The libraries of the future

University special collections - they’re archaic, mysterious places full of imposing tomes and dusty manuscripts - right?

According to David Weston, Keeper of Special Collections at the University of Glasgow library and a key figure in the digitisation of a number of the University’s collections, this couldn’t be further from the truth.

“Digitisation is something that has become a major focus of attention for people in my position – running special collection departments – over the last decade,” he says. Mr Weston has worked with academics, photographers and IT specialists on projects to digitise, among others, Chaucer’s The Romaunt of the Rose and a series of 19th century broadside ballads from the Murray Collection. Another project to digitise a full corpus of 16th century French emblem books – part of the Stirling Maxwell Collection - has been recently completed.

“Digital preservation is a much more active form of preservation than original preservation. Any sort of disk storage can be physically damaged just like a bit of paper or a book can. But even more critical is that it can become outmoded. That is the challenge of digital preservation.”
David Weston

“These books contain a fascinating combination of moral, religious and philosophical advice expressed in a poem, initially in Latin,” Mr Weston explains. “The unique feature of these is that they are combined with engraved images. Now that the corpus has been digitised, it’s possible to view the 27 emblem books, each containing about 100 emblems, and you can search the whole of that by text and by subject. This means that you can not only see all the images, but also compare them. This shows the real value of the digital technology – the infinite ability to connect and compare sources in any way you like, all on the space of a screen.”

The project, which received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, was led by Professor Alison Adams and involved an international team of scholars, as well as the expertise of Mr Weston. He says: “it isn’t just a matter of having the collection but also of having people with motivation and energy. At the end of the day, it’s down to the people and what they make of the resources around them.”

You can see the French emblem books at: www.emblems.arts.gla.ac.uk/french/
For more projects and information: http://special.lib.gla.ac.uk/index.html