Welcome!
Welcome to the new University of Edinburgh’s conservation blog. This post will be the first of many, keeping you up-to-date with all the interesting and exciting aspects of the conservation work going...
View ArticleConserving Laing III
In April this year, I was lucky enough to be offered a 10 week internship to begin conservation work on the David Laing Bequest of rare books. This internship was funded by the National Manuscripts...
View ArticleA Case for Sensorship
Preventive conservation, and environmental monitoring in particular, is an important part of my job as Conservation Officer at the University. It was for this reason, therefore, that I found myself...
View ArticleA Photo Opportunity
“A picture is worth a thousand words”. As this often quoted adage alludes to, photographs have the ability to capture a moment in time. Whether they are images of stern Victorian family portraits or...
View ArticlePressing Matters
As a conservator, you can often find some rather surprising and unexpected ephemera in archive and book collections. Take, for example, this folder from the University’s Aitken Collection. At first...
View ArticlePolicies, Postcards and Prophylactics: Conserving Lothian Health Services...
My name is Emily and I am Project Conservator at Lothian Health Services Archive. LHSA is based at the Centre for Research Collections, where we share a conservation studio with Emma Davey,...
View ArticleHow I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Archive
By Vanessa Johnson, conservation trainee and armchair physicist Well, it’s been six weeks and I’ve survived! Although if archives could kill, the repository of world knowledge would go untapped and...
View ArticleConservation, with Honours
With Fresher Week just past, it seems fitting that this post should be based around diplomas – even if graduating does seem a long way off for these new students! Archival Box containing rolled...
View ArticleOpportunity Knocks…
We have been very pleased to welcome some new faces to the conservation studio over the past month – we now have two new conservation volunteers, Olivia and Collette, and our CRC Graduate Trainee,...
View ArticlePreviously, in Conservation…
There have been many highlights in conservation over the last 12 months, but one of the most enjoyable for me has been the opportunity to take part in outreach activities, whether it’s been writing...
View ArticleA gutsy project: A heart to heart with the new girl
If you didn’t guess from the anatomical pun title, this blog post details the beginnings of my 10-week internship conserving the Thomson-Walker collection at The Centre for Research Collections...
View ArticleIt’s Bound to be a Pamphlet
As part of my ongoing conservation treatment plan, I have been asked to address the needs of the Special Collections popular and regularly consulted pamphlet series. We are all used to seeing, and...
View ArticleCapturing the Moment on Glass Plate Negatives
I recently attended a one-day workshop at the RCAHMS conservation studio regarding the preservation and conservation of glass plate negatives. The day was split roughly into two parts, with the first...
View ArticleGetting to the Heart of the Matter
This blog post starts where I left off last time (with another pun!) and details my efforts on the Thomson-Walker medical print collection thus far, describing the first phase of the project. After I...
View ArticleAn Exhibition in a Day
As part of the University of Edinburgh’s Innovative Learning Week, the Centre for Research Collections ran a joint event between Conservation, Exhibitions and Archives entitled ‘An Exhibition in a...
View ArticleClean up your sax
I am a Preventive Conservation Masters student at Northumbria University, and as part of my course, I am fortunate to be able to put theory into practice for six weeks at The University of Edinburgh....
View ArticleStirling Work
Last week, a contingent from conservation left their natural habitat of the studio to embark on a day trip up North. Stirling University was our destination, more specifically their conservation...
View ArticleSaying Goodbye to Dr. Coffin
This week, we say farewell to our conservation intern, Samantha. To mark the end of her 10-week internship working on the Thomson-Walker collection, we put some questions to Samantha to find out more...
View ArticleA knot better!
I am writing this on the very last day of my work placement here at the University of Edinburgh. I have had an amazing six weeks learning about caring for the historic musical instrument collection....
View ArticleVintage Conservation
Our conservation volunteers have been doing a fantastic job over the past months surface cleaning, repairing and re-housing the Library Correspondence from the University’s archive collection. There...
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