The Scottish Book Trust gives an early shout out to The Great Silence, out in August, as one of their Scottish Novels to Look Forward to in 2021. It’s a fantastic list of books, check them all out here.
Scottish Novels to Look Forward to
Celebrating Burns and the Scots language with Edinburgh Libraries
Join Edinburgh Libraries in celebrating Scotland’s national poet, Rabbie Burns this week. Born in 1759 in Ayrshire, he was the son of a tenant farmer who went on to become one of Scotland’s greatest heroes. To celebrate his literary legacy and lasting impact we have a range of resources for you to discover and enjoy.
Burns Night Quiz
Each year on the 25 January, Burns night is celebrated across Scotland and the world. Despite the lockdown, this year should be no different! Please join Carol from Stockbridge Library as she presents to you a Braw Burns Quiz. Test your knowledge of Scotland’s Bard and the Scots language on Monday 25January at 7.30pm on the Stockbridge Library Facebook page.
Scots language collectionof ebooks and audiobooks
‘The Mither Tongue’ collection is a new selection of titles we have…
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Digital resources at the NLS
Happy New Year to everyone and best wishes for a better 2021.
Thought you might like to cheer up the new year by enjoying browsing in the “Country Life Archive”, to which we have recently subscribed. I’m sure you are all familiar with the magazine as an amazing source of information and photos of country houses, estates and leisure pursuits, with of course lots of adverts and biographical information too, giving a great insight to lifestyles and culture of their times. It covers the period from 1897 – 2005, in colour and is fully searchable.
Find the resource from this link: https://auth.nls.uk/eresources/browse/307 within our Digital Gallery. To use this from your home you will need to register online as a Library reader and to have a postal address in Scotland. This is very straightforward to do and the information is here: https://auth.nls.uk/join/
Happy browsing!
Jennifer Giles
Curator (Scottish Communities & Organisations) National Library of Scotland
A few other interesting NLS e-resources to browse from home:
Digital Gallery – View digitised items from the world-class NLS collections
Digital gallery – National Library of Scotland (nls.uk)
Map images – view thousand of maps online
National Library of Scotland – Map Images (nls.uk)
Moving Image archive – From home movies to documentaries, from industry to entertainment – the National Library of Scotland Moving Image Archive (formerly the Scottish Screen Archive) has something for everyone. Explore around 100 years of Scotland’s history captured by amateur and professional film-makers.
Moving Image Archive catalogue (nls.uk)
Scotsman Digital Archive, 1817-1950 – A full-text digital archive of every issue of The Scotsman newspaper, from 1817 to 1950, in its original published context
eResources – National Library of Scotland (nls.uk)
Browse the full NLS Digital resources collection here: Digital resources – National Library of Scotland (nls.uk)
David T. Rose’s pictures of Edinburgh
Our latest Capital Collections exhibition showcases the beautiful watercolour paintings by Scottish artist David Thomas Rose held by Central Library.
David T. Rose was born, grew up and studied in Scotland but his working life as a civil engineer took him further afield including to Malta, Yorkshire, Wales and London. However, he regularly returned for family holidays visiting his sister in Edinburgh and other relatives in Fife. It’s believed the watercolours of Edinburgh and environs in this collection were painted on these trips. The exhibition features scenes of city life encompassing diverse areas including the Old Town and Craigmillar, Joppa and Leith.
To view the complete set of 70 artworks, visit the wonderful David T. Rose’s pictures of Edinburgh exhibition on Capital Collections.
Some of our favourite books of 2020
Book recommendations… for lockdown reading?
In a year when we’ve turned to reading more than ever for escape and solace, we asked our library colleagues which was their book of the year.
Chris from Fountainbridge Library says her favourite book of the year is Those who are loved by Victoria Hislop.
“It is another wonderful weaving of stories from today back to a difficult and treacherous past. I liked it particuarly because it shines a light on a part of Greece’s history that is just at the edge of human memory and so reveals the youth of today’s great grandparents. It runs very true to some Greek friends own family memories. Victoria’s prose is very readable and the research never restricts a good story. A great book for a wet weekend.”
Available to borrow as an audiobook
Claire from the Information and Learning Resources Team recommends The Lie Tree by Frances Hardinge.
“It’s a hazard…
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Conserving Christmases
Conservator Gloria Conti looks at a fun item from our archives and tells us about the challenges of conserving a poster that would have been designed for use for only a short period of time…
Sometimes jobs can feel like a treat, and what’s better than a fun job just before Christmas?
In preparation for an internal Christmas display shown within our iconic Adam Dome at General Register House a couple of years ago, I was asked to take care of a piece coming from the Montagu Douglas Scott collection, Dukes of Buccleuch, GD224.
This was a letterpress printed poster dating 1892, part of a bundle of correspondence written between 1890 and 1893 (National Records of Scotland reference GD224/1018/19), advertising an exhibition of Christmas Trees taking place at St. Cuthbert’s Chapel and School in Hawick.
“Christmas trees will be covered with a large number of pretty and useful articles which…
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Edinburgh’s water supply
A new story on Our Town Stories describes how a clean and safe water supply was brought to the city.
Edinburgh grew up around the Castle Rock with little provision for sanitation. For hundreds of years, residents were dependent on unreliable private and public pump wells, most having to collect water from the communal well.
In the 1670s, the first sources of water which came into the city from springs in the Pentland Hills were piped into a reservoir on Castle Hill which in turn, supplied the street pumps. However, by 1817, faced with growing discontent from the populace about the insufficient supply, the Town Council needed to find another solution.
In 1819, approval for the construction of a reservoir at Glencorse was granted.
Read further on Our Town Stories to find out how Edinburgh’s water supply has expanded over the…
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Black Lives Matter protest placards – a new exhibition on Capital Collections
In early June of this year, Edinburgh, along with other towns, villages and cities across the world, held large protests in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. Museums & Galleries Edinburgh acquired a large donation of placards, banners and signs from the protest, to add to our permanent museum collection and many of these are now available to see in a new exhibition on Capital Collections.
The protests held were in response to the death of George Floyd at the hands of a US police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota on 25 May 2020. His death was not the only example of police brutality witnessed by the public, but was the catalyst for a collective reckoning in our understanding of systemic racism.
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A new library for Ratho
Today we have a message from the staff at Ratho Library about the library, old and new:
“We opened our doors to the public on 22March 1999 and we closed our doors to Coronavirus just 3 days short of our 21stbirthday. Sadly we won’t be reopening in our current building. We will be opening in the future in our new building and we will keep you up to date with the news as soon as we have it. In the meantime, we want to thank each and everyone of you who have used Ratho Library over the years for allowing us to be part of your village, we have watched it thrive and grow, and we have been delighted to welcome new readers alongside those of you who have been with us from the very start.
We pride ourselves on Ratho Library and how we are involved in your community…
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Edinburgh’s City Read
for Book Week Scotland
This is lovely – for Book Week Scotland, Edinburgh Libraries have chosen A Dark Matter as their Edinburgh’s City Read ebook title. Download it here if you’re a library member. Cheers!
