The Library Blog

Edinburgh Napier University Library blog. Filled with useful and fun blog articles on using the Library, the University, Edinburgh and many other fun topics.

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The Ultimate Dissertation Survival Guide image of laptop and book

The Ultimate Dissertation Survival Guide

17/07/2026 / / 0 Comments

The Ultimate Dissertation Survival Guide

The mention of the word ‘dissertation’ alone is enough to drive fear and dread into the hearts of any final-year student studying at university level. With the depth of research required to effectively write a dissertation, as well as the often very high word count and number of references needed, it is understandable that many students will find this to be one of the most daunting assignments they will write and complete during their university career. It can essentially be defined and seen as an extended essay and detailed research project exploring a specific and often niche subject or area of research within academia. Fear not – we have compiled a short-but-sweet dissertation survival guide for all undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral students. This will include some brief advice and useful links to academic guidelines regarding how to structure, write and add references to your dissertation as well as tips on how to look after your own wellbeing and manage stress whilst working on such a significant and often challenging piece of work.

How to Structure, Write and Add References

The structure and references used in your dissertation hold just as much importance as the information, analysis and arguments written and included in it as well. The structure of any dissertation can often vary, but a standard structure usually consists of the following:

  1. Table of Contents
  2. Introduction
  3. Literature Review
  4. Methodology
  5. Results
  6. Discussion
  7. Conclusion
  8. Reference List
  9. Appendices

Sections

Each section of your dissertation will normally be divided into chapters rather than short paragraphs. You can find recorded tutorials in our Workshops page on our My Napier webpages. These go into much more detail about what you should do and what is recommended to include in each chapter and section. Our LibGuide also has more information, useful tips, and guidelines on critical thinking, literature review, and APA 7th edition referencing. Effective referencing is also a fundamental part of writing a good dissertation. This is not just measured by the quantity of references but also the quality and variety used as well. Using a wide range of credible and varied sources and sources of evidence to back up your main arguments and points will definitely get you some bonus points later on!

References

For dissertations, the number of references and variety of material you will be expected to reference will far exceed what you are expected to in a standard essay. This can sometimes mean that managing and ensuring that you include all of those references can be a very overwhelming task when writing up and annotating your dissertation. Reference Management software such as EndNote and Mendeley can help you with this – these reference management systems allow you to import, organise and store references in a reference library for you to automatically extract and input references into your work as well as generate a bibliography or reference list as well. More information and guidelines can be found in our Reference Management LibGuide webpages as well as our Training and Events Calendar, where upcoming tutorials and workshops regarding how to use both reference management systems are advertised frequently. You can also sign up for these sessions through our Libcal as well.

Managing Stress and Wellbeing…

One of the most difficult parts of writing or working on any significant and lengthy piece of work is starting. It can be very easy to feel overwhelmed by the big word count or extensive volume of work required to write a dissertation. Nevertheless, here are some useful hints and tips below which may help you with managing stress and your wellbeing whilst conducting research for and writing your dissertation:

  • Start early: The earlier the better if possible! It will save you a lot of stress later – even if it means just starting to conduct all the research and planning in advance.
  • Do a little bit every day: Breaking it down into small, manageable tasks each day makes it feel a lot less daunting and, in this case, off-putting. For example, tell yourself you are going to write one chapter of your dissertation today and focus solely on finishing this chapter alone. You might find as well that once you get into the flow of writing this chapter, you may even end up finishing up another in the process! Psychologically, it often makes writing your dissertation feel a lot less overwhelming to do it this way too!
  • Choose a topic you are passionate about: The last thing you want when writing a huge research project about a specific subject area is to find it boring and a chore to write about. This can often end up reflecting in your work as well if it is a topic which you are not passionate about at all.
  • Take regular breaks and days off: Make time for fun, leisure and relaxation when you can. Go out with friends, spend an evening watching your favourite movie or series, go to the gym or for a run or walk every so often as well. Set some time aside to focus on your hobbies outside of education. Your brain will often still be thinking about and working on your dissertation in the background. You may even find inspiration and new ideas outside of a computer screen, pen and paper.

Recommended Reads

By Rachel Downie

Read more study help with our guide on supercharging your studying here

Photo by Nick Morrison on Unsplash

silly cat pick for post From Genes to LOLcats: The History of Memes

From Genes to LOLcats: The History of Memes

14/07/2026 / / 0 Comments

From Genes to LOLcats: The History of Memes

Memes feel like a pure product of the internet, born somewhere between dial-up modems and group chats. But the idea is older than the web itself, and its journey from a scientific term to a cat photo with bad grammar is one of the stranger stories in modern culture.

