This morning we visited the National Library of Scotland, and attended lectures focusing on the John Murray Archive. The Senior Curator of the archive, David McClay, and another librarian whose name I sadly missed, were kind enough to describe the archive and the process of bringing it to exhibition. The Murray family has long been involved with publishing, and over the years has amassed a large collection of manuscripts, letters, and other items relating to publishing. The National Library of Scotland acquired the Murray Archive in 2005, paying £31.2 million. Funds were gathered from the Heritage Lottery Fund in the amount of £17.7 million, which was matched by the Scottish Executive in the amount of £8.6 million, and the remainder from a fund-raising effort by the library. The archive, which has been valued at £45 million and consists of 200,000 items, was purchased directly from the Murray family, who then generously placed the purchase price into a trust fund for the administration and exhibition of the archive, as well as the development of similar projects in the future. The family retains a portion of the collection, which will be given to the library at a future date.The Murray Archive consists of many letters, manuscripts, and books
from authors such as Walter Scott, Jane Austen, William Gladstone, Benjamin Disraeli, Charles Darwin, and Charles Babbage. In addition, the archive consists of one of the largest collections of Lord Byron's letters, manuscripts and papers. The letter pictured here can be found in the archive, and the image was found on the Archive's website. Currently, the largest portion of the archive's staff are catalogers. The library is and will continue to be greatly concerned with identifying exactly what is held in the archive, and making it available to the public through the catalog. The library is also undertaking a digitization project, however. The initial intention is to digitize 15,000 images, making them available on the internet for study. The library's goal is, by the year 2015, to have digitized 2.5 million images and made them available online. Incidentally, David McClay explained to us that only 15% of the cost of digitization results from taking the image. It gives me an idea of the vast amount of work that goes into a project of this size.
Perhaps the most interesting section of our visit to the archive was the information about designing and executing the exhibit. An exhibition of archival material can be challenging, as our hosts explained and many of us have, as museum and library patrons, experienced. The materials are heavily text-based, requiring a great deal of reading, and the value and interest of an item may not be immediately recognizable. The staff of the archive spent three years designing an exhibition to overcome these challenges, and I thought they met and exceeded the challenge admirably. I have never seen an exhibition of textual materials as innovative and entertaining as the exhibition for the John Murray Archive. The above image shows a view of the exhibition, and was taken from the archive's website. As shown, each featured character is placed in a "pod," simultaneously giving the viewer a tangible idea of what he or she might have been like while providing a format which can be easily altered by the archive staff. The archive utilizes touch-screen technology to lead the visitor through an explanation of the writer's life, world, and work. Thus, each item from the archive is given a context through which visitors may better appreciate and understand them. The touch-screens are great fun, usable by both adults and children, and I believe all of us spent a great deal of time learning more about some of the impressive items held by the archive. The initial eleven subjects highlighted by the exhibition were Isabella Bird Bishop, Lord Byron, Charles Darwin, Benjamin Disraeli, James Hogg, Austen Henry Layard, David Livingstone, Robert Peel, Maria Rundell, Sir Walter Scott, and Mary Somerville. I left this visit feeling inspired to think outside the box, following the example of the National Library of Scotland to find new ways to reach a community and make library holdings interesting, educational, and accessible all at once.
