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 […]
Maps with a sense of the past: what are synthetic maps, and why do we love them?
by Chris Fleet, Zekun Li, Katie McDonough, and Valeria Vitale. Maps are excellent documentary sources for understanding the history of the landscape, including past human activities and former physical environments. Many organizations have scanned tens of thousands of historical maps and shared them online. For example, the Sanborn Fire Insurance Map Collection scanned by the […]
John Thomson: photographer, writer and traveller
This week marks the centenary of the death of Scottish photographer John Thomson (1837-1921), one of the great names of early photography. Over the last 30-40 years Thomson’s achievements as a photographer, which were largely forgotten in the years following his death, have been increasingly recognised and publicised. A cast bronze plaque to commemorate him […]
Zoom into Glasgow City
Collated by Jamie McIntosh. The final local authority area of our current Zoom Into series takes us to Glasgow, Scotland’s most populous city. Glasgow is situated in the west of the central belt area of the lowlands, and its city centre is dominated by the River Clyde. Glasgow’s position provides easy access to the greenery of the Loch […]