Are there challenges or difficulties unique to the task of exhibiting books and manuscripts? What kinds of pressures and demands do librarians and curators face? How do policies and frameworks aimed at connecting archives, libraries and museums with the communities around them shape our approach to staging such exhibitions? With the support of the AHRC, a team comprising James Loxley (University of Edinburgh) , Helen Vincent (Senior Curator of Rare Books, National Library of Scotland), Joseph Marshall (Rare Book Librarian at the University of Edinburgh) and Lisa Otty (Research Fellow, University of Edinburgh) delivered a project called Making Our Connections: Collaboration, Community and the Exhibition of the Written Word, which brought together academics and curators from the British Library, the National Galleries of Scotland, the National Trust for Scotland, Trinity College Dublin, the University of Edinburgh, the University of Ulster, Edinburgh Napier University, Dublin City Library and Archive, the Scottish Poetry Library, Seven Stories children’s book centre and the Wordsworth Trust to explore the issues involved.

The output of this project was a publication called Exhibiting the Written Word (2011).