Peter Apian’s Astronomicum Caesareum (Ingolstadt, 1540) is one of the finest printed books in the National Library of Scotland, hand coloured throughout and featuring ingenious and beautiful volvelles. Apian, humanist mathematician and astronomer and born Bienewitz in Leisnig, Saxony (Biene is German for bee, hence the Latinizing of his name to Apian), was the son […]
Category: Illustrations and photographs
January Map of the Month: Sea creatures
Aurora Borealis – By Marco Ottobelli – Own work, [CC BY-SA 4.0] What does “Iceland” mean to you? To me the name conjures up the distinctive Icelandic style of knitting very cosy jumpers, Magnus and Sally Magnusson, long dark nights with the Northern Lights putting on a show, and nervously watching the latest up-dates on […]
Sun-pictures and beyond
Scotland and the photographically illustrated book 1845-1900 In October 1844 Henry Talbot, the inventor of the calotype negative (Talbotype) process of photography travelled to Scotland along with Nicolaas Henneman, his former valet who was now running his own Talbotype establishment in Reading. Talbot, with the aid of Henneman, was planning to take photographs to illustrate […]
Copyright in a Post Brexit World
On 13th October the National Library of Scotland hosted a Special Libraries Association event that saw Professor Charles Oppenheim give a talk titled ‘Copyright in a Post Brexit World’. After a brief introduction by John Coll, Head of Access at the Library, began by giving an overview of copyright: copyright basics what can be copyrighted how long […]
Yes we have colouring books in the library but sorry you can’t colour them in
As well as being a repository of knowledge the National Library of Scotland is an archive of publishing trends and fashions. You might remember the Magic Eye books of the mid 1990s? If you squinted at an image in these books in the right way a 3D landscape would open up before your eyes as […]
Four removes from Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson has been on my mind lately for various reasons, not least because we have a cataloguing project currently underway to sort and describe the extensive papers of Ernest Mehew , the outstanding Stevenson expert of his (or any other) day. We were given the archive of Ernest and Joyce Mehew, and Edinburgh Napier University have the […]
Playing Shakespeare – curtain coming down very soon
Our Treasures exhibition – Playing Shakespeare: 400 years of great acting– part of this year’s world-wide commemoration of Shakespeare’s death in 1616, is coming to the end of its run, with only a few days left. Monday 13 June is your last chance to see four centuries of Shakespeare on stage.
Election fever 1880s-style
Voters in Scotland went to the polls last week to elect a new Scottish Parliament; a recent Library purchase of satirical cartoons of Liberal politician William Ewart Gladstone gives us a humorous view of political campaigning over 130 years ago. This was a time when politicians could not use social media, or TV and radio […]
Playing Shakespeare: 400 years of great acting – our new Treasures display
Ellen Terry and Henry Irving It is great to see the curtain go up on our new Treasures display – Playing Shakespeare: 400 years of great acting – our contribution to this year’s world-wide commemoration of Shakespeare’s death in 1616. I’ve been working on the display for the last few months, and as always it is […]
Dr Graham’s Kalimpong Homes
Scottish missionary papers in the library’s archive and manuscript collections are replete with stories of individual Scots who sought to fulfil their vocation overseas. Figures requiring little introduction are well represented in the papers, such as in the journals of David Livingstone or letters of Mary Slessor, along with more surprising gems, including the last […]