Reading Andrew Greig’s new novel “Rose Nicolson”, the tale of my ancestor

I recently started reading this novel by Scottish writer Andrew Greig. Set in late 16th century Scotland, it is written in the words of William Fowler, student, poet, and later secretary to Anne of Denmark, Queen of King James VI and I. William Fowler also happens to be my 12xg-grandfather, and someone whose family history I have researched extensively, beyond that published to date.

Reading a good Scottish historical fiction book is always exciting for me. Reading one supposedly written in the words of my ancestor is a step beyond! Early on in the book Fowler starts as a young undergraduate student at St Andrews University, something I would do myself over 400 years later.

Fowler’s family history in the book is problematic for me, with an invented older sister, as well as elimination of at least two surviving Fowler brothers. I have to cut the author some slack though. He is after all writing a work of fiction, and needs to make sensible choices for the story he is telling.

I also have some doubts re the St Andrews sections. A memorable early scene in the book sees young Fowler buying a fluffy red student gown. Historians know St Andrews students were wearing gowns then. But the colour red may have been introduced later. Of course it is the modern colour, that of my own fluffy St Andrews gown, and my husband’s (we met as undergraduates at St Andrews).

However the late 16th century setting is gripping, the characterisations and descriptions strong, and I am finding the book a briskly written real page turner. Even if I do need to switch off my genealogist side a bit! I am looking forward to reading the rest of it over the coming weeks.

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My alumni profile on St Andrews Computer Science website

Before I retrained as a historian I was a computer science undergraduate and postgraduate student at St Andrews. I only left that after developing a MS-like illness, aged just 22. I couldn’t carry on with the full-time PhD. I doubt with the brain damage I could even have completed it part-time.

It was very difficult, leaving that PhD. It took me years to come to terms with it. But I’ve kept in touch with people, and have good friends there. My husband completed his PhD there, a few years after I left, so we have retained strong ties with St Andrews Computer Science, even if it’s been difficult for me.

I was approached a few days ago by one of my St Andrews PhD supervisory team to write a profile for the CS alumni page. I’m guessing a call went out to the staff to try to get more profiles from past students. I didn’t expect to be asked, given the circumstances in which I left. But I think it was a positive thing.

Writing the profile brought back lovely memories, especially of my undergraduate days. It’s now been posted on the website. Click the “read more” link to see more of it, including my favourite undergraduate modules, and other memories.

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Distinguished Lectures in Computer Science given by Maria Klawe

I’m just back from attending the morning sessions of today’s Distinguished Lectures in Computer Science at St Andrews given by Maria Klawe, fifth president of Harvey Mudd College. The lectures run all day, but due to my MS-like illness I could only attend the morning sessions, not the whole day. However I greatly enjoyed my time there, and wanted to note my thoughts while I can still remember them.

The venue was the Byre Theatre, St Andrews’ town theatre, in the main auditorium, providing ample seating for current St Andrews computer science staff, students and alumni who had been invited to attend. My husband and I were both there as alumni, from the 1990s. I had to use my wheelchair today, and thank Aaron Quigley and others for arranging a suitably accessible venue. I had a very good view from the back row. Indeed one member of staff joked that I had the best view in the house!

The theme of today’s three lectures was “CS for all”, exploring issues relating to widening computer science education and participation at school level, undergraduate level in universities, and in active research, including disabled people. We attended the first two lectures, which each ran for an hour.

The school-level one, “Computing for all in K-12 education” was particularly interesting, looking at initiatives – often outside academia itself – to widen computer science and particularly programming education for school-age children in America. I was particularly struck by the statistics showing how few computer science teachers there are in US schools, and especially in New York, with just 23 out of nearly 10,000 teachers. No wonder the subject is under-taught in schools. Anyway Maria discussed lots of positive initiatives for change underway, which were encouraging. And there was an active Q&A session afterwards. I was particularly heartened that almost all the people asking questions were women, very encouraging for gender equality. I wasn’t planning on asking a question, but something Maria said triggered me off, and I asked if there was evidence that these various school-level initiatives are leading to increased interest in computer science at university and similar levels.

