Today we’re taking a look at a fantastic blog series happening at Echoes from the Vault, the blog for the Special Collections department of the University of St. Andrews. The blog as a whole does a great job of showcasing the unique holdings of the university’s special collections, but we’re especially loving the 52 Weeks of Inspiring Illustrations series that kicked off in June.
No. 9156 Rhododendron Hippophaeoides by Lilian Snelling. From the holdings of the Special Collections at the University of St. Andrews.
From the Week 1 post:
“Last year, we started an experiment here at Echoes to create a post once a week focused on fantastic bindings found throughout the collections. This year-long thread was a great success: not only did it attract a lot of regular attention to the blog, but it also gave our curators an excuse to trawl the collections on weekly basis for beautiful books.
We’ve decided to follow up this successful year with a new thread: 52 Weeks of Inspiring Illustrations. This year we’ll focus on gorgeous book engravings and decorations, on paintings and marginalia found in manuscripts, on the history of the photographic illustrative method and simply on pretty things found in our collections.
It’s a great excuse for us to focus on the visual in our holdings, to feature items which speak for themselves.
So we hope to put up a nice selection of images from each chosen work. We have had great fun planning out the first half of the year and there are some beauties in preparation. We hope you’ll join us on this year-long exploration of our collections and hope that you see something inspiring along the way! Our aim is to share the ‘wow factor’!”
And so they have. The series (which you can subscribe to) is packed full of images with commentary that links readers out to other items in the digital collections, as well as external links that offer additional context for the images.
I for one am dying to do some little paintings based on the botanical illustrations – an easy way to get my hands engaged in an art-making activity.
We love blogs and other forms of social media as a way to highlight items or a collection of items from a library’s digital holdings – it’s a daily dose of inspiration delivered right to your inbox, Twitter feed, blog reader, etc.
What other library or special collections blogs should we know about? We’re always looking to expand our Collections category – help us out and send some links our way! ~ Laura
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