Edinburgh's university collections made available online

The University of Edinburgh and Heriot-Watt University will be among several Scottish institutions joining a partnership with the Collections Trust to make their collections available online.

The Culture Grid is a project run by the Collections Trust, which puts together archive, museum, library resources and databases, and makes them available in one location.

The partnership will support 'Revealing the Hidden Collections', a £318,000 University Museums in Scotland project led by the University of Aberdeen and funded by the Scottish Funding Council.

Amy Miller, the project officer for Revealing the Hidden Collections, said: “The internet is now an important research tool, for school children, academics and those with an interest in a particular subject but currently they have few ways of discovering what we hold, or viewing it.

"This partnership means that the world class collections held by Scottish university museums will now be accessible for use and enjoyment by everyone.”

Revealing the Hidden Collections is one of many contributors to the Culture Grid, which serves up information to media partners such as Google and the BBC.

The project will bring a “wealth of information” online, according to Ann Jones, Heriot-Watt University Archivist.

Ms Jones said: “Heriot-Watt University's museum and archive collections are a treasure trove for researchers. The collections chart our development from our groundbreaking origins in 1821 as the Edinburgh School of Art, the first Mechanics Institute, which revolutionised access to education, to the present day.

“Our collections tell the fascinating story of our Edinburgh Campus from the time of King Robert the Bruce and provide an eye-opening insight into three centuries of textile design in the shape of our inspirational Textile Collection at our Scottish Borders Campus.”

The Culture Grid currently holds over 730,000 item records from over 50 different collections of national, regional and local scope from museums, libraries and archives, with many thousands more due to be added in the coming months.