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Visual evidence: photographic presentation of landscape and people*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 June 2016

Norman H. Reid
Norman H. Reid*
Affiliation:
St Andrews University Library, North Street, St Andrews, Fife KY16 9TR, UK
*
Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

The University of St Andrews Library has extensive photographic collections, ranging from a fine collection of very early photography (stemming from St Andrews’ important position in the development of photography in Scotland), to modern documentary and topographical images. In order to increase access to these collections, and to assist in their preservation, the University is in the process of digitising the images, and providing them on-line, with a detailed searchable database index. In recent years, this programme has been undertaken in collaboration with the Universities of Dundee and Aberdeen, in the RSLP-funded Visual evidence project, which aims to provide a single point of access to all three collections. Much has been achieved in recent years using this type of temporary, project-oriented funding, but a period of consolidated, predictable funding is now needed in order to safeguard and further progress the advances made so far.

Type
Research Article
Information
Art Libraries Journal , Volume 28 , Issue 3 , 2003 , pp. 23 - 29
Copyright
Copyright © The Art Libraries Society 2003

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Footnotes

*

Publication version of a paper delivered to the ARLIS Conference, Glasgow, August 17 2002.

References

1. University of St Andrews Library, UY8525/1: 1st Minute Book of the St Andrews Literary and Philosophical Society, f.48v: at the meeting of 6 July 1840, ‘Sir David Brewster submitted to the Society a specimen of the Daguerrotype, executed by Mr Davidson, optician, Royal Exchange, Edinburgh, and likewise many specimens of Photogenic drawings, executed under the management of Mr Fox Talbot, of Lacock Abbey, the inventor of this beautiful art, with a description of the method he adopted’. There are many such references through 1841 and 1842, and subsequently.Google Scholar
2. University of St Andrews Library, msdepľ, incoming letters 1839 no. 29; letter of J. D. Forbes to Jane Forbes, 20 May 1839. Forbes’ own underlining.Google Scholar
3. ‘Notice to the Reader’, tipped into the binding of Fox Talbot’s Sun pictures in Scotland (1845). The notice is completed with the statement that ‘they are the sun-pictures themselves, and not, as some persons have imagined, engravings in imitation’.Google Scholar
4. For much more detail on the relationships between John Adamson, Brewster, Robert Adamson and other early St Andrews’ photographers, see Morrison-Low, A.D., ‘Brewster, Talbot and the Adamsons: the arrival of photography in St Andrews’, in History of photography vol. 25 no. 2 2001, p.130–141.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
5. See article elsewhere in this issue of the Art libraries journal. Google Scholar
6. http://www.loc.gov/rr/primt/tgml/ Google Scholar
7. For more detailed descriptions of the St Andrews digitisation programme and the Visual evidence project, see Whatley, P.E. and Reid, N.H.. ‘Image creation and digitization strategies’, in Imaging science journal vol. 49 no. 1 2000, p.45–55;CrossRefGoogle Scholar
and Reid, N.H., ‘Photographic archives: Aberdeen, Dundee and St Andrews’, in Coppock, T., ed. Making information available in digital format: perspectives from practitioners. H.M.S.O., 1999, p.106–119.Google Scholar