Archives

University Archives have won funding for exciting new endeavours.

In a highly competitive funding programme The Wellcome Trust have awarded Archives over £96,000 for a project to increase access to the department's medical collections. The amount received is the highest in the UK - and the only medical project of this kind in Scotland. The grant will fund a two year project involving the Tayside Health Board archive, papers belonging to University medical staff and relating to medical missionaries in Tiberius, Israel.

The project will digitise, conserve, prepare detailed catalogues, provide searchable internet access on a dedicated web site and will support research in many areas.

Further funding of over £40,000 has been awarded to prepare 1850 digital images and associated captions. Resources for Learning in Scotland (RLS) is a consortium headed by the National Library of Scotland including the National Archives of Scotland, the Scottish Cultural Access Network (SCRAN), and over 100 Scottish archives and libraries, to create digital content for the study and celebration of social, cultural and industrial heritage in Scotland.

Dundee University Archives is also a partner in the Scottish Archive Network project to open up Scotland's rich archival heritage. Over the course of the three-year project they are revolutionising access to Scottish Archives, linking archives large and small, public and private, to create a unique knowledge base on Scottish history and culture. SCAN has provided a state-of-the-art internet ready PC which will be available to readers in the Search Room.

Sarah Chubb has been appointed full-time project archivist for a year to work on Dundee University's contribution to the Archives HE Hub project. The Archives Hub will provide a single point of access on the web to descriptions of records held in universities and colleges throughout the UK. Dundee University Archives will develop collection level descriptions for all its collections which will conform to the current international standard. By the end of the project the Archives will have improved access to its holdings by providing detailed descriptions over the internet.

Andrew Nicoll, currently working for the Archives major digitisation project, has secured a two-month secondment in the Royal Commission for Ancient and Historic Monuments in Edinburgh, the Clan Donald Centre in Sky, and Glasgow City Archives to learn new skills through the sharing museum skills millennium awards scheme.

Archives is currently involved in several projects run by the Research Support Libraries Programme. Over 6,000 plans and related material showing Scotland's architectural development have now been scanned and digitised as part of the Drawn Evidence project, and will be available on the project website at www.drawnevidence.ac.uk. The digitised collections already include the most important drawings from universities, local authorities, private estates and national institutions in Scotland. During August project staff visited Orkney and Shetland to select plans for the project, including drawings of St Magnus Cathedral in Kirkwall and the Town House in Lerwick.

A partner project - Visual Evidence, led by the University of St Andrews, is scanning c22,000 images from the Michael Peto photographic collection. These include famous figures from the worlds of politics, art and entertainment. The images will shortly be available on the web. Together with Aberdeen University's George Washington Wilson collection and St Andrews University's Valentine collection they will prove to be a valuable photographic resource. www.dundee.ac.uk/archives

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