A collection for everyone

Find out about the University of Edinburgh’s commitment to making our collections freely accessible to all and learn more about our archives.

We do this physically through our Centre for Research Collections, through our exhibitions and events programme, and digitally though our website and other web resources.

The University’s acquisition of Charles Lyell’s notebooks would provide an outstanding opportunity to make them fully and freely accessible for the first time. Through conservation and digitisation we would be able to share the collection online and to make it available for collaborative and creative working.

We would like to connect the Lyell collection with our other archives and museum collections on geology and earth sciences – as well as with related collections around the world. The aim would be to tell the story of how science came to understand our planet and to see how its climate and environment is being shaped for the future. This has the potential to engage everyone from school children to historians and working scientists.

If you have thoughts or suggestions you would like to share we would like to hear from you.

David McClay

Philanthropy Manager, Library & University Collections

Contact details

Discover our collections

The University of Edinburgh holds some of the world’s most important archives and manuscript collections, providing unique resources for the study of a wide range of disciplines, cultures, technologies, people, and places.

Centre for Research Collections

Our archives

Our collections catalogue online

Our image collections catalogue online