Archive Services refurbishment – new photos

Click here for the latest pictures of our new visitor facilities under construction.

Where is the January book of the month?

Avid followers of the Special Collections book of the month series may be disappointed to notice that there is no posting for January 2010.

Instrument showing the motion of the moon from the first book of the month (August 1999)

We are currently hard at work creating a new website for Special Collections. This is giving us the opportunity to revise and update our current site, and will harmonise the look and feel of our pages so that they follow the same layout and structure as the main library website.

We are aiming for the new site to be launched in the Spring. In the meantime, we will not be adding any major new content to the current Special Collections website. We are therefore taking a break from producing books of the month!

Our book of the month feature has now run for over ten years and all the previous entries remain accessible on our book of the month archive page.  Browsing through these is a great introduction to the wonderful resources of Special Collections. We would be interested to hear your views on whether or not you think we should continue this series once the new website is up and running.

Meanwhile, we will continue to use the library blog to highlight books of interest and provide information about what is going on in Special Collections – so watch this space.

New monthly image showcase for our blog and Facebook

This month we must say thank-you to Jani Helle, producer of a photoblog that reflects his experience as a student at the University of Glasgow. Jani has very kindly allowed us to use one of his photographs as this months profile picture.

If you are a student or member of staff at the University of Glasgow and you have an image of the Library that you think would make a good, profile picture during a month in 2010 we’d be interested to chat to you about showcasing it.

If you have an appropriate image please contact Heather Worlledge-Andrew on hwa@lib.gla.ac.uk

Funds secured to catalogue design archives

Archive Services have been awarded a grant from the National Cataloguing Grants Programme to catalogue the Stoddard-Templeton Archive.  The cataloguing project, which will start in 2010 and complete in 2011 will allow this fascinating collection of carpet designs and patterns to become accessible to researchers.

The Archive, a record of the complete carpet-making process from initial design drafting, through the agreement of colour and pattern, to manufacture and sale, was the product of Scotland’s leading carpet manufacturers, James Templeton & Co Ltd and Stoddard International plc.  Together, the companies had a enormous impact on the Scottish economy and they have a significant role in Scotland’s economic, social, industrial and design heritage.

The Archive is part of the Stoddard-Templeton Collection, which brings together the design archive, design library and heritage carpet collection.  Held across the University, Glasgow School of Art and Glasgow Museums, the Collection is wonderful resource for the study of applied design and economic and social history.

Christmas and New Year Opening times

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all our blog readers and Library users.

Used with kind permission of HikingArtist.com

The main Library is open today, Wednesday 23rd, at the usual times, right up until 2am. Tomorrow, the 24th December, we do close earlier than usual for Christmas Eve at 5pm.

The Library is shut completely on Christmas Day (25th) and Boxing Day (26th) but we’ll be open again at 7:15am on Sunday the 27th December. The building will be open for its normal hours of 7:15am to 2am on the 27th to 30th December.

On Thursday 31st December we will close early again at 5pm and will stay closed for the 1st and 2nd January. We are then open again from 7:15am on Sunday 3rd January.

Staff services are more restricted than usual on some days and please be warned that Special Collections has a longer closure period. You can see all of these in detail on our opening hours web page.

House of Fraser 160th Anniversary celebrations

On the 18th of November I attended the opening of the Heritage Gallery in the House of Fraser store in Glasgow, on behalf of Archive Services. This event marked the beginning of a number of celebrations to mark the 160^th Anniversary of the department store, which was founded in 1849, when partners Hugh Fraser and James Arthur opened a small drapery shop on the corner of Argyle Street/Buchanan Street, Glasgow.

The evening was a success with many people coming along to celebrate the history of this prominent Glasgow store. Archives Services holds the House of Fraser archive and some of the records and artefacts were on display at the Heritage Gallery last night, including a cash register, photographs showing views of the interior and exterior of the store over the years, a Wylie and Lochhead catalogue and a banking agreement from 1933 between Hugh Fraser and the Royal Bank of Scotland.

Over the past three years staff at Archive Services have been recataloguing the House of Fraser archive as part of an AHRC funded project.  This project has seen the use of new techniques for archival arrangement and description to recatalogue the House of Fraser Archive and make it available to a wider audience.  The House of Fraser collection is a valuable source for anyone interested in learning more about the company itself or Scottish business history from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The new online catalogue is currently undergoing user-testing and will be launched later.

