10th June 2019 – Visit of Aberdeen Football Club
Members of the AFC Granite Club visited Museums and Special Collections on the 10th June to view a selection of sporting material from the archives including the early plans of the stadium for Aberdeen Football Club in 1899 and early photographs of University hockey, rugby and football teams. A full list of the material on display can be found here: AFCdisplay_10June2019
7th September 2019 – Doors Open Day
Staff welcomed visitors to Special Collections as part of the annual Doors Open Day event. Michelle Gait, Jan Smith and Heather Kennedy presented a selection of maps from our collections in the Wolfson Reading Room, including some early maps of Aberdeen and Blaeu’s ‘Theatrum orbis terrarium’. DoorsOpenDay_display2019
Our colleague Fiona Musk, the NHS Grampian Archivist, displayed material from the NHS archive collections while Andrew MacGregor was at the Town House with examples of material from the Aberdeen Trades Union Council collection of archives. ATUC_DoorsOpenDay_display
Visitors were also able to view the fantastic new exhibition in the Gallery ‘Walking with Birds: The Art of Audubon and MacGillivray’
2nd October 2019: First steps: Caring for Community Archives
This event, organised by the Scottish Council on Archives and hosted by Aberdeen City and Aberdeenshire Archives at the Town House, was attended by approximately 22 participants. As part of a packed full day programme our book conservator, Brannah Mackenzie, gave a short presentation on conservation and a brief introduction to handling archive material before delivering an interactive workshop on basic cleaning and packaging of archive material.
5th October 2019: Sources for Scottish Catholic History: A Symposium
A symposium celebrating and showcasing archival sources relating to Scottish Catholic history, and the research based on them, was hosted by Museums and Special Collections on the afternoon of the 5th October. Organised by the Scottish Catholic Historical Association, some of the treasures from the University’s collections were on display and included the only known copies of John Hamilton’s ‘Ane godlie exhortatioun’ (Edinburgh, 1559) Blairs College Library BCL.S104 and ‘The Copland tracts’ (London, 1522-31), nine devotional works printed by Robert Copland (fl. 1508-1547) Blairs College Library BCL.S86(1-9). Archive material included Mary Queen of Scots letter of protection (2nd November 1562) AUL KINGS/4/4/1 and a list of emigrants from the Highlands to St. John’s Island in 1790 on board the ships ‘The Jane’ and ‘The Lucy’ Scottish Catholic Archives OL/1/1/3.
The three speakers covered medieval, early modern and modern research interests: Dr Joanna Tucker, University of Glasgow: ‘The Medieval Cartularies in the Scottish Catholic Archives and their Significance’, Professor Gerard Carruthers, University of Glasgow: ‘Alexander Geddes (1737-1802): Lost Genius of Scottish Culture’ and Dr Iida Saarinen, University of Dundee: ‘Doctoral research and the (Untapped) Potential of the Scottish Catholic Archives (Historic Archives)’.
Further information about the material on display can be found here: SCHA symposium 051019 BCL items / SCHA symposium 051019 SCA items
Other meetings and events attended by staff:
7th June 2019: Jane Pirie was at the CILIP Cataloguing futures conference in Edinburgh
1st-3rd July 2019: Andrew MacGregor attended the International Council on Archives annual conference in Dundee
28th August 2019: Susan Curran attended the Building a Successful Learning Programme event in Edinburgh hosted by Museums Galleries Scotland
4th-6th September 2019: Keith O’Sullivan was at the CILIP Rare Books & Special Collections Group annual study conference in Cardiff
17th September 2019: Laura Benvie and Fiona Musk attended the Emotional Support in Archives training day hosted by the Archives & Records Association at the AK Bell Library, Perth
UoA Collections 