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A Scottish SuiteSarah Beasley a & Candice Kail ba Film and Audio Department , Carnegie Library ofPittsburghb Software Engineering Institute , Carnegie MellonUniversityPublished online: 12 Oct 2008.

To cite this article: Sarah Beasley & Candice Kail (2007) A Scottish Suite, Journal ofWeb Librarianship, 1:3, 93-109, DOI: 10.1300/J502v01n03_07

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GLOBAL CONNECTIONS

A Scottish Suite:Accessing Scotland’s Culture

and History Online

Sarah BeasleyCandice Kail

Global Connections’s third column focuses on four sites with digitalcollections related to Scotland’s history and culture: the National Li-brary of Scotland, the Scottish Cultural Resources Access Network, theScottish Poetry Library, and War Detectives.1 These sites provide a

Sarah Beasley is Manager, Film and Audio Department, Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh(E-mail: beasleys@carnegielibrary.org).

Candice Kail is Senior Writer/Editor, Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie MellonUniversity (E-mail: cagkail@gmail.com).

Journal of Web Librarianship, Vol. 1(3) 2007Available online at http://jwl.haworthpress.com

© 2007 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.doi:10.1300/J502v1n03_07 93

Sarah Beasley Candice Kail

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wealth of resources on a variety of topics related to Scotland, Scottishhistory, and Scottish culture. They are well designed, easy to navigate,and fun to explore. Each one offers users clear and vivid digital resources.We hope you enjoy discovering the nuances and intriguing resourcesthat Scotland’s virtual presence offers.

NATIONAL LIBRARY OF SCOTLAND

The National Library of Scotland (http://www.nls.uk/) offers an ever-expanding digital library (http://www.nls.uk/digitallibrary/index.html),which includes twenty-six collections as of this writing. Two of the new-est are a Robert Louis Stevenson feature that includes the full manu-script of Kidnapped and a Medical History of British India that offersforty-four publications relating to public health, disease, and diseaseprevention. The collections are fascinating, ranging from “The Word onthe Street,” described as “early news stories and ballads that informedand entertained Scots between 1650 and 1910 as you browse around1,800 broadsides”1 to Mary Queen of Scots, a history of Scottish book-binding, the 1603 uniting of the Scottish and English crowns, the Moirrare book collection that includes rare books on bees and beekeeping,and the papers of Sir John Kirk, who was an explorer with David Living-stone in Africa. The NLS is working to increase the amount of onlinecontent and plans to introduce a new interface to all digitized content ina single searchable database, as well as a web feature that concentrateson the John Murray Archive. The collections are beautifully presentedand well organized. They are easy to navigate while offering unique,historically important information. The National Library of Scotland’sdigital collections offer a glimpse into many eras and aspects of Scot-land’s rich cultural, political, and genealogical history (Figure 1).

SCRAN

Scran (Figure 2), the Scottish Cultural Resources Access Network(http://www.scran.ac.uk/), is an online database with 336,500 images,movies, and sounds from museums, galleries, archives and the media. Itis operated by The Scran Trust, a registered charity, which “aims to pro-vide educational access to digital materials representing [Scottish] ma-terial culture and history.”2

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The founding partners of The Scran Trust, formed in 1996, includeThe National Museums Scotland, The Royal Commission on the Ancientand Historical Monuments of Scotland, The Scottish Museums Council,and the Scottish Consultative Council on the Curriculum. Currently, theTrust partners with more than three hundred cultural institutions throug-hout the United Kingdom. Scran enables these partners to digitize theirholdings; these institutions retain ownership of their images and soundsbut license them to Scran.

The result, the Scran database, is a copyright-free subscription-basedsite, allowing free searching and viewing of all thumbnail images. The col-lection is vast and varied and includes “images of tigers, Charlie Chaplin,Sean Connery, a Degas, a Dali, images of war or whaling, standing stones,a pint of beer, an integrated circuit, [and] line drawings of an acorn or anadrenal gland.”3 Available subscriptions include home user, educational(limited to schools), commercial, and museums/galleries/archives/libraries.Each has various restrictions such as length of subscription, size of insti-tution, and staff-only or staff/patron use. Subscription pricing is availableat http://www.scran.ac.uk/shop/. Subscriptions allow access to:

• more than 336,500 copyright cleared images,• more than 3,500 “Pathfinder Packs” (brief, professionally written

illustrated histories on events, people, places, etc.),• personal space on Scran where subscribers can store images,

searches, albums, and more.

