∴ Meg Dolan ∴

One of the questions posed to us at the January 17 th meeting was from curator Olive Geddes, who asked “How does the Phoebe Anna Traquair manuscript fit in […] the overall theme of ‘advice’?” I would like to address that here. In our meeting with NLS curators on October 4th, we were shown many hand-selected items from the collections which they thought may fit the theme of International Women’s Day, including Phoebe Anna Traquair’s illuminated manuscript of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnets from the Portuguese .  We had all been very taken with this piece, and thought it would make a perfect Big Ticket Item to attempt to draw visitors, considering her huge involvement in the Scottish Arts and Crafts movement. Barrett Browning and Traquair were both women working in artistic fields which were, at the time, predominantly populated by men, and we have been considering them as providing Advice by Example. Barrett Browning in particular challenged the societal roles of women at the time

One of the points the National Library of Scotland wanted us to consider within the brief we were given at the beginning of our project is the question of authenticity as applied to digital material within their collection, asking: “is authenticity of the original format important?”  As we have been planning our exhibition, this has come up as a troublesome topic, both in whether or not to present this to our audience as a front-facing issue in the exhibition, and in how to gauge the differences in audience interaction with digital vs. physical objects to attempt to respond to this question. I want to delve into the specifics of the term “authenticity,” as it can have several meanings in the context of our project and in relation to any digital artefacts.  Firstly, how does the term authenticity concern the integrity of the material presented within artefacts, and secondly, how does the term authenticity relate to the value of interaction with artefacts? I’d later like to update this w

At the beginning of Semester 2, we were asked to re-present our ideas to a group of NLS staff, including members from Curatorial, Events, Exhibition, Conservation, Digital Learning, IT, Front of House, Public Engagement, and Security. While our Final Pitch in Semester 1 had gone over well, the team at the NLS still had many unanswered questions having to do with logistics of our space, the running of the actual day, our particular objects, IT needs, our social media campaign, and the function of the Conversation Corner. This event caused a lot of stress within the group.  The email we received from Sheena proposing it, while worded perfectly neutrally, was followed up by a long list of copied and pasted questions from various NLS staff, which made us feel very under-the-microscope. At the meeting, we opened with a mini version of our Final Pitch, then touched on all the questions we had been sent, and Melanie showed several Sketch Up models of how we envisioned the room layout.  At the