The prestigious international Laidlaw scholarship scheme has this year selected a UCL Library Services project to be among 33 research opportunities on offer to exceptional undergraduates across UCL.

The project is a collaboration between Rare-Books Librarian Tabitha Tuckett from Special Collections, and Professor Adam Gibson from UCL Medical Physics And Biomedical Engineering. It offers a current first-year undergraduate the opportunity to research the cutting-edge use of imaging techniques and analysis to answer historical questions about rare books, archives and records.

Using Optical Coherence Tomography to explore the 1st printed edition of Euclid’s Elements (1482).

The work will make use of UCL Digital Humanities’ new digitisation suite, and will build on collaborative research with Special Collections that has already used medical imaging techniques in innovative ways to explore damaged text, hidden manuscripts, early printing techniques, the materials of rare books, and more. Read about some of this research here.

Interested students can find out more about the opportunity with Special Collections here, and should apply by 20 January, indicating project 13. Under the scheme, selected students are paid to undertake supervised research for six weeks during two summers, as well as receiving leadership training during their undergraduate career.

Twelve copies of The Drummer from the Alternative Press Collection. Founded in the 1967 and originally called Distant Drummer, the newspaper reported on Philadelphia’s radical/hippie community and served as a forum for commentary on local and national politics as well as the city’s music and arts scene. From 1971 until its demise in 1979, it was known simply as The Drummer.

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Eleven pipers piping: a scene from Ovid’s Metamorphoses depicts Mercury lulling Argus to sleep with his enchanted reed pipe.

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Nine ladies dancing: Let’s dance! A party in the margin livening up this 1534 edition of Polydore Vergil’s History of England.

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Eight maids a-milking: image taken from Commentarii, in libros sex Pedacii Diocordes Anazarbei, de medica meteria, which in turn features in Treasures From UCL (2015).

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