Month: November 2020
The World in Print: Borrowings of Voyages and Travels
Voyages and travels were among the most borrowed books from Scottish libraries in the eighteenth century and Romantic era. Travel narratives and works of geographical description could encompass an almost limitless range of subjects, reflecting a period that was characterised by colonisation and war, as well as a burgeoning interest in natural history, antiquity, and […]
William Hunter’s Library and Legacy: The Hunterian Museum Library
Dr William Hunter (1718-1783) left his collections to his nephew Matthew Baillie who had the use of them with the understanding that they would eventually be given to the University of Glasgow. By the early nineteenth century, Baillie had established his own medical practice and he and his fellow trustees set in motion plans to […]
Illuminating Libraries
A guest post from our partner Linda Cracknell I’d been enchanted with Innerpeffray for a long time, Scotland’s first public lending library set on a bend of the river Earn. It epitomises Scotland’s Enlightenment, and a belief in the power of books to democratise, to illuminate the spirit, and it proved ‘the urge for education […]
Types of Libraries
A prevailing theme seems to be appearing on this blog, which is about our interest in categorisation and classification! Along with thinking through how to categorise both books and borrowers, we’ve also needed to do some reflecting on how to classify the types of libraries involved in our study. Our initial breakdown of the libraries […]
Visitors at Innerpeffray Library: J.M Barrie, George Bernard Shaw and Adam White
Exploring the history of reading, libraries, and historical tourism, I am one of the new researchers on the Books and Borrowing project, undertaking my PhD with Innerpeffray Library and the University of Stirling. My work continues the story of Innerpeffray Library from another PhD thesis published in 2018, looking into how the library was used […]