Capabilities of the subscription site include the following:

• creating your own electronic collections of Scran resources (albums),• making an instant slide show using slides,• creating a worksheet, card, postcard, greeting card, or calendar,• creating an instant booklet from an album of images,• creating a mini Web site from Scran Albums or Pathfinder Packs,• conducting a geographic search,• the ability to e-mail, blog or send a postcard on a particular thumb-

nail image.

USABILITY FEATURES/TOOLS

Scran offers a variety of useful features to help subscribers personal-ize their experience and to create unique presentation materials. The im-ages in the Scran database are available in three sizes: thumbnail,

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postcard, and full screen. There is also a zoom tool that allows images tobe viewed in detail. The “Stuff” feature allows subscribers a personalspace on Scran. Within this space, users can save images, searches, setup Scran to suit their monitor size, and choose among high contrast andlarge text options. More advanced tools include the ability to create“albums,” which enable users to edit text, shift items, and otherwisepersonalize the available resources. The above-mentioned PathfinderPacks can be copied into an album and edited. These albums can be usedto “Create” or “Multicreate” booklets, Web sites, cards, and other mate-rials that can be delivered in a ready-to-use format to the user’s desktop.“Stuff” also allows users to share materials with other users.

Scran’s newest feature (as of March 2007) is “Scribble,” a social net-work for learning and culture. Scribble uses the open-source softwareElgg, which allows users to blog and join or create communities ontopics of interest. Teachers and institutions can create and moderate se-cure “Gated Communities.”

Scran is full of well-produced, useful, and often humorous featuresthat assist users in taking full advantage of all that the site has to offer.Examples include a Quicktime tutorial on the “Share” function; a flashtutorial on Scribble; and a free monthly e-mail newsletter that detailsnew features, offers tips, and suggests activities. Each subscription typereceives a newsletter that is created to address their specific needs anduses. Scran also provides information about useful software and pluginsto optimize the Scran experience. These downloads enable users to en-joy the variety of media formats available on the site and are, for themost part, standard software downloads.

Most of these features, as well as other functions such as the ad-vanced search, are limited to subscribers only. Whenever one attemptsto use a feature that is limited to subscribers, one receives a “Free SiteNote” informing them of the limitations of the free site.

SCRAN IN A BOX

Scran in a Box is a fee-based service that allows other organizations totake advantage of Scran’s open source software, using it to provide accessto their materials. Using a Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP [LAMP]stack, along with custom code, clients choose what modules they want,allowing “a variety of configurations and skins.”4 It is also standardbased, with Dublin Core compliant data fields, support of educational

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metadata such as LOM, remote search facilities including OAI, Z39.50,SRU/SRW, and output using XML and RSS.

CONTRIBUTING TO SCRAN

Scran offers a variety of options for contributing content. They havestandards for digitization and record formats but provide templates inAccess and Filemaker Pro to assist those with less technical capability.For partner institutions with large, pre-digitized collections, they alsooffer support for bulk loading. For smaller collections, they providean online system for uploading records. Scran does not charge a host-ing fee. This seems to be a wonderful model, allowing access to theresources of numerous institutions that might otherwise be unable todigitize their collections. It also consolidates resources, offering a “one-stop-shopping” opportunity for users. Perhaps most importantly, it al-lows students and researchers a place to find copyright-free images andother materials.

