International Women’s Day 2019 – recognising Brenda Moon
To celebrate International Women’s Day 2019, the Boardroom at Argyle House is being named the Brenda Moon Boardroom in recognition of Brenda’s achievement as the first woman to head up a Scottish research university library.
Brenda was chief librarian at the University between 1980 and 1996 and had a clear vision of the transformative effects of digitisation. She played a major role in bringing the University into the digital age, as Edinburgh became one of the first major university libraries in the UK to tackle and deliver a computer-based service. In naming the Boardroom after Brenda, we are recognising her significant contribution to digital university services. The Brenda Moon room was officially opened by Jeremy Upton, Director of Library and University Collections and Sheila Cannell, a former librarian at Edinburgh, and colleague to Brenda.
Notable women
We are remembering the following notable women who also left their mark at Edinburgh - Marjorie Rackstraw, Irene J Young and Annie Hutton Numbers. Three of the training rooms at Argyle House will be renamed in their honour.
To further celebrate International Women’s Day 2019, our Wikimedian in Residence, Ewan McAndrew, hosted a Wikipedia ‘Edit-a-thon’ to add more notable women associated with Edinburgh to Wikipedia, and at the Main Library, LTW Equality and Diversity Images Intern, Francesca Vavotici, hosted a ‘Sketch-a-thon’ using images from the Centre for Research Collections’ Special Collections.
Related links
Wikipedia project page - University of Edinburgh/International Women's Day 2019
(Ed. this article was originally published on 11 Mar, 2019)