The biological beginnings of the Meme

Before any image or GIF, there was just a word, and it didn’t come from the internet at all. In 1976, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins introduced the term meme in his book The Selfish Gene. He shortened the Greek word mimema, meaning imitated thing, so it would rhyme with gene. Dawkins used meme to describe any idea, tune, fashion, or behaviour that spreads from person to person through imitation, much like a gene spreads through a population. He wasn’t thinking about cats in sunglasses. He was thinking about how culture itself evolves, with ideas competing to survive and replicate inside human minds. For nearly two decades, the word mostly stayed in academic circles. Then the internet arrived, and it found a much stranger home.

The Dancing Baby: The Internet’s First Viral Hit

GIF

The first true internet meme wasn’t a joke at all. In 1996, a 3D animated GIF of a baby dancing to a snippet of music started life as a software demo, meant to show off new animation tools. Office workers found it funny anyway and began emailing it to each other. It spread slowly across early newsgroups and personal homepages, picking up remixes along the way, including a kung fu version and a samurai version. By 1998, the Dancing Baby had become so well known that it appeared as a recurring hallucination on the TV show Ally McBeal. It proved something new: a joke could travel from someone’s inbox all the way to a primetime television script.

The Hampster Dance: Going Viral Before “Viral” Was a Word

If the (Creepy) Dancing Baby proved memes could spread, the Hampster Dance proved they could explode. In 1998, Canadian art student Deidre LaCarte built a single page on GeoCities filled with dozens of looping cartoon hamster GIFs, set to a sped-up sample of a Disney song. For months, almost nobody visited it. Then, in early 1999, word spread through email chains and early blogs, and the site went from a few hundred visits to millions within weeks. People used the link to prank colleagues and friends, an early ancestor of the modern rickroll. It even spawned a chart-topping novelty single. The Hampster Dance showed that a meme didn’t need to be clever to take over the internet. It just needed to be impossible to stop sharing.

LOLcats: When Memes Found Their Format

i can has cheezburger? - Imgflip

By the mid 2000s, anonymous forums gave memes room to mutate into something more structured. Around 2005, users on the imageboard 4chan began posting captioned cat photos as part of a weekly tradition called Caturday, reportedly started as a joke pushback against another recurring thread. The captions, written in deliberately broken English known as lolspeak, gave the format real personality. In January 2007, the blog I Can Has Cheezburger turned this into a movement, launching with its now iconic image of a grey cat looking up hopefully, captioned “I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER?” The site went on to post hundreds of cat photos a day, helping LOLcats become one of the first true mainstream internet memes. This is where I first encountered memes. I used to go to the blog on my break for a pick me up giggle…sorry LoL. This was the moment the image macro was born: a picture, bold text up top, a punchline below. That simple template became the blueprint nearly every meme afterwards would follow.

The Harlem Shake: Memes You Could Join In With

For years, memes were things you looked at. The Harlem Shake, which took over the internet in early 2013, turned that around. The format was simple: one person danced alone while everyone around them ignored it, then the beat dropped, and the whole room erupted into chaos. Thousands of people filmed their own versions, in offices, classrooms, and locker rooms, and uploaded them within days of each other. It marked a shift toward participatory memes, ones that spread not because people shared a single image, but because people recreated it themselves. This pattern, take a format and make your own version, would go on to define meme culture for the next decade.

Moo Deng: The Internet Still Loves an Animal

GIF

Fast forward to 2024, and one of the biggest memes of the year wasn’t a song, a dance, or even a person. It was a baby pygmy hippo.

Moo Deng was born in July 2024 at Khao Kheow Open Zoo in Thailand. Zookeepers began posting photos of her on social media, and by September 2024, she had taken over the internet. She was filmed nipping at her keepers, splashing in her pool, and generally looking unimpressed with the world, and people couldn’t get enough. Fan art, merchandise, a theme song, and even a Saturday Night Live sketch followed within weeks. Visitor numbers at the zoo shot up so dramatically that staff had to limit how long people could spend near her enclosure.

From a biology textbook to a worldwide inside joke, memes are now as wired into the internet as genes are wired into us. Every new platform seems to invent its own meme dialect, and the cycle keeps evolving, with trends now rising and fading within days instead of years. Maybe in years to come this will become a subject you can study here at Edinburgh Napier University!

Library resources

Want to learn more about memes? Check out LibrarySearch for books and articles.

By Juliet Kinsey

Read more on the Blog with our article on Emojiis

World Emoji Day

 

 

Share & Discover: The ENU Research Repository Explained

Share & Discover: The ENU Research Repository Explained

12/07/2026 / / 0 Comments

Share & Discover: The ENU Research Repository Explained

 

An institutional repository is an online platform where a university collects and shares its research. Think of it as a digital home for the work created by staff and students. It helps make research more visible, keeps it safe in the long term, and allows others to discover and use it. At Edinburgh Napier, the repository is a public-facing side of Worktribe, the system used to record research activity.

