This past week, Special Collections helped host the bi-annual meeting of The Calotype Society, a modern day take on the original photographic exchange circles that sprung up here in Scotland during the early days of…
At the end of July, John Jardine, University Bedellus, retired after 29 years’ service with the University. In that role as mace-bearer, almost the personification of the corporate identity of the institution, John was…
Antony van Leeuwenhoek is widely recognised as the person who discovered the microbial world and I have always been intrigued by this somewhat unusual and eccentric scientific pioneer. Although he received no formal…
It’s summer time, the season of weddings, and so this week the focus is upon Brides Wedding Book by Elizabeth Hillier, a graduate of the University of St Andrews. I have to admit that I didn’t set out to read this book…
Back in April, we received an addition to the Ladislav Holy Collection – Ladislav Holy (1933–1997) was a Czech anthropologist and Africanist, who came to St Andrews in 1979 as Reader in Social Anthropology, eventually…
Of all the collections to be catalogued by the Phase 1 team, the Shewan Collection will probably be the only one where every item has passed through my hands as lead cataloguer. As this is something which rarely…
Although I thought that the work of George Herbert was all new to me, I found that I already knew some of his poems almost by heart, having sung the hymns “Teach me, my God and King“, “King of Glory, King of Peace” and…
Working with the Photographic Collection, it may seem self-evident that I prefer to read books with pictures. So when asked to read a book from the collections I wracked my brain about where I should start. Since we…
At 9:30 this morning, several of the special collections team took an early morning break, found a sunny patch of grass and experienced the solar eclipse; which reached about 95% of maximum in St Andrews. We had great…
As a teenager, I spent much of my time wearing black velvet, listening to the Sisters of Mercy, and writing depressing poetry. At university, I enrolled in classes like “Byron and Byronism” and “The Rhetoric of…