Piping the (Library) Tradition - the National Piping Centre Library

Right, it occurs to me I never did finish #GLTU4 write-up by covering professional visit number two of the afternoon to The National Piping Centre Library, which is the Highland Library.

Inside the exhibition

The National Piping Centre

The National Piping Centre in Glasgow is concerned with teaching, studying and promotion of the Highland Bagpipe playing and cultural tradition.  It does this through wide ranging instrument tuition options up to degree level and also the likes of the Piping Museum and reference library. It’s a rehearsal and performance space, but one incorporating other elements up to and including a hotel and a lovely bar / restaurant.

A librarian victim in front of shelves

The Tour and Library

James Beaton, the Librarian, gave us a tour round the building itself, talked us through the history and work of the institution, gave an expert tour of the museum, and showed us the library. This has just been totally refurbished with work beginning on populating the shelves from the boxes and getting the collection catalogued.

The Collection

The collection is made up of a whole range of types of items from runs of subject specific periodical material to pamphlets to sheet music and cd’s of pipe music. 


Contextual items are also held that relate to the place of the Highland Bagpipe within the wider culture and history of Scotland. Many items are donations or items long out of print and otherwise difficult to source.

As the overall written knowledge base is fairly small there is a project on-going to try to capture the experiences of people well-known in piping through e.g. audio interviews to increase knowledge available.

Supporting the work of the Centre

The Library collection supports the teaching work of the Piping Centre and is used as part of the resources to support various courses it runs (e.g. that concentrate on the historical or cultural impact of the pipes) or runs in association with other bodies.

Practice what you teach!




The Pipes and after...

As part of the visit we even got James to play his own Pipes for us. I did take a sound recording of this but having problems figuring out where it's been stored to, so an audio file may (or may not) get attached into this to accompany if I ever figure it out. Many thanks to James for looking after us very well.

James playing his Pipes

After which many of us went to the restaurant for an extremely nice meal.

black puding potatoes are divine!

Musings

I suppose three things occurred to me as part of the visit.

The first was the pleasure of seeing vistas of shelf space. Somehow I always see the potential of that. In my own reality trying to find a bit of expansion space and then move stock till it’s in the right place in the classified sequence for where I need it is often a bit of a battle. Law tends to expand fast!

The second was the utter wonderfulness of subject specialists, folk with an expert in-depth knowledge of the discipline that they work in and who are passionate about it and exponents of it. Subject specialists who work in their own areas of interest are very wonderful things. Doesn’t matter what the subject is, you can spot one a mile of once they’re talking about their own discipline. We all share the same characteristics though the subject interests will differ.

The third is very simply I need to remember the Centre is there more often as a place. I’ve been to concerts there, but not for a good while. It is very civilised simply as a drop-in for a coffee for example.