Spring time

Spring into the Official Publications Unit.




Spring is now appearing, and as you walk around Edinburgh the display of crocuses, snowdrops and primroses are breathtaking.
I thought that I should celebrate the emergence of springtime with an exhibition in the display cabinet outside the Official Publications Unit in our Causewayside building.
The items that I chose for the display are beautifully illustrated books, ranging from The art of natural history illustrated treatises and botanical paintings 1400-1850 with a lovely drawing of an Iris on the cover to Artists Kew which has the drawing of the huge green house on the cover, to the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh periodical Botanics which has a cover of snowdrops.
I also relate Easter with spring time and I thought a picture of a cross from the book The British Museum Christ was quite apt.
Why not come along and see for yourself this slightly different aspect of Official Publications.

Who's the daddy?

I recently stumbled across the winter 09/10 issue of Media Education Journal , which contains at least 4 blog-worthy articles that perked my interest. I decided to condense them into one manageable blog.

First is cover star and cultural icon Jeremy Kyle and his enormously popular daytime show. Last year, The Jeremy Kyle Show was accused by Manchester District Judge Alan Berg of being a “human form of bear baiting”. He went on to say, “It seems to me the whole purpose of The Jeremy Kyle Show is to effect a morbid and depressing display of dysfunctional people who are in some kind of turmoil. It is for no more and no less than titillating members of the public who have nothing better to do with their mornings than sit and watch this show.”

Having recently been on paternity leave, I was surprised to find this show compelling and addictive viewing on a daily basis. The article goes on to describe how using certain camera angles, strategic shots of audience members and Kyle’s interview technique can manipulate the viewers sympathies and provoke appropriate outrage when necessary. As a former part-time viewer, I found the article an interesting insight into the production of the show, but I’m also shocked as to how easy it was to be taken in by these techniques.

Also in this issue are part 1 of an article on the quality of the contemporary American drama series, with a particular focus on the show Dexter (for those who don’t know, a retelling of Jeff Lindsay’s excellent Darkly Dreaming Dexter) – about a sociopathic serial killer with an ethical code, an article on the Batman franchise and it’s ever growing popularity (despite the best efforts of Val Kilmer), and lastly, an article on the advertising of Irn Bru and how it’s become a Scottish cultural icon.

All very interesting reads whether you’re an aspiring media studies student, or like me, just watch a lot of television.

Do they mean us?

What do you think of when you hear the words pen-pusher? Bowler hat? Pinstriped suit? Gold-plated pensions? Yep, it's the public sector, or civil service, which includes the National Library of Scotland. It's striking how the image of the public sector or civil servants hasn't changed much over the years; we're still seen as "pen-pushers" (or even bowler-hatted penpushers!)

The Cabinet Office has a list of mythbusters on its website for those who wish to learn more...

Today is the Festa della Donna!

On the 8th of March the International Women’s Day is celebrated widely around the World. The history of this celebration brings us back to the 8th March 1857, when, in the United States, a strike led to the death of a group of female employees and the formation of the first Women’s Union in the U.S.
In 1945 (when the Italian Republic was born after the Fascism) the Union of Italian Women declared that March 8th - also known like "Festa della Donna"- should be dedicated to the celebration of womanhood across the country. Men and women offer a bunch of yellow Mimosa (the yellow spring flower you can see in the photo above) to all the important women in their life. It is an important moment of the year that gives the chance to talk and discuss about women’s rights and their role in society.

One false step

Painting History Delaroche and Lady Jane Grey
Stephen Bann and Linda Whiteley
National Gallery

This book recently arrived on my desk, and it is a stunning book. The Execution of Lady Jane Grey by the French painter Paul Delaroche is one of the most popular paintings in the National Gallery. The book describes this picture and shows detailed shots and others paintings from Delaroche’s lifetime.
The book explores the influence of popular prints and theatre on Delaroche’s portrayals of English history, as well as supplying a biography of Lady Jane Grey who was Queen of England for only nine days.
I have always been fascinated with the Tudor period. I wondered what it would have been like to live among these kings, queens and nobles, all vying for power and using whatever means – even family members to become more powerful, and if that is your daughter then so be it. There was also the fear factor - that one false move could cost you your life.
The book also contains other illustrations such as the Puritan and Cavalier, 1880 and a particularly beautiful painting of Anne Boleyn in the Tower shortly after her arrest (see above left).
It is a wonderful book, slightly on the morbid side as quite a few of the illustrations are about imprisonment and executions. This is a good book to leaf through to admire the richness of the art work of Paul Delaroche and other painters.