Level 3 Annexe: temporary closure

Level 3 Annexe will be closed today, 22nd Dec,  from 1pm. You can still get refreshments from the Rest and Be Thoughtful area on Level 4.

Turnitin – advance warning of downtime

The providers of Turnitin have warned us that the system will be down for an evening.

The exact downtime is for 8 hours from 5pm on Jan 2nd 2010 to 1am on Jan 3rd 2010.

If you have assignments that you were thinking of submitting around this time please allow for this downtime and either submit before or after it. The reason for the downtime is bring forward user requested improvements:

• Improvements to the instructor and student dashboards, how the system looks to you when you log in.
• The launch of a new peer review tool PeerMark (the existing PeerReview tool to be phased out by June 2010)
• To orient users to the new dashboard, an intercept page will appear when users log in from 18th Dec 2009.

For more complete information go to
https://submit.ac.uk/static_jisc/ac_uk_new_tii_features_010210.html.

Who killed Moctezuma II? Intrigue and subversion at the British Museum…

One of the University of Glasgow Library’s most impressive and unusual treasures is currently on loan at the British Museum.  The Historia de Tlaxcala, also know as the Codex Tlaxcala, is central to the museum’s fascinating new exhibition, Moctezuma: Aztec Ruler, running until the 24th of January 2010. 

The codex provides a descriptive history of the small city-state of Tlaxcala, which bordered the Aztec empire.  The Aztecs, or the Mexicas, as more correctly they should be known, were the preeminent military power in early 16th century Mesoamerica with an empire stretching from the Pacific to the Gulf Coast. The Tlaxcalans – no fans of their bullying and expansionist neighbours – were happy to ally themselves with the Spanish in their 1519 conquest and were instrumental in helping secure victory.
 
The codex, compiled over half a century after the conquest, was presented to the Spanish King, Philip II, in 1585.  It consists of a persuasive text and a parallel pictographic narrative detailing the Spanish-Tlaxcalan triumph, conceived and created by the Tlaxcalan delegation to curry favour with the Spanish Crown in order to win preferential treatment for the town.

Tlaxcala codex. Folios 258v-259r. (MS Hunter 242 (U.3.15))

Tlaxcala Codex – Detail from folio 259 recto showing Moctezuma with a chain-wielding Spaniard behind him.

The Mexica ruler, Moctezuma II, died shortly after the Spanish conquest in controversial and contested circumstances. Interestingly, the Tlaxcala codex potentially sheds some light on his untimely demise. Traditional Spanish accounts attribute the death to his angry and disillusioned subjects throwing stones.  However, the codex scribe depicts Moctezuma on the roof of his palace placating his warriors and ordering their retreat as two Spaniards approach him from behind, one with a chain raised threateningly in hand. 

So were the Spanish responsible for killing Moctezuma II? Well, they may have been – indeed, some other accounts also point to their involvement – but why, one might ask, would a Tlaxcalan account, conceived to cosy-up to the Spanish, make such a subversive claim? Perhaps, speculate the exhibition curators, because a pro-Mexica scribe had been employed to duplicate the image from a master copy, and in so doing, altered it to sabotage their old enemy the Tlaxcalans’ project!

To learn more about this interesting manuscript, read our Book of the Month article on it.

Group Study Space – availability

One of the most commonly asked questions at the Welcome desk is, “What group study facilities do you have?”

The answer is that we have six formal rooms, taking from 4 to 8 people, with the larger ones being suitable for two small groups to share if demand is high. Any group of three students or more can book a study room although we advise that you do so 24hrs ahead of when you need it if at all possible, bookings can be made up to two weeks ahead so if you have a presentation due in the next few weeks simply book a room near to the completion day. Bookings are currently being taken at the Welcome desk on level 2.  More information on the facilities within each individual room can be seen on our website.

If an individual room is not available remember that the whole of the Library’s level 3 is also designated as a group study space. We are happy for you to meet and work quietly at the tables or sofa spaces near the photocopy room and circular desk area or in the new pods in the refreshment area.

The six refurbished areas with red seating can seat more than one small group working simultaneously and these spaces also provide somewhere for groups to plug-in their laptops and display the screen up on the wall so everyone can see and work together on presentations and papers.