The second lecture, on university-level education, also appealed to me. When I studied computer science as an undergraduate between 1990 and 1994 I was a tiny minority as a female student. So any steps to widen things are welcome. This was a good talk too, although I would personally have liked more detailed coverage of the various initiatives to widen accessibility. I was left often wanting to know more, as was my husband. I also wondered just how well some of the initiatives might translate to a UK setting. It seems to me, and I may have this wrong, that university level education in the USA is far more flexible than in the UK, with more flexibility in terms of which subjects you specialise in. Whereas in the UK it is normal to apply to a specific honours programme from school. This is particularly the case in England, with three year honours degrees, but even in Scotland, with its extra year for flexibility. And it isn’t always possible to switch later. My future husband and I – both undergraduates at St Andrews between 1990 and 1994 – wanted at the end of our first year to switch to joint honours computer science and astronomy, both quite unaware that the other was trying to do this at the same time. But the university authorities had just scrapped that honours degree combination, so we were told no, and I opted for just computer science, and my husband physics and astronomy. Though if we’d applied straight to do this combination from school we could have done it. Whereas in the USA I get the feeling that things are more modular and more flexible, and e.g. there is more room for people to move to computer science from other subjects later during their degree programmes.

This talk ran for quite a long time, leaving little time for questions, but there were interesting ones. I was particularly amused by the discussion of funded versus self-funded PhDs. After leaving computer science I switched to history, studied to completed PhD level. There is virtually no public PhD funding available for humanities students, meaning there is a much stronger tradition of e.g. history students self-funding, usually part-time. This is rarely in my experience done for employment purposes and to lead to increased salaries, but more for personal development and an intellectual challenge. But it does lead to a very different research environment from hard sciences like computer science, where the balance is more towards full-time funded PhDs going on to academia or industry.

Anyway I’m really glad that I went, sorry I’m missing the last talk. Many thanks to Maria and the organisers for such an interesting event. And for opening it to alumni like me and my husband.

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Internet @100 day celebrating Vint Cerf at Computer Science, St Andrews

My husband and I are both graduates of Computer Science at St Andrews. Because of this we received invitations to go to a day celebrating Internet founding father Dr Vint Cerf who is to get an honorary degree this week from the university. The day had a large number of talks running from about 10am through to about 8pm at night. Because of my MS-like illness I couldn’t attend the whole thing, and we ended up having to choose between the morning session and the evening to drop. In the end we decided to come for the afternoon and evening sessions. I would have to use my wheelchair to last the day, but the venue is good on accessibility grounds, and I was given a university guest parking permit, which would allow us to park in a disabled space directly opposite the venue.

We got to St Andrews about 1pm. There was a slight hitch getting our visitor parking permit, because the front door to Computer Science wasn’t staffed, and the secretaries we tried phoning were all at lunch. But eventually it was sorted, we got parked, unloaded the wheelchair, and wheeled into the venue. We were even in time to grab a sandwich or two from what was left of lunch before the talks started at 1.30pm.

The first afternoon speaker, Julie McCann, was excellent, talking about embedded systems. She covered a lot in 45-50 minutes, in a lively and interesting talk. This was followed by 10 minutes of questions, before a brief comfort break.

I had to go to the toilet an *awful* lot due to my MS-like illness, which was a problem. We usually left while questions were ongoing, so I could beat any queues. But I lost count of how many times I had to go. On the plus we were at the back of the lecture theatre, with an easy way out, in a space left for a wheelchair user. And one of the students helping was very attentive at helping us get through the lecture theatre doors, both out and in. But it was a menace! But we just got on with things. At least I was able to go, and was comfortable.

The 2.40pm talk with Lars Eggert had to be somewhat curtailed for time – he had perhaps put together too many slides for the time available. But he gave a good potted history of the Internet, which I enjoyed. I was at university as a computer science student in the early 1990s, and am a little vague about earlier Internet history, so always appreciate a recap.

4.10-5.10 was a panel with all the speakers and chairs of the day, all sitting together on the stage, taking questions. I asked the second question, which was answered by four of the panel, for ten minutes or so in total. I was curious to know what difference it makes to be researching a subject – the Internet – which is in many ways ubiquitous now, and well-known to the public, who have a perception of it, and thus resulting expectations. That’s different from just about any other earlier aspect of computing history, and I wondered what the implications are for how academic research in the field is conducted. The answers from the panel were diverse and insightful, and there were many other interesting questions asked. I think this might have been my favourite “talk” that we attended, because it was so wide-ranging in its scope, and fascinating.

5.10-5.30 was another break. I’d just settled with my husband, when I spotted my former PhD supervisor come in. So I wheeled over and said hi. I had to leave a full-time funded Computer Science PhD at St Andrews in 1996, after struggling for two years with worsening ill health, after my progressive MS-like illness struck at just 22, just as I was starting the PhD. On the plus after leaving St Andrews I later retrained as an academic historian, picking up three more degrees, including PhD. But it was hard to leave St Andrews. So it meant a lot to chat to my former supervisor. I also filled him in on what my husband – who did complete a Computer Science PhD at St Andrews – was doing work-wise.

Then on to the evening session. 5.30-6.30 with Jon Crowcroft was fun, perhaps a little rambling in places, at times skipping too much over some of the really intriguing bits, which could be frustrating. But it was entertaining, and enthusiastic, and we really did feel as though he was a real hacker, albeit an academic one, who’d seen a lot over the years.

Then it was Vint Cerf at 6.40. He talked about the problems of preserving data and software in a digital age, which echoed many of my views. He also proposed a technical solution, though it raised a lot of questions in terms of whether there would be the political will or economic support for it. I would have liked to have followed this up in questions, but Vint was having some trouble hearing the questioners, and with me at the back, even with microphone, it might have been difficult practically. As it was there were plenty of interesting questions asked. He received very generous applause at the end, and a birthday cake (it’s his birthday today) from Fisher & Donaldson. Plus we all sang happy birthday to him.

The room was packed. It is a big lecture theatre, in the new medical building, and most seats were taken. It was a very impressive turnout, and the audience seemed to be enjoying things a lot, and were engaging a lot in the Q&A sessions, which were very lively and interesting. As well as my PhD supervisor we caught up with various other friends and lecturers at Computer Science, and had a great time. I wish we could have attended all the talks, but we had to make a tough choice. As it was I think it was a very worthwhile visit.

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Another rewarding one day visit to St Andrews Book Conference

Last year I attended for the first time – but not the first time the conference had been held – the St Andrews Book Conference, as I blogged. Because of my MS-like illness I can only attend for a little time: at most a day there, and then a day of rest, and then back for the final morning. But if I’m weaker it’s just one day there. Yesterday the 2015 St Andrews Book Conference started, and I was back again for a single day. The theme this year was “Buying and Selling”, and I was among the speakers on the opening day.

Again I had to use my wheelchair, in a very old building. But again the conference organisers were very accommodating, holding the conference talks in a ground floor room with a disabled toilet nearby – which sadly I had to use alarmingly frequently, as my MS-like problems were playing up quite badly on the day. My husband was permitted to accompany me as helper, so he could fetch food and drinks, and help me manage the wheelchair around. And we were made to feel very welcome. St Andrews staff and students were also extremely attentive, often checking if I needed food or drink to be fetched. Very kind.

I had a lot of good chats during breaks over the day. The first was with a St Andrews book history PhD student who I’d been in touch with after last year’s conference. We chatted about shared experiences like writing a PhD thesis – which she’s doing at the moment. And I also got to meet a German book history professor who recently invited me to write a book chapter for a collection he’s editing. That was particularly useful – he was able to fill me in more on the publishing process, and I came away feeling very positive about the project, and the chapter I’m currently in the process of writing. Another contact was with a fellow Dundee history graduate, who is going on to postgraduate study. She read my PhD thesis as part of her dissertation work – wooh! And I had a great chat near the end with one of the professors who I’d asked a question after his talk, and he’d asked me one after mine. He was particularly struck by my brief passing evidence of a Scottish chapman – seller of cheap print, to relatively poor customers – carrying French language study books, which would conventionally have been assumed to be of more interest to the wealthy and elite. And we chatted about much else beside. All good.

