A new store for housing rare and unique photographs will be opened at the University of Glasgow on 29 May 2007.

The store, which will hold over 20,000 images of historic importance, will provide an ideal environment for the preservation of the photographic collections. Temperature and humidity levels will be maintained for a stable, cool environment and space will be available to develop further acquisition programmes.

Included in the collection are almost one thousand original images by the pioneering photographic partnership of David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson. Thomas Annan's famous pictures of the crumbling closes of Glasgow commissioned by the City of Glasgow in 1866, also provide a unique and fascinating glimpse of Scottish life and history in the first years of photography.

Keeper of Special Collections at the University, David Weston, said: 'We have a wealth of images that mark important periods and individuals in history and these need to be preserved. The collections exemplify the profound documentary value and aesthetic beauty of photography. The store, made possible with significant funding from The Wolfson Foundation, will be an invaluable addition to our Special Collections section of the library. '

Other materials included in the store are: The Pencil of Nature by Henry Fox Talbot, the first book to be illustrated with photographs; a substantial body of photographs reflecting the life and interests of James McNeill Whistler; photographic negatives made by William Speirs Bruce on expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctic between 1899 and 1914; and the photographic record of the life and creative output of James Paterson, one of the 'Glasgow Boys', formerly housed in the James Paterson Museum at Moniaive.

Many of the images kept at the new store can be viewed at: http://special.lib.gla.ac.uk/subindex/photography.html

The Hill/Adamson Collection is available on CD-Rom which can be ordered at the following website: http://special.lib.gla.ac.uk/hillandadamson/index.html

Kate Richardson (K.Richardson@admin.gla.ac.uk)

For more information please contact Kate Richardson in the Media Relations Office on 0141 330 3683 or email K.Richardson@admin.gla.ac.uk

First published: 23 May 2007