Fellowship Announcements: not One, but Two

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

My final days as a librarian are characterised by a combination of exhaustion and adrenaline. This cough is determined to flatten me, but I’m equally determined to plan ahead for pastures new!

I woke, coughing, at 3.30 am yesterday.  In broad daylight, no less.  I reflected grimly that, whilst I didn’t deny believers their joy at the summer Solstice, I personally would have preferred to have greeted the sun a couple of hours later.  I coughed, made tea, and finally got up and read a book.

My decision came back and bit me in the heel later. I needed a wee power-nap at lunchtime. In the evening, I sat down to look at my new, 1951 catalogue (which came packaged in original 1966 wrapping, addressed to the last owner) in daylight … and woke to find myself sitting in the dark.  No disrespect to the original compilers; I was just exhausted.

It wasn’t just the Coughing

I wasn’t just tired out by coughing and sleeplessness. I’d had so much excitement that I think I was just suffering from an excess of adrenaline followed by the inevitable slump at the end of the day!

All my chickens metaphorically hatched yesterday.  I can now relate that, after a long time planning and waiting, I shall be starting my new, semi-retirement role with a new  job title, and I couldn’t be happier.  I have been promoted in semi-retirement!

Post Doctoral Research Fellow

As a Performing Arts Librarian, I was partially seconded as a postdoctoral researcher.  But you can’t be seconded if you don’t hold the original post any longer, so when I retire, I will have a new part-time contract with a new title and job description. This pleases me enormously.

And in 2025, a Heritage Collections Fellowship at IASH

I’m extremely proud to have just accepted a six-month fellowship at the University of Edinburgh, at the Institute of Advanced Studies in the Humanities. Between January and June next year, I’ll be researching the archival collection of papers from Thomas Nelson, the Edinburgh publisher.  There’s something singularly appropriate about a retired scholar librarian researching an archive in  another academic library, particularly such an eminent collection. I’m particularly pleased because one of my strengths is in placing what I’m researching into its wider cultural and historical context, and this massive collection of papers certainly offers plenty of scope for that. 

To begin with, there’s that new Audible book I bought the other day – nothing to do with Nelson, but hopefully giving me understanding about significant economic trends that would have impacted their trade.  (Just let me stop coughing enough to listen to it …!)

Flashbacks no.14, Thomas Nelson and Sons

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
Picture of book cover

‘Audible’ books are great for someone who is trying to rest their eyes. But the problem starts when the book you want to read isn’t on Audible! Only being able to read a few pages at a time made reading this book a bit more of an endurance test than it needed to be. It wasn’t difficult reading in terms of comprehension – just a bit of an effort for my left eye without the assistance of the right one, which will take a few more weeks to catch up!

Thomas Nelson & Sons: Memories of an Edinburgh Publishing House, ed. Heather Holmes and David Finkelstein (East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 2001) ; Flashbacks series no.14 (Book cover shown above)

In the final pages of the book I’ve recently submitted to my publisher, I have referred to Thomas Nelson and Sons, the Edinburgh publisher. In connection with the research behind that book, I had acquired a copy of the paperback edited by Heather Holmes and David Finkelstein some months ago, but I didn’t read it at the time – because it was clearly not going to inform me about editorial decisions of the sort I was writing about. Nonetheless, I did want to read it at some stage, and I made a start last weekend.

Image from Wikimedia Commons

I learned a lot more about what it was like working in the print works, as recalled by four different individuals who were time-served printers – but I didn’t learn a huge amount more about publishing decisions in general, and there was nothing at all about publishing music. Nonetheless, it was useful; I’ve got a lot more background, and a few more facts and figures. Moreover, it was helpful to read about the demise of Thomas Nelson and Sons in the 1960s, the same decade that saw the decline of Scotland’s music publishing industry.

The ‘Flashbacks’ series is (or was) published by Tuckwell Press in association with SAPPHIRE (the Scottish Archive of Print and Publishing History Records) and The European Ethnological Research Centre. The latter sponsored the series, c/o the Royal Museums of Scotland. I think the National Museums of Scotland publishing page may be out of date, since it says there are six Flashbacks publications to date, yet the book I’ve just read is no.14, and was published in 2001. So far as I can make out, the series ended around 2004, and I think the SAPPHIRE oral history project ended about five years after that. (There are articles by Finkelstein, Sarah Bromage and Alistair McCleery dating from 2002 and 2009.)

As it happens, this was exactly the kind of book that I needed right now. Whilst I’m temporarily out of action, it’s useful to read around a subject without the pressure of needing to take notes. I can do the detailed scholarly work later!