Category: Project News
Research Festival Call for Papers: Libraries, Lives and Legacies, April 2023
Libraries, Lives and Legacies Organised by the AHRC-funded ‘Books and Borrowing, 1750-1830′ and ‘Libraries, Reading Communities and Cultural Formation in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic’ projects. www.borrowing.stir.ac.uk http://c18librariesonline.org/ Split-Venue Research Festival 13-14 April 2023 – University of Liverpool and online 17-18 April 2023 – University of Stirling We are glad to announce a series of events on […]
Books and Borrowing Creative Writing Competition Announcement
Calling all creative writers! The Books and Borrowing project are delighted to announce the launch of the 2022 Books and Borrowing Creative Writing Competition. Entries may be in any genre (prose, verse, drama) but must not exceed 2000 words of prose, or 40 lines of poetry. They must be on the theme of books and […]
A New Chapter
In October I started work on a new project, bringing my two years as a research fellow with Books and Borrowing to an end. It’s been an exceptionally rewarding period for me intellectually, and the project and team have often felt like an island of stability in uncertain times. I’m determined to stay in touch […]
All Together Now: Reflections on the ECSSS and BARS/NASSR conferences
It’s conference season in the academic world, and the ‘Books and Borrowing’ team were delighted to attend two conferences back to back! Despite train and bus strikes, we made it to Liverpool to attend the Eighteenth-Century Scottish Studies Society (ECSSS) conference on the theme of ‘Scots Abroad’ at the University of Liverpool. We then moved […]
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 […]
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 […]
Event Report: Books and Borrowing: Edinburgh’s 19th Century Readers
On Thursday 23rd June, members of the Books and Borrowing team were joined by an online audience for an event highlighting our work on Edinburgh’s historic libraries. This session was hosted by the National Library of Scotland as part of their regular webinar series, and we’re grateful to the library as a whole, and particularly […]
Eighteenth-Century Studies at Stirling Writing Retreat
From 23-27 May 2022, several members of the Books and Borrowing team (Katie, Gerry, Maxine, Cleo, Josh, and Danni) participated in the Eighteenth-Century Studies at Stirling Writing Retreat at the beautiful Alexander House in rural Perthshire. Fifteen scholars came together to write and to support each other in that endeavour. The idea of the retreat […]
Abbotsford; or, The Day Out
The ‘Books and Borrowing’ team recently had the pleasure of a long-awaited trip to Abbotsford, the former home of Walter Scott on the river Tweed in the Scottish Borders. As I have discussed previously here and here on this blog, Scott has a peculiar importance for the study of library borrowing records between 1750 and […]
Books and Borrowing: Edinburgh’s 19th Century Readers – Online Event with NLS
In conjunction with our partners at the National Library of Scotland, we’re pleased to announce the upcoming online event, ‘Books and Borrowing: Edinburgh’s 19th Century Readers’, which will take place from 5.00-6.00pm on Thursday 23 June, 2022. This event is free, and we invite you to book your place through Eventbrite. Join the Books and […]