A new cultural project to provide a global audience with access to the University of Aberdeen's outstanding historical and scientific collections will be officially launched today (Wednesday, September 22), by James Boyle, Chair of the Scottish Executive's Cultural Commission and former Chair of the Scottish Arts Council.
The £240,000 project, entitled LEMUR (Learning with Museum Resources), is a virtual museum and on-line database that will provide worldwide access to thousands of the finest objects from the University's Marischal Museum, its Natural Philosophy Collection, and items from other collections in the University. The University holds the sixth most important museum collections in the country.
Thousands of images and text have been drawn together to create a digital collection on the World Wide Web and built into a new style of undergraduate teaching at the University and elsewhere. The project is unique in the UK and is targeted for use by academics across the world, as well as schools and the public.
Dr Alan Knox, Manager of the University of Aberdeen 's Historic Collections, said he was delighted to mark the culmination of three years' hard work with the official launch of the pioneering initiative. He said: “We are very proud to be launching LEMUR. It is exciting to see the collections being used in teaching this way. The University has these wonderful collections and we're continuing to find new ways for everyone to enjoy them and learn from them”.
Invited guests will gather at Marischal Museum today, including James Boyle, who has the honour of formally launching the LEMUR web site, and University of Aberdeen Principal, Professor C Duncan Rice.
After the official launch, Neil Curtis, Senior Curator at Marischal Museum, will give a demonstration of LEMUR.
Funded by the Higher Education Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), the well-designed LEMUR project is three-fold, with each strand bringing its own distinctive benefits:- LEMUR features a searchable database with images and a variety of search and display options, which makes it easy to navigate and, thus, time-effective. The Marischal Virtual Museum has records of every case and object in the museum, and features virtual access, ‘behind the scenes' and interactive panoramas. The project shows actual examples of the use of these resources in teaching
These award-winning resources have been designed by a team of curators, IT specialists, academics and a photographer who, for the past three years, have been drawing on up-to-date information about the objects, donors' archives, museum catalogues, scholarly opinions and other viewpoints.
The academics involved include University of Aberdeen staff from Physics, History of Art, Cultural History and History and Philosophy of Science. The entire team has worked together to establish the collection, update catalogues, create captions and develop new teaching packages.
All the digitised items have been obtained from Marischal Museum, the University Art Collection, the Natural Philosophy Collection, Special Libraries and Archives and the Herbarium, as well as from collections held by the Departments of Zoology and Geology.
The Natural Philosophy Collection is part of the University's School of Physics, and is one of the finest of its type in the UK . The collection contains over 2,000 items spanning two and a half centuries, from mid 18 th century astronomical equipment to late 20 th century digital computers.
Lack of display space and the fragility of many of these objects has made access difficult in the past. The LEMUR project will open up the collections to anyone with an internet connection.
Marischal Museum was established in 1786. Today, the collection consists of around 70,000 items, donated by graduates, staff and friends of the University over the centuries. Many objects are of national significance, with particular strengths in Scottish prehistory, Scottish militaria, African and Oceanic ethnography, Classical coins and Egyptology.
The Museum is affiliated with University Museums in Scotland (UMIS) – an organisation that exists to foster the preservation, care and interpretation of historical and cultural collections in Scottish universities, and to promote the interests of the collections.
The Museum's Senior Curator Neil Curtis, is also the UMIS secretary. He said: “The LEMUR project shows the importance of university collections and some of the imaginative ways in which people can have access to them. The Marischal Virtual Museum and database are particularly rich and offer many exciting ways to study museums and collections.”
More information on the background to the LEMUR project is available at www.abdn.ac.uk/lemur . The Virtual Museum is at www.abdn.ac.uk/virtualmuseum . The searchable database is at www.abdn.ac.uk/museumsearch.