APS Secures Government Print Management Contract

Following a competitive tender process APS Group has secured a contract from the Scottish Government for the supply of design, print, publishing and associated services. APS Group Scotland Ltd will manage and deliver all aspects of the contract from a new APS Document Management and Operations Centre in Edinburgh.

On the level

(More about the pug later...!)

We get some great venues for SAALG (South Asia Archive & Library Group) conferences, and none more so than the Freemasons' Hall, which we visited on 19th February. Our hosts were the archivist and curators of the Library & Museum there.
After a tour of this gorgeous Art Deco building, we were treated to a talk on freemasonry in India. Basically, it was "exported" (along with other British traditions) during the Raj, principally for military personnel and East India Co. employees.
Manockjee Cursetjee, a Parsee, was the first Indian freemason. He lobbied the Duke of Sussex (who encouraged the ideal of a universal botherhood) for entry into the society, but eventually joined a French lodge. James Burnes founded a new lodge – the Rising Star of Western India Lodge, 1843 (with a Scottish constitution) - which welcomed Prosonno Cooman Dutt as their first Indian freemason. The Scottish and Irish constitutions were considered more egalitarian, cutting across all religions and castes.
Lots of genealogical work is carried out at the Library; the staff glean a lot of information from the annual returns from 1887, as well as histories and files of lodges; pre-1887 membership files on CD-ROM; proposals forms and photographs. They can be difficult to trace because freemasons moved between lodges and constitutions (especially military personnel), depending on where they were stationed, and there were movements relating to career, such as in the railways industry.

The museum had some fascinating artifacts, including porcelain figures relating to a German masonic order dubbed the Mops (German for pug - just in case you're wondering what pugs have got to do with freemasons). Their founder loved pugs and so adopted the dog as their symbol. Rituals included blind-folded freemasons being instructed to kiss the pug's bottom ... which turned out to be a dummy.

If you're ever in the Drury Lane area, nip down Great Queen Street and pop in to see the Library & Museum - well worth a visit.

Official Weirdos

Please do whatever you like with this selection of American Official Publications from the 70s: take them seriously, be surprised, find the fun underneath the serious appearance…in any case, I hope you will agree it's been worth pointing them out!

- “Loan rate and sales policy for 1978 peanuts”
- “Asbestos in hand-held hair dryers”
- “Implications of the President’s health budget”
- “International Coffee Agreement Act of 1979”
- “Gold and Silver Labelling and Advertising Act”
- “Proposed smaller one-dollar coin”
- “Alien adopted children”
- “Amateur Sports Act of 1978”
- “Six-day mail delivery: hearings before the Committee on Post Office”

Scotland in Europe

A couple of interesting items from the European Community:
- “Scotland in Europe: the European Community: why it began, why we joined, why we must remain in it” [1982]. This booklet is clearly advertising the European Community to Scottish people, but it still has some very good content: it fights some mythology about the Community and strengthens the general belief that -despite being an island!- Britain is not an isolated country and, like any other, it needs to be part of a broader community in order to achieve its potential, economically as well as politically. This publication is very honest in presenting the Community like an opportunity for Britain, with no guarantees.
- “People come first: social policy in the European Community” [1976]. This is a very juicy publication, it has chapters about some crucial aspects of our daily social life: “Migrant workers”, “Young workers”, “Humanisation of work”, “Social justice and the social wage”. The most interesting is the one about “Women at work”, please enjoy this extract, I am not sure if I’ve found it funny or sad, I am sure I laughed a lot, but it’s been a pretty bitter laugh…: “The principle of equal pay for men and women in the Community is laid down in the Rome Treaty. It is set 1961 as a deadline but no member State has given full satisfaction in its treatment of women workers. In fact, in 1973 the Commission threatened to take legal action against member States which did not obey the Treaty. In December 1974 the Council of Ministers approved a Directive, submitted by the Commission, which will close the legal loopholes by the end of 1975.”

Flowering of Florence - Botanical art for the Medici

This stunning book is the catalogue of a National Gallery of Washington Exhibition from March 2002. Its subject, a chapter from Italian art of 17th century: the reflection of the newborn Botanical Science in the figurative arts, through the artistic commissions of the Medici family in Florence. The sixty-eight works displayed were all commissioned by the Medici family: paintings, works on vellum and paper, hard stone mosaics, manuscripts, printed books and textiles, and were lent by various Museums, Libraries and Galleries from Florence, Rome, Pisa, Venice, Bologna, as well as from Washington and London. The cover of this beautiful publication is a detail from a still life (“Chinese Plate with cherries and bean pods”, c. 1620) by Giovanna Garzoni. Born in 1600 in central Italy, she lived in Rome before spending almost a decade (1642-1651) working as one of the favoured artists of the Medici court in Florence. Her studies in the area of botanical illustration constituted valuable training for Giovanna, who gradually broadened her repertoire to include still-life paintings, a genre that would win her fame in Paris, Rome, Naples and Turin – some of the most illustrious courts of Europe. She also studied the works of the great northern European masters of still life and their influence can be seen through her observant eye: she was able to capture the most subtle details of the flowers in her compositions, and was very sensitive to the effects of a sharp, revealing light and its effects on objects. Her works were always executed on vellum (from the Old French Vélin, for "calfskin", mammal skin prepared for writing or printing on), never on canvas, and mostly with gouache or watercolour. In the other two works shown here (“Glass vase with flowers” and “Still life with birds and fruit”), her sense of colour combines nude, melancholic tones, with powerful, deep shades of red and pink: she makes Nature talk through colours, communicating at once its fragility and its vitality. This dualism is at the heart of her painting: her art is strong and delicate as a crystal glass. As strong as the skin she painted on, as delicate as the watery colours she chose. The illustrations in this catalogue are a feast for the eye, each of them a journey into history, human ability, beauty and most of all into the colours and the shapes (and also, why not, the smells) of a Mediterranean garden with its flowers, fruits and vegetables. I feel compelled to highlight the sumptuous “Citrus Fruits”, 1715, oil on canvas where Barolomeo Bimbi presents thirty-four different kind of lemons. Take a closer look also at one of the hard stone mosaics designed by Jacopo Ligozzi: this “Tabletop with Scattered Flowers”, 1614-1621, is a perfect example of the astonishing “trompe l’oeil” effect achieved by the Florentine mosaicists, who reached an exceptionally high level of accomplishment through the sponsorship of the Medici family. Every single pictorical effect of shade, light and colour is obtained by the skilled artist’s choice of stones and cuts, with no use of paint whatsoever.
Should you wish to have a pleasant journey through a warm Southern European garden, please do so at NLS asking for this great piece of our collection. And for an early example of Florentine botanical attention to flowers, enjoy this Madonna by Botticelli at the National Gallery of Scotland on the Mound, on display in the permanent collection.

Haiti Crisis

Already one of the poorest countries in the world, with unstable government and little social organisation, Haiti's devastation by the recent earthquake is a further blow. In 1993, the beginings of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) was established, to try and restore democracy and a functioning civil state. In 2009, the former US president Bill Clinton was appointed as the UN Secretary General's special envoy to Haiti, and has instigated health provision in the beleaguered country.

Has all this come too late to reverse the decades of exploitation, misguided interference and deliberate political intervention? With the world's attention now focussed on the plight of the Haitian people, perhaps there is some hope.

Crisis over?

