RAS Collections Evening 2022

Dr Philip Jagessar

The Society was very pleased to host a Collections Evening last week (24 March). In addition to giving people a chance to see some of our collections at close hand, Collections Evenings show how they are being used, catalogued, and conserved. This is especially important now, as we are keen for people to see that, despite the interruptions of the past two years, work with the Society’s collections has been able to continue. Throughout the pandemic, we opened our Reading Room service for researchers whenever government restrictions allowed us to do so, and we also carried on with all the other behind-the-scenes activities which form such a large proportion of activity at any library or archive.

Ian Herbertson

The Collections Evening showcased three interesting but contrasting projects that unfolded over the course of the previous twelve months, pertaining to three different parts of the Society’s library and archive. Dr Philip Jagessar gave a presentation about his Harley Fellowship project to survey the RAS map collection; Ian Herbertson explained his project to document the cataloguing status of the Society’s art collection; and Jean-Baptiste Lamontre described what he discovered while exploring Brian Houghton Hodgson’s archive of studies on Himalayan languages.

Jean-Baptiste Lamontre

We are very grateful to all three of our speakers, and to all our guests who joined us for the occasion, either in-person at Stephenson Way or online via Zoom.

The event can be viewed in full via our Youtube channel: