GASHE: The Gateway to the Archives of Scottish Higher Education
Funded under the Research Collections in the Humanities and Social Sciences strand of the Research Support Libraries Programme of the Joint Higher Education Funding Councils of the UK, The Gateway to the Archives of Scottish Higher Education (GASHE) project provides an integrated gateway to Higher Education Institutions' (HEI) records, the primary resources for Scotland's educational, intellectual and cultural history.
The GASHE project partners are the Universities of Dundee, Edinburgh, Glasgow (the lead institution), Glasgow Caledonian, Heriot-Watt, Napier, St Andrews and Strathclyde, together with Edinburgh College of Art and Glasgow School of Art. The partner collections cover the thirteenth century to the present day and come in a vast array of formats from parchment deeds to video cassettes, architectural plans to financial ledgers. The partners in this project are representative of Scottish Higher Education from medieval Universities to modern post-polytechnic Universities, and together their HEI collections run to over 10 linear kilometres and encompass well over a million items.
Scottish HEIs have developed from a number of predecessor and affiliated bodies whose records are included as an integral part of this project. Thus the muniment collection of the University of St Andrews also contains material relating to University College, Dundee.
Scottish Institutions of Higher Education have made a vital contribution to the learning and culture of the British Isles, and the records that they have generated over the last half millennium attract attention from researchers from around the world. Historians of all disciplines, educationalists and social scientists find these resources of immense value to their research interests. The project unlocks outstanding collections of archives and related materials in differing media, covering a vast chronological breadth and across a diverse range of higher educational institutions, to a wide range of academic disciplines.
Many collections are only partially catalogued and many others provide inadequate descriptions. The final product is an on-line resource which describes a variety of educational, intellectual and cultural resources to recognised international standards. It allows seamless searching of archive and manuscript collections across the eleven higher educational institutions and enables subject and functional guided navigation as well as value-added biographical and institutional access points. Experience gained from the GASHE project has led to further study of function and activity descriptions which cut across traditional forms of archival description. This method preserves the fundamentally accepted archival principles while recognising that these principles are not necessarily the most appropriate for the academic researcher.
GASHE does not hold any records. The collections are held by the individual institutions that are part of the GASHE Project. Any interested parties wishing to research these collections will have to contact the appropriate institution to arrange a consultation.
For further information about GASHE, please access the GASHE website.