Some news items are saying that the H1N1 Influenza A virus is no longer as large a threat as feared last summer. It is also being suggested that health officials over-reacted leaving vast stores of unused vaccine.
Introduction to pandemic influenza, which has just been catalogued, is an essential text with a strong emphasis on preparedness.
It aims to promote a better understanding of influenza and raises questions in each chapter. The book includes biomathematical modelling, epidemiology, policy issues and selected papers for further reading.
Following three global pandemics in the last 100 years and the recent avian and swine influenza outbreaks, preparedness should still be of vital importance.

Mull of Kintyre Chinook helicopter crash - case re-opened?

A recently discovered internal Ministry of Defence memo has shown that there were very serious concerns about the safety of the Chinook Mark II helicopter fleet, several months before the fatal crash on the Mull of Kintyre in 1994. The special forces crew and 25 senior members of Northern Ireland's intelligence community were killed.
A Royal Air Force investigation finally found the two pilots guilty of gross negligence. As well as the official reports, including Select Committee on Chinook ZD576, you can also find the House of Lords' discussions about it online.

Along with Sir Stephen Young's conclusions after the Fatal Accident Inquiry, we also have CD-ROMs containing the transcripts. These were supplied by Steuart Campbell, who wrote a book about the incident.

(Image courtesy of RAF)

Christmas Cheer

If you have not already seen the small exhibition outside the Official Publications Unit in Causewayside then hurry along to it. It is entitled Christmas cheer and I searched our collection for items that have a festive feel.
There is a fantastic book from the Victoria and Albert collection, about Christmas lists, a book with headings inside that you can fill in and then consult each year to make a perfect Christmas.
There is also a book about festive dining, some wonderful recipes in this of times gone by.
There is a selection of Christmas cards produced by the NLS, I couldn’t display all of them but did enjoy looking through the collection.
I couldn’t forget to put two parliamentary papers in the display one from Westminster and one from the Scottish Parliament about Christmas trading.
I thoroughly enjoyed looking through the Official Publications collection and I found the most amazing things.
Watch out for future displays.
Merry Christmas to all.

Extraterrestrial Intelligence Research

These hearings before the U.S. Subcommittee on Space Science and Applications were held in 1978. The subject of the discussion was a program called SETI- Search of Extra Terrestrial Intelligence, and whether it was worth it funding this again. Such a program has many philosophical implications and opens up to an infinite range of scientific questions. Both aspects are explored in these utterly fascinating hearings.
The discussion begins with a very simple, although exciting and potentially scary, calculation: how many “good” planets are out there? how many planets sufficiently close to a star providing the heat and light necessary for the development of intelligent life? Well, the answer may be beyond our capacity to produce a mental image: there are 10 billion “good” planets in our galaxy, and billions of galaxies in the space. The longevity of those civilizations must also be taken in account: some of them will have gone through their histories and have perished. This “reduces” the estimated number of civilized planets to one billion. Although this doesn’t mean that each potentially good planet is actually hosting intelligent life, the chances are still so wide that the existence of extraterrestrial intelligent life is almost certain, according to this discussion.
In spite of this, a visit to another civilized planet still remains unreal: advanced culture would be so far from one another on the average, that none of them could afford, in terms of energy expenditure, to visit their nearest neighbours, even if they knew where those neighbours were. So the ultimate challenge would be to communicate with Extraterrestrial Intelligent Life through radio transmissions.
The discussion goes further on what the SETI program should investigate, all the main issues seem to be related to Biocosmology:
- Extrasolar Planetary Search: “If we discovered that only certain classes of stars had suitable planetary systems it would reduce the number of target stars to be searched.”
- “A second aspect of biocosmology would be to continue to study the origin of life.” The discoveries would confirm our present beliefs on how life began but could also explain how chemicals became DNA and how DNA evolved into the living cell. “Then we could say with confidence: (…) it will happen in other places”.
- “A third aspect of biocosmology should be studies of the evolution of intelligence. We think intelligence has survival value and would be favored in natural selection. The sentient organism withdraws from danger; the insensate organism does not; the intelligent animal uses better strategies to seek food, avoid danger and protect its young.”
Other aspects were investigated during these hearings: which type of radio waves are more likely to succeed? In which directions should they be sent? Every question has many answers, very different from one another. A more practical reason to look for extraterrestrial life is also openly explained: “The discovery of other life is not only a legitimate mission for NASA but it is also an essential one without which popular interest and support will fade. It is probably fair to say the NASA exists because it was felt that a space program might discover other life in the solar system.”
The interest in reading these hearings resides in the combination of exploration and research, in a fascinating but still, 30 years later, obscure matter. Scientific issues might have changed and developed further, but not the philosophical curiosity that makes us look up into the dark sky and ask the question: “Are we alone?…”

