May 25, National Library of Scotland
Friday, Edinburgh
At the National Library of Scotland, the sheer number of items in their collection blew me away. The NLS has 16,000,000 printed items, 2,000,000 maps, 100,000 manuscripts, and 25,000 newspaper and magazine titles. This means that the processing, and retrieving can be very complicated, to put it lightly. Our first speaker told us that the retrievers end up walking eight to ten miles per day. If every shelf in the library and their stores was laid out end-to-end in a straight line, it would stretch over 124,000 miles. Still, they guarantee being able to fetch materials from their off site locations within 50 minutes of being requested.
The presenters picked out a few treasures from their archives for us to touch and flip through, including a handwritten book from Caroline Lamb to Lord Byron, some of Lord Byron's letters, a letter from Darwin to publisher John Murray proposing his manuscript for 'The Origin of Species', and photographs by Isabella Bird.
We were not allowed to take any pictures, but many of these rare items are digitized and have also been transcribed from handwriting into typed words and can be easily accessed by searching the NLS website.
For the rest of the day, a group of us took a bus tour around Edinburgh to get a second look at the city, and venture in to 'New Town.'
The presenters picked out a few treasures from their archives for us to touch and flip through, including a handwritten book from Caroline Lamb to Lord Byron, some of Lord Byron's letters, a letter from Darwin to publisher John Murray proposing his manuscript for 'The Origin of Species', and photographs by Isabella Bird.
We were not allowed to take any pictures, but many of these rare items are digitized and have also been transcribed from handwriting into typed words and can be easily accessed by searching the NLS website.
For the rest of the day, a group of us took a bus tour around Edinburgh to get a second look at the city, and venture in to 'New Town.'
Go to all pictures from Edinburgh after the National Library of Scotland.