Texts In The City

Today in 1911, the New York City Main Library building was dedicated and opened to the public. Orkney was a couple of years earlier as you can see here on our handy history page.

The New York building cost $9 million to build and from laying of first stone to stamping of first book took 9 years to build. It was the largest marble structure in America at the time.

Incidentally, a precursor to the building was the Astor library. The First President of the board of that library was none other than Washington Irving, son of Orkney lad William Irving. The Irving family came from Quholm on the island of Shapinsay.

We shall be celebrating our sister library's birthday today by eating enormous pastrami sandwiches, blasting Frank Sinatra's 'New York New York and shouting "HEY! What are you lookin' at? You talkin' to ME?" every time a customer catches our eye.

Gunnie is Go...

Gunnie Moberg by Alistair Peebles

You may remember this breathless post from early March in which we crowed with delight at our purchase of the Gunnie Moberg Archive.

Gunnie Moberg was a Swedish-born photographer, artist and friend to many in Orkney where she and her husband, Tam McPhail, made their home. It is wonderful that her collection of negatives, prints, slides and cameras get to stay here in Orkney and become part of the Orkney Archive.

Photographer Rebecca Marr has been given the enviable job of cataloguing, conserving and curating the collection and she can tell you about it in her own words here in the lovely blog she has made to document the process.

http://gunniemobergarchive.wordpress.com/

Aboot the shore hintin' flooers

 We have a new display up in the Foyer, Searchroom and the Orkney Room to coincide with the Orkney Nature Festival 11th-19th May 2013. http://www.orkneycommunities.co.uk/ORKNEYNATUREFESTIVAL/

FOYER

We love coincidences in the Orkney Archive and the first one today is a beauty. In our new display we have a few pages from Gunner Astles Diary (Archive Reference: D1/237) showing what the weather was like in May 1918. Gunner Astle, originally from Great Budworth, Northwich, was stationed at Hoxa Battery on South Ronaldsay from 1917-1918 and wrote more about the weather and wildlife of the island than the progress of the war. Here is the entry for Thursday 9th May 1918:

It seems that he had just recovered from the flu or something like it and had been confined to his hammock, so he was not delighted by everyone saying "Many Happy Returns", as he did not want to return to his hammock.

ARCHIVE SEARCHROOM

We are also delighted to be able to use a selection of photos from the newly acquired Gunnie Moberg Archive. Our second coincidence of the day, was that the only photos catalogued so far  - are nature ones!

 ORKNEY ROOM

In the Orkney Room we have a selection of books about Nature in Orkney written by Orcadians and visitors and travellers to Orkney, including A Countrywoman's Diary by Bessie Skea, Orkney Shore by Robert Rendall, The First Wash of Spring by George Mackay Brown and Orcadian Papers of the Orkney Natural History Society 1887-1904.

We 'May' Not See You On Monday...

We shall be closed on Monday for our May Day holiday, apologies for any inconvenience this may cause.

The current plan is to pinch the book trolleys and ride them down the dunes of Dingieshowe beach on route to swimming in our pants but we may just sit at the back of a bus throwing sweets, we haven't quite decided. We're definitely all dressing up as Pop and Ma Larkin though.

Posts from other years have already explained Orkney beliefs and customs for this time of year so we shall just leave you with Ernest Walker Marwick's thoughts on May taken from his Island Calendar show for BBC Radio:

'I've always thought that one of the loveliest lines in English poetry is, "Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May." They are a comment on life itself. If you were to talk of May in human terms you might say that it is the adolescent month.

We have no sooner had a couple of halcyon days, blue as sapphire, than there comes a bleak wind which cuts us to the bone, and which makes the kye in the fields look so miserable that we speak of the koo-kwacks o'Mey. In other places this is the gab of May.

And yet in May we feel that the time has come when we must really forget the winter and get on with the work of the spring...'

He goes on to say that, to people of his age (EWM was born in 1915), May was when children's winter boots were taken away 'no matter how cold the weather' and they went bare-foot until harvest was over.

Excuse us won't you? We must go and kiss and hug our shoes and socks with tearful gratitude...

We're All Goin' On An Archives Holiday!

It is getting to that time of year when we get slightly busier and the customers start to get a lot less local.

It is lovely to get visitors but it sometimes seems a shame that people have to travel so far to do their research. (Many travel from Australia and Canada each year.)

So we are leaving. We shall hire a big bus, Cliff Richard style and take a road trip South. We shall affix an enormous speaker to the roof which shall blast our theme tune  as we go and we'll just take the archives on the road okay? I'll just let the others in on my brilliant new outreach plans....

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I just ran this idea past Dusty who fell into a deep swoon after shrieking " the archives away from their strongrooms... NEVER!" and had to be revived with old treasure hunt chocolates and meths from the cleaning cupboard (AKA the archive bar. Mmmm... meths...with just a hint of glass cleaner).

