Aug 2010 Professor McCleery took part in the Guardian Careers Blog on Publishing. The Blog offered anyone the chance to put questions about careers in the UK’s largest creative industry to a small panel of experts drawn from companies such as Penguin and agencies such as Skillset. Professor McCleery was the only representative from Higher Education. The blog can be viewed on the Guardian website.
http://careers.guardian.co.uk/forums
The ’10 Scottish Books That Changed the World’ exhibition created by the Scottish Centre for the Book at Edinburgh Napier University is currently on display at the Wigtown Book Festival. The exhibition covers the publishing history of ten key books produced in Scotland from Adam Smith’s ‘Wealth of Nations’ to the ‘Rules of Golf’ produced by the Royal and Ancient in St Andrews. Professor Alistair McCleery, Director of the Scottish Centre for the Book said: “It was a difficult choice and many will dispute our ten. It’s a chance to fly the saltire and boast about the impact made by this small nation’s past and present publishing industry.” The exhibition was previously displayed at Highland Homecoming in Inverness and the Lennoxlove Book Festival. It will be the central display at Dunedin Public Library in New Zealand during Scottish Week there in November. Copies of the exhibition booklet are available from the Scottish Centre for the Book. Contact f.hartree@napier.ac.uk
David Wedderburn sent thanks to Alistair McCleery for the copies of the Confessions of a Justified Sinner sent for a study group to enjoy.
‘Just a note to thank you again for the copies of the Confessions, they are great and were much appreciated by all’
Melanie’s article, ‘No Man but a Blockhead Ever wrote, Except for Money: Copyright and the Profession of Author’, has appeared in The International Journal of the Book Vol 7 No 3 – see http://booksandpublishing.com/2010/04/book-journal-volume-7-number-3-now-ava ilable/#more-2102
Well done Melanie!
On Thursday, 29 April W.A Kelly from the Scottish Centre of the Book held another colloquium on the history of the book in a particular area, this time dealing with the Low Countries. Once more we were able to attract five speakers of a very high calibre from The Netherlands and Flanders, who spoke on a variety of topics ranging from the sixteenth to the twenty-first century. It is hoped that the papers given, supplemented by one or two others, will be published inhouse in the near future by Merchiston Publishing. Next year the area to be covered will be Russia, when, it is hoped, we can enjoy once more the hospitality of the National Library of Scotland.
On the 15th of March Edinburgh Napier University visited Gilmerton Primary school. Primary 5 children had entered the how do you carry your poem drawing competition but instead of drawing a picture they decided to write their own original poems about how they carried their poem. 10 of the children’s poems from this school were selected and printed into a booklet. Fiona Hartree from Edinburgh Napier University surprised the children by appearing at assembly and presented the children with their poem in print and their poem framed.
David Aird from Gilmerton Primary said:
Just a short note to thank you for taking the time to come into the school yesterday and for getting the poems together for the booklet.
As you can imagine the children were really pleased and surprised and I am sure that this will stay with them as a positive experience and who knows what might happen in the future.
And further to the last mention of books on YouTube, there’s an fascinating glimpse into the sort of development Penguin is undertaking to exploit the capacities of the new Apple iPad. Find it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdExukJVUGI
Video trailers for books are rapidly gaining favour as a form of marketing to wider audiences than traditional advertising. Here’s a particularly good one from Hachette to promote ‘Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Killer’ –
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X58RPS665V0
It displays the right mix of appeal to both the ironic pomo and the inner geek.
htthttp://www.scotslanguage.com/articles/view/1777
Dr Linda Gunn has broadened her search for wiki entries and with some help from the Scots Lanuage Centre is asking for Scotland to think around different themes and to record living heritage onto the ICH wiki
