Edinburgh University Library Research Articles

An Open Book

Edinburgh Diamond is a service situated within Edinburgh University Library that supports the publication of academic and student-led Diamond Open Access journals and books. This practice paper reviews the launch of our Open Access book hosting programme, and also our rebrand, looking at the timeline and challenges, and offering recommendations for those wishing to launch their own service.

The Rights Retention Policy of Edinburgh University

As the first UK institution, Edinburgh University adopted a Rights Retention Policy on 1st January 2022. As a result, all research articles written by Edinburgh’s researchers can now be made legally available in open access immediately upon publication in a journal or a volume of conference proceedings. In this episode, head of Library Research Support at Edinburgh University Library, Dominic Tate explains how the policy came into being and how it has been received by academic publishers.
 In addition to Plan S, the 41 recommendations as stated in an Open Science Roadmap developed by a working group within LERU (League of European Research Universities) served as inspiration for the latest revision of the Open Access Policy at Edinburgh University. The institution has had an institutional repository in place for two decades and most researchers are routinely depositing their articles there. The next step was to enable these articles (usually in the form of the Author's Accepted Manuscript, AAM) to be made immediately available in open access without any embargo periods or other restrictions. About 160 publishers have received prior notice about Edinburgh’s rights retention policy and the reception has been overwhelmingly positive.
 The podcast recording was made in conjunction with the Munin Conference on Scholarly Publishing. It was first published online December 5, 2022.

Diamond Open Access Publishing in the Library

With developing guidance and policies around Open Access publishing, and with relatively high article and book processing charges from publishers, it is more important than ever for libraries to engage with Open Access publishing to provide support for their academics and students. It is even more important to be transparent about the process, so that we can foster an open community between libraries, providing viable alternative publishing solutions for the research community.
 Library publishing is a growing area, with more and more institutions now seeking ways to disrupt traditional publishing and support their staff and students through the power of Open Access. Edinburgh University Library has offered a Diamond Open Access journal hosting service for ten years, and recently launched a complimentary book hosting platform, bringing both services under the rebranded name of Edinburgh Diamond. Edinburgh Diamond is free of charge to Edinburgh staff and students, and enables them to publish journals, textbooks, monographs and edited collections with full library support in the areas of hosting (via open source software OJS & OMP), technical support, indexing, policy development, best-practice guidance, reporting and workflow training. Our service has grown and strengthened during the pandemic, with even more researchers looking online while physical libraries were closed. This growth hasn’t slowed now spaces are opening up again, and we are now actively growing our output. The rebranded service launched in October 2021 and we are keen to document and share our journey with the library community throughout the world.

Un dattiloscritto montaliano autografo non ancora conosciuto

This article examines a hitherto unknown typewritten copy of Eugenio Montale’s poem ‘Il rosso e il nero’, which the poet had gifted to the Scottish intellectual and provocateur Hamish Henderson in 1950. The poem, subsequently modified and renamed ‘Nubi color magenta…’ in the Madrigali privati section of La bufera e altro (1956), is preserved with Henderson’s papers in the Edinburgh University Library. The analysis includes a detailed description of the text, which provides insights into the evolution and publication history of the poem from its earliest known draft to its definitive published form. The discussion then expands to consider Montale’s sources and why he discarded the various working titles for the poem’s incipit. The article concludes by presenting Hamish Henderson in his role as a cultural mediator and by examining both his friendship with Montale and his relationship to Italian culture.

David Gregory, John Arbuthnot and their roles in the early development of probability in Great Britain

The first English translation of Huygens' (1657) De Ratiociniis in Ludo Aleae was anonymously published in 1692; since the early eighteenth century it has been assigned to the Scottish physician John Arbuthnot (1667–1735). We have found evidence showing that Arbuthnot's work on probability was influenced by Archibald Pitcairne (1652–1713) and, most significantly, by David Gregory (1659–1708). Manuscripts found in Gregory's collection at the Edinburgh University Library suggest that Gregory had a key role in the translation. The circumstantial evidence presented in this article reveals that the circle of individuals led by Gregory, Arbuthnot and Pitcairne probably originated earlier than previously established and that the role of Arbuthnot was more important than originally thought. We have also shown that the first developments of probability theory in Great Britain took place in Scotland thanks to David Gregory.

