Shakespeare's Scotland: 25th September

To coincide with Perth Theatre’s production of Macbeth, on the evening of Wednesday 25 September, the Royal Scottish Geographical Society will be putting on an informal display from its extensive collections of these splendid early maps of Scotland, together with others of the same period, and drawing particular attention to those geographical localities named by Shakespeare in his play.

Margaret Wilkes, one of the joint authors of the recently-published, much-acclaimed ‘Scotland: Mapping the Nation’ and Convener of RSGS’s Collections & Information Committee, will be present to guide visitors through this special display and to point out items of interest about the maps.  She will be accompanied by Tony Simpson, a member of RSGS’s Collections Team, who has produced a sequence of detailed Powerpoint images focusing on the places which have particular association with Shakespeare’s Macbeth: Forres, Darnaway, Cawdor, Inverness, Glamis, Macduff’s Castle by East Wemyss, Birnam and of course Dunsinane.

This special evening will run from 17.30 – 18.30hrs and take place at the Society’s Headquarters, Lord John Murray’s House, 15 - 19 North Port. Perth.

Tickets are £5. Places are limited. Please book by contacting 01738 455050 or enquiries@rsgs.org

Collections Corner: Concerning German Town Plans, Black Forest Gateau and Good Conservation Practices.

Dogged work by one of our Collections Team members, who’s just completed the identification and listing of over 400 German Town Plans (produced and printed by the then British War Office between 1943-45) led to the Team celebrating this doughty event by working our way through two packets of suitably Geographical-sounding ‘Black Forest Gateau Cookies’, hunted down in a well-kent British chain-store close by. 

Our Team Member’s work involved checking the geographical location of the 400 towns and villages (some very small) and recording the latitude and longitude of these as a first stage towards eventual production of an electronic graphic index to these plans.  To build on this endeavour, a post-graduate student - on the University of Edinburgh’s Institute of Geography MSc Course in Geographical Information Systems (GIS) - is presently doing his Project on electronic indexing in connection with our map collections.

A nice bottle of German-produced Gewürztraminer or Riesling might have been a finer geographical tribute but Curators of Collections know full well that maps and alcohol are not soul mates and – true to best Curatorial practice - must be kept far apart.  So a tea-break with our German-sounding cookies was taken in another room, leaving the Town Plans to rest in peace, free from the hazards of greasy fingers or biscuit crumbs.  As Curators the world over know, a cuppa and a ‘piece’ at one’s desk are ‘verboten’ if one has maps, books, manuscripts, artefacts or other collection items located in close range and curatorial fingers must be kept clean at all times.

Samples from the German Town Plans. Click to enlarge.

Our dogged Team Member was later released to cool off amongst our Polar Collections. (In 2008 we acquired two important collections, the Angus Erskine Polar Collection and the Scottish Arctic Club Collection and a full list of the books in these collections is available on our website).  A future blog will expand on another Polar theme to mark the bi-centenary of the Scottish (Orcadian-born) Arctic Explorer and surgeon, Dr John Rae (1813-1893), who spent a large part of his career working for the Hudson’s Bay Company in Canada and was also heavily involved in the search for the missing North-West Passage explorer, Sir John Franklin.  

The Society has extensive book, journal, map, and photographic collections which are available to members. These collections are continually updated, and RSGS welcomes donations of relevant material.  Please send any enquiries about the collection to collections@rsgs.org and we'll get back to you as soon as possible (please note that the Collections Team is voluntary and meets once a week).

For more information about the Collections, the Enquiry Service and Access see http://www.rsgs.org/collections/access.html

  
www.rsgs.org

Guest Post: Testing the Water - Planning an expedition with the RSGS collection.

Callum (the little blue dot amongst the swells!) Chuya River, Altai Mountains, Siberia, Russia.

The Society has a wealth of items in its collection, including maps and guide books which can be made available to anyone who wants to plan an adventure. Callum Strong is an avid Kayaker, a passion that has taken him across the world in search of challenging white waters. He visited the RSGS headquarters to use maps to help in the planning of his next trip.

I visited the RSGS archives with an interest in finding maps of Northern Pakistan for an exploratory whitewater kayaking expedition, the British Universities Kayak Expedition 2013, which myself and a team the best student whitewater paddlers selected from across the UK are undertaking this summer. Accurate topographic maps are of great use in planning which rivers will be possible and have quality whitewater, important as we hope to complete a number of first descents on such rivers in the Karakoram and Hindu Kush mountain ranges.

Callum Strong

The archive team at the RSGS were incredibly welcoming and helpful, buoyed by their obviously great enthusiasm for their work. With their expert guidance and knowledge of their incredible collection I managed to identify a number of maps which will be really useful and importantly, accessible to our expedition. I thoroughly enjoyed my visit and will have to get planning another adventure so I can visit them again soon!

www.rsgs.org

Callum decending the Falls of Falloch, River Falloch, Scotland.