Latest Posts
Beatrix Potter at Innerpeffray Library
First posted on the Library of Innerpeffray’s blog and cross-posted here by kind permission of the Keeper of Books Beatrix Potter at Innerpeffray Library As it is the 155th anniversary of Beatrix Potter’s birth on 28 July 2021, we are celebrating by exploring some of the links between Beatrix Potter and the Library of Innerpeffray. […]
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. […]
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. […]
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 […]
Return from Orkney
Like Harriot Byron, I ask, what am I to do with my gratitude? I can do nothing but thank you and go on.[1] In this quotation, Jane Austen quotes Richardson’s Sir Charles Grandison to thank her sister Cassandra for her kindness in sending a long letter. I, too, wish to record my gratitude for the […]
The Most Borrowed Books of the Leighton Library’s Water Drinkers
by Jacqueline Kennard I’m thrilled about my temporary placement with Books and Borrowing and to be writing my first blog post! Funded by the Carnegie Trust’s Undergraduate Vacation Scholarship, I’ll be spending twelve weeks comparing and analysing early-nineteenth-century book borrowings from five libraries in provincial Scotland, namely the Leighton Library, St Andrews University Library, the […]
Celebrity Spotting – Robert Riddell at St Andrews
Work has been continuing on the massive body of borrowing data we have from St Andrews University library. With the roughly 4,000 records of the 1748-1753 mixed professors/students register entered into our system, my attention has recently been on the 1772-1776 student ledger. This volume presents some distinctive challenges. In general, librarians’ record-keeping develops a […]
Walter Scott at Innerpeffray: Read to Death
Innerpeffray Library has now re-opened to visitors! After a longer than usual winter closure period due to lockdown and Covid-19 restrictions, you can once again travel to rural Perthshire and see the first free public library in Scotland – and its new exhibition. Celebrating the 250th anniversary of the birth of Sir Walter Scott, ‘Read […]
Event Report: Library Lives at Innerpeffray
On Saturday 22nd May we held the first of several project events intended to bring our work with Scotland’s historical borrowing records to a wider public. Entitled Library Lives: Books, Borrowing and Beyond, the event was co-hosted by our project partners at Innerpeffray Library, and offered two hours of short talks and live research on […]
Life Cycles and Henry Brooke’s The Fool of Quality
In each of our weekly meetings for Books and Borrowing, we talk a bit about what we’ve been noticing in the registers – strange anomalies, popular books, quirks of record-keeping practices and so on. Sometimes the popular books becoming apparent from the data we’re transcribing are relatively predictable: for example, the works of Charles Rollin […]