guide at St Cecilia’s Hall, which was great as it permitted me to familiarise myself with the collection.  During my Bachelor’s Degree and first Master’s Degree, I specialised in museology but never came across musicology which means that I was a complete beginner when I first started.  Needless to say that I learnt a lot!

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Since last month, I have been working in collaboration with Colette Bush, the Museums Galleries Scotland Intern based with the CRC and Museums, at the Reid Concert Hall, where we are in charge of reviewing the display of the collection.  I am very excited about this project, even more so when I learnt that the Reid is actually the first purpose built establishment as an instrument museum in the world.

 

This project is connected to the redevelopment plan at St Cecilia’s Hall which will lead to its temporary closure next September for about a year or two.  Until now, the musical instrument collection was equally spread out between both museums.  During St Cecilia’s Hall’s closure, the collection will be only visible at the Reid which means the museum will become the collection’s main venue.  One other aim of this project is to expand the museum’s engagement with the general public by making the content more accessible.  In order to do that, we are planning a display based on thematics but we also intend to make the content of the cases more comprehensible by putting more explanatory labels and less instruments on display.  Even if the Reid itself is quite small, the collection on display is actually quite extensive which can be quite disconcerting for the visitor (around 1000 items are on display!).

 

Although, the collection being first of all a teaching collection, it should still be complete enough so the music school can use the collection as a point of reference for their classes, which is a big challenge as we need to find the right balance between accessibility and educational purposes.

 

Innovative Learning Week – Online Quiz

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Poster_ART_060114We’ve been running an online quiz during Innovative Learning Week with questions based on many of our different online resources.  The first nine questions have already been posted on the CRC Facebook page, the 10th and final question will be posted at 3pm this afternoon ( https://www.facebook.com/crc.edinburgh ).  For anyone who has missed the questions so far, here is a quick recap:

Question 1:  Looking at our image collections here:   http://images.is.ed.ac.uk/  In the Roslin Institute Collection, what is Mr Anthony H Wingfield riding?

Question 2: Using the English Short Title Catalogue (http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/information-services/library-museum-gallery/finding-resources/library-databases/databases-a-z/databases-e ), search for “Perverting divine truth”.  What is the title of the book you find, and where is the nearest copy located?

Question 3: In 1915, father and son William Henry and William Lawrence Bragg won the Nobel Prize for Physics for their foundational work published in the book “X-rays and crystal structure”.  Using the library catalogue, where is the 1915 edition of this book held? http://catalogue.lib.ed.ac.uk/vwebv/searchBasic?sk=en_US

Question 4: Reputedly, we have the first drawing of a Native American in the Laing Collection in http://images.is.ed.ac.uk/ .  What is his name?

Question 5: Using the Archives and Manuscripts catalogue (http://www.archives.lib.ed.ac.uk/), which post would Arthur Darbishire have filled had he not died in the First World War?

Question 6: Browse through the UoEArtandArchives blog (http://uoeartandarchives.tumblr.com/).  Who was Monster Hunting in 1934?

Question 7: Bugles are instruments that have been used as signalling devises in the military for generations.  MIMEd has a bugle in its collection that is said to have been taken off of a German soldier at the battle of the Somme.  Using the MIMEd website http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/information-services/library-museum-gallery/museums-and-galleries/musical-instrument-museums/mime , can you find the name of the maker and the German town in which it was made in c 1914?

Question 8: What was title of the article/paper that was prepared for the University Court by a Rector who went on to become Prime Minister?  The date the paper was laid before the Court was 26th May 1975. Again look in the archive resources here: http://www.archives.lib.ed.ac.uk/

Question 9: Which collections held by Lothian Health Services Archive (http://www.lhsa.lib.ed.ac.uk/) were inscribed into the UNESCO Memory of the World Register in 2011?

