National Library of Scotland: India, maps and parliament

Some news announcements from the National Library of Scotland (www.nls.uk):

Boost for Medical History of British India website 
A fascinating collection of 146 volumes (40,000 pages) of veterinary medicine reports have been added to the Wellcome Trust-funded Medical History of British India website. Covering 1864-1959, the reports focus on veterinary diseases, colleges and laboratories and Civil Veterinary Departments. This free to access, important material provides extensive research on animal diseases such as surra and rinderpest. Detailed reports show how veterinary medicine was used by the British colonists to control disease, maintain livestock and alleviate famine and its effect on military and local communities. This material will be useful to those interested in veterinary science, military medicine, animal husbandry and agriculture.

New georeferenced maps of Scotland and Great Britain 
Detailed maps of Scotland from the 1890s and the 1940s, as well as thematic maps of Great Britain in the 1940s, are newly available on the NLS maps website. The maps have been georeferenced to align with their correct location, so that you can easily view the same place at different times in the past. You can also compare the historic maps to modern Google maps and satellite imagery. The work is the result of a new public-private partnership between the National Library of Scotland and Wilbourn Associates.

House of Commons Parliamentary Papers now searchable online 
Parliamentary papers are one of the richest and most detailed primary resources for British history, its colonies and the wider world. As well as the likes of Keynes and Beveridge, many other prominent people contributed to the papers including John Stuart Mill, Michael Faraday, Edwin Chadwick, Karl Marx and Charles Dickens. These are the working documents of government for all areas of social, political, economic and foreign policy. The House of Commons Parliamentary Papers are now available to search online. In addition to the papers, the resource now also includes Hansard, all with searchable full text and detailed subject indexing.

(Comment - not sure why this is being announced now, the parliamentary papers have been available through the site for quite a while)

And finally:

Roadshow heads for Giffnock! 
NLS stages its annual roadshow in March 2012, working in partnership with East Renfrewshire Libraries in Giffnock. On Sunday 11 March a local history fair takes place at Eastwood Theatre, Giffnock, bringing together national and local library services and displays to celebrate local history. It includes talks by NLS Map Library and Scottish Screen Archive staff. On Monday 12 March workshops take place for local schools, teachers and librarians. The roadshow, run in partnership with libraries across Scotland since 2006, encourages communities to explore the Library's collections and services.

Chris