Organiser Jan and St Andrews prof Andrew opened the event at 10.45, then the first session ran from 11-12.30. This session had three talks covering often the issue of debt and credit in early bookselling. One particularly interesting talk was by economist Jeremiah E. Dittmar, proposing an economics-based statistical analysis of lots of book prices, teasing out trends. This proved to be quite controversial, but was entertaining nevertheless, and certainly something different. I asked my first question of the day at the end of the session, the first of many I asked, and would have asked more, had time permitted.

The second session of the day ran from 2-3pm, with two talks. I particularly enjoyed the talk by French/TCD professor Jean-Paul Pittion, looking at the stock of a 1660s French bookseller. There was much he said I could relate to my own research from the 18th century, and it was nice that he gave us handouts of photocopies of the original book stock inventory to study. He was quite surprised to find a few women among the customers, thus revealing their reading interests, so I commented – as he probably knew already – that many women readers at the time would have been hidden in the records behind male relatives (husbands, fathers, sons or brothers) going into the bookshop for them. And I wondered which women might be more likely to go into a bookshop on their own then, which led to an interesting discussion about salon culture in Paris filtering through slowly to the provinces at this time, and these women going into the provincial bookshop being trend setters to a large extent.

My panel started at 3.30pm. Each speaker spoke for 20 minutes, Magdalena, then me, then my Dundee University history colleague Martine, then we had about 25 minutes for joint questions at the end. I sat at the table to give my talk, with a PowerPoint zapper to change slides. It was all going well until the PowerPoint screens cut out halfway through! Jan thought they had maybe overheated. I said that’s fine, I can go on without slides, though you will all miss my Fife map 😉 So I proceeded, even holding up my Fife map printout so they saw what they were missing! But a few minutes later the St Andrews team got the visuals working again, so my visuals including Fife map were go once more. The talk came in just under 20 minutes, and I covered almost everything I wanted to. Then I returned to my wheelchair, before wheeling up at the end after Martine’s talk for a group Q&A. We all had lots of questions from the audience. For example I was asked about literacy rates in Scotland, the price implications of the copyright trials and subsequent price drops for bookseller business viability, rural book supply, and someone else asked about chapmen and others and where they got their books from. All are questions I can usefully feed into my subsequent book chapter version of the conference paper. We didn’t have overlapping questions though, because each talk was quite different. But I had a question for Magdalena, and it was a very fun Q&A all round.

After a brief break next up was the wine reception. Originally this had been going to be in the St John’s House garden, but they moved it into the main conference room, and overlapped it with the final session. We were filled up with drinks – wine (red or white) and beer on offer – before the first speaker, then offered a refill after him, and a refill after the next speaker, and a refill after the third one! Some people took everything on offer! I stopped the wine after the second glass – was already feeling quite light headed. I’m amazed the audience managed to come up with coherent questions afterwards. The last session was a lot of fun, talking about book collecting, including bibliomania, incunabula and libraries. There was a fantastic talk to close by Daryl Green a Rare Books librarian at the University of St Andrews, talking about skulduggery among the St Andrews university academics – including a principal! – in the 19th century, and possible deliberate theft by them of manuscripts. He illustrated his PowerPoint with animated images from The Ninth Gate, one of my most favourite movies, all about a book collector and various bizarre characters. Which provided much amusement. As did his visual casting of the 19th century St Andrews academics, for a movie version.

Things wound up a little before 7pm when people were relocating to the Vine Leaf. We headed off then, saying goodbye to various people. I had a lovely day, but was pretty tired after, and will be resting solidly for the next two. I’ve emailed the organisers and prof Andrew my thanks. I really appreciate them holding the conference on the ground floor so I can attend. It also clearly benefited some other people there, who either needed to use the disabled toilet quite frequently, or were rather wobbly on their legs.