The Highlander: The Art of Decolonising Publishing

In 2015, I embarked on a new project with my former PhD supervisor at Edinburgh: to create a respected area studies journal of Highland Asia that would be both accessible and accountable to the communities where, and with whom, we do our research: Highland Asia! We successfully built up an editorial board of renowned scholars, convinced the Edinburgh University Library to be our publisher, and soon we had our journal online, with a short first issue free to download anywhere. However, we suddenly realised that we had lost something in the process. While we now engage with the global academic community, offering excellent peer-review, and editorial value to authors, we also found we were beginning to replicate a publishing model we were trying to get away from. Like pay-wall journals we were operating in a space at a distance, closed off, and culturally inaccessible to the communities we were eager to engage with. Can Open Access forge new pathways that are different from the pay-wall journals and big publishers? In recent months, we have started to look at our old notes, to see where we might regain our footing, to get back that ‘anarchist’ DIY inspiration! Providing free downloadable PDFs is good, but it is no great achievement anymore. How can we meaningfully bridge the worlds we work in so that knowledge production itself is more open? In our case, we think one approach is to open up the entire publishing process. In addition to indigenous authors and reviewers, we want to engage proof-readers, copyeditors, typesetters, photographers, cover designers, printers and remote college departments and libraries across the Himalayas. We have only started exploring this in 2020, but in the process we have discovered that there is great demand, for example, for printed versions. Easily produced locally, we could set up a basic subscription model, and stock local college libraries, book stores, and coffee shops in Northeast India, Bhutan, Sikkim, and Nepal. By opening up, and engaging in dialogue with local scholars, librarians, designers, and artists we have found all kinds of opportunities that help our journal move in the direction of being truly ‘Open Access’ in every way. In Edinburgh, we have also found a community of PhD students doing research on the Himalayas, excited to learn about publishing. We are forming an editorial collective that is now connecting with our community in Asia, offering additional contacts that can facilitate research exchange. Our journal remains experimental. We have, for example, decided to go with a rolling publishing model instead of distinct issues. I also want to engage my own students in Tromsø, especially in editorial management. I also hope we can develop synergies with the Open Access community in Norway. Beyond library publishing, we see an opportunity to create a new space, instead of combatting an old space dominated by for-profit publishers. Finally, by crossing borders, and truly opening up in this way, we also push this idea of knowledge production towards greater accountability. Indeed we are calling for truly tangible ways in decolonising publishing.

The Handwriting of Fifteenth-Century Privy Seal and Council Clerks

Abstract Although most scholars of medieval English palaeography are familiar with the hand of the Privy Seal clerk and poet Thomas Hoccleve, almost nothing is known about the handwriting of his fellow clerks. This article is the first attempt to identify and describe the hands of a number of clerks who wrote for the Privy Seal and for the Council in the fifteenth century. In Part 1, I identify the handwriting of Hoccleve’s fellow clerks, including William Alberton, Henry Benet, John Claydon, John Hethe, John Offord, and Richard Priour, adding writs, letters, charters, and manuscripts in their hands. I also identify the hand of the Council clerk Richard Caudray and attribute further records to the Council and Privy Seal clerk Robert Frye. Part 2 offers a reconsideration of the features of Hoccleve’s handwriting in the light of the new findings. This article also identifies the scribal stints and hands in four documents produced by Privy Seal clerks: British Library, MS Add. 24,062 (Hoccleve’s Formulary); BL, MS Cotton Cleopatra F. iii (Part 1 of the Book of the Council); BL, MS Harley 219; and Edinburgh University Library, MS 183 (Privy Seal and Signet formulary, or ‘Royal Letter Book’). This article reveals the extent to which Privy Seal clerks participated in the copying of literature and offers a more nuanced understanding of the varieties of the secretary script used by government scribes.

