Month: July 2022
Introducing the Chambers’ Library Map of Borrowers, 1827-1830
The Books and Borrowing team are pleased to announce the release of the Chambers’ Library Map of Borrowers, 1827-1830. What began as a quick experiment in georeferencing the borrower addresses recorded in the ledger of Robert Chambers’ Edinburgh circulating library has developed significantly over the past few months, thanks to the hard work of Brian […]
Mrs Felix Yaniewicz and the Chambers’ Circulating Library, 1829
Sometimes the stars seem to align when doing research. For Books and Borrowing, the configuration of the arrival and transcription of the Chambers’ Borrowing Register and the identification of one of its borrowers has been almost spooky for me in the case of Mrs Yaniewicz. Mrs Yaniewicz took a ‘New Books’ quarterly subscription from the […]
Forgotten Best-Sellers: Alain-René Lesage, Gil Blas (1715-35)
Over the past few weeks, prompted by seeing a copy of it in Walter Scott’s library during our trip to Abbotsford, I have been enjoying reading another forgotten best-seller, Alain-René Lesage’s L’Histoire de Gil Blas de Santillane. I’ve been reading it in the 1748 translation by Tobias Smollett, The Adventures of Gil Blas of Santillane, […]
The Final Year: What Goes In?
The end of Year 2 is an odd time for a project like this. We can, I think, rightly be proud of where we’ve got to despite pandemic circumstances, with over 125,000 records currently in the system. This meets our benchmark and puts us on course to reach our target of 150,000 records by the […]