SCOTTISH POETRY ONLINEAND SCOTTISH POETRY LIBRARY

The Scottish Poetry Library combines a physical library near theScottish Parliament in Edinburgh with an extensive virtual presence(http://www.spl.org.uk/) (Figure 3). The library offers access to manypoetry resources related to Scotland, from a traditional catalog of theirphysical holdings to an extensive poetry index that offers a very thor-ough subject list used like Library of Congress subject headings, a list ofpoets that links to biographical and other related information, and aform to request assistance finding a poem, a quote using part of a line, ora poem’s subject. Their homepage features a poet of the month and po-etry from the featured poet, as well as links to other parts of the site.

The SPL online catalog, INSPIRE (INternational Scottish Poetry In-formation REsource), offers basic and advanced search options. It alsogives users the option to search the Scottish Poetry Index, which is “asearchable index of poems, poetry-related articles, and reviews in se-lected Scottish literary journals held by the Scottish Poetry Library.”5

The limits and search structures available in INSPIRE make it a remark-ably powerful tool and widen its potential to searching for poetry onspecific themes or particular interviews with poets that can then be

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located in other collections once the citation information is clear. Over-all, the Scottish Poetry Library offers a number of access points to liter-ature that is rich, diverse, and steeped in the tremendous cultural andintellectual history of Scotland.

The Scottish Poetry Library’s Web site offers a section on library ser-vices that includes a section for librarians, which the site’s developersthought might be “of particular interest to fellow professionals.”6 It in-cludes information about their online catalog and the extensive subjectindexing available in the catalog. Their “Canned Searches” provide an“extensive use of live links into [SPL’s] holdings through . . . searches[c]ompiled by the librarians and placed throughout the Web site.”7 Thissection also offers information about the Scottish Poetry Index, theircollection policy, donations, their online booklists, and their volunteerpolicy (Figure 4). Supported by the Scottish Arts Council, the NationalLottery through the Scottish Arts Council, and donations, subscriptions,and legacies, the SPL opened in 1984. The focus of their physical andonline collections is contemporary poetry written in Scots, Gaelic, andEnglish by poets living in Scotland.

The Scottish Poetry Online collection (http://www.spl.org.uk/poetry_online/index.html) is an introduction both to contemporary Scottishpoets and to Scotland’s vivid literary history (Figure 5). Its sections in-clude the annual Best Scottish Poems, “an online selection of twenty ofthe best poems by Scottish authors to appear in books, pamphlets andliterary magazines,”8 from 2004, 2005, and 2006. These sections havean introduction written by the editor for that year, links via an onlinetable of contents to the full text of the selected poems, and an acknowl-edgements section that provides information about the artwork associ-ated with each collection. Each of these poems also has a citation if it isincluded in a print collection, a note by the author about the poem, acomment from the editor, biographical information about each author,and links to related information such as the author’s Web site.

The site also hosts a special collection, The Hollyrood Poetry Link, acollaborative project linking poets and members of the Scottish Parliament.The section provides information about the project as well as the full text ofthe poems developed as a result of the funding provided by the MPs.

One of the most interesting things the site offers is an interactive mapof Scotland that allows users to click on a specific region to access con-temporary poems about that area. The section is the “Poetry Map ofScotland” and is available via a hyperlink from the Scottish Poetry On-line’s main page. It does not claim to be comprehensive or historical; itsimply “offer[s] a selection of over a hundred places or natural features

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written about by living Scottish poets.”9 The map divides Scotland intoits regions and allows users to click on the region of their choice. Withinthat region are colored circles designating the areas that have poemsconnected to them, and scrolling over the circle will bring up the poetand title of the poem that is related to that area. There is also a list of allthe poems associated with that section of Scotland linked along the rightside of the map (Figure 6). It brings the country, the landscape, and thepoetry together in a wonderfully visual way.

WAR DETECTIVES

War Detectives (http://www.wardetectives.info/) is a project thatprovided school children and community groups an opportunity to learnabout the World War II and how it affected Scotland (Figure 7). Specifi-cally, the project encouraged young people to learn first hand fromthose who lived through the war. It was part of a larger program called“Their Past, Your Future,” an initiative commemorating the 60th anni-versary of the end of World War II. “Their Past, Your Future” was ledby the Scottish Museums Council in partnership with the Scottish Li-brary and Information Council, Learning and Teaching Scotland, andwas developed in partnership with the Imperial War Museum.