Material Diplomacy: A Continental Manuscript Produced for James III, Edinburgh University Library, MS 195

This paper examines a late medieval manuscript produced in northern France and Flanders for a member of the Scottish royal house: Edinburgh University Library, MS 195. The manuscript contains an ornate representation of the royal arms of Scotland, supported by two unicorns. It was commissioned for James III c. 1464–7. Despite its royal provenance, the manuscript has received limited scholarly attention. The text and illuminations are analysed in order to shed light on their origins and on the circumstances of their production. The manuscript is an important example of a continental work produced for Scottish royalty. By studying the text, heraldry, iconography and historical context of the manuscript, this paper provides new insights into the diplomatic relationship between James III, the French court and the continental manuscript trade. It also provides new solutions to old problems, such as the enigmatic letters ‘P’ and ‘L’ found in the border decoration.

Voices of Scottish Librarians: The Evolution of a Profession and Its Response to Changing Times

Voices of Scottish Librarians: The Evolution of a Profession and Its Response to Changing Times

Illustrating History: Rashid al-Din and his Compendium of Chronicles

The Arabic copy of Rashid al-Din’s Jāmiʿ al-tavārīkh dated 714/1314‒15 and divided between Edinburgh University Library (Or. ms. 20) and the Khalili Collection in London (ms. 727) is of seminal importance as one of the first and most extensively illustrated histories produced in Iran. This article examines four paintings from the manuscript to suggest why the patron wanted to add illustrations and how artists in his atelier adopted and adapted elements from Chinese painting in order to disseminate the text and enhance its meaning.

The Marginalization of Astrology in Seventeenth-Century Scotland

As evidenced by student notebooks, astrology was a core component of the university curriculum in Scotland until the late seventeenth century. Edinburgh University Library catalogues document that purchases of astrology books peaked in the 1670s. By 1700, however, astrology’s place in academia had been irrevocably lost. The reasons for this abrupt elimination include changes in natural philosophy as scholastic ideas and texts were shed and Cartesianism, Copernicanism, Newtonianism and the experimental and observational methods were adopted. The changing identity of astrological practitioners also played a major role, as did the personal animosity of influential individuals like the mathematician and astronomer David Gregory.

An attenuated philosophical gentleman.

Dr. Joseph Black had at one time, a house near us to the west. He was a striking and beautiful person; tall, very thin, and cadaverously pale; his hair carefully powdered, though there was little of it except what was collected in a long thin queue; his eyes dark, clear and large, like deep pools of pure water. He wore black speckless clothes, silk stockings, silver buckles, and either a slim green umbrella, or a genteel brown cane. The general frame and air were feeble and slender. The wildest boy respected Black. No lad could be irreverent toward a man so pale, so gentle, so elegant and so illustrious. So he glided, like a spirit, through our rather mischievous sportiveness, unharmed. He died seated, with a bowl of milk upon his knee, of which his ceasing to be did not spill a drop; a departure which it seemed, after the event, might have been foretold of this attenuated philosophical gentleman.

Richard Wagner’s Der fliegende Holländer – A Flying Hebridean in Disguise?

Several scholars have drawn attention both to the many Scottish references in Richard Wagner’s initial sketches of The Flying Dutchman and to the close links between the opera and the composer’s own disastrous Nordic sea journey, but discussions tend to centre on the opera’s libretto. What appear to be musical reminiscences of Hebridean songs in the opera’s core thematic material have not been alluded to since Marjory Kennedy-Fraser pointed them out at the beginning of the twentieth century. Having a long-standing interest in Wagner’s oeuvre, she associated various themes and tunes she had collected in the Outer Hebrides with the German composer, and among her extant field recordings – now at Edinburgh University Library – there are indeed snippets of music that closely resemble Wagnerian leitmotifs and airs, in particular Senta’s ballad in Der fliegende Holländer. Drawing on a paper Kennedy-Fraser read to the Musical Association in London in 1918, various scattered references, and letters from Sir Granville Bantock and John Lorne Campbell, my article discusses the potential links between Hebridean songs and, in particular, Senta’s ballad.

