The 2023 annual conference of the Scottish Records Association will take place on Friday 24February 2023 and will be held in conjunction with National Records of Scotland.

The venue is New Register House in Edinburgh. At the morning session a series of talks will discuss advances in online palaeography tuition and how Artificial Intelligence can help transcribe

manuscripts.

During the afternoon there will be an open event where researchers can bring documents they are having problems reading or understanding, to get advice from experienced palaeographers from academic institutions and archives. Also present will be societies who publish original sources of Scottish history, showing how their publications can help researchers understand similar records and how to access other useful sources. There will be a small display of original records from the National Records of Scotland’s archives related to the societies’ publications.

The conference will mark the launch of the new edition of "Scottish Handwriting 1500-1700: a self-help pack", published jointly by the Scottish Records Association and National Records of Scotland. 

For more details and to reserve a place at the morning talks and the afternoon open event, please go to the Eventbrite page at: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/on-the-write-track-tickets-511589617317.

The Annual General Meeting of the Scottish Records Association took place online via Zoom on Thursday 8 December at 12.30pm.

The 2022 annual conference of the Scottish Records Association took place on 18 May 2022 online and at the Soutar Theatre, AK Bell Library, Perth. It explored how personal testimony and sound archives are used by research projects to record the experiences of people who are connected by similarities in their working lives, geographical location, or other ‘communities of interest’. Recordings from such projects have special significance for these communities, but also extend beyond them and can be re-used in different ways. Presentations were made by historians and others who use recordings in their research, and by archivists, curators and other staff who make sound archives available to researchers.

Terry Brotherstone (University of Aberdeen) and Dr Hugo Manson (independent scholar)

The Making of an Oral Archive: how the Aberdeen University / British Library Lives in the [UK North Sea] Oil Industry Collection was created

Dr Valentina Bold (Crichton Trust)

‘Up the Middle Road’: Crichton stories of resilience and recovery

Professor Margaret Bennett (Royal Conservatoire of Scotland)

Perthshire Shuttle-makers and the Ordie Shuttle Mill, Luncarty

Dr Saqib Razzaq (Colourful Heritage Project)

‘The Colourful Heritage Project: preserving the history of Scotland’s South Asians and Muslims

Audrey Wilson and Taylor Webb (Scottish Council on Archives)

Voices - Our Stories Matter: bridging the gap between archives and community heritage

Victoria Peters (University of Strathclyde)

The Scottish Oral History Centre Archive at the University of Strathclyde

Louise Scollay (University of Edinburgh)

The School of Scottish Studies Archives: access and re-use  

Caroline Milligan and Lesley Bryson (European Ethnological Research Centre)

An Exploration of the Methodology and Practice of the Regional Ethnology of Scotland Project (RESP)

Versions of some of the presentations will appear in the SRA Journal, Scottish Archives,

but abstracts can be read here.