National Collecting Scheme Scotland

The National Collecting Scheme Scotland is an initiative of the Scottish Arts Council that supports public collections across Scotland to acquire and present challenging contemporary visual art. The initiative also seeks to enable curators within those organisations to extend their knowledge and understanding of contemporary visual arts, and to develop their engagement with the visual arts sector in Scotland.

Find out more about the NCSS scheme and its acquisitions at the University of Glasgow website and at the archived Scottish Arts Council site.

Edinburgh's "Capital Collections" website launches

The Capital Collections website has recently launched as an image library of Edinburgh City Libraries and Museums and Galleries. It contains "images of material from the collections of Edinburgh's City Libraries and Museums and Galleries. You can discover the historical and cultural life of Edinburgh, Scotland and the Scots through this growing image library which includes a wonderful selection of photographs, paintings, engravings and objects ranging from toys to ceramics, silverware and material from the history collections." Images are downloadable for personal/educational purposes, and some are also available to purchase.

Edinburgh College of Art launches new catalogue interface

(with thanks to SVAG member Jane Furness, news on the new and improved ECA catalogue - cheers, Paula)

ECA Library Service is delighted to announce a new and much improved interface to our online Library Catalogue. This will be run as a pilot service alongside our existing catalogue until the end of the year, after which the old catalogue will be discontinued and the new one will take its place.

Our new catalogue has a fresher and more user-friendly design and incorporates several brand new and very useful features:

-Enhanced and improved search functions
- Book jacket images
- Links to book previews, reviews and related books (all from Google Books)
- The facility to add books to your own personal list for future reference
- The facility to save searches and run them again at a later date

Please feel free to try out our new pilot Library Catalogue service. The new catalogue is also available as a link from the homepage of the existing catalogue. We would welcome your comments and feedback during the pilot.

We will be running some drop-in sessions in the coming weeks to help introduce users to the new catalogue – details to follow.

NGS seminar: Social media for the Scottish cultural heritage sector

Social media for the Scottish cultural heritage sector: a one-day open seminar

Date: Thursday 21 October 2010, 10am–5pm
Venue: Hawthornden Lecture Theatre, National Galleries of Scotland
Cost: This event is free of charge, thanks to funding from the Royal Society of Edinburgh

Aims: to discuss current social media practice in the Scottish sector; to consider developments in other national contexts; to establish a focus for future workshops and an emerging research agenda
People: open to all professionals in the cultural heritage sector with an interest in social media in museums and galleries, and to researchers and professionals interested in the broad field of museum and gallery education

The first event organized as part of the Digital Futures of Cultural Heritage Education project will be a one-day open seminar to be held on 21 October 2010 at the National Galleries of Scotland. This will be followed by two workshops, which will combine discussion and debate with hands-on work in various social media environments. These will be hosted by the School of Education at the University of Edinburgh, in March and June 2011. Details will be available in the autumn of 2010.

Further details of the October seminar, including the programme and the link for booking online, can be found at the Digital Futures of Cultural Heritage Education project website.

JISC Advance - Digital Media and Copyright Seminar, London

(with thanks to JISC Digital Media for the following information - hope some of you, SVAG members or not, will find this useful - Paula)

"Do you use images from the internet in PowerPoint? Are you struggling to get your head around the rights of your digital collection? Are you embarking on producing your own digital media resources? JISC Digital Media in association with JISC Legal is hosting a brand new JISC Advance - Digital Media and Copyright Seminar to help disseminate information in order to help you protect your resources and your institution.

Use of digital media has fast become the norm in day-to-day work, and as a result awareness of copyright and other rights is key in taking care of your own works, as well as making sure you are not infringing the rights of others.

This seminar aims to offer practical approaches and considerations for using digital media in teaching and learning, digitising digital media and digital rights management. It is aimed at those working in developing institutional policy, disseminating copyright information to staff, and those working with digital media on a day-to-day basis.

The objectives are:

* To increase confidence in dealing with multi-layer intellectual property rights in digital media
* To identify appropriate approaches to dealing with the uncertainties of copyright law in relation to digital media
* To share experiences of both issues and solutions to IPR challenges in relation to digital media

Having listened to many of our users, we are running this event outside of Bristol, with a view to hosting it in various venues nationwide in the upcoming future.

To find out more and book a place please see the the event page."