I’ve since followed up by sending LinkedIn requests to a number of people I met and chatted with. Great contacts made. Great ideas sparked. And yes I will have to write another book chapter by September.

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Revisiting the Mediaeval St Andrews App

A couple of months ago I reviewed the newly released iOS version of the Mediaeval St Andrews App. Although I praised the content, I ran into an awful lot of problems with the implementation. I encountered lots of bugs, and was particularly concerned about the central design decision that meant the app needed to be always connected to the Internet, so it could download multimedia data, restricting the app’s use out and about – for example on foot in St Andrews – on a WiFi only device like an iPod touch (which I have) and a WiFi only iPad (like my Dad has).

A new version of the app was released a few days ago. I am pleased to say that almost all the issues I raised have been now fixed, including the always online issue. The iOS app design has been completely changed from an 8MB core download with constant Internet downloads of resources to a 312MB one-off installation, which installs all the multimedia resources (pictures, video, sound files) at first installation, which means that the app can now work offline and online. This increases the initial installation time and space required, but makes the app more flexible in when and how it can be used. It also has the benefit of making the app now seem much more snappy and responsive in general use. With the original version there was a noticeable lag opening up sites and multimedia resources, caused by the app constantly needing to download more data. But now that this data is all localised on the device at installation it not only means the app can work offline, but also makes it faster and more pleasant to use.

Other issues solved include location services – the app can work without those turned on, but now produces an elegant error message, and can then be used with map or tour, rather than be unusable. Likewise the erratic video playing bugs, and the strange white-out bug I reported have all been fixed.

Because I ran into so many user interface issues when I first tried the app my last review focused more on these. Now I can focus more on discussing the content, which I have always thought is superb.

The app revolves around three main interfaces: map, site list, and tour. The last of these just has a children’s tour at the moment (which, yes, works offline too now), but more tours are expected to be added in future.

The map includes marked sites of interest. Though I notice it has missed at least one major St Andrews museum: the St Andrews Preservation Trust Museum at the east end of North Street. Importantly the map now works nicely with location services turned off, and in offline mode. You can zoom in to select sites of interest, based on their location, and then tap to learn more about them.

But the core part of the app, for me anyway, is the sites section, providing access to the history of 22 locations in the town. As an example of the depth of information recorded, consider the tolbooth, the former town hall. The main entry for this in the app includes a snippet from the Geddy map as illustration, and then gives a potted history of the tolbooth.

This is then supplemented by a range of pictures, audio, video, and additional information.

I still find the pictures main user interface unintuitive, not designed like the rest of the app. I’ve been told this is for implementation reasons, because of the plug-in software used to give this functionality. But I still think it’s a shame. A more familiar interface is available from the main site entry page, if you tap on the Geddy map, and then that pops up bigger, and you can swipe left and right through the site’s images, as below.

I particularly like the additional information available for a lot of the sites, giving historical snippets and curios, as this screen-shot from the tolbooth entry shows.

There is an enormous amount of depth of information in the sites section of the app, that is probably best absorbed slowly over time. It would be useful reference material on foot, for example when in the town exploring the sites, but it is also good for home learning and research.

Having said that, if you go to the sites listing, select a site and read about it, it is rather unintuitive to be taken back afterwards to the map interface rather than the sites listing you just used – maybe something the designers might like to look at. Likewise the level of detail varies by site. But usually there is ample to be going on with, and is a good reflection of current knowledge about the town. As someone who has researched a tolbooth elsewhere in Scotland (Melrose) I wish we had as much information about it and a virtual reconstruction like St Andrews!

I am really pleased with this new version of the iOS app. Most of the implementation issues that I discussed before have been ironed out, and it is now generally a pleasure to use. And the change in design, though needing a big install at the start, means it can be used on more devices and in more ways, and is also quicker and more responsive in general use, without the same lag seen originally.

There are still some issues where the app is somewhat unintuitive in use. So I would rate it 7/10 at the moment for user interface and implementation. But that is an enormous improvement on things as they were. And together with my 9/10 rating for content means I give it overall a very strong rating of 8/10.