Find out more at NLS…
…or visit the NASA website, and the Astronomy Picture of the day Archive.

A Glimpse of Heaven

A Glimpse of Heaven Catholic Churches of England and Wales
by Christopher Martin
This item is a beautiful book full of amazing photographs of Catholic Church architecture in England and Wales.
In 1791 Catholic worship and church building became legal again. Previously in the reign of Elizabeth 1 (1558-1603) when the Church of England was established, the Catholics faced stark choices. They had either to conform to the Church of England, using their own parish church but with all the traditional furnishings and images removed, or they would have to face crippling financial penalties and even imprisonment.
In the 1840s the situation was transformed. The confidence and growing wealth encouraged church building on an ambitious scale. The photographs in this book show the amazing splendour of the churches and furnishings and decoration.
English Heritage has only 18% of the Catholic churches listed, and English Heritage are busy in partnership with Catholic dioceses to demonstrate many more deserve recognition for their contribution to the historic environment.

"Rome Reborn"

Some treasures from the Vatican Library:

- Henry VIII, letters to Anne Boleyn, in English and French, before 1533
The Library acquired these loving letters to Anne Boleyn, from the period, towards the end of Henry’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon, when he had made Anne Boleyn pregnant and was trying unsuccessfully to obtain a divorce.

- Galileo Galilei, Sunspot observations, 1612
Galileo’s skills as an observer enabled him to create and use the first telescope. These drawings represent sunspots, whose existence proved that the sun wasn’t the perfect, unchanged body that traditional cosmology wanted it to be.

- Homer, Iliad, in Latin and Greek, 1477
These marvellous illustrations were made by a north Italian artist, who here represented Greek and Trojan heroes in ancient armour and costumes, while ships and tents were contemporary. Later images in this series are either merely sketched in or omitted entirely: perhaps funds or time ran out.

These images can be seen in the catalogue from the first of a series of exhibitions that the Library of Congress presented during the 90s about great libraries of the world. The series began with the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (Vatican Library), the prototypical research library of western culture. Founded by Pope Nicholas V in the 1450s, its collections are not primarily theological and acquisitions policy was focused upon the liberal arts and sciences. The most comprehensive areas are: history of the exact sciences, East Asian languages and literatures, and music history.
Three hundred and fifty years later, the Vatican Library remains the richest collection of western manuscripts and printed books in the world.
Renaissance intellectuals understood that an individual book- especially a manuscript could often be a historical as well as literary document. Especially when the author was a great scientist and writer, or ruler and statesman.

This book, rich in illustrations as it is, offers an amazing Roman experience to the NLS user: a journey through the Vatican Library collections, without leaving Edinburgh. It is also worth remembering that, even if you’re planning a visit to Rome, it is not normally possible to visit the Library as it is not open to the general public, with strict exceptions for researchers.

Read this book at NLS: shelfmark F1/LC.4/51

Saying sorry

Interesting to see that the Australian government will apologise to the thousands of migrants who were sent to that country as children, and that the British government will follow suit. It's a sad story, these kids were from workhouses and slums, sent by charities and other organisations to have a (hopefully) better life elsewhere. But their parents hadn't given permission for them to be taken away. In 1998, the House of Commons Health Committee made recommendations on this matter (including setting up a database and offering counselling services), which also tackled the issue of a formal apology. It states "[the committee] considers that these policies were misguided. To those and their families who see themselves as still deeply scarred it offers sincere regrets. To all it offers a sympathetic recognition of the special challenges they faced in building their lives". Eleven years later, it seems a formal apology is on the cards.

