THE fact that Aberdeen has failed in its bid to become UK City of Culture 2017 should not deter Aberdeen from pursing that accolade in future.
Although judges described Aberdeen's artistic and cultural expertise as limited and said its bid lacked a coherent vision and a wow factor, there is already light on the horizon as the Scottish Catholic Archives, all one million historic documents dating from 1177 to 1878, are coming to Aberdeen University Library's Special Collections to fill a gap in the collection and attract scholars from all over the world to study and research in Aberdeen.
This will tie in with the excellent opportunities at the former Blairs College, four miles outside Aberdeen, where the fine Blairs Chapel and the Blairs Museum will be complemented by a championship golf course, private housing, a conference centre and a hotel. This will create a Catholic cultural hotspot and attract many tourists to the city and environs. As The Sound of Music says, "when God shuts a door he opens a window". This means that the exceptional collection of letters and documents, including letters from Mary Queen of Scots, is coming home to Aberdeen, where the material was originally collected from all over Europe – from the Scots Colleges in Paris, Spain, Rome and Regensburg in Bavaria.
It's a splendid coup for Aberdeen as the documents have recently been seriously damaged by mould in the early 19th-century townhouse, known as Columba House, at 16 Drummond Place in Edinburgh. Thankfully the Blairs Museum Trust stepped in and commissioned a firm of document cleaners to dust and treat each of the pages and store them in acid-free boxes. Columba House had reached the end of its shelf life and was regularly affected by mould and damp, so it is good that the Blairs Museum Trust had secured an agreement with Aberdeen University. Even though the 27,000 books of the Blairs Library will no longer be at the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh and the historic archives will be safe in Aberdeen, a day's journey from the National Records of Scotland, they will be opened up to many more researchers and scholars than was possible in Edinburgh.
Michael TRB Turnbull,
5 Orchard Court,
Longniddry.
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