Whether you’re a student starting your first research project or an academic sharing your latest publication, the ENU research repository is a valuable service provided by the library to help you showcase your work.

Why Use the Repository?

 

There are plenty of benefits to using the repository, both for researchers and the wider community.

 

  • It increases visibility. When you upload your work, it can be found through search engines such as CORE, Google, or our LibrarySearch. This means your research can reach a much wider audience, not just those with access to academic journals.

 

  • It helps preserve your work. The repository provides a stable, long-term archive, so your research remains available even if journal access changes or websites disappear.

 

  • Your repository page acts as your academic staff profile. By keeping your outputs up to date in Worktribe, you can easily present your research and keep a complete record of your work.

 

  • Keeping an up-to-date record of your research is necessary for upcoming REF2029. All outputs to be submitted to REF must be recorded in the repository.

 

It’s worth noting that the repository isn’t just for journal articles or books. It supports a wide range of research output types, including datasets, reports, podcasts, exhibitions, teaching resources, and many others. This reflects the diversity of research at ENU and helps promote work from across all disciplines.

 

Supporting Open Access

One of the repository’s most important roles is helping researchers make their work openly accessible.

Under the university’s Open Access Policy and rights-retention approach, ENU academics retain the right to share copies of their accepted manuscripts in the repository. This is known as green open access. It allows journal articles and conference papers to be freely available, even if they are published in journals behind a paywall.

As an author, all you need to remember is to upload your accepted manuscript to Worktribe. Once it’s in the system, it can be shared in the repository with a Creative Commons licence, helping more people access and use your research.

 

Did you know?

 

The ENU repository is an ideal place to share research data. In this short video, we explain how to make your data available using Worktribe.

 

You can also easily request a DOI (Digital Object Identifier) for your outputs hosted in our repository, such as datasets or reports. A DOI gives your work a permanent, citable link, making it easier for others to find and reference it. When creating an output record, simply click ‘Request DOI’, and the repository team will assign it.

 

Getting Started

 

Using the repository is straightforward and brings real benefits to your research visibility. The library repository team manages the outputs section of Worktribe and is happy to help with any questions you might have. Please send your queries to repository@napier.ac.uk.

 

For more information about the repository and open access publishing, see the Publishing and Open Access LibGuide. You can find guidance on using Worktribe on the staff intranet.

And we have another bloghttps://blogs.napier.ac.uk/library/?s=open+access posts

By Patrycja Respondek

Green library

Stars and wishes for green libraries

10/07/2026 / / 0 Comments

Stars and wishes for green libraries

 

In the face of consumerism and the throwaway society, libraries have become community oases with the potential to embody all three principles of sustainability (as described in the Guiding principles for sustainable development document published by the UK government). Their role will certainly become pivotal in the green future of societies.

 

Libraries as environmental guardians

 

At Edinburgh Napier University, Craiglockhart Library quite literally evokes the idea of a green library. The campus is nestled in what we would describe in French as “un écrin de verdure” (essentially, a metaphorical green jewellery box), as the buildings sit atop a small hill, surrounded by trees and green spaces. From the library office, large bay windows face the slope of Craiglockhart Hill West, covered in a tangle of trees and ferns. Slowly coming out of winter this year, we have been eyewitnesses to the re-greening, budding and blossoming of trees, hedges, and shrubs, which have now left a palette of lovely green hues among plants and leaves.

It feels like a privilege to take your eyes off the computer for a few moments and spot and follow the wanderings of a rabbit, a squirrel, or even a fox. You can leave the library building at lunchtime and take a walk around campus while listening to the song of various birds in the trees and you may be rewarded with the sight of a robin performing its lovely song from a high-up branch, its tiny throat quivering as it warbles.

Therefore, Craiglockhart Library is an example of a library which can offer what could be described as “green wellbeing” to people. Library staff there have taken this idea even further by bringing the greenery indoors, with plants lining the office bay windows and dotted throughout the library. Of note from last year – a cherry tomato plant in our office kept producing tomatoes well into the beginning of winter, and this was a source of joy for many of us.

 

Libraries as inclusive spaces which foster social interactions

 

Few places offer a stronger sense of community than libraries do. Libraries strive to bring people together in inclusive spaces which can become a lifeline and offer relief from isolation and loneliness. Reading is an excellent way to learn new things, reflect, develop new skills, and broaden one’s horizons. Picking up a book can also open a door onto adventure and feelings of joy, suspense but also tears, and it comes at no additional cost for library users.

