Events

Upcoming events with Heritage Collections.

Image of promotional Heritage Highlights poster

Heritage Highlights

Each week during the semester we’ll be hosting a mini event to highlight one of our items from the collections.  Colleagues from across Heritage Collections have been invited to pick a favourite item that they’d like to talk about and explain what makes it a highlight to them!  These drop in events will be held on different days, different times and different locations across campus throughout the semester. 

 

Week One:  A-Z Posters

Thursday 19th September, 12:30, Centre for Research Collections, Fiona Menzies, Project Archivist (One Health)

The archive of the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland recently came into Heritage Collections from Edinburgh Zoo and it's your chance to have a look at some of the objects from the collection! In this Heritage Highlight, come and have a look at an artistic surprise.

 

Week Two: 1668 Virginal by Stephen Keene

Wednesday 25th September, 3pm, St Cecilia's Hall, Jenny Nex, Musical Instrument Museum Curator

Musical instruments can be approached from many different angles. This beautiful example offers opportunities for research in surprising fields of study. You'll have a chance to hear what it sounds like too.  Book your place on MyEd here.  

 

Week Three: Alexander Fleming Penicillin Mould

Tuesday 1st October, 11am, Centre for Research Collections, Daisy Stafford, Research Services Supervisor

Book your place here.

 

Week Four: Panorama

Wednesday 9th October, 2pm, Main Library Exhibition Gallery, Elizabeth Quarmby Lawrence, Rare Books and Literary Collections Curator

The panoramas of Constantinople were possibly the most ambitious project ever undertaken for the Panorama, Leicester Square, and for Henry Aston Barker, the artist, were his masterpiece. One of them was reproduced as an aquatinted engraving, allowing us to appreciate the achievement of the full-size original. Come and hear more about this panorama than could be included in the exhibition interpretation.  Book your place here.

 

 

Heritage Week 

During Heritage Week, we will be hosting a series of events to offer an insight into the collections and services that we provide.  Do you want to explore our Rare Book Collections?  Do you want to see behind the scenes in our store rooms?  Would you like to know more about our musical instrument collections and our conservation work?  All of this, and a lot more will be on offer! 

Join us for a programme of in-person and online events and learn about the collections and how they can be used to enhance and support your studies. Sessions will be hosted by Heritage Collections colleagues and external supporters.

Save the Date: 21-25 October 2024. Full programme release 01 October 2024. 

EDITOR Workshop poster
EDITOR Workshop poster

Previous Events

EDITOR Transcription Workshop - Cataloguing Where No One Has Catalogued Before
10-12 March 2021
2pm – 6pm GMT, 9am-1pm EST

 

To catalogue the uncatalogued... What would it mean to use machine learning to finally delve into vast collections which are too onerous to catalogue manually? What if partial collections could be reunited digitally, breaking institutional barriers? What if handwritten and printed collections could be transcribed using algorithms?

In collaboration with colleagues at the University of Virginia Law Library, we at the University of Edinburgh’s Library and University Collections team sought to explore these questions and more. Generously funded by the Scottish Library and Information Council’s Resource Discovery Fund, we ran a virtual workshop from March 10-12, 20212 which was aimed at exploring, contextualising, and refining the advanced OCR and IIIF technologies and methodologies conceived and implemented by both project teams.

Over three afternoons (GMT) the workshop demonstrated the innovating work that has been done to test transcription on an early printed collection, the Scottish Session papers, and an 18th century handwritten collection, the notebooks of Sir Charles Lyell. The workshop included hands-on practical sessions to allow participants the opportunity to experiment with the techniques we have developed to investigate how these techniques can be applied to other print collections and to illustrate their potential for pursuing digital scholarship.

As well as cutting across disciplinary and international boundaries, the workshop also cut across sectors by bringing together librarians, archivists, scholars, programmers and developers to discuss common collections whose potential could be unleashed using these digital tools.

The event was a resounding success, with over 150 people attending from all over the world.

The event programme is available here:

Videos of the event are now available online:  

 

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