Scots Independent Archive

The University of Stirling has received funding from the Scots Independent to digitise a full run of its newspaper.

This project will create a comprehensive digital archive of the Scots Independent including almost 100 years of newspaper issues dating back to 1926. The digitisation will be carried out using the University’s new ScanStudio. Once the digitisation is complete the digital newspaper archive will be uploaded and become accessible to researchers and the general public alike from anywhere in the world. This project will run from April to December 2022.

An important new addition to the Scottish Political Archive this collection will give an excellent insight into political, cultural and social history, through access to the pictures, cartoons, letters, and advertising contained within the newspapers. As a result, the archive should be of interest to a wide group of researchers with many different interests.

Updates:

January 2023

We’re delighted to say that our Digitisation Assistant, Scott, has had his post extended. This means that the Scots Independent Project can now digitise the following associated collections:

• The cartoons of Ewen Bain; these cartoons were created for the Scots Independent newspapers. SPA now holds the originals, kindly donated by the Scots Independent.
• Photographs by Kenneth Phee; some of these photographs featured in the SI newspapers and some will be unseen material.
• Sgian Dubh magazine, a wonderful resource to add to our collections of political publications

Scott is also continuing his ongoing work cataloguing these key collections and can now begin to cross reference between the digitised images and the newspapers in which they appear.

Finally, the project will create an exhibition about the Scots Independent, for display in the University Library in Spring 2023 – watch this space!