Category: Borrowers
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 […]
Individual Readers at the Royal High School
One of my favourite things about working with library borrowers’ records is getting to know the individual quirks and tastes of specific borrowers. Towards the end of the eighteenth century, the borrowing habits of the boys at the Royal High School began to diversify. Prior to this, a large majority visited the library to borrow […]
A First Look at the Advocates Library
We have now taken delivery of a first set of images from the borrowers’ receipt books of the Advocates Library with the permission of our partners the Faculty of Advocates and via the digitisation skills of our partners the National Library of Scotland. Our Digital Humanities Research Officer Brian Aitken has loaded these to our […]
Numbers, Focus and Prioritisation
Over the last few weeks, the Books and Borrowing team have been working on a problem of which we were aware at the outset of the project, but one that has grown in prominence as we’ve discovered more library records and added further institutions to our list while conducting our research. Our target is to […]
The Royal High School of Edinburgh and the University of Edinburgh
I’ve been so delighted to get started with the Books and Borrowing team and have really enjoyed getting stuck in and learning all about the project’s Content Management System (CMS) and what’s been achieved so far. ‘Books and Borrowing’ is a project close to my heart as my PhD focused on the pupil borrowing records […]
William Robertson (1721-1793): Minister, Principal, Historian
This year marks the tercentenary of the birth of a major figure of the Scottish Enlightenment. William Robertson was a leading moderate minister of the Church of Scotland, Principal of the University of Edinburgh from 1762 until 1793, and a famous author of historical works. Robertson’s three major historical works, The History of Scotland (2 […]
A Comparison of the Borrowings of Different Classes at the Library of Innerpeffray, John Gray Library, Haddington, and Selkirk Subscription Library
In my last blog post, I discussed the Library of Innerpeffray’s exceptional labouring-class borrowing demographic. Labouring-class people were the driving force for borrowings at Innerpeffray as early as the eighteenth century, contradicting narratives claiming that they only began accessing libraries in the nineteenth century, with access previously exclusive to scholarly, aristocratic, and professional elites. The […]
John Anderson: Professor, Philosopher, and Military Man
As the end of my scholarship draws closer, I intend to bring my project closer to home by delving into eighteenth-century professorial registers from the University of Glasgow. More specifically, I have examined the borrowing records for John Anderson (1726-1796), a Professor at the University of Glasgow between 1754 and 1796. As these records have […]
Labouring-Class Borrowing at Innerpeffray Library, 1815-1833
Now that I’m in the final few weeks of my Carnegie-funded research with Books and Borrowing (I’m very sad about this!) I thought I’d share some of my findings with you. There’s too much for me to share in a single blog post, so this post will centre around labouring-class borrowings at Innerpeffray Library from […]
David Brichan: The Borrowings of a St Andrews University Student
As a student, I admit the thought of undertaking cutting-edge research with the ‘Books and Borrowing’ Project was at first daunting. Funded by a Carnegie Trust Vacation Scholarship, my project concerns itself with the French Revolution and its effects, if it had any, on the reading practices of St. Andrews University students and the wider […]