I SUPPORT the Bishops of Scotland in their courageous decision to relocate the one million Scottish Catholic Archives to the University of Aberdeen.

We have been told that this is “an ideal opportunity to expose the historical manuscripts to the study of scholars”; that “the decision to move the older section to Aberdeen made perfect sense for its preservation and digitisation” and that the forthcoming transfer of the 27,000 books of the Blairs Library from the National Library of Scotland will be done “to improve, in some way, the benefits that scholars already enjoy through the National Library of Scotland”.

These are huge expectations heaped on to the shoulders of the University of Aberdeen and this is a decision which demands ongoing commitment and leadership from the Blairs Museum Trust.

The enormity of the task facing both bodies is daunting. Digitising one million historic documents is going to take organisation and time and will not come cheap. A recent project to digitise the 200,000 documents of Cardinal John Henry Newman’s handwritten archive will last three years and cost £386,000. The Scottish Catholic Historic Archives are five times bigger and come from many different centuries — from parchment to paper.

The decision to move the archives to Aberdeen was also partly based on what the bishops referred to as Columba House’s inadequacies, that it was not fit for purpose. Yet only a year ago, when Columba House was put up for sale by the bishops, the sale prospectus emphasised that it was a “Grade A listed landmark building”, ‘an imposing and spacious main door flat”, with 2680 sq ft (58.50 sq m) of floor space, excluding the hall and other circulation areas.’

Now that the outbreak of mould has been dealt with, it is to be hoped that a role for Columba House will be found in the future as a repository for the Catholic Church’s modern, post-1878 archives.

Michael T R B Turnbull,