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Robert Burns was born into a farming family at Alloway in Ayrshire in 1759. He died in Dumfries at the early age of 37. Yet in that short time he had taken the Scottish literary world by storm, and had secured a place for himself in history and in legend.

This site is based on material by or relating to 'Scotland's Bard' which is held by the National Library of Scotland (except where otherwise stated).

Special features are pages giving highlights of the Library's significant resources – whether original letters or poems (see Manuscripts page) or important books (see Books page).

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Muriel Spark was identified as a promising and creative writer when her name was still Muriel Camberg and she was still at school. Some of her poems had already been published by the time she won her first poetry prize, at the age of 12.

Dame Muriel – poet, writer of fiction and literary criticism, and biographer – went on to win most of the literary awards going, was never out of print, and was at the top of her profession, internationally, for more than half a century.

Best-known as the author of 'The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie', Muriel decided in the 1940s to keep a record of her professional and personal activities, beginning a personal archive that is now one of the largest and most comprehensive held by the National Library of Scotland.

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This site features a selection of leading Scottish writers, photographed in a 30-year period by Edinburgh publisher and photographer Gordon Wright. It is based on an exhibition held at the National Library of Scotland in 2001.

Gordon Wright's photographs featured in 'The Write Stuff' are in copyright. For permission to use them, and to order print or digital copies, please email Gordon Wright.

Texts by Jennie Renton, editor of 'The Scottish Book Collector'.

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Robert Louis Stevenson was born in Edinburgh’s New Town in 1850. He died 44 years later on a small Samoan island in the Pacific.

During his short life he travelled the world, defied convention, and made himself one of the most famous writers of the 19th century.

Here we tell Stevenson's story, illustrated with material held in the National Library of Scotland's collections.

You can also see the entire first English edition of Kidnapped – one of his most famous tales – published in 1886.

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At 2am on Wednesday 8 February 1587, Mary Queen of Scots picked up her pen for the last time. Her execution on the block at Fotheringhay Castle was a mere six hours away when she wrote this letter. It is addressed to Henri III of France, brother of her first husband.

As well as the English translation, Mary's last written words are available here in a French transcription. You can also read the historical background to this letter.

The letter is part of the National Library of Scotland's manuscript collections. (NLS reference: Adv.MS.54.1.1)

Shown here is an image of Mary shortly after her marriage in 1558. With her is her husband, Francois. As eldest son of the French King, he took the title of Dauphin (or 'Dolphin') of France. He became king in 1559.

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Explore almost 1,000 years of Scotland's history via the National Library of Scotland's interactive timeline. Trace events as they happened by reading the first-hand accounts of observers, from the death of St Margaret to the opening of the new Scottish Parliament. Digital facsimiles of some of the most important documents in our collections help to illustrate the story of the shaping of the Scottish nation.

This website is based on an exhibition of manuscripts and printed material held in the National Library of Scotland in the summer of 2000. It uses extracts from the book Reportage Scotland, edited by Louise Yeoman and published by Luath Press in association with NLS.

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Propaganda – A Weapon of War is a small snapshot of Second World War propaganda that can be found in the National Library of Scotland’s collections.

Between 1939 and 1945, both Allied and Axis Governments greatly influenced wartime behaviour and attitudes through propaganda. This took various forms: the printed word and pictorial leaflets, radio broadcasts and cinema and poster campaigns.

White propaganda was mostly practical information intended for the Home Front. Black propaganda targeted enemy morale, and there was a strong Scottish involvement in the clandestine organisation that developed it – the Political Warfare Executive.

On this website you'll find examples of British Government propaganda, from 'Make do and Mend' to 'Tag und Nacht'.

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In 1603, two very different nations were brought together by the curious fact that they only had one monarch between them.

On the death of England's Queen Elizabeth I without children, the next in line to the throne was the reigning king of Scotland, King James VI. James won the backing of the English establishment as he was a Protestant, he had sons who could be king after him, and his 36-year rule in Scotland had largely been a success.

However, he was also a Scot, who spoke a different language and had a different cultural background. How would he be able to bring the two countries together?

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The Kirk Papers is a collection of photographs and papers belonging to East Africa pioneer Sir John Kirk. It was acquired for the National Library of Scotland in 1998/1999 with the help of a grant of £55,000 from the Heritage Lottery Fund.

Though not as well-known as his friend and fellow-explorer David Livingstone, Kirk was a trail-blazer of empire in East Africa and a man of eminence in his day. Born in Barry, Angus, in 1832, Kirk qualified in medicine at Edinburgh University and then volunteered for medical service in the Crimea. An accomplished botanist, zoologist and diplomat, he was also a talented photographer. This is evident from the collection of over 250 photographs, many of them stunning.

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The Scottish Beekeepers' Association has deposited the Moir Rare Book Collection of 250 volumes relating to all aspects of beekeeping. It is one of the very finest collections of rare beekeeping books in the world, including items published as far back as 1525.

