This “now page” is a hub for my current activities.
I live in Edinburgh and am currently Research Principal for the WS Society who can also be seen on Twitter and on Instagram. Under the WS Society umbrella, I am also the administrator for the local children’s education charity John Watson’s Trust.
I am on Bluesky, Mastodon, Substack, Twitter and Linkedin: my photographs are at Lixmount. My former Twitter account is now purely an archive.
My current projects are:
- An online portal for the WS Society and Signet Library’s heritage collections, exhibitions and digitized materials
- Conducting a small-scale photographic survey of Leith and Edinburgh following the pattern of the Edinburgh Photographic Society’s Survey Section (1899-1914)
- Researching for a proposed book on the photographers of the Liberation of Paris in August 1944.
- Researching the bibliographical afterlife of the pioneer photographer Robert Adamson (1821-1848)
Recently completed projects include:
I curated an exhibition at the Signet Library in March 2023, giving a talk and producing a brochure – Hill and Adamson at the Signet Library: A Series of Calotype Views of St. Andrews, 1846
I gave a talk at the Broughton History Society at McDonald Road Library on Monday February 6th 2023, A Signet Library journal of the Deacon Brodie summer: The 1788 Diary of George Sandy
I curated The Signet Library’s Long 18th Century 1722-1837 – The Signet Library’s Summer Exhibition 4th to 7th July 2022
I presented a paper entitled “From Chiang Yee to IIIF: 200 years of ‘spreading the word’ about Edinburgh’s Signet Library” given at The Independent Libraries Association Conference in Birmingham on 14th May 2022
A new digital edition of The Diary of George Sandy 1788
My article on the history, present and future of the Signet Library was published in Legal Information Management in February 2022.
My feature on aspects of the WS Society Archive for the JISC Archives Hub blog was published on 1st July 2021 and can be viewed here.
I issued a series of video lectures on aspects of Signet Library history and collections as part of the WS Society Annual Exhibition 2021 and these can be seen via the Exhibition Home Page. The lectures also accompany the completed digitization and transcription of The Travel Diaries of William Creech 1766-1767.
My article “Building ‘The Palace of Bokes’: Robert Reid, William Stark and the Signet Library” was published in The Book of the Old Edinburgh Club New Series Volume 16 in February 2021.
I was privileged to participate in the production of a new edited edition of one of the Signet Library’s most important manuscripts which was published in November 2020 as Scottish Record Society New Series vol. 46 An Impartial and Genuine List of Ladys on the Whig or Jacobite Partie, Edinburgh 1745 edited by Dr. Anita Gillespie.
In April 2020 I completed the first iteration of the WS Society Archives Catalogue with the JISC Archive Hub.
In 2020 I presented an online talk to the Edinburgh Bibliographical Society on the subject of the Signet Library Sales of 1959-1979
In 2019 I reinaugurated the University of Glasgow’s Murray Lecture with a paper entitled Legal bibliophilia in the Dear Green Place: Dr David Murray and his lost legal archive 1842-1928