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Reviewing the Mediaeval St Andrews app for iOS

First a disclaimer. I’ve something of a vested interest in this app, as a graduate of computer science at St Andrews, before I switched to history and picked up three more degrees. I really like the idea of St Andrews computer scientists and historians working together to provide this resource. And I like that it’s free.

My husband – also a computer science graduate from St Andrews – and I attended the app launch in November 2014, where we got to try out the app on Android tablets provided on the day. We’ve been keen to try it out properly ever since, so as soon as it was available for iOS I downloaded it to my iPad to try.

Unfortunately I have run into a lot of usability issues, which I’m going to detail below. But I want to stress that I think the content of the app is superb, the underlying historical resources which it aims to provide access to. For 22 sites in the town each one has a summary description, with a relevant portion of the Geddy map of the town from circa 1580, and typically additional resources like photos (modern, historical and virtual reconstruction), videos and audio files.

I particularly like where modern and virtual overlap in the app, as in the screen shot below, from the entry for the church formerly above St Andrews harbour.

The app also has a modern digital map of the town, with its historic sites indicated, providing alternative access to sites of interest. And a section for guided tours, just one tour at the moment, but expect more to be added in future

But the implementation of the app and its user interface proved to be a stumbling block for me, and it’s only fair that I detail the issues, not least to help the app creators improve things. I was testing it on my iPad. However my husband and I also noticed many problems in our brief try out on an Android tablet at the app launch. Particularly how slow the app is to use, probably due to it constantly needing to download information to show the user, an inconsistent user interface design, and troublesome bugs cropping up. However what I’m writing below focuses on my experience with my iPad, an iPad Air 128GB 3G + WiFi model running iOS 8.1.2. I was using the Mediaeval St Andrews App version 1 for iOS.

The first major issue, and it’s a design issue, is that the app requires a permanent online connection. If it’s started with no network connection the screen goes blank and gets stuck in that state. Started with a network though, and all is well. As a long-time user of iOS apps I’m used to offline working, and apps installing everything they need. In practice it’s likely that the amount of data in this case is very substantial, so having an 8MB core app, as it is for iOS, and downloading everything else is appealing. But it won’t always work well. For example I could take the app on my iPod touch to St Andrews, but couldn’t use it as a reference tool without Internet – the iPod touch relies on WiFi, and is not a smartphone. Likewise my Dad has a WiFi only iPad mini, which he wants to use the app on. He can from home, but not elsewhere, including on visits to St Andrews. The constant need for downloading data also makes the app, as we noticed on Android on launch day, often seem sluggish to use, as the user waits for more data to download. And even with a smartphone I wonder how good constant downloading is in terms of data use, especially for larger resources like videos.

On the subject of videos, many of the sites in the app have these linked to them. But the videos would not play reliably for me on my iPad. At the first attempt, and even after rebooting my iPad, they would not play at all. They’d start to download, with a download spinning animation, but the videos wouldn’t play at all. Well apart from any linked sound, as in the Katie Stevenson narrated St Andrews Castle video. The sound started as soon as the spinning animation started, indicating downloading. But no pictures would appear. Fortunately a later attempt did get the videos to work, in a window in the centre of the screen, but I don’t know what was different this time, certainly nothing I was aware of having changed.

An irritating issue when viewing linked photos for sites is that the user interface changes when you view a photo. Normally there’s a back button you tap to go back to the previous screen. To get the same effect when viewing an image, and to close it to return to the previous screen, there’s no back button, but instead you have to look for and tap a small x cross at the bottom left of the screen to close things. I found this very unintuitive and have not got the hang of it.

I ran into other issues. For example the in-app map won’t appear at all if location services are turned off. I don’t normally give iPad apps location services access, and since I don’t have a smartphone I’m unlikely to be carrying this app around as I walk. But turning location services on, even for me located at a distance in Dundee, and suddenly the map worked. I also repeatedly ran into a nasty bug – which I cannot replicate reliably unfortunately to help get it fixed – where I’d be looking at a site’s core listing, complete with Geddy map portion, and suddenly the right half of the screen would go white, and then as I tried to navigate to other sections text would overlay my screen in a very unreadable manner. I also sometimes found the categorisation of linked photos confusing, particularly photos incorporating both virtual reconstructions and modern views, which weren’t categorised as virtual images. But that may be a personal thing for me.

