Historical Music of Scotland website
Betweeen October 2012 and October 2015, I was seconded part-time as postdoctoral researcher to the Bass Culture project – an AHRC-funded musicology project looking at historical Scottish fiddle music. The PI was Dr David McGuinness, a senior lecturer at the University of Glasgow, and we were joined by a recent PhD graduate, Luca Guariento, who did the technical website wizardry. http.hms.scot is now online in beta form – it goes live next month – so you can see our 22 digitized fiddle collections, and the other 200 or so collections whose bibliographical and location details are listed along with commentary on the books and their compilers. (Please do take a look! There’s a box for comments.)
Anyway, that kept me out of the library for two days a week until mid October last year. Seamlessly, I put the Bass Culture folders to one side, created a new Dropbox folder and started a new project of my own, in what is effectively a six-month part-time sabbatical. Still the same two days a week, but now I’m looking at the historic copyright music collection at the University of St Andrews. Hopefully I’ll be able to continue it on a larger scale if I can find follow-on grant funding. I want to combine big data capabilities with historical commentary, examining all the contemporary music copyright collections. Watch this space – I’m looking into it!
Just to add to the fun, I’ve also signed up to the Postgraduate Certificate in Learning and Teaching in Higher Arts Education – which is offered at my workplace – so I’ve done my lesson plans and now have to design and carry out a project. I thought I had a lovely idea, but it was flawed, so it’s back to the drawing-board for me. Hopefully Plan B will be just the ticket.
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