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This chapter discusses the differences between face-to-face and online ethnographies of Scottish Country Dancing. It draws on fieldwork conducted firstly in Lyon in 2017 and subsequently in Edinburgh in 2017–2018, with further fieldwork in Edinburgh, due to the global pandemic, now taking place online. Online Scottish Country Dancing is challenging, especially given that this social dancing requires a partner and space. Due to the pandemic, how and why individuals do online dancing has shifted because people can now link in and across different locations. As a researcher as well as a dancer, my current project utilises blended ethnography, including textual analysis, fieldnotes, participant observations, interviews and surveys. Conducting online ethnographic practices raises specific ethical considerations and challenges, most notably concerning who is being observed and whether the participants are aware of being observed. This chapter addresses how the research aims to adapt ethnography from face-to-face fieldwork to online situations, in response to the impact of COVID-19 and associated ethical challenges.

The present paper describes an Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) research project into Scottish fiddle music and the important considerations of music digitization, access and discovery in designing the website that will be one of the project’s enduring outcomes.

The paper is a general review of existing online indices to music repertoires and some of the general problems associated with selecting metadata and indexing such material and is a survey of the various recent and contemporary projects into the digital encoding of musical notation for online use.

The questions addressed during the design of the Bass Culture project database serve to highlight the importance of cooperation between musicologists, information specialists and computer scientists, and the benefits of having researchers with strengths in more than one of these disciplines. The Music Encoding Initiative proves an effective means of providing digital access to the Scottish fiddle tune repertoire.

The digital encoding of music notation is still comparatively cutting-edge; the Bass Culture project is thus a useful exemplar for interdisciplinary collaboration between musicologists, information specialists and computer scientists, and it addresses issues which are likely to be applicable to future projects of this nature.

THE most important date in current British library affairs was undoubtedly May 6th, 1955, when the Public Libraries (Scotland) Act became law. In five laconic paragraphs it sweeps away the financial shackles which have been the exasperation, almost the despair, of our Scottish colleagues who until now were able to watch their English and Welsh ones, free from rate limits, able to lend library material one to another and able, of course all this with their local authority consent, to borrow money for legitimate library purposes. Now, Scotland is free too in all these necessary matters. The new Aft, of course, will have to be interpreted in conjunction with the existing Scottish Public Libraries Acts, and one clause, 3, which gives authorities power to revoke any decision they have made to adopt the principal Aft, may have repercussions not at present envisaged. However that may be, a new vista is open to a country which was always notable for its high valuation of education, and yet for a century withheld adequate means from its library service.

How successful is the technological approach? Donald Hutchings, of Oxford University Institute of Education, writes: How far is the slowness of schools to develop technical courses, and of the universities to recognize them, the result of psychological and educational misconceptions? This was the underlying question of the conference on Towards More Creative Science held at New College, Oxford, recently.

This chapter outlines the history of ethical regulation and considers how the position of ethics has shifted. The intent of this book is to explore novice and accomplished ethnographers ‘everyday, real-life’ ethical challenges and considerations against a backdrop of theoretical and ethical guideline scrutiny.

This research focuses on the ways in which individuals play out their Scottish ethnic feelings and on the role of dress in this process. Using the grounded theory approach, participants defining themselves as ethnically Scottish were interviewed for this study. The findings indicate that respondents vary greatly in the emphasis they place on Scottish ethnicity when defining their self‐identities. Additionally, respondents differ in the degree to which they feel complete in their Scottish identity. Those who find their Scottish ethnicity to be salient to their definition of self put more effort into the construction of that identity. Oftentimes, ethnic dress symbols play a prominent role in this construction process – the importance of dress diminishes as feelings of identity completeness increases.