Congregational Libraries to Police Archives - Edinburgh Doors Open Day 2012

Last weekend was Doors Open Day in Edinburgh

 I spent an afternoon wandering around four buildings, mostly chosen for geographical proximity, and a geographical area I hadn’t covered before, and being close to my main target of the day, the NMS Collections Centre.

I thus found it extremely amusing to note that distinct libraries, archives and research activities were unexpectedly part of most of them.

South Leith Parish Church

Looks ‘normal’ looking straight down the church.

 But if you turn your head to the left within it from the central aisle you suddenly see the library corner.

Full of everything from religious texts to the works of Alexander McCall Smith.

High concentration on children’s materials, and a lot of audio material.

An everyday congregational library to serve the needs of a church community.

It made me smile.



Parish Newsletter section discussing Library



Leith Town Hall & Sheriff Court

This is now a working police station, so we got shown the Old Council Chamber, briefly taken through the police station which is the old Sheriff Court, and down to the 1870 prison cells by police officers working there (not your normal Doors Open Day volunteer guides!). 



Doors Open Day visitors perambulate around the cells



Cells are not in use for prisoners anymore.

However, I did note all the cells had become somewhat unusual archive storage instead.



Notices on cell doors re Major Incident Archiving Team



View through cell door to archive storage boxes inside

National Museums Scotland Collections Centre in Granton

Well this is the reserve collection of NMS and also the working space for a vast amount of technical departments.

So the Library proper is within the NMS proper in Central Edinburgh, (see my previous blog post re), but a lot of research activity gets carried out on the Granton site.

Trinity House Maritime Museum

This did not have a library, plenty of bookcases mind! It is certainly a large collection, but about the nautical heritage of Leith, part of Historic Scotland. It houses paintings, objects, written material amongst it.

Amusement

So all in all in an afternoon I found a congregational library, police archives, and a lot of research capability and output.

The fact that I wasn’t even trying to go anywhere specific with a library or archives focus for once does illustrate the sheer diversity and volume of libraries, archives, and research collections.