Playing catch-up

Ok, going on holiday for a month sounded like a fabulous plan, but the reality is, you get the best part of a months work backlogged for when you come back, and spend all your time trying to get that done while also keeping on top of the current stuff.

I’m aiming high – by the end of this week, the mail pile should be gone….hopefully.

In the meantime, a link to a story the lovely Hedgehog Librarian sent me while I was off bungee jumping in New Zealand…

The Digital Repository of the National Library of Scotland (which has its very own lovely blog here) has made a choice of technical partner for its ongoing project of creating a Digital Repository of many of the important documents from their massive (and always increasing!) collection.

Also, I just realised that the NLS also has a Flickr account, uploading lots of interesting photos from their photograph collections. A great way to be able to see some of the things you wouldn’t always expect a library to have. After all, libraries just hold books…don’t they? 😉

The blogging bard

It’s a busy time for Rabbie Burns. As the National Year of Homecoming is centred around the 250th anniversary of his birth, he’s got a lot of people looking closely at him and his work. So, he’s been reanimated, and popped up on Twitter, tweeting poems, line by line. After the initial news reports, NTS actually posted the essential information needed for following him on Twitter: his username – ayrshirebard. They might however want to note that Twitter updates to your phone haven’t been possible in the UK for many months.

And now, the revived poet has also taken to blogging!

Robert Burns’ Letters will be posting the letters of the bard, on the anniversary of the day they were actually written. He’s currently in full love-letter flow, writing to his ‘Clarinda’. The content of 91 letters will be being posted, concluding in 2010, when it is hoped the National Trust for Scotland will be able to open the doors of the Robert Burns Birthplace Museum. Funds are still needed for this (about £4 million), so if you can donate, please do!

Although one plea – pleeease take off the SnapShots thing on links to sites outside the blog, it’s the most annoying popup in the whole entire world…ever!

Now….time to try and find a good ceilidh in town for Burns Night….

A peek into the past

The State Papers Domestic of Henry VIII to Elizabeth I, covering the period from 1509 to 1603 are now available online for anyone who’s interested to rummage though, at State Papers Online.

The papers cover a vast range of issues from the time:

Containing 380,000 facsimile manuscript documents linked to fully-searchable Calendar entries, Part I delivers the complete collection of State Papers Domestic for this era. Every facet of early modern Government is detailed including social and economic affairs.
Key themes of Part I include:
  • Henry VIII’s relations with Europe
  • The Reformation
  • The Dissolution of Monasteries
  • Elizabeth I: Marriage and the Succession
  • Voyages of Discovery of Drake, Gilbert, Hawkins and Frobisher
  • Relations between the Crown and the nobility
  • The rise and fall of the Earl of Essex
  • The diplomacy of William Cecil and Francis Walsingham
Includes:
  • From the National Archives, London: SP 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15
  • From the British Library: Lansdowne Collection Burghley Papers
  • Calendars to all the above series and the HMC Calendars and Haynes/Murdin transcriptions of the Cecil Papers, Hatfield House

Part II will be available from 2009, and will include:

“The Tudors: Henry VIII to Elizabeth I, 1509 – 1603: State Papers Foreign, Ireland, Scotland, Borders and Registers of the Privy Council”