The foundation of the collection was due to the efforts of John William Moir (1851-1940). Inspired by the example of Scots missionary David Livingstone, Moir and his brother emigrated from Scotland in 1877 to southeast Africa, where they were initially involved in the creation of alternative transport routes to help obviate the need for slave transport. It was later, after settling in the Shire Highlands of present-day Malawi, that John Moir began beekeeping, due to the fact that his crops required pollination.

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Edinburgh-born John Thomson (1837-1921) was one of the great names of early photography. His photographic legacy is one of astonishing quality and depth.

Thomson's images of China and South-East Asia brought the land, culture, and people of the Far East alive for the 'armchair travellers' of Victorian Britain.

He was one of the pioneers of photojournalism, using his camera to record life on London's streets in the 1870s. As a society photographer he also captured the rich and famous in the years before the First World War.

These pages present a brief introduction to Thomson's work, with examples drawn from the National Library of Scotland's collections.

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Phoebe Anna Traquair's exquisite illustrated manuscript of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s ‘Sonnets from the Portuguese’ is one of the National Library of Scotland's treasures.

Made in Edinburgh between 1892 and 1897, it is among the finest examples of the work of Scotland's leading artist of the Arts and Crafts movement.

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Blog September 9, 2009 About CHODARR What is CHODARR? CHODARR stands for Community Health Online Digital Archive and Research Resource which is a publicly accessible virtual library of community-based and government publications. It is a permanent, catalogued and full-text online archive of grey literature and research materials related to health and social welfare policy. The CHODARR archive includes documents that are not normally published by commercial publishers.

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The aim of the VICTORIAN WOMEN WRITERS' LETTERS PROJECT is to make available through electronic publication the correspondences of early to mid-Victorian British women writers in a form that attempts to capture the multiplexity of epistolary communication.

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This was the background leading to the founding in 1965 of the Vancouver based Alcuin Society. The chief aims of the Society are “to further the interests of book collectors and to promote a wider appreciation of fine books…”. To that end the Society provides a wide range of book oriented activities, including since 1981 an annual Awards for Excellence in Book Design in Canada. The Society continues to flourish. The Society’s From Hand to Hand: A Gathering of the Book Arts in British Columbia… (1986) is a very useful introductory although dated directory of British Columbia fine printing and book arts. The 1970s were important to the British Columbia fine private press/typography scene.

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Background Multicultural Canada: Our Diverse Heritage The Multicultural Canada digitization project grew from our conviction that the cultural groups that make up our country have little-known stories that need to be researched and told. Through newspapers, interviews, photographs, print and material culture people tell us who they are. Yet research into Canada’s multi-ethnic communities has been hampered by the relative lack of availability of non-English language materials and other artefacts originating from minority groups. Archives and libraries have long worked with individuals and cultural communities in Canada to collect and preserve the historical record of their experience; but these documents are seldom available beyond the walls of the institution.

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HARRISON BROWN The Sian Incident and Beyond "Harrison Brown: The Sian Incident and Beyond" is a chronicle of author and journalist Harrison Brown's voyage to China between 1936 and 1937, and the events that unfolded during that time in what has become known as 'The Sian Incident'. The events are presented largely through the eyes of Harrison Brown himself - 'H.B.' as his friends called him - through the journals that he kept during his trip, the photographs he took, and the articles and manuscript that he wrote during and after his journey. You may browse through a collection of 137 of H.B's photos, his 22-chapter manuscript "On the Trail of a Freelance", his original hand-written journal pages, and much more.

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Doukhobor Collection of Simon Fraser University About the Collection The Simon Fraser University Library Doukhobor Collection is comprised of over 700 primary source items (totaling over 3,300 images) dating from 1898 to 1975. Among these items are a variety of scanned manuscripts, photographs, books and book chapters, journals, magazine articles, financial documents and interviews. The items in the Collection largely deal with the settlement of the Doukhobors in late 19th - early 20th century Canada. This material represents a significant portion of the manuscripts and photographs but only a fraction of the books and periodicals in the Library's holdings. The collection includes items in both English and Russian.

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Purchasing Print Issues Past issues can be purchased for $12 apiece from the Museum Store at the University of Michigan Museum of Art by contacting Store Manager Suzanne Witthoff at witthoff@umich.edu or 734.763.9051. About Bulletin The Bulletin of the University of Michigan Museums of Art and Archaeology was a joint publication of the University of Michigan Museum of Art , the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology , and the Department of the History of Art . This journal features scholarly articles related to subjects of interest to both museums, particularly their collections, exhibitions, and fieldwork programs.

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Goals The British Women Romantic Poet's Project is producing an online scholarly archive consisting of E-text editions of poetry by British and Irish women written (not necessarily published) between 1789 (the onset of the French Revolution) and 1832 (the passage of the Reform Act), a period traditionally known in English literary history as the Romantic period. Selection Criteria Texts are being selected in consultation with our Editorial Advisory Board , consisting of scholars in the United States and Canada. Our aim is to make complete texts available that are not readily accessible from other sources, many of which are not well known, or who are only beginning to be of interest to the scholarly community.

