The month of June got off to a busy start with three groups visiting Special Collections, all welcomed by Jane Pirie, our Rare Books Cataloguer, and Keith O’Sullivan, the Senior Rare Books Librarian.
6th June 2016 – Skene Guild of Westhill
Around 20-30 members of the Skene Guild of Westhill were given a tour of The Sir Duncan Rice Library building, including the Special Collections Centre. Material of local interest was displayed as part of the tour in the Seminar Room and colleagues were delighted to answer questions from the group about the facilities available to readers and the work carried out by the teams across the Library and Special Collections.
7th June 2016 – Brigham Young Ballroom Team
30 members of the Brigham Young Ballroom team from the Brigham Young University in Utah (https://home.byu.edu/home/) visited Special Collections in the morning and were given a tour of the Library building and the Special Collections Centre. A variety of treasures from the collections were on display for the team to view before they were shown round the current exhibition in the gallery, An Audience with Charles Dickens, with the aid of Jen Shaw, Exhibition Officer: http://www.abdn.ac.uk/library/about/special/exhibitions/.
7th June 2016 – Arts Fund visit
Later that same day 20 attendees from the Arts Fund (http://www.artfund.org/) were given a tour of Special Collections and the Glucksman Conservation Centre. Jen Shaw provided the group with an introduction to the outreach work carried out in Special Collections and discussed the Dickens exhibition (http://www.abdn.ac.uk/library/about/special/exhibitions/) in the Gallery after which the group were escorted to Special Collections and divided into two smaller parties. Each group had the opportunity to view an exhibition of items from the collections in the Seminar Room and were shown the environmentally controlled stores as well as given an introduction to the Glucksman Conservation Centre (www.abdn.ac.uk/library/about/special/glucksman-conservation-centre/).
For a list of the material on display for both visits please see here: List of material on display – June 2016
UoA Collections 