The National Library of Wales
Wales in Europe - art without frontiers
Mon, 01 Jun 09 09:45:00
As the Welsh electorate vote for the European Parliament on 4 June, Wales will play its part as a European cultural as well as political nation.
The National Library of Wales is one of 16 libraries across Europe to contribute digitised material to a new project EuropeanaTravel which is part of the Europeana digital library Project. It is expected that over a million items ranging from maps, manuscripts, photographs, books and films will be included in EuropeanaTravel on the themes of tours, trade routes, travel and exploration.
The National Library will be digitising its fine collection of over 500 drawing volumes which contain a wide variety of material, from the amateur sketches of wealthy travellers to the field sketchbooks of professional artists. They encompass a range of genres including pen and ink, pencil, gouache, wash and watercolour. The bulk of the Library's collection dates from the 19th century, although there are some excellent 18th century examples. Among the highlights are drawings by Moses Griffith, Alexander Cozens and Sir Richard Colt Hoare.
The volumes are mainly filled with landscapes of Wales, many following a particular topographical route but there are also pictures of Britain, Europe and Asia. There are numerous examples of drawings of castles, great houses, ruins and churches that give us an accurate record of how an area looked at a particular point in time.
Other libraries from Germany, Estonia, the Netherlands, Finland, Ireland, Czech Republic, Hungary, England, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Latvia, Poland, Austria and Sweden will be providing content from their rich collections.
Welcoming the launch of the new project, Dr Jill Cousins, director of the Europeana office in the Royal Library in the Netherlands, said, ‘This resource will be of value to school teachers and students, to travellers and holidaymakers. Many people nowadays travel many miles in their lifetimes; most of our forefathers hardly left their village. EuropeanaTravel will allow
us to document how this great change took place’
Gwyn Jenkins, Director of Collection Services at the National Library said that, ‘This is the first time that the Library has received European funding for a digitisation project and this will be a fine opportunity for the Library to showcase some of its collections on an European stage.’
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Medi Jones-Jackson 01970 632 534
