Project News August 2007

Time flies when you are enjoying yourself; it also flies when you are working on a project to list, conserve and promote several thousand maps, atlases, photographs and slides. We can hardly believe it but the Heritage Lottery Fund supported project, Images for All, which aimed to carry out essential work on the Society's geographical collections, comes to an end this August.

The nearing of the end of the project, however, has not meant a winding down of activity and we are as busy as ever.

In the area of conservation; we have now received back photographic material from the professional conservator, Susie Clark, who has cleaned and repaired photographic prints and glass lantern slides from some of the Society's most interesting collections, including those of Ella Christie and William Gordon Burn Murdoch. The result from the work carried out is that we may now be confident that these fascinating materials are stored in stable conditions to enable their long term survival.

The digitisation element of Images for All is well up and running and Dr Anthony Newton, also responsible for the Images for all database, has taken charge of the project to digitise the Anna Hanlon collection. Our intention is to scan the entire collection, which comprises around 15 thousand 35mm slides, and make this wonderful record of a lifetime of travel available through this website. This collection of images will be searchable through the online collections database and will complement the current Image Gallery, displaying "Gems" selected from across the collections.

The last few months have been a busy season for publicity and saw the Society's St Kilda collection featured in various publications such as: The West Highland Free Press; The Stornoway Gazette and The Scot's Magazine.

We have also been busy with outreach work for the project, taking the Images for All mini exhibition to various RSGS Member Centres including, Aberdeen, Perth and Helensburgh and also providing a talk for students on the ILS course at the University of Strathclyde.

To mark the completion of this project and celebrate its invaluable achievements, a launch is to be held in the Institute of Geography at the University of Edinburgh. Invited are members of the press, guests from the library and archives world and others who have helped and supported us throughout the project. Guests are to be given the opportunity to examine some of the geographical material conserved through the project as well as witness a demonstration of the custom built Images for all database and website.

The end of August, however, will not mean the death of Images for All; the terms of the HLF funding allow for a winding down period, so it is anticipated that all outcomes of the project will be successfully completed by the end of the year and plans have been put in to place to ensure that the good work of Images for All is preserved and carried forward with the Society as it moves to Perth.