Saturday Outing to Maryhill Burgh Halls

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

Why This Matters

This is all about networking – and expanding one’s knowledge beyond the immediate focus of research, in order to understand the context in which the topic stands.

Yesterday, I headed north of the river, because there was a community event being held by Maryhill Burgh Halls Trust, and a group I’ve recently started following was manning a stall there – the Protests and Suffragettes social enterprise.

A creative project & new social enterprise led by a team of artists, activists, & local historians working to recover and re-voice the histories of women activists in Scotland.

My takeaways from the stall!

My interest stems from the work I’ve done researching late Victorian and early twentieth century Glasgow women involved in teaching, performing or publishing music. I’ve already published an extensive article in the RMA Research Chronicle, and I’m giving a conference paper later this year. I’d like to find out if two of ‘my’ ladies were actively involved in the early suffrage movement. My guess is that they may have been sympathisers, if not active in the cause. The older lady lived before the Suffragette movement as such, and I’m not expecting to find the younger of the two doing anything particularly audacious,  but it would be nice to find any trace of supporting the cause,  even just as a member of some organised group!  (I’ve already mentioned my trip to Glasgow Women’s Library on a similar mission a couple of weeks ago.)

Anyway, I thought it would be altogether lovely if I introduced myself today, since we’ve already been in touch via social media. And it was lovely. I took the opportunity to outline what else I’m hoping to find out about this particular mother and daughter.

Caught chatting

Elevator Pitches

You’re always reading on LinkedIn about how you should have an elevator pitch just there on the tip of your tongue, so that your current project can be readily described to questioners who may not know very much about your work yet. As I travelled home, energised, after my outing, I reflected that actually, I need several elevator pitches, because I have two side projects as well as the main one!

Glasgow Women’s Careers in Music

One of my side projects, I’m currently exploring how different women’s backgrounds may have influenced the careers they pursued, in turn-of-the-century Glasgow.

The Glasgow Athenaeum School of Music

I’ve been exploring the careers of our first Principals, and contemplating the musical education that the institution offered in the first few decades. Another side project.

Publisher Thomas Nelson & Sons

This is the big project. I’ve been looking at the kind of educational music materials published in the first half of the twentieth century, and reflecting on the use made of Nelson’s four Scots song books by pupils and teachers. After archival work on the Nelson correspondence, I’m now conducting an oral history of the Sir John Leng Trust’s Scots Song medal competitions in Dundee. The idea is that I’ll use all this for a third book. Watch this space!

A wee Saturday Expedition: The Librarian-Researcher’s Afternoon Outing

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

After diligently doing my organ practice this morning, I felt like an outing this afternoon. Only a librarian/musicologist would decide to go library-visiting! However, I knew that Paisley has a new, exciting public library building in the High Street, and I also wanted to find out about an old Paisley publication, so where else would I go? The image above is one I found on Renfrewshire Libraries’ website.

Sean McNamara’s enthusiastic tweet about the library, on 23 November 2023.

The library is bright and modern, on three floors. The ground floor has a large children’s section at the back of the floor, with places for parents and children to sit, and steps the children could go up and down – very cheerful and user-friendly.

There are also facilities for making a hot drink. Whatever next?! Very nice, but an unexpected surprise for an old-school librarian who last worked in a public library, erm, 36 years ago! 

Plainly there wasn’t going to be anything of the kind I was looking for, on the ground floor. I headed up to the next floor, and the next. Places for computer use, an array of different seating arrangements, non-fiction …..

I asked, but I discovered that if I would find what I wanted anywhere in Paisley, then it was not here. I need to go the Heritage Centre (aka “the archives”), elsewhere in the city. That’s a trip for another day, since it’s not open at the weekend.

Shop front, Paisley High Street
Parlane’s former offices in Paisley High Street. Book sculpture right above the top dormer window.

All was not lost. I also wanted to find out where Parlane’s offices had been. I knew that they, too, were in the High Street – and they were two doors away, in fact. They looked a bit sorry for themselves. I took a photo, but a string of twinkly lights (not illuminated by day) obscured a decent photo of the book sculpture at the top of the building. 

Maybe I’ll find a better one online somewhere. Messrs Parlane might have been pleased to find a new library as their next-door-but-one neighbour, but I fear they would have been sad to see the High Street today. It wasn’t exactly bustling on a Saturday mid-afternoon.

Home I came, and spent several hours making lists of things I’d like to see at the Heritage Centre. (I hope they’re as welcoming as the website suggests, or they’ll find me a bit of a nuisance with my long list!!)