At Edinburgh Napier University, our three campus libraries located at Craiglockhart, Merchiston and Sighthill are welcoming and safe places for everybody and offer a wide range of spaces and services to meet the varying needs of our library users.

  • Need to focus on your studies or revise for exams? Feel free to use our quiet and silent study rooms.
  • Preparing for a group presentation? Why not book one of our group study rooms or use one of our open-space study booths?
  • Looking for resources for your assessment? Browse our shelves and use Library Search to access both print and digital items.
  • Looking for books to support your wellbeing? Our wellbeing collections of self-help books are available for you at our three campuses.
  • Want to take a break after a busy day? Make your way to our relaxation area. If you need quiet time to yourself, why not sit at one of our jigsaw tables and build a puzzle for a while, to take your mind off things? We also have colouring books and board games available.
  • Need help accessing our services or any questions? Our friendly staff are here to help at the library desk, Monday to Friday, 8.45am-4.45pm.

 

Libraries as advocates for a circular economy

 

The usual “green gestures” for the environment are of course as important as ever to reduce energy and resource waste in libraries, such as (but not limited to): switching lights off after hours, switching electronic devices (such as PCs and laptops) off after use, printing less and using the appropriate bins for the suitable type of waste.

However, libraries go further than just reducing waste and energy consumption – they promote the re-generation of resources, which underpins the circular economy model (as described by the UK Green Building Council). The lifecycle of library’s printed and digital resources and physical equipment (such as desks, chairs, PCs, laptops) shows that items and furniture are constantly being re-used and borrowed by many different users, and this demonstrates how efficient these spaces can be.

At Edinburgh Napier Libraries, physical books at the end of their lifecycle with us are withdrawn from our collections and enter a new life with Better World Books (further details can be found in our “Green and Sustainability Libraries” 2025 blog post).

Merchiston Library also offers a community library space which works as a book exchange corner where people can leave their own books and take new ones. These books are not part of the catalogue and can be taken freely. This supports the community in circulating and reusing books even further.

Libraries are also learning hubs for DIY skills, which are becoming critical in turning our society greener. At Merchiston Library, you can browse our collection of gardening books and learn how to grow your own food, even in reduced spaces in the middle of the city. At Craiglockhart Library, you will find origami guides and origami paper in our relaxation area – why not try and learn to make origami to embellish your flat or house, instead of buying (often industrially-made) decorations from shops?

 

Re-thinking and recycling library spaces

 

Libraries are already doing an incredible job as green spaces. Depending on their location, they may promote access to surrounding green spaces or bring plants to the library. They also provide solid support for the community’s wellbeing and inclusion, and they encourage the efficient use and cycling of resources.

Many library spaces are not limited to promoting reading and studying; they also bring people together through reading groups, various clubs, and workshops. This demonstrates how versatile library spaces already are and how reusing the premises themselves for various activities reinforces the circular-economy model of regeneration and recycling.

Why not keep diversifying and re-inventing the use of library spaces? In her book The Green Ages: Medieval Innovations in Sustainability, Annette Kehnel explains how we can learn from the past for our future sustainable endeavours. In particular, she describes how our economy can become more sustainable if we focus efforts on repairing things rather than replacing them with new objects produced from scratch, as was customary in the past.

To do so, we need to learn some repair and DIY skills, and libraries seem to be the perfect spaces to teach them. Providing books to learn these skills is a start, but the idea could be further developed and a whole range of workshops organised. For example, why not organise hands-on sewing, bike or furniture repair workshops so people can learn the basics of mending their clothes, bikes and household items? Gardening books were mentioned earlier – why not try to integrate mini greenhouse projects in sunny spaces of libraries or along windows, with users tending to plants and workshops getting people started on growing their own vegetables at home or in allotments?

Organising more events, activities and workshops in libraries will bring people together more, encourage knowledge exchange and help build trust. This is why libraries have the potential to strengthen and make communities more resilient, enabling people to rely on one another for support.

A wealth of different ways and projects can be imagined that put library spaces at the helm of a more sustainable and nurturing society.

 

Bibliography

“Guiding principles for sustainable development”, UK government: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a7dcc1640f0b65d8863478d/Guiding_principles_for_SD.pdf

The Green Ages: Medieval Innovations in Sustainability, Annette Kehnel, Publisher: Profile Books, 2024, ISBN: 9781800816251.

“What is the Circular Economy?”, UK Green Building Council (UKGBC): https://ukgbc.org/our-work/topics/circular-economy/

By Adeline Tournier

 

Feeling a bit green, we have plenty of posts for you

UFO

The truth is out there! – World UFO Day.

02/07/2026 / / 0 Comments

The truth is out there! – World UFO Day.

