A year has passed since National Library of Scotland staff began remote working due to the COVID-19 crisis. The adaptability of the Library’s personnel to their new circumstances and the use of Microsoft Teams, Zoom video conferencing, and the accessing of files and databases through a VPN (virtual private network) has enabled the mission, work […]
Author: James Mitchell
Bonner and his Bees: Historical Beekeeping in Scotland
In anticipation of Spring’s arrival I’ve recently been doing a little gardening to prepare plants, trees and soil for the coming warmer weather and its promise of rebirth after the dreich Scottish winter. The returning of birdsong and the anticipation of flowers and green leaves made me consider the importance of bees to the wellbeing […]
Robert Louis Stevenson and Switzerland
“A mountain valley has, at the best, a certain prison-like effect on the imagination, but a mountain valley, an Alpine winter, and an invalid’s weakness make up among them a prison of the most effective kind”. December 3, 2019 marks the 125th anniversary of the death of Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894). As a memorial, the […]
Cross Trust Special Collections Interns 2019
Our names are Jennifer Stewart and Honor Wilson and we have just completed a four-week Special Collections Internship at the National Library of Scotland. We both had backgrounds working within the archival and library sector prior to commencing our internships: Honor had volunteered at the University of Edinburgh’s Centre for Research Collections and is about […]
Cross Trust Special Collections Interns 2018
Our names are James Fox and Amanda Bowie and we have just completed a four week Special Collections Internship with the National Library of Scotland. Both of us have a background in history: James is about to enter the final year of an MA in History at the University of St Andrews and Amanda has […]
Forty Years Gone: New Wave and Disco in 1978
The year 1978 saw a changing of the guard in popular music. The decade-long dominance of heavy blues-based rock was coming to an end and in its place two new genres, new wave and disco, would rise to attain massive worldwide popularity while at the same time becoming templates for popular music up to the […]
Talwin Morris: Book Design and the Glasgow School at the Turn of the 20th century
My name is Kathryn Hillman. I’ve just completed a postgraduate internship within Rare Books Collections as part of my MSc in Art in the Global Middle Ages at the University of Edinburgh. I spent most of my time here at the National Library working on the Provenance Project, researching and identifying the previous ownership history of rare books […]
Oliver & Boyd
Recent visitors to the National Library of Scotland may have noticed two stern visages gazing down on them as they ascend the front stair.
16th Century Venetian Chapbooks
I’m presently cataloguing the important collection of chapbooks held in the Lauriston Castle Collection. Chapbooks are small paper-covered booklets, usually printed on a single sheet, folded into books of 8, 12, 16 and 24 pages, and often illustrated with crude woodcuts. They were in circulation primarily from the 16th to the 19th centuries, and sold by […]
Cross Trust Special Collections Interns
Our names are Amy Kerr and Jennifer Roach and we have just completed our four week special collections internship in Archives, Records Management and Rare Books Librarianship. We are very grateful to have been given this opportunity, which was was funded by the Cross Trust. We both came from different postgraduate courses: Amy is completing […]