We featured this story in our blog a while back, about the "New Lives for Old" book published by the National Archives (Kew). It's full of heart-breaking first-hand accounts, pictures and letters and is a moving story about a practice which didn't end until the second world war.

You can read it here at the Library, shelfmark GRO.2008.4.1

"Viewpoints"

"Viewpoints: a selection from the Pictorial Collections of the Library of Congress” was published in 1974 to offer an overview of the American library’s collection of images. From a varied selection of historic photographs, modern and ancient prints and drawings, two images caught my attention.

This first is an engraving by Giuseppe Maria Mitelli, a Bolognese artist of 17th century: it is headed in rebus form “il [mondo] e’[per] lo piu’ [gabbia] di [matti]”- the world is, for the most part, a cage for madmen.
Clockwise from the top we find Fortune sitting, then the Artist, near the top and outside the cage, absorbed with his palette and sketchbook, the Astronomer, gluttons in the middle, musician and merrymakers at the bottom. Lying on the floor with glasses, and reading the Cabala, there’s an old Jew. On the left a man with a book under his arm is looking through a magnifying glass (maybe a Scientist?). Others are trying to catch coins that are being thrown down from the top of the cage.

The second image is a drawing from 1910 by Charles Dana Gibson and it looks to me as a tribute to beauty and art. This drawing is simply wonderful: for the technique (pencil and pen-and-ink on paper), the subject, the inspired aesthetic pleasure represented. No wonder it’s called: “The sweetest story ever told”.

These two images seem to capture the two main purposes of art: showing the human condition with all its pain and trouble, and offering a consolation, through the beauty and grace of the artistic creation.

Happy 1st Birthday Wellcome Library Blog

Congratulations to the Wellcome Library Blog on receiving 20,000 visits in its first year from people in 139 countries.

Written by Wellcome Library staff, this is an entertaining and informative blog for those interested in the Wellcome's amazing collection of medical history items. If you haven't had a chance to visit, why not do so on its first birthday?

(Photo credit: www.himetop.wikidot.com)

Workers Memorial Day

Workers Memorial Day Public consultation
Department for Work and Pensions
Cm 7563

This consultation paper seeks views on proposals for official recognition of Workers Memorial Day in the UK.
It is a day for remembrance for workers killed, injured or made ill by their work. This day originated in Canada in 1984, and it takes place annually on the 28th April. In 2001 the International Labour Organisation recognised this day and announced that it should be a day of action for safety and health at work. It is now recognised in lots of countries.
From 1992 the day has been informally recognised in the UK and now they are growing calls for Government to provide the day with some form of official recognition, subject to the outcome of the consultation, formal recognition will first take effect in the UK on 28 April 2010.

Out of interest the UK has one of the best health and safety records in the world, but even with the best there were 180 workplace fatalities in Britain in 2008/09 and many more die as a result from diseases incurred when they are working. There are around 4000 cancer deaths due to past exposure to asbestos each year and frighteningly every working day over 400 people are seriously injured at work. It is estimated that it costs society £20 billion a year in accidents and ill health, but of course it is impossible to put a price on human suffering.
It is therefore a stark reminder that the 28th April helps challenge those people that trivialise and undermine health and safety and a chance to focus the minds of everyone to improve health and safety performance.
For the whole consultation paper click here.

(Picture credit www.hazard.org)

Keep the red flag flying

One of my favourite libraries is the Working Class Movement Library, based in Salford, which has some great on-line resources. There are milestones in the history of employment rights and trade unions, many of which, of course, feature official publications. It's got a blog, too.
What I love about the library is that it's developed from the personal collection of Ruth and Eddie Frow, both avid book collectors, who devoted their lives to the labour movement.