Registered Charity No. SC 009009 Spring/Summer 2015 INSIDE THIS ISSUE SCC Visiting Scholars Award....................1-2 Library pilot project: 24/7 opening.............3 Museum events.......4-5 Thomas Reid Prize......6 Team Pigment.........6-7 The Far North........8-10 Women, Science, Narrative.................11 Provenance Database.................12 Archives award attracts scholars Conservation from around the world project....................13 A new awards scheme to enable scholars to access the University of Aberdeen's rich archives and rare Thomas Hood books has attracted entries from academics across talk....................14-15 the globe. FAUL Committee and The University is home to more than 230,000 rare AGM........................16 printed books – including more than 4,000 sixteenth- century items – as well as 5,000 irreplaceable archival collections, with material dating as far back as the third century BC. The collections cover all aspects of the history and culture of the University, the City of Aberdeen, the region and the relationship they enjoy with the wider world. Now housed in the state-of-the-art Sir Duncan Rice Library with dedicated reading rooms, the University’s Special Collections offer some of the best facilities to academics available anywhere in the world. To make these important collections more accessible to academics outwith Aberdeen, the University launched the first Special Collections Centre Visiting Scholars Awards at the end of last year. continued on next page The Friends of Aberdeen University Library continued from previous page The awards are funded by a collaboration between the Aberdeen Humanities Fund, the Friends of Aberdeen University Library and the Special Collections Centre. This year’s awards are supported in part by the gift of Henry Doss and Chris Arvidson, and have been selected from a global field of entries. Henry Doss said: “These awards represent an outstanding opportunity for international scholars in the humanities to work directly with the tremendously important historic collections held at Aberdeen.” intellectual, medical, literary and The first three recipients are Dr John environmental context of their writing. Stone, Serra Hunter Fellow in English Dr McDermid has spent the last decade Literature at the Universitat de examining female education in Barcelona; Dr Samantha Walton, nineteenth-century Scotland. She is Lecturer in English Literature: Writing working on a project called “Evenings and the Environment at Bath Spa out in Urban Scotland, 1870-1940” and University; and Dr Jane McDermid, will use Aberdeen, which has a rich Reader in History at Southampton history of associational activities, as a University. Each will use the rare key case study. The University’s Special resources found in the Special Collections Centre holds an impressive Collections Centre to further their own range of sources including records of specialist areas of study. churches, clubs, societies, co-operatives Dr Stone will focus on library formation and trade unions, and she will utilise at the Royal Scots College, Valladolid, in these to show what is distinctive to the late eighteenth and early nineteenth Aberdeen and to identify similarities and centuries, with special reference to the peculiarities of urban associational life Scottish Catholic Archives, which moved throughout Scotland. to the University of Aberdeen last year. Siobhán Convery, Head of Special He will examine how cultural artefacts Collections at the University of categorised as English and Scottish were Aberdeen, said: “The first Special imported, consumed, modified or Collections Centre Visiting Scholars criticised in late eighteenth-century Awards attracted a high calibre of Spain, and hopes that the processes of researchers from around the world with cultural transfer associated with the applicants from Europe, North America, Royal Scots College will shed new light China and Australia. The standard of on their contemporary reception. applicants reflects the international Dr Wilson’s research concerns interwar importance of Aberdeen’s collection of writing, particularly Scottish fiction and rare books, archives and manuscripts. modernist culture. The Visiting Scholars We look forward to welcoming the first Award will enable her to access the three recipients to the Special correspondence and personal Collections Centre and their presence papers of Lewis Grassic Gibbon here will open up further opportunities and Nan Shepherd, which will for research collaboration with our own academic community.” assist her in establishing the 2 Pilot project: 24/7 opening of library The Sir Duncan Rice Library recently conducted an exciting pilot, opening the building 24/7 during revision and exams in November and December 2014. In recent years the library has pursued a gradual programme of increasing opening hours. During the exam period, this has largely been limited to an additional four hours, closing at 2am instead of 10pm. The combined interest of students and administration resulted in proceeding with a 24/7 pilot program. The library opened at 11am on Sunday, 23 November and remained open continuously until 10pm on Friday, 19 December. In preparation for this pilot the library staff formed a planning committee to consider staffing and policy options and prepare for potential pitfalls. We also worked closely with Estates (cleaning and security), IT Services, and Student Services (catering). We were gratified by the support and cooperation from colleagues in each of these areas. Catering agreed to keep the Hardback Café open until 10pm each evening; Security trained, monitored and worked closely with the outside firm hired to staff the library overnight; Cleaning added extra staff and increased services; and IT monitored and maintained the Sentry access system, computer usage and updates affected by these hours. Response to the extended opening hours was overwhelmingly positive with significant library usage. The average number of students in the library ranged from 162 at 1am to 21 at 5am. In the end the combination of thorough preparation by library staff, the support of colleagues across campus and a professional security staff resulted in a remarkably effective and trouble-free pilot. Minor issues with plumbing and cleaning were quickly addressed, and there were no health and safety or security issues. The Sentry system which controls access to the SDRL and to the upper floors worked without a fault, and computers and self-issue machines showed good usage. After 27 nights we had not a single complaint from a student or staff member, and several students made a point of complimenting the professionalism and friendliness of the overnight workers. The library staff committee prepared a bookmark for the 24/7 period that included safety tips and the telephone number to the desk on the ground floor with a short survey on the back. These bookmarks were scattered at desks throughout the library each night of the 24/7 pilot. Seventy-one of the surveys were returned. Most of the students simply said that they appreciated access to the library at night and would use the service again. Seventeen asked that the 24/7 hours be extended to the entire term. Anecdotal evidence gathered by staff speaking with students was also overwhelmingly positive, with many saying that they or students they know used the service and they appreciate knowing the option was available to them. The December pilot was the first in three steps this year in our continuing search to determine optimal library opening hours. Our next step is to extend opening hours this term (Spring 2015) until 2am Sunday to Thursday nights (instead of closing at midnight). Our third step will be to repeat the 24/7 pilot during revision and exams in April and May. During this term we will also bench- mark with other university libraries across the sector, consider staffing implications, examine alternative staffing models and finalise a report on resource implications with the goal of recommending new library hours for September 2015. 3 Crafting Kingdoms: The Rise of the Northern Picts Old treasures, new finds and fresh perspectives on the Picts of Northern Scotland from the University of Aberdeen’s Archaeology Department. Ancient treasures and new discoveries will be on show until 31 May 2015 at the University of Aberdeen’s King’s Museum in an exhibition exploring the origins of the Picts. “Crafting Kingdoms: The Rise of the Northern Picts” draws on recent projects in the University of Aberdeen’s Archaeology Department which have been investigating the Pictish kingdoms of North East Scotland and where their main power bases were situated. Objects on show for the first time include a recently unearthed Pictish silver hoard discovered during fieldwork at Gaulcross and finds from the excavations at Rhynie showing that this was the seat of a powerful ruler around AD 500 with the place name now known to be recording that it was “a very royal place”. On display from the University Museums collections are a beautiful Pictish silver chain found at Nigg Bay in Aberdeen in 1796 and a carved stone depicting a sea eagle and the mysterious Pictish beast, along with loans of Pictish silver and other artefacts from Aberdeenshire Museums, National Museums Scotland and the British Museum. The exhibition also contains experimental reconstructions of Pictish metalworking by the Scottish Sculpture Workshop and artefacts by the Rhynie Woman Artists’ collective reflecting on the Pictish legacy.