‘From Ball to Chain’ – Seminar Series to Welcome The Provost of Fife for In-Depth Talk

March offers a double whammy for fans of Dunfermline Athletic as Dunfermline Carnegie Library & Galleries bring together a special archive project and an event featuring one of the town’s most noted sons come together.

Provost Jim Leishman MBE, who officially opened the new facility last September, has kindly agreed to speak about his career as a footballer, football manager and then politician in his brilliantly named talk “From Ball to Chain” on Sunday 18^th March at 2pm in Dunfermline Carnegie Library & Galleries.

Jim Leishman said: “It gives me great pleasure to deliver this career-spanning Sunday Seminar on home turf, recapping some of the glory days and tribulations I’ve faced as a sportsman, a football manager and a politician over the decades. You might even hear a bit about my time on stage. This town holds so many memories, it’s hard to know where to start, but there will be stories!”

During March the Dunfermline Athletic Heritage Trust will also begin their new project of searching the local historical papers for Dunfermline Athletic match reports to add to their website, alongside statistical information, the results of which will be available on www.daht.org.uk.

This once complex but interesting task will be made much easier as the Reading Room in DCL&G has acquired a state of the art digital microfilm reader, making match reports from the papers of a century ago far more straightforward to read, scan and copy.

Gordon McKenzie of DAHT, said: “Although microfilm readers have been available for some time, the new machine at the Reading Room is a great enhancement. It allows for better focussing of the images, which in turn makes the text easier to read. This is particularly important for older newspapers, where text is generally much smaller than is now the case.”

“The new microfilm reader in Dunfermline library is a great facility for making social history accessible. Although my immediate interest is in local sports coverage, it is fascinating browsing through old newspapers. In the course of my research, I have often found myself reading other, completely unrelated, items of local news from the past.”

Tickets for Provost Jim Leishman’s talk can be obtained via www.onfife.com priced £5 each. Any member of the public can make an appointment to look at the microfilmed newspapers by emailing [email protected] or by coming into the Reading Room at Dunfermline Carnegie Library & Galleries.