The Fonds just assumed I was joking and clipped me on the ear with a commonty of Rendall.

VOC has locked himself into the darkroom with the Tom Kent negatives.

So the plan's off.

"Thanks for nothing guys!" I hear you shout; "what if we can't visit? What then huh? HUH?"

Then simply get in touch dear readers: we conduct much of our research by phone, letter and email.
Contact details are here.

We Fear Our Hearts Shall Never 'Beat Again.'

Keen fans of the Orkney Archive shall know that we are closed to the public on a Wednesday. This is so that we can tend to our children (hem, I mean... the archives) by cataloguing, packaging and lovingly stroking them all day long.

We have always been glad of this time to organise our teetering piles of uncatalogued material but never more so than today.

Today the archive staff are all wearing black armbands and tear stained veils after receiving the devastating news that JLS are to split.

There is no way we could face the public today. Sniff. Sniff sniff... Sniff.

There shall be no cataloguing today, merely lying in nests of packaging material whilst weeping and gently singing 'One Shot' to each other.

Mystery Object Update

It's for this:

Mystery Object Time

We have been spring cleaning here at the Orkney Archives and frankly, everything still looks the same and will look the same for ever and ever and ever. We have a lot of stuff.

We have found some cool things though, created about 2mm of shelf space and freed a staff member whom we all thought had retired but had in fact just gotten stuck under an enormous pile of uncatalogued maps and plans. (Sorry for that Hester.)

Whaddya think this is for hmmmmmmmm?

LOOK. It Is An Orcadian Newspaper CAKE.

Little did we know when this customer first enquired about copies from a 1953 Orcadian that a newspaper CAKE was planned.

A cake that you can read. I mean, honestly, does it get any better than that?

This is an Exception to the Rule...

You know how we feel about people writing on our books readers. You know.

But.... Look at these! They're lovely little illustrations pencilled into our copy of Voices From The Light House, a poetry collection by James Morrison,

No, not that one.

No.





Our James Morrison (we think) appears as an assistant light house keeper on Walls, aged 28 in the 1881 census. He was born in Bemera, Invernesshire.


We like to rename this one 'archi' and pretend that it's about us, :

Great Tait #2

Not long until the Orkney Book Festival begins on April 14th. There are two evenings of films and talks devoted to Margaret Tait and we have put together a small exhibition from our collection of Tait's papers in the archive searchroom.

Come and have a look at scripts, photographs, letters and notebooks which show how valued Margaret Tait's work was both within and outside of Orkney.

"What You Don't Have You Don't Miss."

We have received an exciting new edition to our catalogue this week: The Happy Valley Collection, a boxful of photographs, interviews, anecdotes, video footage and an ORCA report pertaining to Bankburn, a.k.a Happy Valley which was, for over 50 years, the home of Edwin Harrold.

Mr Harrold planted gardens and woodland around his modest cottage which he powered using a hydroelectric generator connected to a water wheel in the burn.

Photographs by Jane Glue

Photograph by Betty Pottinger

Photographs by Julie Rickards.

Photograph of wheelhouse from Stephen Firth.

“What you don’t have you don’t miss” said Edwin. His fiddle was for others to play. He didn’t play an instrument. He was good at drawing. He didn’t want donations from visitors but did accept plants and shrubs.

(Excerpt from interview with neighbour Ruby Spence.)

When I was small, probably about 5-10, I used to visit Edwin either when I lived in Orkney (1965-67) or during extended summer holidays after that. He always had sweets in his large dresser in the main room of HV and my sister and I would get some chocolate or similar before we left. Edwin's bedroom was just off the main room and he had a sort of curtain over the door. He would go through there and then come back through telling us that his wife Matilda was sleeping. At my age, I really believed him although, as was his usual, he was pulling my leg.

(Excerpt from email from Stephen Firth.)

The reference number for the Happy Valley collection is D128







In a time of Giants...

Welcome to Orkney in the time of giants or really peedie hooses and ships...

We just thought we'd brighten up your day with this lovely old map o Kirkwall.


This is part of a plan of Grain surveyed and drawn by William Aberdeen in 1766 for Sir Laurence Dundas.


Orkney Archive Reference: D8/E/19[G3]

A Chance For You to See What We've Been Banging On About For So Long...

Films and talks about Margaret Tait?

Films by Margaret Tait?

Yes Please!

See you all there. We'll be the ones at the back with bells on.

Never A Doll Moment

Look what I found when looking for shipbuilding apprenticeship documents. What are they for? Who knows?

One of the figures has "Napolean - 5' 4" and Horatio Nelson was 5' 5"' written on it's leg.

Reference: D116/6