Friday, 8 January 2016

Happy new year from LHSA!


It’s the first blog of the year, and a chance to reflect back on some of our achievements of 2015: projects completed – cataloguing and conserving our HIV/AIDS collections, and a website full of educational resources based on them (http://hiv-aids-resources.is.ed.ac.uk/) – and a brand new Wellcome Trust-funded TB case note cataloguing project began. We started converting our catalogues to make our collections available in ArchivesSpace (the University’s new online archive discovery tool), hosted a John Lewis Golden Jubilee Trust secondee, worked to preserve our regularly used bound volumes and architectural plans, and answered a wide range of your enquiries relating to the material we look after. All of this and more has featured in the blogs of the last 12 months…
But we’ve got 2016 to look forward to now, and lots in store for us already. As well as our usual work helping others to access the LHSA collections, we’ll be collaborating with our NHS archivist colleagues across Scotland to organise a one-day symposium looking at the benefits of using archive material in art projects (and taking part in a couple of art projects ourselves for the redevelopment of the Royal Edinburgh Hospital and the new buildings at the Little France Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh site). We’ll also be showcasing a couple of our recent Wellcome Trust projects in an exhibition in the Main Library display wall later in the year, which will coincide with the completion of our Wellcome project to catalogue Norman Dott’s case notes that started back in 2012.
We’re delighted to be taking part in the University’s Innovative Learning Week (ILW) in February where we have secured some funding from the ILW programme to create resources from archive material to entertain and educate 11 to 14 year olds in the Royal Edinburgh Hospital for Sick Children. And we’ll be working with colleagues from the Hospital to make sure those resources are just right!
The rest of January is a particularly exciting time for us as we welcome two new members of staff. The first is a maternity cover post, to continue (and complete) the Dott case note cataloguing and the second is our Access Officer, who will focus on LHSA's user services work. More from both of them once they join us later this month, so watch this space!

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