Books and Borrowing 1750-1830

Category: Project News

Mapping Borrowers from Robert Chambers’ Edinburgh Circulating Library

Earlier in the year, I reported that the Books and Borrowing Project had begun the work of entering the records of Robert Chambers’ Edinburgh Circulating Library into our database. Here, I’d like to share some initial progress towards an additional project, which will use data from the Chambers records to create an online map of […]

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Event Report: Books and Borrowing in Eighteenth-Century Glasgow

We had the pleasure of running an event in Glasgow University Library Special Collections last week. This was an opportunity for us to share some of the research we have done specifically on the university’s own records, while bringing together colleagues with cognate interests to think more expansively about the Glasgow context and about the […]

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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. […]

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Looking Forward to 2022

The Books and Borrowing team have now returned to work after the holidays – in the first half of 2022, we’re entering a crucial stage of the project as we build out the materials we have in the system, cover the libraries we have yet to engage with in detail, conduct contextualisation and normalisation, and […]

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The Midway Point

We are now at the midway point of the Books and Borrowing project! We are eighteen months in, with eighteen left to go. It seemed, therefore, a good time to stop and reflect on what we have achieved so far, and what remains to be done. I want to begin this reflection with some personal […]

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The Leighton Library’s Water Drinkers: An Exhibition

When I applied for my scholarship from the Carnegie Trust earlier this year I committed to creating an exhibition displaying some of my findings. I’m so pleased to share that the exhibition has officially launched! Hurrah! It’s located in the Pathfoot Building at the University of Stirling in the A corridor (immediately to the left […]

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Novel Reading in Post-Enlightenment Scotland: a PhD

Hello! My name is Cleo O’Callaghan Yeoman, and I am delighted to be joining the Books and Borrowing team as I begin my SGSAH/AHRC-funded PhD this month, co-supervised by the Universities of Stirling and Glasgow. My PhD project centres upon analysing the relationships between novel reading and forms of ‘improvement’ within Post-Enlightenment Scotland. By combining […]

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A First Look at the Aberdeen Theological Library

In 1826, the first of a series of royal commissions was established that would report on the condition and management of the Scottish universities at intervals in the nineteenth century. The range of materials gathered by the commissioners today provide historians with an extraordinary insight into the evolution of Scottish education, including the operation of […]

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In Memoriam William St Clair

The Books and Borrowing team were all saddened to hear of the recent death of William St Clair. In what follows, three of us reflect on his enduring legacy. Matthew Sangster writes: I have a very clear memory of first reading The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period on a train in the Scottish Highlands. […]

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Robert Chambers’ Circulating Library Borrowing Register, 1828-1829

The Chambers Library Borrowing Register: A Unique Manuscript A surviving borrowing register for Robert Chambers’ circulating library, which operated in Edinburgh in the 1820s, records book loans from 1828-1829 (NLS, Dep. 341/413). The Books and Borrowing project is working with the National Library of Scotland to conserve and digitise this unique manuscript that K. A. […]

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