This 2nd of July is World UFO Day, marking  the 79th anniversary of the alleged UFO crash in Roswell, New Mexico, that helped spark our modern fascination with UFO sightings. UFOs, which means Unidentified Flying Objects, are exactly what they sound like – something in the sky that we can’t quite explain. These can include strange lights, shapes, or what appear to be aircraft in the night skies.

Now, many UFO sightings do have somewhat mundane explanations, such as being tricks of the light, normal human planes, or even just people’s imagination. But that hasn’t stopped many people from speculating that these could be signs of alien life visiting Earth. Humans have been seeing strange and unexplained shapes and images appearing in the sky for a very long time, with some of our earliest know records dating back to over a thousand years ago!

 

UFO phenomena

Some of these instances can be explained by people in the ancient past having a limited understanding of space and physics, which led them to misunderstand phenomena we now see as normal. For example, there are documents from Ancient Rome describing strange objects in the sky that we would now recognise as meteor showers or comet sightings. However, others are much stranger and don’t have such a clear explanation. Such as Chinese writer and inventor Shen Kuo, who in 1088 recorded a series of sightings of a large flying object appearing over the city of Yangzhou at night.

However, it was in the years following the Second World War that the number of UFO sightings really took off (excuse the pun) with 1947 seeing the first widespread reports of UFO sightings in the United States when a pilot claimed to have seen flying discs in the air near Mount Rainer. This story became a media sensation, and the alleged objects were quickly dubbed “Flying Saucers.”
It’s from this that we have the modern community of UFO spotters and investigators, with dedicated groups around the world discussing the phenomenon.

Now, while cultural depictions of UFOs tend to associate them strongly with the United States, the UK has had its fair share of UFO sightings as well. To the point that in the 1950s the UK government set up an official investigative group to study possible UFO sightings and alien encounters, calling the group the Flying Saucer Working Party.

UFOs in Scotland

In fact, did you know that Scotland was at one point the world hotspot for UFO sightings? Yes, really!
Specifically, the village of Bonnybridge, located near Falkirk between Glasgow and Edinburgh, has a history of UFO sightings dating back to the early 1990s, when many locals began reporting strange goings-on in the skies. These strange sightings took all forms, from lights in the sky that assumed strange shapes to alleged sightings of objects landing in fields.

Pretty soon, the area between Bonnybridge, Falkirk, and Stirling was dubbed in UFO circles as “The Falkirk Triangle” and the area would remain a UFO hotspot to this day with hundreds of alleged sightings every year.
Things got so bad that local councillor Billy Buchanan got involved, writing a letter to the Prime Minister asking that the government launch a formal investigation into sightings in the area. Billy is even still trying to raise awareness about UFO encounters to this day!

Just recently, Glasgow was crowned the Alien abduction capital of Scotland, showing that there’s still people out there with a passion for UFO spotting. So why not take the 2nd of July to get involved and maybe do a bit of UFO spotting yourself?

By Matthew Ferrie

Photo by Brian Warrington Unsplash

We have another post just for you

National Writing Day

National Writing Day

24/06/2026 / / 0 Comments

National Writing Day

The 24th of June is National Writing Day, a day where creative people across Britain come together to celebrate and practice the art of writing as a form of self-expression, as a way of improving literacy, as a way of creating entertainment for others, or even just because it’s fun to do!

National Writing Day is an initiative organised by First Story, a charity that provides artistic and cultural education to school pupils who might otherwise be unable to access it, with the emphasis, of course, on creative writing. First Story champions creative writing as a fantastic medium for helping young people improve their reading and communication skills, build confidence in exploring new ideas, and learn a skill set that requires discipline and focus.

First Story provides this help to young people through their Young Writers Programme, matching professional writers with schools and having the writers run a sixteen-week workshop that encourages aspiring young writers to develop their writing skills and provides support through editing and proofreading their work. Perhaps most impressive of all, at the end of this workshop, the work the pupils have done will be compiled together and published in a printed anthology – a copy of which will even be catalogued into the British Library!

Writing at Napier

If you’re a student at Napier, you can get involved as well by taking the day to just write something purely for fun. Writing for pleasure can be a great way to unwind now that most of you will be on holiday for the summer, and who knows – you might just be able to make a new hobby out of it!
There’s no need to feel left out if you’re not interested in creating prose fiction either. National Writing Day celebrates all forms of creative writing, whether that be poetry, script writing, essays (although we imagine you might be sick of writing essays by now!) or even just journaling for yourself. You don’t need to fret or worry over if what you’re writing is good enough to show to anyone either, what matters is building up the confidence to write something just for yourself.