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Philosophy of the Journal In a climate of high subscription charges often levied by commercial publishers and learned societies alike, ARKIVOC was launched in 2000 as a journal with a very different philosophy: it was designed for universal on-demand distribution at no cost to authors (no page charges or other fees), or readers (no access or downloading charges). Many of the standard publishing procedures are used in ARKIVOC, but a major difference is that the "Control Board" which runs the journal is unpaid. ARKIVOC also has a very large Editorial Board of Referees, currently with close to 1,000 members. ARKIVOC is unique from most such boards in that about half our members come from outside Western Europe, North America and Japan.

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Introduction The Ann Arbor District Library, the University of Michigan University Library and the U-M’s Bentley Historical Library have entered into a partnership to create The Making of Ann Arbor, an online, public website on the history and development of the Ann Arbor community. MOAA is an illustrated narrative about Ann Arbor from its pioneer days when it was part of Michigan Territory to the early twentieth century. The project draws upon the three libraries’ resources and the expertise of all three partners to build a website of interest to the citizens of Ann Arbor. In addition to the illustrated narrative history of our city, the website has a searchable image database, including many photographs and other visual images not used in the narrative.

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The pamphlets digitized here comprise a very small part of a much larger collection of pamphlets owned by the Labadie Collection on the topic of anarchism. In order to maintain a simple way for the project to continue, the pamphlets were chosen for this project in call number order, rather than by level of intellectual or historical significance. These pamphlets were first cataloged in 1982 with funding from the NEH using local subject headings and call numbers. Later, the pamphlets were added to the University of Michigan Library's online catalog MIRLYN , making them much more widely accessible. It is our intention to eventually digitize the remainder of the pamphlets as time and resources permit. Currently, there are almost 600 pamphlets available online.

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  Humanities Text Initiative American Verse Project The University of Michigan Press is collaborating with HTI in an experimental venture to make these materials available to a wider audience over the Internet. The project has several purposes: first, it allows the Press to explore new ways of providing access to World-Wide Web documents. The HTI provides several levels of access to the American verse texts, and guidelines for use (2) are stated clearly at the beginning of each document. Individuals are allowed to use the texts freely, whether to create new editions, distribute to students, or use as a basis for multimedia products.

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About The American Jewess Project Overview: The American Jewess Published between April 1895 and August 1899, The American Jewess was the first English-language publication directed to American Jewish women. Part of the emergence of new public identities for Jewish women, The American Jewess offered an evocative range of features that included demands for synagogue membership for women; health, household and fashion tips; early expressions of American Zionism; short fiction; and reflections on the propriety of women riding bicycles. The American Jewess represented the changing aspirations of America's prosperous and acculturated Jewish women.

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Abraham Lincoln Association Serials Between 1940 and 1952, the Abraham Lincoln Association published fifty-two issues of The Abraham Lincoln Quarterly , a journal with original articles regarding all facets of Abraham Lincoln's life and the world in which he lived.  According to ALA President G. W.

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aking of America (MOA) represents a major collaborative endeavor to preserve and make accessible through digital technology a significant body of primary sources related to development of the U.S. infrastructure. With funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation , MOA seeks to involve research institutions and national consortia to develop common protocols and consensus for the selection, conversion, storage, retrieval, and use of digitized materials on a large, distributed scale. The initial phase of the project, begun in the fall of 1995, focused on developing a collaborative effort between the University of Michigan and Cornell University .

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Contact Please send all inquiries and submissions to FragmentsJournal@gmail.com The editorial board is pleased to announce the establishment of Fragments , a new, open-access and peer-reviewed journal, which will be published by MPublishing, a division of the University of Michigan Library. The journal's first articles were published in July 2011. Fragments will provide a forum for dialogue and exchange between scholars in all fields of the humanities and social sciences who study the premodern world. The journal encourages scholars to pursue subjects of broad interest to colleagues working in other places and times, and to pursue comparative and connective approaches in investigating the past.

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About this Project First published over the course of more than twenty years (1751-1777), the 32 volumes of the Encyclopédie include 21 volumes of text with more than 70,000 articles on subjects ranging from asparagus to zodiac. The remaining 11 volumes contain beautifully engraved plates illustrating many of the articles. The Encyclopédie was the major achievement of the French Enlightenment whose aim, in Diderot's words, was to "change the common way of thinking" through the expansion of knowledge and the development of critical modes of thought. The Encyclopédie was a collaborative project, the work of a "society of men of letters," as its title page declared. By the time the last volume was published, more than 140 people had contributed articles to its pages.

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The Court Rolls of Ramsey, Hepmangrove and Bury, 1268-1600 The court rolls of Ramsey, Hepmangrove and Bury constitute a distinctive collection of primary sources for examining and exploring the lives of ordinary people and the institutions of a rural community in the East Midlands of medieval England from the end of the 13th century to the beginning of the 17th century. They were previously published on microfiche as part of The Court Rolls of Ramsey, Hepmangrove and Bury, 1268-1600 , edited and translated by Edwin DeWindt and originally published by the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies (Toronto) in 1990 as vol. 17 of the Subsidia Mediaevalia series (ISBN 0-88844-366-8).

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