A country full of old things

I have no idea why, but castles have never really appealed to me. But when you're in Scotland, visiting one is right up there with having a whiskey in a pub or a can of Irn-Bru at a chip shop.

I've been to Edinburgh Castle, but not inside it as the lines were long and those who were waiting were not being sheltered from the rain. My Father-in-Law was willing to drive us a short distance and he recommended Stirling Castle.



It's a fine castle. Well preserved and a great introduction of life in the 16th century. The history of the place is a soap opera and you can read about some of it here.



Yes, there were cannons.



But there were also places for archers to fire out of.



The views were outstanding.

We did not but I think I'd recommended taking a guided tour so you get a bit more detail from the experience. There are also some docents disguised and historical reenactors on site that are fun.



Do not pay attention to that guy though, he don't know shit.



There are a lot of carvings in the museum and on the sides of the castle walls, as it was James IV's way to establish himself as sovereign.



You can spend a long time looking at those.

There's a lot of history in the town, and it's where my wife went to college. I really enjoyed going here and wish there was more time to explore.

Seeking and overlaying

Work is usually work, and I rarely write about it in any social media anymore. However, the past week or so has had me working with some old materials. We're building or matching together bibliographical records for thousands of materials that have insufficient records, making them very hard to find in the catalog. Some of what I have to look for is pretty easy, others a moderate challenge, still others make me bang my head on the desk - in a good way of course. I do enjoy the work, the search process, the matching of records and organization.

This is what 1849 looks like.



A simple math primer. I get a weird charge working with items that were printed when Zachary Taylor was president. The materials I've been working on are very diverse, tax laws, midwifery, a treatise on infidelity that had the date of purchase inscribed, hand written by the owner of the book - a certain Mr. Orton, in 1853.

Then there was this, from 1869. I liked the cover.

There is a lot to go through, in many different languages. It makes me think about preservation and storage, a major issue in libraries that have depositories. What do we do with the stuff? Even in the digital age not everything is available online, nor can it be found at the Gutenberg Project or Google Books. Space is becoming tighter and tighter though. Decisions have to be made. May those wiser than me be making the correct ones.