Need help getting motivated? Or maybe you’ve been bitten by the writing bug and want to get more involved? If you’re a student here at Napier, Why not consider joining the University’s Creative Writing Society. Ran by students here at Napier, they meet every Monday on our Merchiston Campus to host writing events and competitions, as well as social events outside the university such as picnics or even just casual meetups! The Creative Writing Society can be a great way to meet others interested in creative writing, share ideas and projects you might be working on, and hopefully build up the confidence to share your work with others.

Writing Motivation at the Library

You can also check out some books on writing that we have in the library. I’d highly recommend Stephen King’s “On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft” if which the horror icon talks about his own history with writing, his creative process, and offers some of his treasured advice on aspiring writers. The book positively oozes with infectious enthusiasm for writing and is a great motivator to get started, even if horror isn’t your genre.

So why not get involved? 24th just grab a pen and paper and get to writing!

By Matthew Ferrie

We have a whole range of writing posts to keep you going

Photo by Aaron Burden Unsplash

 

Image of surfers at scottish beach for artice Scottish Surfing: Riding the wave from Tahiti to Edinburgh

Scottish Surfing: Riding the wave from Tahiti to Edinburgh

23/06/2026 / / 0 Comments

Scottish Surfing: Riding the wave from Tahiti to Edinburgh

Surfing isn’t probably the first thing you think of when you think about Scotland. Cold north seas and a people known for their kilts rather than their wetsuits come more to mind. Still, there’s a surprising popularity for the sport here and a growing uptake to ride the Scottish waves. Admittedly, the latest waves are in an old quarry, but it counts. Read on to find out more about Surfing, Scotland and the latest wave technology,

Surfing History

Surfing began in Polynesia more than 1,000 years ago, where Pacific Islanders rode waves for sport, status, and spiritual practice. Hawaii took the tradition furthest, developing it into something closer to an art form. There, surfing was called heʻe nalu, meaning “wave sliding,” and it carried real social weight. Chiefs proved their right to lead by riding the best waves on the finest boards, while commoners surfed too, but on simpler equipment and lesser breaks.

Captain Cook’s crew witnessed surfing firsthand in the 1770s, and Joseph Banks recorded Tahitians riding waves as early as 1769. Soon after, missionaries arrived in Hawaii and disapproved of the sport, viewing it as immodest and disruptive. Their influence took hold, and surfing nearly disappeared by the late 1800s.

Then came the revival. Hawaiian waterman Duke Kahanamoku helped restore the sport in the early 1900s, carrying it to California and Australia along the way. His name is still woven into surfing’s modern identity.

Britain’s Unlikely First Surfer

Britain’s first surfer was not a beach bum, but a middle-aged agricultural professor named John Wrightson.

In September 1890, two Hawaiian princes, David Kawānanakoa and Jonah Kūhiō Kalanianaʻole, were studying at Wrightson’s college in Wiltshire (please check out their excellent moustaches). Their guardian took them to Bridlington on England’s east coast as a reward for good schoolwork. There, in the grey North Sea, the princes built boards from local timber and surfed, and Wrightson joined them, reputedly becoming the first Briton ever to surf.

A letter from Prince Kūhiō survives today, written to the Hawaiian consul about the trip. In it, he described the rough seas and noted how quickly Wrightson was picking up the sport.

There is a Scottish thread here too. The princes’ cousin was Princess Victoria Kaʻiulani, heir to the Hawaiian throne, who was half Hawaiian and half Scottish, with a father from Edinburgh. So Hawaiian and Scottish royalty were connected decades before anyone surfed a Scottish wave.

Surfing Arrives in Scotland

Scotland’s surf scene grew slowly, then quickly, a bit like catching a wave. In the early 1970s, surfers explored the coastline, trying Machrihanish first before pushing north toward Bettyhill near Thurso. Scotland held its first surfing championships at Bettyhill in 1973, and soon after, a surfer named Pat Kieran discovered the reef at Thurso East and wrote home about it, drawing more surfers north.

Thurso transformed from a quiet fishing town into a coldwater surfing destination, and today it ranks among the best right-hand reef breaks in the world. Surfers founded the Scottish Surfing Federation in 1975, and it still operates today under the name Scottish Surfing. Spots emerged across the country, from Fraserburgh in the east to Tiree in the west, and because Scotland’s waters stay cold year-round, its surfers tend to be hardy and committed.

Lost Shore: A Wave Without an Ocean

Scotland recently added something its coastline could never offer on its own: a perfect wave, on demand, just outside Edinburgh.

