Piper manuscript Album Amicorum (c.1620), Shelfmark, La. III. 283, and our complete collection of over 700 Hill and Adamson calotype photographic prints (1843–48). A selection of

THE

NEWSLETTER OF THE FRIENDS OF EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY LIBRARYNUMBER 33 SUMMER 2009

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Virgil. Eclogues, Georgics, and Aeneid,15th century. Ms195, f.19r.

It seems a doubtful time to ask formoney but rewarding causes alwaysattract donors, and so it is that theFriends have secured a worthyfuture for the next phase of theCentre for Research Collections.The generous contributions ofseventy-five members will providesome handsome display cases aswell as curatorial creation of somefine exhibitions. These will show-case on the Ground Floor, andtherefore make very accessible thewealth of Special Collections thatthe library has – many donated andpurchased by the Friends.

We were able to match theanonymous gift of £50,000 given as a remarkable foundation donationby a Friend, and the Universitygenerously contributed £50,000. The money raised will enable thenext phase of the Development togo ahead. I would like to thank allthose involved in this project: staffand donors. It is an importantachievement as it makes the profileof the Library unique and excitingand gives the friends a permanentand acknowledged place in itsfuture.

‘… the books, the arts, the academes, That show, contain, and nourish all theworld’ are our concern. I look for-ward with you all to experiencingsome of the hidden treasures theUniversity Library can now sharewith us.

Lady Caplan, President, Friends of Edinburgh University Library

‘ … The Books, That show,contain, and nourish all theworld.’ Shakespeare, Love’s Labour’s Lost

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As I write, the redevelopment of theGround Floor of the Main Library isalmost complete. We already knowthat the Centre for ResearchCollections and the new study spaceon the 5th and 6th floors haveproved immensely popular withstudents, academics and researchers;and we hope that the Ground Floorwill be equally popular. They will bevery different. The Ground Flooraddresses the way in which studentswork today – for example, learningin groups is now important and weare providing ‘group study pods’ tosupport this way of working. Theyalso appreciate working with a cupof coffee in hand and the café willsupport this. Another crucialprovision is the HUB collection ofbooks, a collection of about 60,000High Use Books, which will helpintroduce students arriving at the

University to the immense collections in the Library – andencourage them to explore thelarger collections in their own time.A newly developed Helpdesk willprovide support to students andothers in the use of the Library.

The Ground Floor will have anew glass entrance, with the exteriorpodium completely restructured.This will produce the same effect asoriginally intended of comingthrough a small entrance and theninto the cathedral-like space of theForum – a feature of the Sir BasilSpence building. Other originalfeatures will be retained, particularlythe wooden slats and the grandstaircase.

Most importantly, the ExhibitionRoom is being completelyredeveloped. With the help of theFriends we have now purchased

exhibition cases of very high quality,addressing issues of both securityand environmental control. Thesewill be installed shortly and will beused for exhibitions of the specialcollections in the Library,commencing in September with anexhibition of some of our majortreasures.

The finishing work of theredevelopment is still underway; butthe end is now in sight. We areexpecting that the Ground Floor willbe handed over by the contractor inJune. The café will open on 15thJune, and the rest of the services onthe Ground Floor will open on 1stJuly. We are excited by this redevel-opment, and hope that you will beimpressed by what we have done.

Sheila Cannell,Director of Library Services

Library Redevelopment

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FOCUS ON…The Digital Imaging UnitThen and Now: ‘An Inspiring Area of Work’

The history of the PhotographicDepartment can be traced back asfar as 1945 when the Library began toprovide images from our collectionsfor the use of other libraries. In thosepost war years of financial constraintits success relied heavily upon theingenuity of the then Keeper ofManuscripts, Charles Finlayson, who‘was something of an expert atproducing working cameras frombits and pieces of old ones bought atlittle cost’ (Guild and Law, EdinburghUniversity Library (1982) p.124). A fullyequipped department dates from1948 when new equipment waspurchased and the first photographic

technician was appointed. Growthwas fast: by the late 1950s thedepartment occupied a suite ofrooms and employed three photo-graphers. Services soon includedprint making, microfilming andphotostatting (later photocopying).And by the time of the move to thenew library building in GeorgeSquare in 1967 no fewer than fivephotographers were employed in animpressive suite of nine rooms in thebasement.