Elizabeth Melville's Letters in Edinburgh University Library, Laing III.347

Elizabeth Melville's Letters in Edinburgh University Library, Laing III.347

Private ownership of public heritage

In 2003, the world celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the elucidation of the structure of DNA and, thus, the birth of molecular biology. As this period is now a part of human history, original documents from the founders of molecular biology are becoming increasingly important to scholars, and are being harshly fought over by public libraries and private collectors. Private correspondence, laboratory notebooks, draft manuscripts, meeting and travel notes, and photographs all make up the primary documentation that allows historians to understand how theories and discoveries developed, while revealing details of the complex personalities behind the achievements and their roles in biological research. Arguments over such documents raise the question of whether this part of the common cultural heritage, and, more generally, any historical scientific treasure, should be retained in its country of origin and made accessible to the public, while restricting private ownership. > …original documents from the founders of molecular biology are becoming increasingly important to scholars, and are being harshly fought over by public libraries and private collectors Many of these questions were triggered by the controversy surrounding the so‐called Norman Collection, a huge archive of papers from the main protagonists of the ‘classic period’ of molecular biology, including Aaron Klug, Max Perutz, Rosalind Franklin, Francis Crick, James Watson, Rollin Hotchkiss, Sven Furberg, Sydney Brenner, Max Delbruck and Maurice Wilkins. Rare‐book dealer Jeremy Norman in California put together this scientific trove with the help of Al Seckel, a neuroscientist working at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, USA, who personally contacted scientists in order to buy their professional archives. In a few years, and with some US$1.5 million, Seckel and Norman amassed an immense amount of material, including rarities such as Wilkin's personal copy of Watson's controversial draft book Honest Jim , later published in a revised …

An Elusive Victorian: The Evolution of Alfred Russel Wallace (review)

Reviewed by: An Elusive Victorian: The Evolution of Alfred Russel Wallace Sandra Herbert (bio) An Elusive Victorian: The Evolution of Alfred Russel Wallace, by Martin Fichman; x + 382. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2004, $40.00, £25.50. What is one to make of Alfred Russel Wallace? He is most famous as Charles Darwin's doppelgänger. Coming seemingly out of nowhere, Wallace's 1858 letter to Darwin and [End Page 578] an accompanying essay outlining a theory of evolution through natural selection prompted a flurry of activity among Darwin's scientific colleagues to secure priority for their man in the most honorable way possible, by publishing Wallace's essay and some of Darwin's early writings on the species question simultaneously. Wallace's letter also prompted Darwin to begin writing the manuscript that became On the Origin of Species (1859). Wallace's most prominent place in history is thus as a man who provoked another man to write a book. Throughout his life Wallace deferred to Darwin on the question of priority for the theory of evolution through natural selection. Yet he was by no means reclusive: he lived to ninety and published prolifically, including three books written in his eighties. How then can Wallace be called "elusive"? Martin Fichman answers this question in his splendid new book: it is his biographers whom Wallace has eluded. The challenge of Wallace for biographers is that it remains "difficult to pigeonhole him into any neat category. Many labels have been applied to him: field naturalist, biological theorist, socialist, spiritualist, theist, land nationalizationist, philosopher and ethicist" (1). As Fichman remarks, the easiest way for authors to deal with such a man is to focus on those aspects of his identity revealed through his collaboration with his scientific peers, and to leave the rest behind. Lewis McKinney, for example, wrote an elegant book of lasting significance entitled Wallace and Natural Selection (1972) that dealt solely with biology. Of course McKinney was not attempting to write a biography. Nor, exactly, is Fichman, though his method is largely biographical. His goal is rather to explain Wallace—that is, to show how his spiritualism, his socialism, and his penchant for large schemes of social reform can be integrated with his evolutionary science. Fichman examines in minute detail Wallace's range of social contacts, including those formed on his lecture tour to North America in 1886–87; his marginal annotations in his books (the collection at Edinburgh University Library being key); as well as his publications. After reviewing Wallace's achievements as a natural historian, Fichman treats three main subjects: Wallace's evolutionary philosophy, his exploration of spiritualism, and his sociopolitical views. Fichman deftly shows how integrated Wallace's interests were from his early career: his sympathy for the poor rose from his service as a land surveyor setting up a new system of taxation (and, for a while, collecting payments himself from poor farmers). During the same period he educated himself in botany and forsook traditional religious ties. In the 1840s, without a university education, his wide reading formed his views: Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology (1830–33), Darwin's Journal and Remarks, 1832–1836 (1839), Thomas Robert Malthus's work on population, and Robert Chambers's anonymously published Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844). Drawing on Jane Camerini's work on Wallace as a field naturalist, Fichman mines Wallace's accounts of his exploring and collecting expeditions in South America (1848– 52) and in the Malaysian archipelago (1854–62) for evidence of an embracing philosophy. He suggests, for example, that Wallace's close experience with the orangutan prompted him to believe that factors other than natural selection were at work in the evolution of Homo sapiens (39). In the 1860s, Wallace began to publish on that point, making common cause with Lyell but separating himself from Darwin. In the 1860s and 1870s Wallace explored the world of spiritualism, as did other noteworthy men of science, including the psychologist William James and William Crookes, the discoverer of [End Page 579] thallium. The growing professionalism of science in the late nineteenth century did not encourage such interests, but, as Fichman shows, Wallace...