We selected War Detectives primarily because of the concept ratherthan for its content or because of impressive Web applications. It is awonderful example of how a community can become involved in pre-serving its history and reminds us in some respects of the StoryCorpsproject (http://www.storycorps.net/), which records the stories of peo-ple from all over the United States and preserves them at the AmericanFolklife Center at the Library of Congress. We would love to see librariesacross the globe become involved in this kind of grassroots communitypreservation initiative.

In the case of War Detectives, participating school groups produced aseries of digital resources that are available on the site. These resourcesinclude audio, video, and text-based interviews with World War II veter-ans as well as family and community members who lived through thewar. There are also videos of dramatic presentations in which the childrenre-enact wartime scenarios such as air raids. Pupils also developedPowerPoint presentations on specific topics such as propaganda and agri-culture, mock newsreels, and posters inspired by documents from thetime (Figure 8).

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Navigating the War Detectives site is very straightforward. A menu ofoptions along the top of the screen follows users as they browse throughthe pages. There is also a “Project Search” box, powered by Google,which allows for simple searches of the projects. There are no advancedsearch features. We did a sample search for “powerpoint,” for example,the results that included both links to the index pages of projects that con-tain PowerPoint presentations and direct links to the PowerPoint pre-sentations themselves. A search for the term “agriculture” producedsimilar results. Boolean search terms are not recognized, but multiple keywords can be entered. While the “Project Search” feature does not searchthrough audio and video content, many of these project components havecorresponding transcripts, which are included in the search.

CONCLUSION

Thus finishes our tour of Scotland’s wonderful online suite thattogether do a tremendous job of preserving Scottish history as well aspresenting her present and future. The four sites that we chose are notthe only digital projects offered about Scotland or by Scottish culturalorganizations. They do offer a great overview not only of what is avail-able about Scotland but of ideas for how other libraries and groups canpreserve their heritage while inviting participation in the developmentof their future.

AUTHOR NOTES

Sarah Beasley was recently elected as member-at-large of the International Rela-tions Round Table of the American Library Association and serves as co-chair of theIRRT International Poster Session Committee.

Candice Kail is Senior Writer/Editor, Software Engineering, Institute, CarnegieMellon University. Prior to completing her MLIS at the University of Pittsburgh in2005, she was a technical writer, editor, and project manager at New York University’sInformation Technology Services and a marketing associate at Aspen Publishers. Herinterests include research, writing, technology, and the presentation of information.

NOTES

1. Scran and War Detectives were brought to our attention through a presentation byAlan Poulter (Graduate School of Informatics, University of Strathclyde) during theInternational Papers Session at the American Library Association Annual Conferencein 2006.

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2. National Library of Scotland, “Digital Library,” http://www.nls.uk/digitallibrary/index.html, accessed March 1, 2007.

3. Scran, “What Is Scran?,” http://www.scran.ac.uk/info/aboutscran.php, accessedMarch 1, 2007.

4. Scran, “What Is Scran?”5. Scran, “Scran_in_a_Box,” http://www.scran.ac.uk/info/scran_in_a_box.php,

accessed March 1, 2007.6. “Horizon Information Portal,” http://slic1.cdlr.strath.ac.uk:8080/ipac20/ipac.jsp?

profile=spi, accessed March 1, 2007.7. Scottish Poetry Library, “Scottish Poetry Library,” http://www.spl.org.uk/for_

librarians/index.html, accessed March 1, 2007.8. Scottish Poetry Library, “Canned Searches,” http://www.spl.org.uk/for_librarians/

index.html#c, accessed March 1, 2007.9. Scottish Poetry Library, “Best Scottish Poems 2004,” http://www.spl.org.uk/

best-poems_2004/intro.htm, accessed March 1, 2007.10. Scottish Poetry Library, “The Scottish Poetry Library: Poetry Online,” http://

www.spl.org.uk/poetry_map/index1.htm, accessed March 1, 2007.

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