The department continued itssteady work for the next threedecades, although staff numbersgradually dwindled, ultimately to

Laing Charter no 21[3161] a grant of landsfrom 1315–17

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just one, and it’s fair to say that it wasnot able to keep fully up to date withtechnological advances. By the late1990s it was time for a rethink. Thedepartment at that time was stilldevoted to traditional film photo-graphy, although solely in 35mm,processing was restricted to blackand white only and the demand for microfilming had dwindledconsiderably.Perhaps moreimportantly, thephotographiclandscape wasundergoing arevolution as thenew technologyof digitalphotographyrapidlybecame aseriousqualitycontenderto film

photography, and by today has,arguably, overtaken it. But whateverthe arguments over quality there canbe no doubt that digital photographynow reigns supreme as a means ofwidening access to images andrepurposing them for a wide varietyof uses. Its versatility is unmatched.

And so, in the early years of thenew millennium the decision wastaken to abandon film photographyand wet processing for good. The

old sinks, plumbing and processingequipment, were stripped out andthe rooms adapted to create a spacesuitable for digital photography.Thus the Digital Imaging Unit (DIU)was born. New cameras werepurchased, along with the necessarystudio lighting and computers, andtwo new photographers were

recruited: Susan Pettigrew andMalcolm Brown; they

currently staff the unitmanaged by Andrew

Grout (see box).

However, the improvements didnot stop there. The exciting Libraryredevelopment programme, whichresulted in the move of the DIU tothe 5th floor in 2008, enabled us tocreate a dedicated custom-designedstudio space providing maximumflexibility and high quality work.Thanks to generous funding fromthe Gannochy Trust, the DIU is nowfirmly integrated within the syner-getic research space that constitutesthe Centre for Research Collections.The improvements are many: thefloor of the DIU has been renderedvibration-free for our free-standingphotographic equipment, the wallsare painted neutral grey and thefluorescent lighting is daylight-balanced to allow for theaccurate assessment ofcolour in the imageswe create. Outputand quality ofwork has

Pheasants (male and female) from Illustrations ofBritish Ornithology (Edinburgh: 1833) Volume II, plate57 by Prideaux John Selby (1788–1867). This copywas purchased for EUL through the Reid Bequest

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certainly been increased as a result ofthe many improvements made sincethe relocation.

The bulk of our work involvestwo main strands: the creation ofhigh-quality images from bothbound and flat items, performedusing a Hasselblad camera (a makefamous for its use by NASA duringthe Apollo moon landings!), and simple black and white book scanning. But we also have the capacity to

scan 35mm and glass plate transparencies and to create

images of less fragile flat itemsusing a flat bed scanner. Recently,with the purchase of a dedicatedtable top studio and lighting kit, wehave expanded our capability intothe area of 3D object photography,which is proving very useful forphotographing small collections ofbooks, items from our museumcollections and models used forteaching in veterinary medicine. Wealso undertake on-site photographyaround the Library, documentingthis exciting period of redevel-opment and providing images forthe new flat panel displays on the 5thfloor and in the soon to be reopenedground floor.

About half of the work under-taken by the DIU is as a direct result

of readers’ orders; the remaininghalf is generated by digital

imaging projects – for whichwe often receive Universityor external funding – or by

the rolling programme ofdigitisation of iconic itemsfrom our own collections.The latter has recentlyincluded the complete

imaging of some of our greatesttreasures, such as Rashid al-Din’s‘History of the World’ (Ms Or 20),Michael Van Meer’s wonderfullyillustrated manuscript AlbumAmicorum (c.1620), Shelfmark, La. III.283, and our complete collection ofover 700 Hill and Adamson calotypephotographic prints (1843–48). Aselection of digital prints of thelatter are on display until mid-Junein the CRC on the 6th floor. Indeed,we aim to make our images as widelyavailable as possible: via the LunaInsight web collections, for example(see http://www.lib.ed.ac.uk/resources/collections/specdivision/images.shtml). Manyimages are used in publications,some by media companies such asthe BBC, and we submit images tothe Bridgeman Art Library, a

commercial picture library, thatresults in a small but regular incomestream.

