Latest Posts
Books and Borrowing Creative Writing Competition: Materials
The materials here are provided in support of the Books and Borrowing Creative Writing Competition. Innerpeffray Library Transcription 1859 Nov 19 Chambers Journal John Edwards P[olice] Constable Muthill Returned 10 Jan 60 “ Men of the Line Hugh Campbell Labourer Gilmore Returned 21 Dec “ Brougham’s Sketches Vol 6 [?]McClean Niven Miller Mill of Earn […]
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 […]
Collections Management as Borrowing-record Stand-in in the Australian Subscription Library
By Brittani Ivan, PhD Candidate at Western Sydney University My work is something of a departure from this website’s usual fare, as my primary area of study is an Australian, rather than a Scottish Library: The Australian Subscription Library of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Founded in 1826, the Australian Subscription Library was first self-proclaimed […]
Event Report: Online Creative Writing Workshop: Books and Borrowing
On 31 August 2022, I had the pleasure of attending the Books and Borrowing Online Creative Writing Workshop, hosted in partnership with the National Library of Scotland, and led by the wonderful Linda Cracknell. The idea of the workshop was to inspire people to think about how they might use library borrowing records, and archival […]
Forgotten Best-Sellers: Susan Ferrier’s The Inheritance (1824)
In 1824, Edinburgh-born Scottish novelist Susan Ferrier published her second of three novels, titled The Inheritance. The Inheritance was preceded by Marriage, published in 1818, and followed by Destiny, which was published in 1831. Ronnie Young describes The Inheritance as ‘the most critically successful of [Ferrier’s] works’,[1] and indeed, on 11 June 1824, Ferrier’s publisher, […]
Farewell to Gerry McKeever and Alex Deans
This week, I have the sad task of bidding farewell to postdoctoral research fellows Gerry McKeever and Alex Deans. Gerry leaves the Books and Borrowing team to take up a Lectureship in Modern Scottish Literature at the University of Edinburgh, while Alex returns to the University of Glasgow to work on a research project very […]
A Visitor to Innerpeffray Library: Héloïse Russell-Fergusson
Reposted with permission from the Innerpeffray Library Blog’s ‘Visitor Vignettes’ series The Innerpeffray Library visitors’ books contain signatures and details of visitors to the library from 1859 to the present day – with each modern visitor adding to the living archive. By digitising and investigating the information within the visitors’ books, it is possible to […]
Forgotten Best-Sellers: The World Displayed; or, a Curious Collection of Voyages and Travels
From the moment I began to seriously crunch the numbers on the borrowers’ records of the Royal High School, the unrivalled popularity of two titles came to the fore: Charles Rollin’s Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Medes and Persians, Macedonians, and Greeks and The World Displayed; or, a Curious Collection of Voyages […]
Why Do Libraries Matter?
This week, I’ve been reflecting on a theme which is, of course, very close to our Books and Borrowing hearts. Why do libraries matter? This was prompted by a conversation with the Chief Printer of the Pathfoot Press, project friend and supporter Kelsey Jackson Williams. Back in the dim ages of long ago (also known […]
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 […]