This all sounds very negative, but I can’t stress enough that the underlying content is superb. I’d like to see these user interface issues ironed out, at least the easier ones. Change the photo back interface to use the standard everywhere else back button rather than that confusing cross, fix the app so it at least acts elegantly if started without network connection, and check the videos to see if there might be a bug in there re playing them. It’s probably also a good idea to get the map working with location services turned off. Likewise I’d recommend considering the feasibility of providing an offline version of the app, but don’t know how much data that would take up. Perhaps it might be possible to store the core content for example, such as the core site entry pages, which might speed things up in many places, not least loading up each site initially. But if the app must be used in always online mode, then that should be made clear in the App Store description for people to read before downloading and trying to use it.

At the moment I can’t rate the app higher than 4/10 for implementation and 9/10 for content, giving 6.5/10 if averaged. But I feel that it has much potential, if only some implementation issues could be ironed out in the next version.

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Rewarding opening day at St Andrews “Lost Books” conference

I spent today at the opening day of the 6th Annual St Andrews Book Conference. I’m a bit alarmed as a book historian that I’ve missed the prior events. I will try not to miss future ones! Though having said that, the focus of these conferences seems to be on the Medieval, Renaissance and Early Modern periods, which is quite different from the 18th and early 19th centuries my research focuses on. The theme of this year’s conference was how book historians can tackle the difficult problem of researching books that are now lost, but can in at least some cases be detected through other evidence, like inventories, printers’ lists, etc.

The conference was held in St John’s House on South Street, an old building which is not very wheelchair friendly. And I had to use my wheelchair while there, to be able to last for the whole day. Luckily the organisers Flavia Bruni and Andrew Pettegree were very accommodating, and kindly moved the main talks to a room I could access, with disabled toilet too. My husband accompanied me as my helper, and was admitted free, and fed/watered. He is an academic at another university, and was easily able to access the Eduroam wireless network for academic visitors on his iPad, though conference visitors were also given guest Internet accounts.

The conference started with opening words from organiser Andrew Pettegree. Although he researches a very different book history period from me I found much of general application in what he said. For example the books produced in a country are not the only ones read there, which echoes my later 18th century research into Scottish reading habits. Likewise surviving editions are no surrogate for production, which may seem to have obvious application in the Early Modern period, but was also relevant to me researching circa 1800, and now starting to wonder how good a guide existing imprints are to printing and publishing concentrations!

The opening session was two longer talks. These were quite thought-provoking, and I suspect there may be further heated discussion tomorrow, between those who advocate a more statistical approach, and those who consider using statistics and similar techniques in this context poses enormous problems. As a former scientist, albeit one who later picked up three more (history) degrees, I am open to statistical techniques, with care. I am sorry that I will be missing tomorrow’s talks on modelling book survival by Jonathan Green, Frank McIntyre, and Goran Proot. I must seek out their writings on the subject. As a downside the opening speakers often assumed that the audience had more knowledge of certain 15th and 16th century book history aspects than I certainly did. A little explanation might have helped, for book historians in the audience, like me, researching other periods. Not everyone there was an Early Modern specialist, or familiar with the same research tools or terminology.

Lunch followed. I was stuck in the talk room, because of my wheelchair, but my husband fetched food and drink for me, and others also kindly offered to help. I was also able to have a good long chat with a colleague and friend, and with others too. So although I was away from the main lunch venue I did not feel too left out. I also bought a Brill academic book from the reduced offers, having sent my husband upstairs to check out the titles on offer, photograph the display stands on his iPad, then bring down titles of interest for me to look at, before filling out the order form with the Brill rep.