ILL, a dying breed or a new brand? The experience of Edinburgh University

PurposeThe purpose of this article is to examine the trend of interlibrary loans (ILLs) through the experiences of Edinburgh University Library (EUL). A preliminary study aims to consider how the purchase of one e‐journal package impacted on the number of ILL requests processed.Design/methodology/approachThe article describes the experience of EUL.FindingsThe article finds that total ILLs, both returnables and non‐returnables, rose to a peak in 1998 and have declined significantly since then. Full desk‐top delivery has not yet been achieved, but this is in the forefront of the library's strategy.Originality/valueThe paper gives a detailed insight into the impact of e‐journals and other factors on the use of the document supply service for both returnables and non‐returnables in a large UK university.

Open access, open source and e‐theses: the development of the Edinburgh Research Archive

PurposeTo examine how the synergy of open access and open source have been used at Edinburgh University Library to design and implement an e‐thesis service, and to offer a comfortable theoretical framework to aid others.Design/methodology/approachThe concepts of open access and open source are introduced and compared to show the conceptual relationship between them and the natural partnering of these approaches to information freedom. The development of the open access repository (Edinburgh Research Archive, ERA) and the related open source software (Tapir for DSpace) are then examined as an opportunity for other implementers and developers to gain insight, both technical and non‐technical.FindingsThat open access and open source are a natural and forward looking way to develop e‐theses and other research material repositories. The discussion of developing open source and the brief study of the creation of ERA show us that this approach is both warranted and useful.Research limitations/implicationsIt shows how institutions can leverage open source technology successfully, and further consideration must be given to this development methodology.Practical implicationsSoftware and documentation outcomes available for the community have been produced should aid the further research in this area and provide a good starting point for institutions.Originality/valueWe discuss for the first time both the theoretical aspects and the practical considerations surrounding an e‐theses archive which is of value to any group of information professionals considering similar activities.

The Royal Festival Hall: A Postscript

In late 2003, immediately after the publication in that year’s Architectural History of my article, ‘Teamwork or Masterwork?’, which discussed the issue of the ‘authorship’ of the Royal Festival Hall (RFH) design, a large, carefully-wrapped roll of drawings of early schemes for the RFH was discovered at the Matthew family house, Keith Marischal, East Lothian; together with the remainder of the archival material at the house, it has now been passed to Edinburgh University Library (Special Collections Department). As set out in this short postscript, they shed an important new light on the arguments put forward in the earlier article, whose text and footnotes should be consulted at the appropriate points, to obviate the need for repetition in this piece.

Developing a digital preservation strategy at Edinburgh University Library

Digital preservation poses an increasing cause for concern in UK higher education institutions. This paper provides a general overview of the development of a digital preservation pilot project within a university library, including the future integration of the METS and OAIS standards. It also considers how it is planned to automate these digital preservation practices in Edinburgh University Library's new digital object management system.