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,
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article