To submit your answers at the end of the week, use the form here: http://www.emailmeform.com/builder/form/1HI905dJ87

Volunteer of the Month – January 2014

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Beth Dumas, CRC Taster Day Volunteer

Since October, I have been volunteering with the CRC, doing one or two day sessions with each department and discovering how every job contributes to the task of running the University of Edinburgh’s Special Collections. Just by volunteering one day a week, I was able to jump right into assisting with book collections, responding to queries for information or digital images, and the beginnings of rare books and archive cataloguing. Among other highlights, I discovered a fascinating drawing in a late 19th century casebook from the Lothian Health Services Archive, encountered more books in Icelandic than I’d ever imagined would be in Edinburgh, and spent a rather poignant day sorting materials associated with alumni who fought in WWI.

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As a student in the MSc Material Cultures and History of the Book programme, the experience has proved invaluable in my understanding of how the modern library handles rare books, manuscripts, and archives, and the varied professions associated with an institution such as the CRC. This practical information has dove-tailed nicely with my academic interest in book history, and rounded out my studies in a way that simply completing my course-work never would. When I started volunteering, I knew I wanted to work in a library but wasn’t sure where I would be the best fit, but by learning about every department, I was able to determine that my strongest interest is in rare books, which led directly into my new position as one of two cataloguing interns in the rare books and manuscripts division of the CRC, which I am eagerly looking forward to as the next step on my career path. I would strongly suggest that anyone with an interest in literature, art, history, or, obviously, book history, take the time to volunteer at the CRC, because it’s a rewarding way to see how your academic interests can be applied to managing and preserving the wealth of material culture available at the University.

Volunteer of the Month – November 2013

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Emma Smith

Exhibitions Intern and Volunteer

I was the Exhibitions Intern based in the CRC during the summer and I was tasked with the planning, design and curation of an exhibition which would be on display in the Main Library Exhibition Room over the winter.  I used this opportunity to design an exhibition which is based on the theme of “cabinets of curiosity” and highlights the breadth of the University’s Collections.  I have had a chance to work with a number of the collection curators and other staff within the CRC to help create the Collect.Ed exhibition.

 

As an undergraduate keen to develop a career in the museums and heritage sector, this has been a fantastic opportunity for me to gain valuable skills and experience in this highly competitive field.  I hope that this exhibition will give other students, staff and visitors an opportunity to see some of the amazing items in the University’s collection and will be enjoyed as much as I enjoyed its creation and realisation.

 

Collect.Ed will be open in the Main Library Exhibition Room until 1 March.

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Kirsty Bailey – October 2013

Norman Dott Project Volunteer

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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

Dott web image 19-10-2012

 

Volunteer of the Month – September 2013

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Jessica Macaulay

Digital Imaging Unit Volunteer

From February – August 2013 I volunteered two afternoons a week to work in the Digital Imaging Unit under the direction of Malcolm and Susan. During the course of my time in the DIU I participated in a number of projects ranging including cropping images for the online book reader, enriching the metadata for the online images of the Rashid al-Din, and researching a number of images and objects for key-wording before they were uploaded into flickr.  At the end of my stint I was able to assist in setting up a twitter account for the CRC (@UofECRC) in order to help promote the physical and online collections and have continued to contribute to the twitter account from Canada.

https://twitter.com/UofECRC

 

Volunteer of the Month – August 2013

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Sandi Phillips

Conservation Volunteer

Once a fortnight for the past two years I have been conserving 550 sheets of paper belonging to the Carmichael Watson Collection. These date from the late 1800s to the early 1900s and are all mostly in Gaelic, written by the scholar Alexander Carmichael. Most of the sheets needed quite a lot of attention. The majority of them needed surface cleaning. This entailed using a chemical sponge and gentle use of an eraser. There were also sheets which had rust on them where metal paper clips had been attached. Rust was removed with the tip of a scalpel using magnifying glasses. Great care was needed so that only the damaged fibres were taken away. Tears were repaired using Japanese paper and wheat starch paste with the pages pressed to ensure the ‘glue’ had dried. Finally all the sheets were placed in acid-free folders and housed in a low-acid board box.