Of course, our many successesdo not mean that we can rest on our laurels. Technology in digitalimaging moves forward at bewil-dering speed and the investment inequipment required to keep pacewith these advancements issubstantial. We still need to do moreto make images available to theacademic community and thegeneral public via the worldwideweb, and the necessity to catalogueaccurately all the images we create isan ongoing challenge.

Digital imaging at EdinburghUniversity Library is an inspiringarea of work and one that promisessignificant advances in the future.Watch this space! Andrew Grout

Dr Andrew Grout (right) began his professional life as a geologist, working for the British Geological Surveyfor thirteen years. He then undertook postgraduate research in the history of science, which led to hisappointment, in 1996, as Research Fellow in the University’s Department of Geography. From 1998–2002he worked on two flagship projects to make the cartographic heritage of Scotland more widely accessible:Project Pont and Charting the Nation. Since 2002 he has been Digital Library Officer in Special Collectionsand has been Digital Imaging Unit manager since 2007.

Susan Pettigrew (middle) studied photography at Stevenson College and began work at Perth Museum & Art gallery, digitising their collections of historic glass plate negatives for SCRAN. She recalls that herappointment to the Digital Imaging Unit ‘came at an exciting time, as the change over to digital photographywas in the early stages and provided many challenges. Even after five years, I still feel privileged to be photographing such rare and precious collections, and to be working with a team who are committed toproviding a high quality service’.

Malcolm Brown (left) studied Fine Art at Glasgow School of Art, graduating with a BA (Hons) in Drawing and Painting. A subsequent career as a visual artist (exhibiting at the Talbot Rice Gallery, Collective Gallery,Glasgow Print Studio and elsewhere) was paralleled by work as a library assistant, both at EdinburghUniversity Library and AK Bell Public Library, Perth. As Malcolm comments: ‘We are fortunate to work withtop of the range technology which is capable of capturing extremely rich detail from the collections’.

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The cases at the entrance to theCRC currently display a selection ofHill & Adamson calotype imagesand these will continue on displayuntil mid June.

From then until the end ofAugust a ‘DIGITAL HIGHLIGHTS’display will illustrate some of thekey items photographed by theDigital Imaging Unit in the past year.Two examples of these are shownhere:

By September the ExhibitionRoom on the newly renovatedGround Floor will be available andthe new exhibition cases, funded bythe Friends, will be in place. Thesestate-of-the-art cases, made by anItalian firm, are, to date, the onlyones of their kind in Scotland andthe first exhibition to be created inthis space will be a ‘Treasures’ block-buster running from September to

December – a fitting display tolaunch the Ground Floor space andExhibition Room.

More news of future exhibitionsin these spaces will be announced inthe winter issue of The Piper.

Above. Japanesekimono designs(c.1900) ShelfmarkRB.P. 44

Left. Michael vanMeer, Album Amicorum(c.1620) LA. III. 28

Exhibitions and Displays

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Our collection of manuscripts fromthe Middle East, both Islamic andsecular, is centred on the donationsand bequests made in the 19thcentury by various scholars andofficials of Empire. These brought ussuch gems as the famous Jami’ al-Tawarikh of Rashid al-Din and al-Biruni’s al-Athar al-Baqiyya, bothdated early 14th century A.D. Thecollection, small but with some veryvaluable and interesting items, hashad no significant additions untilvery recently, when four manuscriptswere bought from Bernard Quaritchwith the help of the Library’sStrategic Fund.

