Ian R. M. Mowat, Librarian to the University
In what is believed to be a first, certainly on the eastern side to the Atlantic, the Library is developing a means of honouring benefactors on the World-Wide Web. Provisionally entitled the Virtual Hall of Fame, a Web site is being created which will give details of major donors. Edinburgh has benefited greatly over the year from the support of its graduates and, indeed, from many others. It clearly is important to do all we can to recognise that debt and to do so in ways commensurate with current practice.
The idea was generated, in part, by a recognition of how much better supporters are acknowledged in the United States than they are in the United Kingdom and by memories of the way classical architecture has been used to celebrate famous men (and women), whether in the original classical temples of Greece and Rome or in their more modern variants such as the Lincoln Memorial.
Edinburgh has its own, ready-made classical temple in the form of the Playfair Library, the old Library in Old College, Using this as a concept, two postgraduate students (one in computer science, the other in architectural design) are developing software which can be accessed via Netscape 4 or Internet Explorer. The individual bays of the Playfair Library have been assigned either to subject areas or specific donors; and clicking on a designated bay brings up on the computer either a portrait of specific donors or, where images are not available, at least details of who they were and the nature of their benefaction to the Library. It will be possible to include subject rooms in which donations have been particularly strong - Medicine is an obvious example, but Commonwealth Studies perhaps less so.
There can sometimes be a tension between the desires for donors to see their gift gather together in one place, especially when the donor is gifting a collection in memory of a loved relative, and the needs of the Library to offer as effective a service as possible to users by distributing books donated as one collection to join the other books on similar subjects scattered throughout the library. Usually such tensions are amicably resolved and it is hoped that the Virtual Hall of Fame will be another way in which the totality of a donation can be recognised in a permanent fashion, with worldwide coverage, while leaving the maximum flexibility for arranging individual items of stock.
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since 4 Mar 99
Last updated on
4 Mar 99