Sandi Phillips

Some of the sheets had interesting watermarks on them and as an aside from the practical element of this paper conservation I decided to do a bit of investigation in my own time. Some of the watermarks originated from a papermaker in Glasgow. I found out that the United Wire factory which I live near created the wireworks used for making paper, so it is possible that some of the paper on which I had been working might have been created on wires made in this factory.

Intern of the Month – July 2013

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Snezhana Savova

CRC Marketing Intern

I have been the summer Marketing Intern at the Centre for Research Collections (CRC) for the past two months.  My task was to research and review the current marketing strategy of the department and to propose ways to improve it in order to further develop the CRC and to better promote the various impressive Collections it is home to.

I spent the initial two weeks of my internship to discovering the Collections and the hidden treasures, many of which I have never heard of before I came to the CRC.  Subsequently, I researched the printed promotional material, as well as the online and social media presence of the department and started work on their improvement.  My main aim was to raise the awareness for the existence and significance of the Collections; the target audience included all students and staff of the University, people who use the collections for their research purposes and the wider public.

After four weeks, I presented my suggestions to the department based my research of the current strategy of the CRC and the activities of other similar institutions.  My presentation covered a broad range of topics and areas to be worked on in order to present and promote the CRC and the Collections in a more inspiring, exciting and remarkable way.

For the remainder of these two months, I worked on the implementation of my suggestions and succeeded to actually make some real changes and improvements.  Many new and innovative ways to deliver our message to diverse groups are now utilised and there is significantly higher awareness of the department within the University.

My time at the CRC was very pleasant and fruitful and it contributed both to the growth of the department and my personal one.  I feel I have gained valuable skills which will be highly beneficial for my future career development.  Furthermore, I met great people and had the pleasure to work in a very positive and supportive environment.

Finally, I am more than happy to continue helping the CRC and am looking forward to coming back as a volunteer during term time.

Volunteer of the Month – June 2013

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Sophie Volker

CRC Archives Volunteer

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I have been working on the Quatercentenary Collection for more than 6 months. In 1983 the University celebrated its 400th anniversary and, as part of these celebrations, the University library put out a call to all alumni and ex-staff (this was before the archive existed), asking them for contributions to a collection which would be used to illustrate student life at Edinburgh. Hundreds of people responded, and the library was sent thousands of items including class cards, degree scrolls, lecture notes, tickets to dances, menus for club dinners and photographs. It’s not just documents, though – I have found two embroidered velvet caps and a box of 1930s cigarettes! I think my favourite thing in the whole collection is a dance card from the 1920s, which has a tiny pencil attached by a piece of ribbon. The collection ranges in date from the 1870s to the 1970s – more or less 100 years of student life at the University of Edinburgh.  Many people who sent items also included letters with their recollections of their time at university. This enormous, important collection was then split up according to type: photographs in a box with other photographs, boxes full of party invitations, boxes and boxes containing only class cards.

My job is to put each individual accession back together again – instead of items being catalogued by type, they will be catalogued in groups according to who deposited them. This has meant making a list of what is in every one of the 42 boxes, and then going through every box and taking out the separate items and rehousing them in proper archive folders and boxes. It is very satisfying bringing all the different items together to make a little picture of an individual’s time at the University of Edinburgh. I love knowing that these things will be catalogued in their proper place, and that one day someone will look at them and find out about an ancestor’s student days.

Volunteer Event – June 2013

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Some of our volunteers gave presentations at a special event yesterday to say thank you to our volunteers for the all hard work that they have been putting in over the past few months.  Eleven volunteers gave short presentations outlining the work they have been doing, what skills they have been learning and how their experiences have been helping them to develop.  We would like to say a big thank you to everyone who attended yesterday’s event in the CRC and especially to those who did presentations.

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