A Nation Built on Books: The Role of Libraries in Modern Scotland
Scotland's National Librarian discusses the place of libraries in our cultural landscape.
Blood and Vellum: Manuscripts and Materiality in a Pandemic
By Bryony Coombs In March 2020 I was working in the Mitchell Library in Glasgow, conducting research on a fifteenth century manuscript, a Latin chronicle of Scottish history. This was fortuitous timing, as one week later the UK entered a…
‘Everything that wriggles’: The Muriel Spark Archives
By James Bailey ‘I am a hoarder of two things: documents and trusted friends’, wrote Spark in her 1992 autobiography, Curriculum Vitae. ‘The former outweigh the latter in terms of quantity’, she added. Spark wasn’t exaggerating; while the author was…
A Brief Discussion of University Art, Design and Media Archives as Catalysts for Creativity and Research
By Louise Chapman In 2012, I uncovered an array of boxes containing 177 items of dress in the School of Fashion and Textiles archives at Birmingham City University (BCU). Found in a store cupboard the assemblage included a large selection…