Category: Borrowers
Supernatural Visions: A Halloween Post
Second Sight Studying the Supernatural An entry showing that George Graham Bell borrowed ‘Aubreys Miscellanies’ from the Advocates Library on 1 January 1823 seems innocuous enough. But dare to open the library catalogue the full title reveals a world of the supernatural: Miscellanies, viz. I. Day-fatality. II. Local-fatality. III. Ostenta. IV. Omens. V. Dreams. VI. […]
A Return to the Records of the Bristol Library Society
In September of last year, I made my first research trip to Bristol where over the course of two weeks I photographed the records of one of the libraries my doctoral project examines, the Bristol Library Society (1772-1894). I discussed the fruits of that search in a previous blog post. I was fortunate to return […]
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 […]
The Pirate, The Sea and a Cargo of Books
by Linda Cracknell The moral compass was already set when I launched North in May to run a creative writing workshop at the Orkney Library & Archive, Kirkwall, Orkney. The Books and Borrowing project had established that there was an enthusiastic readership in nineteenth-century Orkney for both local Mary Brunton’s best-selling novel of moral excellence, […]
Guest Post – University of Glasgow Library borrowing registers, beyond the borrowing: what additional insights can they provide?
by Robert MacLean, Assistant Librarian in Archives and Special Collections, University of Glasgow Archives and Special Collections (ASC) at the University of Glasgow holds the institution’s historical library records, including old catalogues, library committee minutes, acquisition ledgers and the registers recording when books were borrowed and by whom. Until recently these have been rather overlooked […]
International Women’s Day 2022
Today, 8 March, 2022 is International Women’s Day, and I’m therefore going to take the opportunity to reflect a little, both on the women writers and readers we find in our borrowing records, as I did last year and also on those we don’t see – the wives, daughters, mothers, sisters, cousins, nieces, friends, and […]
Il étoit une fois…: The Advocates Library and the ‘Le Cabinet des Fées’
When I began transcribing the borrowing registers of the Advocates Library, I expected to find that law reports, Session Papers, periodicals, and books of law were popular with the erudite lawyers of the Faculty of Advocates. I took stock upon the completion of the transcriptions for two registers covering the period from 1 April 1788 […]
Early Reflections on Robert Chambers’ Edinburgh Circulating Library
Back in July 2021, Kit Baston announced the exciting news that we’d be adding the records of Robert Chambers’ Edinburgh Circulating Library to the Books and Borrowing project. Our partners at the National Library of Scotland have now completed conservation and digitisation work on the register, and we’ve begun to enter records into our system. […]
William MacGregor Stirling: Minister, Historian, and Antiquarian
It may seem facile to remark that behind each borrowing record is a borrower. Library records alone often tell us little of their identity. Typically, this may include the price of admission paid by a library borrower, perhaps a signature signed into the subscription book, or details of their occupation or address. For most library […]
Christmas in Kirkwall
As the festive season approaches, I thought I would write something to get us all in the mood for Christmas. This time last year, I looked at Christmas borrowings at the Library of Innerpeffray. This year, I’m going to be focussing on the Orkney Library, and reporting on what borrowers were returning to the library […]