The two main afternoon sessions contained three talks each. In the first there was a good mix of scholars from Sweden, St Andrews and Italy. I particularly liked Alexandra Hill’s talk about her research into the English Stationers’ Company Register. As I said to her in the question section after, her findings of which books were more likely to be preserved and survived versus those more likely to be lost echoed my own research into book buying, collecting and reading habits two centuries later. I also greatly appreciated that her talk was extremely well judged in timing terms, and made excellent use of PowerPoint. Some more experienced speakers today could have learned lessons from her, particularly on how to time a talk for a conference – practice, practice, practice!

The second afternoon session looked at dispersal of collections. Again a nice mix of talks, feeding well into each other. I was struck for example by Anna Giulia Cavagna speaking of a 16th century library taking five (yes five!) years to be transported from Vienna to Italy. I quizzed her about this afterwards, and it was very enlightening to learn more details about how valuable books were transported, slowly, with negotiation, and much care. It also tied in nicely to some of the afternoon’s earlier speakers.

I had to miss the evening’s closing session which was in an inaccessible venue for me, although the relevant curator had offered to give me a private tour, which I had to decline due to illness. But this was not a problem. I very much enjoyed what I was able to attend, and was very glad to be there. Thanks also to the session chairs for allowing me to ask a question three times. I’m fairly clueless when it comes to the 15th and 16th century and book history, but was inspired enough by what the speakers had said to engage with their research, and quiz them further. Thank you to all for being so accommodating.

The conference continues tomorrow and on Saturday morning. Sadly I will have to miss these due to my MS-like illness: I always had to choose one main day, with a slight hope (but not happening now) of attending on the final morning too. But I am very pleased with what I was able to attend, and found it quite inspiring. For example I’m currently working on several new journal papers, and one of these, albeit that it is looking at book history in the 18th and early 19th centuries, picks up nicely on some of the themes from today. So that is extremely useful, and it was a very worthwhile day.

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A shadow library of lost books?

Fascinating blog post from Glasgow University Library about a project at St Andrews that’s tracing references to lost books, using documentary evidence, catalogues, inventories etc. There will also be a conference about this at St Andrews in June 2014. I intend to be there.

University of Glasgow Library Blog

I recall reading somewhere that books survive in greater numbers than just about any other human-made object (the exception being coins). And having passed the last couple of hours buried beneath an ever-increasing mound of hefty hardbacks searching (in vain) for the source of this claim, it certainly sounds plausible to me!  Yet despite the large number of bibliographic survivors (our Special Collections department alone holds in the region of 200,000 printed books, with the same again in manuscript items) many many more books have been lost over the years.

Stories of fire, flood and the depredations of war have engaged bibliophiles for centuries, exemplified by the lost Library of Alexandria, Maffei Pinelli’s great book collection (thrown overboard by pirates!) and the frankly Blackadder-esque tale of Thomas Carlyle’s servant accidentally using the first draft of The French Revolution to kindle the fire. Owen Gingerich, in his entertaining The book nobody…

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Three old postcards of St Andrews, Fife

I’m building up a collection of old postcards of places that are important to me. I lived in St Andrews from 1990-1994, and holidayed there most summers throughout the 1980s. And after my husband and I graduated from St Andrews University, and married soon after, we were determined that we would stay living in the near area, which we’ve managed to do.

My three latest postcards cover a range of dates from the 1920s through to the 1970s, the latter not long before I started my childhood holidays there.

The earliest, dated 1928, shows The Pends at the end of South Street, near the Cathedral. This is a pretty postcard, coloured, and has a nice note on the back.

The next chronologically, dated 1965, shows University Hall, the hall of residence on Kennedy Gardens – then for female students only – which I stayed in during 1990-1991. It shows the older part of the building, the prettier bit, not the modern wing I stayed in. I like that the postcard writer was up in St Andrews for a graduation. I wonder if the graduate had stayed in University Hall.

The third postcard is from nearest to my time, 1977, and shows the view down to the harbour. Again there’s a note on the back, which I’ve scanned in here. If I have a choice between two otherwise identical postcards, one that’s been used and one that’s been unused, I’ll go for the used one every time, because the note is always a nice example of social history.

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