CILIPS North East Branch event

The next CILIPS North East Branch event (held jointly with Grampian

Information) will be 'By George she's got it - enhancing and improving

access through the migration of digital objects.' This presentation

will discuss the recent migration of the George Washington Wilson

photographic archive to the University of Aberdeen's digital asset

management software.

As one of Scotland's premier photographers George Washington Wilson and

his firm captured images not only of Aberdeen and the North East but

the whole of Scotland and most of England, as well as parts of Wales

and Northern Ireland, Gibraltar, Morocco, the South of Spain, and

(especially) colonial South Africa and Australia. Thousands of those

images are now available for all to see at http://digitool.abdn.ac.uk/.

The project has enhanced the level of detail visible in the images

themselves and the basic metadata created when the archive was first

digitised. This twilight session will include a look at images from the

collection as well as the crosswalks which have enabled us to increase

the granularity of our metadata while still allowing it to be harvested

in Dublin Core.

This free event will take place in the Seminar Room at the Queen Mother

Library on the University of Aberdeen's Old Aberdeen Campus (see

http://www.abdn.ac.uk/maps/old-aberdeen.php) at 16:00 on Tuesday

28 June 2011.

In Conversation at the Edinburgh City Libraries Reference Library

Edinburgh Reads is delighted to present Frances Fowle talking about her book, on the Scottish Art Dealer Alexander Reid – Van Gogh’s Twin - in conversation with Hil Williamson on Thursday 14 July at 6.30pm in the Edinburgh City Libraries Reference Library.

Frances Fowle is Senior Lecturer in History of Art at the University of Edinburgh, and Senior Curator of French art at the National Gallery of Scotland. She curated the Impressionism and Scotland exhibition in 2008 and Van Gogh and Britain in 2006.

Alexander Reid, often a stubborn and difficult individual but a ‘prince among dealers’ brought Impressionism to Scotland as well as championing the Glasgow Boys and the Scottish Colourists. Frances tells the fascinating story of his life, including his friendship with artists such as Whistler and Van Gogh.

Booking for this event is essential. Please contact readerdevelopment@edinburgh.gov.uk or phone 0131 242 8100.

Rare books and special collections at GSA

Following a major project to audit and recatalogue its rare books and special collections, the Glasgow School of Library Art is now digitizing selected titles and making them available on the Internet Archive. Titles include 3 volumes of Bairei Kono’s bird drawings, early zoological hand-coloured plates, a 16^th century Palladio volume, and the complete 2 volumes of the Scottish Art Review. Further titles will follow over the coming weeks at http://www.archive.org/details/glasgowschoolofart

Women's Library Suffrage Collection online

A unique collection relating to British women’s fight for the vote 100 years ago has been revealed online today through the Visual Arts Data Service (VADS).

The digitised material represents a selection of the vast collections housed at the Women’s Library at London Metropolitan University, and includes posters, photographs, postcards, badges, and other memorabilia relating to the British suffrage movement.

Particularly remarkable and moving items from the online collection include a photograph of a crowd attacking suffragettes, and the purse that was held by Emily Wilding Davison at the Epsom Derby in 1913, when she stepped in front of the horse of King George V, which resulted in her death four days later.

The Women’s Library is the oldest and largest collection of women’s history in the UK and was founded in 1926 as the Library of the London Society for Women’s Service, a non-militant organisation led by leading suffragist, Millicent Fawcett. It is now held by the London Metropolitan University and is an internationally acclaimed specialist library, archive, and museum with collections that have broadened since its inception to include a wide range of subjects which focus on the lives of women in Britain. The collection now consists of 60,000 books and pamphlets, 3500 periodical titles, over 450 archives, and 5000 museum objects.

The collection of valuable documents, from the Women's Library and the Parliamentary Archives, which tell the story of the women’s suffrage movement has also recently been selected as one of twenty collections to represent the outstanding heritage of the United Kingdom on the UNESCO UK Memory of the World Register.

The online selection provides a taster of these extensive collections, and adds to the national repository of over 120,000 digitised images available through VADS from a range of collections across the UK. In particular, this latest addition complements the existing online collection of Women’s Library Suffrage Banners, which includes almost 250 banners and associated artworks which have been made available online for free use in education and research.

Books in Focus at the SNGMA

Books in Focus at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art

Each session is devoted to artists books held in the collection of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. July’s session will focus on books by the German surrealist Hans Bellmer, whilst in August we will continue the surrealist theme by examining books by Salvador Dalí. The final session in September will focus on Joan Miró.

Hans Bellmer

Thursday 7^th July 2011, 11.30am -12.30pm, Modern Two

This session will focus on books by the German-born Surrealist artist Hans Bellmer (1902-1975), who documented the creation of his articulated ‘Doll’ with sketches and photographs in a number of French and German publications, and also produced illustrations for Surrealist erotica.

Salvador Dalí

Thursday 4^th August 2011, 11.30am – 12.30pm, Modern Two

Salvador Dalí (1904-1989) was a central figure in the early years of the Surrealist movement, and contributed images to a number of Surrealist texts in the 1930s and 1940s. Amongst the books examined in this session will be the influential prose poem Les Chants de Maldoror by Lautréamont, illustrated by Dalí, which was cited as a major inspiration by the Surrealists.

Joan Miró

Thursday 1^st September 2011, 11.30am – 12.30pm, Modern Two

The Catalan artist Joan Miró settled in Paris in 1918, and from 1924 onwards collaborated and exhibited with the Surrealist group. This session will include the 1958 book Constellations (reproducing prints by Miró, and accompanied by a text by André Breton), and a number of other publications featuring the familiar motifs of his poetic imagery.

There are only 10 spaces available in each session, so booking is essential – please ring 0131 624 6268 or email gmainfo@nationalgalleries.org to book your place.