In our previous two blogs of the series we gave you a general overview of the Music Retroconversion Project that the National Library is currently working on, followed by a discussion of some of the different cards we’ve been converting and the challenges these have posed. This final blog describes the benefits the project will […]
Tag: cataloguing
Putting the Music Catalogue Online: Part 2 – So many cards, so many challenges!
In our previous blog of this series, we gave you a general overview of the Music Retoconversion Project that the National Library is currently working on. Here we will discuss some of the different cards we’ve been converting and the challenges these have posed. The catalogues contain two types of cards: regular bibliographic cards with […]
Putting the Music Catalogue Online: Part 1 – Project Background
The National Library is working on a project to transfer its music card catalogues to the library’s online catalogue. Up until now, to search for music materials, users had the option of physically searching the Main Music Card Catalogue in the reading rooms, or they could phone the library and the librarians would check through […]
The Rankin Files
It all began a few years ago, when representatives of the Library sat down with renowned crime writer Ian Rankin to discuss the acquisition of his extensive literary archive. Fast-forward to September 2019, when I took up the post of Ian Rankin Project Curator, tasked with the arrangement, cataloguing, and promotion of this incredible collection […]
What’s in a name? Not enough information!
When cataloguing archival material, it is obviously useful to be able to identify the creator of the record. Details such as full name and dates of birth and/or death can help researchers to clearly pick out potential people of interest. However, the name and dates alone are not always enough to distinguish one person from another. […]
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 […]
Frustration, Fascination and Film Identification
From first viewing, it’s nothing very much to look at, a rather grainy piece of silent colour film lasting just under two minutes. Simply recorded as (Lifeboat Launch) the film was dated rather vaguely as ‘1950s’ with an ‘unknown location’. Time to send in the cataloguers.
The Archival Detective
When the John Murray Archive (JMA) arrived at the National Library of Scotland in 2006, approximately 17,500 individuals had been identified as having an item relating to them in the archive. For each of these, their full name, dates and epithet (a little descriptive detail in order to distinguish that particular person) needs to be […]