ResearchBuzz

I do not sit around and say to myself, “Wow, I sure would like an online resource featuring engravings of 17th century Scotland,” but this is a nice site. John Slezer published his drawings in a book called “Theatrum Scotiae”, which has been turned into a Web site called “Slezer’s Scotland”. This Web site is available at http://www.nls.uk/slezer/ .

You can search by keyword, browse a subject list, or pick sites from a map of Scotland. If you just want to explore, though, may I recommend the highlights list? It’ll provide you a list of images and commentary.

Each engraving’s page has details about the location and the context of the times. You can zoom in and pan around large versions of each engraved image as well — and I mean seriously zoom. You can use a MrSid plugin if your browser has one, but you don’t have to.

Oh, National Library of Scotland, you’re so cool. I want to be like you when I grow up. The latest offering from the NLS is the Scottish Screen Archive’s 1000 clips online, available at http://ssa.nls.uk/ .

Actually this site is a catalog of Scottish films, beyond the 1000 clips. You can browse the catalog by place, subject, biography, or decade (the clips go back to the 1890s, though most of the clips seem to be in the 1950s and 1960s) or you can search by several factors. You can also limit your search results to those film results which do have clips online, and/or those clips to which the Library has clear copyright or can clear copyright.

I did a full search for Highlanders and limited my results to those catalog listings which have clips available. I got eight results, ranging from a silent film in 1899 to a 1961 film about children in Scotland’s orphanages who seem to spend an inordinate amount of time bobbing for apples. (It was a very odd clip.)

The catalog pages for each film are extensive. In addition to the standard name, date, length, etc. There’s also an extensive shot listing with time markers. Clips are embedded on the right side of the page. There are descriptions for those clips as well. Most of the catalog pages I looked at had multiple clips available. Underneath the embedded clips are copyright notifications and suggestions — based on topic — for other film catalog pages which might prove interesting.

For more information about the Scottish Film Archive, check out the FAQs and the About Us page.

The National Library of Scotland has announced the addition of several hundred maps now at the online Scottish map collection: http://www.nls.uk/maps/index.html . The maps include one-inch to the mile maps that cover 1856-1891, 1885-1900, and 1903-1912.

From the home map of the Scotland Maps collection you can search by keyword (a search for military found over 575 results) or you can browse by type. Other recent map sets added to the collection include the Roy Military Survey of Scotland, 1747-1755, and John Home’s Survey of Assynt in 1774.