Lost Shore Surf Resort opened on 11 November 2024 in Ratho, in a former quarry about 25 minutes from the city centre. It cost roughly £60 million to build, and it is the UK’s first inland surf resort and currently Europe’s largest wave pool. Wavegarden Cove technology powers the lagoon, generating up to 1,000 waves an hour across more than 20 wave types, suited to beginners and elite athletes alike. The resort also includes lodges, camping pods, a sauna, and restaurants.

The numbers are striking. In its first year, Lost Shore drew over 100,000 visitors, created more than 130 jobs, and added around £11 million annually to the local economy. I personally cannot wait to get out there and have a go at surfing now the summer is here.

Edinburgh Napier University and the Surf Lab

Lost Shore did not stop at building a wave pool. It partnered with Edinburgh Napier University to create something new called the Surf Lab.

The Surf Lab officially launched in October 2025, and it is described as the world’s first research collaboration between a university and a commercial wave pool. The idea began years earlier, when Lost Shore founder Andy Hadden and Napier academic Dr Brendon Ferrier first discussed it back in 2017. The lab focuses on several areas, including surf therapy, high-performance coaching, adaptive surfing, and equipment design.

The lab has already produced real results. Researchers tested nine different wetsuit brands under controlled conditions to find the warmest option for Lost Shore’s customers, and the winning suit was made from Yulex, a plant-based rubber. As a result, Lost Shore now runs the largest plant-based rental wetsuit fleet in the world.

Edinburgh Napier’s interest in surfing predates the resort itself. In 2022, the university completed what is claimed to be the world’s first PhD study in surf therapy, and the Surf Lab builds on that foundation. It gives researchers a fixed base inside Europe’s biggest wave pool, where students, athletes, and industry partners can all use the space. The university hopes the lab will support business growth and community wellbeing, alongside its sporting goals.

It is a fitting partnership. A university built on research and knowledge now extends that work into a converted quarry, and Ratho has become both a surf destination and a genuine site of academic study.

A Sport Still Finding New Shores

From Tahiti to a Yorkshire beach to a quarry near Edinburgh Airport, surfing keeps adapting. Scotland’s relationship with the sport began almost by accident, through royal holidaymakers in the 1890s, and grew through decades of hardy surfers braving freezing reefs in the north. Now, with Lost Shore and the Edinburgh Napier’s Surf Lab, Scotland is not just catching waves. It is helping shape where the sport goes next.

Library Resources

Why not check out the book The Science and Culture of Surfing by David Kennedy, available as an eBook. We also have articles like Surfing and Modernity in the North of Scotland and Surfing in Caithness and Sutherland: Environment, Tourism and Tension. Plus so much more on Librarysearch.napier.ac.uk

Read more articles from the blog on Sport and our Sport resources:

Physiotherapy and Sports & Exercise Science Resources

By Juliet Kinsey

Image credit: Paul Byrne on Unsplash

Reading lists

Welcome to Edinburgh Napier Libraries Trimester 3 2026

03/06/2026 / / 0 Comments

Welcome to Edinburgh Napier Libraries Trimester 3 2026

A warm welcome to any new students joining us here at Edinburgh Napier University this Summer. Here’s a comprehensive guide to our library services to help you get started.

Library Resources

Each of your courses will have a reading list, that you can access through the LibrarySearch (more on that further down). Make sure to log in at the top right corner as a university member. We also offer subject and research guides created by subject librarians to help you with finding information and resources. These guides are available online and cover a wide range of topics relevant to your studies. You can find them in LibGuides. For more personalised help, you can contact your subject librarian or arrange a one-on-one appointment. Details about your subject librarian are available on the library webpages.

LibrarySearch is the library catalogue used to search for a wide range of books, articles, and ebooks. LibrarySearch provides details of all items on the library shelves as well as subscription databases, including ebooks, ejournals, online multimedia and e-conference proceedings.

Library Loans. You can borrow and return books via the Self- Service Kiosks. They are really easy to use, just follow the on-screen instructions. When returning items, you can leave them in the return boxes beside the self-service kiosks after scanning them in. Books are 7-day loans, but they renew automatically for up to 4 months unless requested.  You can borrow up to 30 physical items. If you are looking for something we don’t have, we have an inter-library loan service.

Click and Collect services are available at each campus library. Items can be requested and will be held in our designated Click and Collect areas, where you can pick them up at your convenience. The requested items will be held for seven days. Please remember to check out your books at the self-service kiosk.

Laptops and Printers

Printing, scanning and copying is available using our Multi-Functional Devices (MFDs). MFDs are situated in all three campus libraries. You must ensure you have enough print credit to print.

Laptops to Loan. Laptops are available at each campus library, JKCC and Bainfield, where laptops can be borrowed for up to 14 days. The lapsafes are self-service and can be operated by scanning your student card.

Study Spaces.

