This short blog uncovers the story of Anchor Pensioners 1965, a recent addition to the moving image catalogue, and illustrates how public engagement is key to understanding some of the unique archival material in the Library’s collections. The film came in to the archive a few years ago as a consequence of a house move. […]
Author: Staff Writer
Collections available for music making
While the National Library of Scotland is a reference-only library and doesn’t lend music, mass digitisation has seen the set up of ‘Special Collections of Printed Music’ on our Digital Gallery. You can browse the different sections of this site or you can search for specific titles or composer’s names. Over the past year we […]
Fishing for films
‘’There are 24 hours in the day and every one of them is for fishing.’’ Beyond the Grampians (1963) Films are often factual historical documents providing evidence, not simply of working practices, but how people lived and what life was actually like. Audiovisual records can contain inherent bias or a particular audience or message that […]
Automatically transcribing the Marjory Fleming Diaries
This blog post by Joe Nockels explores the creation of the first Library dataset to be generated using the Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology of Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR). As a result we now have an accurate semi-automatic transcription of the diaries of Scottish child author Marjory Fleming (1803-1811). Few historical texts voice the experience of […]
Exploring climate change, environmental damage and race.
Through newspaper and journal articles accessed via Ethnic NewsWatch, this blog post by our Climate Crisis Intern explores the relationship between climate change, environmental damage, and race. “Global climate change is experienced very differently across race, gender, class and nationality.” So begins a 2012 article from Race, Gender & Class, a journal available on Ethnic […]
Festive films by the fireside
Now it’s December, we’re opening a selection box of festive films from the Moving Image Archive, not least because they can’t be shared on the big screen at the Library this year. Luckily, many films in the archive can be savoured wherever you are in the world. This short blog will showcase a few festive […]
Reading list: In reflection of Black History Month
In reflection of US Black History Month, the cohort of interns here at the National Library of Scotland have curated a reading list of titles from the Library’s ever-expanding print and digital collections relating to Black history. Our internships are as follows: Access and Outreach Equalities, Diversity and Inclusion Climate Crisis Gaelic Translation Rights and Personalisation Creating Media Content This small selection of material comes from a larger pool of […]
Black History Month and eResources
As the creating content intern for the National Library, I’m working on creating an online media centre and expanding our media contacts. My work will focus on researching up-and-coming journalists, writers and art curators from a range of backgrounds across the UK and beyond. I aim to connect Black creators and journalists from across Scotland, […]
Wild Scotland on Film
‘’The light of enchantment on heather and lochan, the curler’s call, the fragrance of green bog myrtle, slow silence enfolding all’’ Bee Keeping in the North (1946) (Intertitles on silent film) Scotland’s great outdoors features in many memorable films – think of the brooding mountains of Glencoe in ‘Skyfall’ or the breathtaking Aberdeenshire village of […]
21st Century Periods
In early 2020, following the Government’s Period Poverty Bill and the subsequent Let’s Call Periods, Periods campaign, we committed to supplying free sanitary products in our buildings. By happy coincidence, General Collections curators Dora Petherbridge and Jan Usher had been working with Professor Bettina Bildhauer and Dr Camilla Mørk Røstvik of St Andrews University, who […]