The archives department, established in 1978, was initially situated in a small corner of the Tower basement, and during the intervening period has built up an impressive reputation within Scotland, culminating in two external funding awards.
University Archives: current activities The first - £300,000 from the Non-Formula Funding for research Collections Programme in 1995 - to improve access to the collections and the second - in 1999 from the Research Support Libraries Programme (RSLP) - to fund two large scale digitisation projects now in progress. A report on the achievements of the first project is available from archives.
The archives are staffed by the University archivist, Patricia Whatley, the assistant archivist, Jennifer Tait and senior archive assistant, Michael Bolik. Others include staff dedicated to externally funded projects: Jan Merchant and Michael Bolik - the archives IT expert - have been seconded part-time for three years and Andrew Nicoll and Keren Guthrie are both on short-term temporary appointments. Ingrid Thomson has taken on Michael's original post. Other staff include student assistants and volunteers.
Archives support the core functions of the University: learning, teaching and research and the collections are used widely within the University for these purposes. The archives seek to collect material that will strengthen and develop its existing holdings and new collections are made with due regard to their teaching and research potential. Cataloguing is an important activity which releases the research potential and this information is disseminated to departments.
Recent collections include records relating to the Glasite Church which takes its name from the Reverend John Glas (1695-1773), who was for a time Presbyterian minister at Tealing (Perthshire). His desire to see a return to "New Testament" Christianity combined with his opposition to state control over the church led to his suspension from the Church of Scotland in 1728.
He established an independent fellowship in Dundee, the members of which became known as Glasites, and with the help of his son-in-law George Sandeman the first meeting house was built in Perth in 1733. The Glasite Hall in Dundee was built towards the end of the 18th century and was affectionately known as the "Kail Kirk" because of the Glasite practice of celebrating the Biblical agape or "love" feast using kail, a cabbage based broth. The Glasite vision passed to George Sandeman, whose followers - both in Britain and America - became known as Sandemanians.
In 1999 some of the last surviving members of the Sandemanian congregation in Edinburgh gifted an important collection of papers and related material to Dundee University Archives, where they augment the existing Glasite Church records.
The new material also included eight paintings and engravings, including a beautiful 18th century miniature and a portrait by Skirving - a prominent 18th century artist - as well as a box of artefacts including the "kale ladle", tuning forks and other items.
The archives' most recent accession was the Bett Brothers collection. Well known major builders, their records date from the 1930s to the present day. This collection provides a rare opportunity for researchers to study the development of private housing. This collection is on a parallel to the Meikle McTaggart collection held by the Royal Commission on Ancient and Historical Monuments in Scotland.
A third collection held by archives is that of Michael Peto (1908-1970) - a Hungarian born photo-journalist renowned for his sensitive use of photography. His collection of around 128,000 original and copy prints, negatives and colour transparencies provides an in-depth record of lives and social conditions through the decades.
His complete collection was gifted to the University in 1971 by his family and there is still much work to be done on the collection in terms of preservation and exploitation. An RSLP funded project is just one of the ways in which this is being done. "The Visual Evidence" led by St Andrews University will enable the digitisation of 20,000 Peto images and ultimately their display on a photographic web site.
A second digitisation project "The Drawn Evidence: Scotland's Development Through its Architectural Archives from Industrialisation to the Millennium, 1780-2000" is another RSLP funded programme taking place in archives and is aimed at the support of academic research. Architectural drawings and their associated records are vitally important to many academic disciplines. Large format drawings and plans bring their own problems of access and storage and are highly vulnerable to damage caused by frequent handling.
In order to preserve this vulnerable archival resource and to widen access to it, this collaborative project proposes to digitally scan a core section of around 18,000 selected architectural drawings of Scotland, related textual archives and associated materials in order to create a dedicated single web-based search interface. Included will be 300 drawings held by the University of Edinburgh, of Sir Rowland Anderson, one of Scotland's foremost architects.
The on-line resource will enable subject-guided navigational aids and seamless cross-searching of data. The selection of the drawings and monitoring of the project will benefit from the input of specialist academic advisors (principal academic advisor -Professor of Scottish Architectural History, Charles McKean) who will also advise on the collection, functional priorities and the design of the final product. The equipment that has made this project possible cost a total of £120,000 and comprises a state-of-the-art digital camera which produces very high quality image resolution. A digitisation service is a available for a reasonable cost and any interested departments should contact archives directly.
The archives' collections can be consulted in the archives search room, based in the Tower building east basement every day 9am-5pm except Thursday when the search room is closed in the afternoon. During term time the opening hours are extended to include evening opening on Wednesday and Thursday 5pm-8pm. All students and staff are welcome.
The archives staff also are asked regularly to speak at conferences and seminars and are happy to give presentations to departmental staff and students to outline how the collections can enrich their teaching and research activities.
For further information on archives at the University contact ext 4095 or visit http://www.dundee.ac.uk/archives/
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