We have a variety of study spaces available at each of our campus libraries. There are individual and collaborative study spaces as well as silent study areas.

Group Study Rooms are also available and can be booked up to 14 days in advance. You can check availability and book online via Resource Booker for up to 1 two-hour slot per day.

Our general Opening Hours can be found on our My Napier webpages via the library tab.  Staffed hours in all of our campus libraries are 8:45am-16:45pm Monday to Friday. Our libraries are unstaffed. at weekends, but still free to use from 9am-5pm. During the summer, the Merchiston campus library is having some essential maintenance. Access is as follows:

  • Zone 1, the area near the helpdesk (including Group Study Room 8), will remain open. The Library helpdesk will remain open, with the usual Opening Hours.
     
  • All other library areas will be closed. This means no access to quiet, silent study spaces, print books, journals, and other items on shelves.  

In our spaces, we also have our Wellbeing Collections available at each campus, with a range of books to support both your physical and mental health and well-being. There are also relaxation areas where you can take a break from studying and de-stress for a while by reading, playing games or doing some relaxing activities such as jigsaws and colouring in.

Degree show

Degree Show 2026

01/06/2026 / / 0 Comments

Degree Show 2026

Breaking the Mould: A Celebration of Creativity and Innovation
From May 29 to June 5, we’re excited to invite you to an extraordinary event at our Merchiston campus, showcasing the remarkable talents of our next generation of designers and creatives. This week-long celebration marks the unveiling of our undergraduate and postgraduate students’ final year projects—a testament to their hard work, creativity, and innovative spirit.
In this unique display, witness how these emerging talents are challenging conventions and pushing the boundaries of technical craft. It’s an opportunity to meet students from diverse disciplines, each bringing their own fresh perspectives and ideas. Join us as we shine a spotlight on these talented individuals and explore their worlds. This event promises to be a captivating experience that embodies the essence of breaking the mould in design and creativity. Don’t miss this chance to see where imagination and skill converge!
Find out more at napier.ac.uk
Craiglockhart campus

21 Years of Craiglockhart campus library

20/05/2026 / / 0 Comments

21 Years of Craiglockhart campus library

Merchiston library is partially closed over the summer. We’ve went in our archives to dig out a post regarding last time one of our campus libraries had a refurb.

In the summer of 2004 the refurbished Craiglockhart campus was getting ready to re-open. It had acquired a modern extension to cope with increased student numbers. So the library was now housed in the lower floor below the foyer. Controversially, the main library area lacked a ceiling. Whilst the works were taking place the book stock and library staff were accommodated at Sighthill campus.  Which would later get its own refurbishment.

Back then, at Sighthill, the staff offices and library were quite old-fashioned looking, with lots of dark wood. The library desk was not near the book stock; in fact, it wasn’t even on the same floor. Without a lift capable of taking trollies between floors, books had to be loaded into a dumbwaiter-style lift, sent up to the correct floor, then unloaded from the lift onto another trolley. Packing the books for the move back to Craiglockhart was a massive task. Books were packed in crates in Dewey Decimal order, and journals were alphabetised by title, then by date. Crates were then labelled and transported to Craiglockhart.

Craiglockhart campus library

The new Craiglockhart library was very different. There was light coloured metal shelving and large windows making the area seem much brighter. Book and journal stock was held on the same floor as the library desk making returning items to the correct place much easier. Once the stock had been transported back from Sighthill it had to be unpacked and put onto the shelves in the correct order which required a lot of concentration! The crates served as seating for library staff at breaks and lunchtime, as the library furniture had not yet arrived.

At the time, there were two rows of main book stock, which, due to the increase in e-book usage and no longer teaching languages, have now been reduced to one. Almost all journals stocked were in print format and these were stored in large rolling stacks situated where the collaborative desks are now. It would be a few years before self-service kiosks for issuing and returning books came to the library and even longer until a Click and Collect shelf for requests. Until then if you requested a book and wanted to collect it you had to wait to be served at the library helpdesk.

A few years after returning to Craiglockhart the size of the staff office was reduced to create the quiet room. Low-level talking and discussion are allowed here, but it tends to be more of a silent study room.

As time passed and print journal subscriptions moved to electronic ones the rolling stacks became obsolete and collaborative desks were fitted in this space. Over the years computers have been upgraded regularly and Macs were added. The lapsafe provides access to laptops which can be borrowed.

With increased space due to reduced print stock it was possible to create the relaxation space. This is a space to take time out from studies. Books, colouring sheets, games and origami paper are provided.

At the time Craiglockhart library re-opened no-one could have guessed how many changes there would be over the years. Let’s see what the next 21 years bring!

 

Read more about the changes of Craiglockhart over the years

By Vivienne Hamilton

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