Book Borrowing Surgeons: A Jean Guild Grant from the Old Edinburgh Club
EUA IN1/ADS/LIB/3/Da.2.6, page 13. Transcription available at https://borrowing.stir.ac.uk/library/edinburgh-university/registers/46/152851/image-and-text
I am delighted to share that I have been awarded a Jean Guild Grant from the Old Edinburgh Club (OEC) for a project to continue the work of Books and Borrowing. I am grateful to the OEC for their support and to the Books & Borrowing Team for their enthusiasm for this new follow-on project.
The project will reveal the books borrowed by the surgeons, medical students or their apprentices, which may have helped them deal with various conditions, ailments, and illnesses plaguing people of the time. As Edinburgh was considered a centre of excellence for medicine, this project will add another element to our understanding of the people involved in this profession.
Book cover of Edinburgh University Library, 1580-1980: A Collection of Historical Essays, ed. Jean R. Guild and Alexander Law, published by Edinburgh University Library in 1982.
The new project involves transcribing 183 pages from a borrower’s receipt book, EUA IN1/ADS/LIB/3/Da.2.6, dating from the 1780s to the 1810s and recording the borrowings from external users of the Edinburgh University Library. Members of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh (RCSE) had the right to use the University Library in exchange for the donation of their books in 1763. Some had previously been students of the university. Transcribing these records and matching the borrowers to ones already in the database will let us know more about ‘what happened next’. As the surgeons are well-documented in other places, for example in the RCSE’s online ‘Surgeons Database’, I will be able to enhance biographical details for them by including their life dates and dates of qualification, giving us another aspect into their lives.
I like to think that Jean R. Guild would have approved of this project since she was a librarian at and historian of the Edinburgh University Library as well as the editor and contributor to the book about its history. I hope I will do her, the Old Edinburgh Club, and ,of course, Books & Borrowing proud!
The project and its outcomes will be updated at Book Borrowing Surgeons at the Old Edinburgh Club’s website. Regular news updates on the project will be available to read on social media via ‘Books and Borrowing’ (@books-borrowing.bsky.social) and on (@kgbaston.bsky.social). News updates and blogs will also appear on the Old Edinburgh Club website and through OEC’s Facebook, X and Bluesky accounts.