Mary and Elizabeth #OnThisDay

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://theorkneynews.scot/2026/02/01/mary-and-elizabeth-onthisday/

Attempted and successful library tourism in Edinburgh and Northern England

Beyond the NLS, Scotland has various libraries within the country. There’s over twenty public libraries in Edinburgh alone. The day after I visited the NLS, I traveled to Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RGBE) by bus. This garden is akin to Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania. It has a beautiful plant collection, and a special library. However, the library isn’t accessible from the garden, a clear barrier to entry. Furthermore, the science, learning and archives section is only accessible by appointment. That is too bad. If it had been accessible from the garden I may have visited it. There are museums and various collections within the garden as well. Every plant has a specific identifying number associated with it.

Note: This serves as the beginning of my series, which begins, chronologically, with my guest post on Reel Librarians, on February 11th, entitled “Edinburgh and the National Library of Scotland: Library tourism redux.” It will be reposted on here over a month later. There will be two more parts of this series, focusing on my continued library tourism in London and Belgium coming later this year. Links to those will be added to this post later.

The RGBE website describes the library as providing the “basic tools” to support research and organization of biodiversity into a “manageable framework to underpin ecological and biological research.” This makes it even more unfortunate that the “extensive” library, said to be the Scottish national reference collection for “specialist botanical and horticultural resources” with over one million items, cannot be accessed from the garden itself. A pamphlet purchased for two pounds says directly: “no access from Garden,” putting this barrier into writing.

The second part of my vacation involved staying one week at HF Holidays’ Derwent Bank house, which sits on Derwent Water lake, to hike throughout the acclaimed and well-known Lake District, in Cumbria. Some of the hikes were arduous, although that might not be the case if you were physically fit, unlike myself, who wasn’t as fit as other hikers. I wanted to hike there as it was blazing hot in Baltimore, where I live. Other hikers were primarily from England and the Netherlands. The hikes often involved going through sheep grazing areas, avoiding sheep poop in the process, with beautiful views, and a visit to the Castlerigg Stone Circle.

On the fifth day of hiking, on July 31st, the coach bus I was riding in, with fellow hikers passed by the Keswick library. It looked to be one big room filled with desktop computers. Further research indicated that this library offers printing, loanable dementia bags and storysacks, hearing aid batteries, and more. It’s located off the town’s main street, with some nearby parking lots (they call them “car parks” in England), plus a bus station 200 yards from the library. It also hosts board games, a Lego club, jigsaw puzzle building, mindful coloring, books to help with well-being and health, and more.

Lastly was a bookshelf almost akin to the Little Free “Library” collections in the U.S. (but without serving a physical manifestation of a “desire to privatize the world”), at the Penrith train station. See you at the next post, where my journey continues, in London!

© 2025-2026 Burkely Hermann. All rights reserved.

Sources used

• “Derwent Bank Lake District,” HF Holidays, 2025.
• Hermann, Burkely. “Blogposts, fictional archives, Ancestry’s monopoly on federal records, the Little Free “Library” deception, powerful ICJ decisions, and the DNC’s sidelining of pro-Palestinian voices,” History Hermann, 3 Sept. 2024.
• Hermann, Burkely. “Here’s four photos I took from my third-floor room at the Derwent Bank house of @hfholidays.co.uk on August 1st, the last day I was there, looking down at the beautiful garden, and down across the Derwent Water lake to the beautiful landscape across the lake. I revised the image slightly from the original using an Instagram filter on here. I only stayed for a week, and this was only the second part of my trip (the first part was going to #edinburgh) but I throughly [sic] enjoyed my time there, even if the hikes could be rigorous at times,” Instagram, 9. Aug. 2025.
• Hermann, Burkely. “Photos of the Castlerigg Stone Circle which I took on July 28th, a place also known as the Druids Circle. I used some photo tools on here to make these images even better and pop out more, as the originals were rather dark. #castleriggstonecircle,” Instagram, 9. Aug. 2025.
• “Keswick Library,” Cumberland Council, 2025.
• “Libraries,” City of Edinburgh, 2025.
• “Library & Archives,” Longwood Gardens, 2025.
• Miline, Simon. “Why our work matters,” Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, 2025.
• “Our History,” Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, 2025.
• “Penrith (North Lakes) (PNR),” National Rail, 2025.
• “What We Do,” Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, 2025.

#CastleriggStoneCircle #castleriggstonecircle #Cumbria #DerwentBank #Edinburgh #England #gardens #HFHolidays #Keswick #LakeDistrict #lakes #libraryTourism #LongwoodGardens #maps #memory #museums #NationalLibraryOfScotland #Penrith #publicTransit #ReelLibrarians #restrictions #Scotland #shortBlogs

Curtain Raiser: Launch of the National Library’s Centenary Celebrations
28 March, Edinburgh | tickets £4–£12

Join National Librarian Amina Shah with special guests Damian Barr & Val McDermid for the official launch of the National Library of Scotland’s centenary year.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/curtain-raiser-launch-of-the-national-librarys-centenary-celebrations-tickets-1224999449329

#Scottish #literature #Library #NationalLibrary #NationalLibraryofScotland

How copyright chaos reigns among the UK’s top cultural institutions

The perennial attempts to widen the reach of copyright in the pursuit of yet more revenue is something that is to be expected from companies. After all, maximising profits is basically what companies do. But as previous Walled Culture posts have lamented, there is also a widespread tendency among non-profit cultural institutions – museums, art galleries, libraries etc. – to use copyright […]

#2d #3d #anarchy #artGalleries #britishLibrary #culture #foia #freedomOfInformation #libraries #museums #nationalGalleriesOfScotland #nationalLibraryOfScotland #publicDomain #tateGallery #uk #wallaceCollection

https://walledculture.org/how-copyright-chaos-reigns-among-the-uks-top-cultural-institutions/

For all interested in or studying the more recent past ...

Post-war OS maps as single sheets, overlay, or side-by-side for the period 1944-1973 are now available from the National Library of Scotland website:
https://maps.nls.uk/os/national-grid/

A great deal of information on post-war rebuilding and expansion can now be seen for free, as detailed as 1:1250.

A wonderful site just got even better. Well done to all involved. 👍🏼

#OSmaps #History #Maps #PostWW2 #NationalLibraryOfScotland

Shin sibh, a charaidean! Come along with me to George IV Bridge and the National Library of Scotland!

#Gàidhlig #DùnÈideann #Gaelic #Edinburgh #NLS #NationalLibraryOfScotland

Shin sibh, a charaidean! Thigibh còmhla rium gu Drochaid Dheòrsa IV is Leabharlann Nàiseanta na h-Alba!

#Gàidhlig #DùnÈideann #Gaelic #Edinburgh #NLS #NationalLibraryOfScotland