Amanda Ramsey has followed in the footsteps of Matthew Ferrie on his Jean Butchart Bursary, cataloguing manuscripts held by the Edinburgh Central Library. We asked Amanda to reflect on her work as a placement student there and introduce how she is helping us improve access to back issues of the Book of the Old Edinburgh Club. She has been awarded a Jean Butchart Bursary for this project.
Cataloguing City Library Manuscripts
I feel privileged to have been given a placement at Edinburgh Central Library on the Master of Library and Information Sciences course at the University of Strathclyde. I spent a total of 10 weeks working at the library during the second semester, mostly creating electronic catalogue records. I started with regular print books, learning how to put them properly onto the library’s online public access catalogue at https://yourlibrary.edinburgh.gov.uk/. I was able to select the books I wanted to catalogue, so I chose books on American history and presidents, such as “Memoirs of the Hon. Thomas Jefferson”, “Sketch of the Laws Relating to Slavery in the Several States of the United States of America”, “From Log Cabin to White House: The Story of President Garfield’s Life”, and “Mayflower Essays on the Story of the Pilgrim Fathers”. I chose books on these topics because I grew up visiting presidential homes during family vacations. Being in an environment where many of these types of books are only discoverable by searching in the Library but not yet available on the online catalogue made it a fun project to practice with.
When moving into the manuscript phase of the project, I started with Levels 1 and 2 items which are documents in which the cataloguing is straightforward and there is not a lot of ambiguity to handle. As time went on, I was challenged with more Level 3 manuscripts. I found a few documents that were especially interesting to me. The first was a set of schoolbooks that didn’t have a title or author listed on them. They focused mostly on science subjects, more specifically chemistry. What interested me in these books was that some of the terminology used in the books has changed but the majority has stayed the same even after all these years.
Another manuscript I worked on was a part of the collection of publisher William Creech (1745-1815). This was a dream journal that had been given to him in 1808 with the idea that it could be published as a play. The dreams were so bizarre and vivid, taking place over a span of a few months. While it was never published, it is still extremely interesting to read about someone’s dreams from such a long time ago. Finally, another manuscript that I worked on was a scrapbook from a schoolteacher, called the Rothesay House School: Miss Millidge’s Scrap Books. I really liked this manuscript because it had pictures in it as well as information, so it brought history to life. It gives viewers an idea of what schools were like between 1947 and 1953 in Scotland.
Since I am from the United States, I learned quite a lot about Scottish history and culture when working on this project. It was an awe-inspiring experience to work with manuscripts and books that were in some cases almost as old as my own country. I definitely have an appreciation for Scottish history and more specifically, Edinburgh history.
Experience of cataloguing
The experience of cataloguing these items and working at Edinburgh Central Library has been incredible. I learned almost everything I know about cataloguing from this department. I can’t thank the Old Edinburgh Club enough for supporting this cataloguing project and challenging me in ways I didn’t know I needed so that I could sharpen my librarian skills in the realm of archiving and cataloguing. The knowledge and patience every staff member at Edinburgh Central has shown while teaching me about manuscripts and how to catalogue was very much appreciated. The passion that I witnessed of both the librarians at Edinburgh Central Library and the Old Edinburgh Club has encouraged me and made me excited for my future career in librarianship. I hope that I get to do more work with manuscripts and cataloguing in the future because of this project.
The Jean Butchart Bursary award
I am excited to continue my work in relation to Edinburgh history. I have been awarded a Jean Butchart Bursary from the Old Edinburgh Club, to make it easier to search the older online volumes of the Book of the Old Edinburgh Club. I am splitting the volumes into individual articles and adding metadata to each of these. This is helping me develop new professional skills, so I am grateful for this opportunity.
The skills I have learned during these projects will help me in the future because I now know how to use different technologies that I hadn’t previously been able to access such as a PDF splitter and the cataloguing system. Learning the Library of Congress cataloguing system will aid me, especially if I end up as a librarian in the United States because it is commonly used in libraries all over the country. Being taught how to use the MARC cataloguing framework has allowed me to gain confidence in cataloguing, which is an important skill librarians need. Finally, I’ve learned how important collaboration is in a library and I’ve seen how the wheels of the machine work together to bring the best possible services to patrons. With the support of people like the Old Edinburgh Club, expansion of services and opportunities are possible. Prior to this experience, I didn’t fully know how other organizations and people in the community could create a partnership and bring more exposure to the benefits of libraries. Seeing this partnership between the Central Library and the Old Edinburgh Club has inspired me to hopefully work to do the same in the library I will work at in the future.
