The Library holds millions of items- books, journals, e-books, maps, music, moving images- and these can help individuals build both practical and emotional resilience in the face of the climate crisis. Be it a map showing the effects of coastal erosion in Scotland or an e-book on climate justice or a poem deepening our relationship […]
Our collections and the climate crisis – Clyde River Basin
The Library holds millions of items- books, journals, e-books, maps, music, moving images- and these can help individuals build both practical and emotional resilience in the face of the climate crisis. Be it a map showing the effects of coastal erosion in Scotland or an e-book on climate justice or a poem deepening our relationship […]
Robert Louis Stevenson: a young historian
At the age of fifteen Robert Louis Stevenson penned “The Pentland Rising: A page of history”. This is a vivid and eloquent recreation of the events that led to the Covenanters’ military engagement with Royalist forces on 28 November 1666. This event, the Battle of Rullion Green, took place exactly 355 years ago today. Stevenson’s […]
Our collections and the climate crisis – Cairngorms
The Library holds millions of items- books, journals, e-books, maps, music, moving images- and these can help individuals build both practical and emotional resilience in the face of the climate crisis. Be it a map showing the effects of coastal erosion in Scotland or an e-book on climate justice or a poem deepening our relationship […]
Our collections and the Climate Crisis — Outer Hebrides
The Library holds millions of items- books, journals, e-books, maps, music, moving images- and these can help individuals build both practical and emotional resilience in the face of the climate crisis. Be it a map showing the effects of coastal erosion in Scotland or an e-book on climate justice or a poem deepening our relationship […]
Exploring the climate crisis through the Library’s collections
The climate crisis is here. Every year, its effects become more and more disruptive to our daily lives. But the effects of the changing climate are not distributed evenly, with some countries and communities enduring far more than others. As we watch the crisis grow, the need for practical and emotional resilience at the individual […]
Women with nature
By Maili Fraser, student research placement with the Moving Image Archive This year I’ve had the privilege of doing a research placement on the new archive documentary Living Proof – a Climate Story, with director (and National Library of Scotland curator) Dr Emily Munro. Living Proof documents and explores Scotland’s climate history and our impact […]
Gil Heron, Gil Scott-Heron and their “Scottish spirits”.
This is a blog about four men, footballer Gil Heron (1922-2008), his son the musician Gil Scott-Heron (1949-2011), publisher Jamie Byng (1969-) and TV executive and football pundit Stuart Cosgrove (1952-). These men’s lives and the points where they crossed over tells us something about Scotland and its relationship with African-American culture over the last […]
17 shades of Ali Smith’s “Autumn”
The novel “Autumn” by Ali Smith was published on 20th October 2016 and was shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker Prize. It is the first volume in a quartet, each volume is named after a season. Quickly written and speedily published it is a “state of the nation” novel. Although published less than four months […]
Brigid Brophy takes an axe and gives English literature fifty whacks
The Library of St John’s College, Oxford used to be home to an edition of Spenser’s “The Faerie Queen” in which a discontented undergraduate had written his opinion of the books that he was obliged to read for his course. “First I thought Troilus and Criseyde was the most boring poem in English. Then I […]