These particular manuscriptswere chosen primarily because oftheir subject matter (law, grammar,rhetoric and religious sciences),which fit well with our existingcollection, and partly for the varietythey display in script, appearanceand age, ranging from 1423 A.D. to

1734–5 A.D. The new acquisitions are:• al-Taftazani’s Sharh al-qism al-thalithmin al miftah (1423 A.D.), an early copyproduced just 25 years after his death,and treating of rhetoric, logic,metaphysics and law. Copied in riqa’script on thick cream coloured paperwith some darker brown leaves

• ‘Abd Allah ibn Mahmud al-Mawsili’s al-Ikhtiyar li-ta’lil al-mukhtar fi’l furu’ (late 15th centuryA.D.), a well-known treatise on theIslamic school of Hanafi law. Copiedin naskhi script on cream colouredpaper, in covers of Turkish brownmorocco• Revised version of the Muqaddimaal-ajurrumiyya of Ibn Ajurrum (1718 A.D.). This work is a treatise on the inflection of words and has been very influential in the study of Arabic grammar. Copied in black muhaqqaq script on creamcoloured paper in original leatherbinding• Collection of 33 treatises onreligious sciences (1734–35 A.D.)Includes works on Qur’anic exegesis,hadith, Islamic dogma andlinguistics. Copied on thin, polishedpaper in black Ottoman naskhi andnasta’liq scripts

Frances Abercromby,College Librarian(Humanities & Social Science)

Recent AcquisitionsMiddle Eastern and Islamic manuscripts in Edinburgh University Library

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The Piper is the newsletter of the Friends of Edinburgh UniversityLibrary, and is published twice a year.

ISSN 0963-4681

Scottish Charity Number SC001518

Articles are copyright © the Friends of EUL and individual contributors.

Managing editor: Fiona Graham

Photography: Edinburgh University Library Digital ImagingUnit

Design: Mark Blackadder

Print: University of Edinburgh Printing Services

FRIENDS

OF

EDIN

BURGHUNIVER

SIT

YLI

BRARY

You can make a differenceBy becoming a Friend you can help to support the existing collections of Edinburgh University Library and fund new acquisitions. You could even be remembered eternally by leaving a legacy to the Friends.

Don’t hesitate – join now!

For a membership form, telephone 0131 650 3381 or write to: Friends of Edinburgh University Library, Edinburgh University Library, George Square, Edinburgh EH8 9LJwww.lib.ed.ac.uk/about/friends

Front cover image:Virgil. Eclogues, Georgics, and Aeneid, 15th century. Ms195, f.19r.

A secular book of a beauty to match contemporary devotional texts,this copy of Virgil was written in Paris by a Florentine scribe,Francesco Florio, and was decorated there, apparently by twodifferent artists.

In the foreground of this miniature illustrating the Georgics aman is filling a wine cask, another treads the wine press, othersare harvesting the grapes. Behind, ploughing and sowing are takingplace. Ceres, half-length in cloud, scatters seed; Minerva, also half-length, crowned with olive wreath, presides over a grove of olivetrees. A city is in the distance.

The Scottish royal crest, the Lion Rampant, is included in oneof the illuminations. This indicates that the book was commis-sioned by a member of the Scottish royal family. In that case itmost likely came to Scotland soon after it was made and remainedhere until it was given to the University Library by John Colville onhis graduation in 1654. In the early days of the ‘Tounis College’ theLibrary received all its new books by way of gifts from graduatingstudents.

Below. A ‘wind-chariot’ on the beach in Holland. Michael van Meer's AlbumAmicorum (from which this is taken) offers a fascinating view of life in theearly 17th century. This is one of the earliest depictions of land wind-surfing.The chariot is flying the flag of the Prince of Orange. [La.III. 283. f.254v]

Main image. Eiakintomino, a Powhatan nativeAmerican, depicted in St James's Park, London,in 1615. From the Album Amicorum of Michaelvan Meer [La.II.283, f.254v]

Events

Unfortunately the events programmeuntil December 2009 has not yet beenfinalised. A full list of events will besent to Friends over the summer.