Feature Articles

The National Library of Scotland
by Cathy Boylan, Marketing Manager - Europe, Academic Services Development, YBP Library Services

Editor: This is the first in an ongoing, occasional series highlighting special collections and special libraries around the world.

The National Library of Scotland (NLS) has the distinction of being in existence longer than almost any other YBP customer. Before the National Library of Scotland, there was the Library of the Faculty of Advocates. Opened in 1689, the Advocate's Library in Edinburgh was given the legal right, under the 1710 Copyright Act, to claim a copy of every book published in Britain. In the following centuries, the Library added books and manuscripts to the collections by purchase as well as legal deposit, creating a national library in all but name.

By the 1920s, the upkeep of such a major collection was too much for a private institution and with an endowment of £100,000 provided by Sir Alexander Grant of Forres the library's contents were presented to the nation. The National Library of Scotland was formally constituted by an Act of Parliament in 1925.

• NLS is Scotland's largest library, serving both as a general research library and as the world's leading repository for the printed and manuscript record of Scotland's history and culture.
• Printed items alone exceed 8,000,000 and include everything from Mary Queen of Scots' last letter to the manuscripts of great writers such as Sir Walter Scott and Muriel Spark, to the largest map collection in Scotland - one of the biggest in the world, with around two million cartographic items.
• The John Murray Archive, which the NLS is currently in the process of acquiring, is a treasure trove of 150,000 items by some of the greatest writers, politicians and scientists of the late 18th to early 20th centuries.
• Selection of current publications is aided by a Slip Plan in which YBP profilers check thousands of English-language books each year for content relevant to Scotland, notifying the library of all those found.

…and Beyond

Far from being parochial, NLS also promotes access to the ideas and cultures of the world. For example, current publications from and about Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka are being added to the National Library of Scotland's foreign collections in increasing numbers, following the decision to dedicate funding for the buying of South Asian material. The library is assisted in selection by its Slip Plan which notifies the Curator of publications meeting NLS criteria.

Despite financial constraints in recent years, the collection of South Asian holdings is one of the most important in the UK and the most important north of Cambridge. The Library has substantial manuscript items relating to the East India Company, the administration of British India, and legal, military, trade and missionary activities. Travel and exploration are prominent themes in the collection as a whole. Particularly important is the India Papers collection - unique in Scotland - comprising more than 4,000 volumes relating to the Imperial Government and the government of many Indian states.

The overall emphasis in current purchasing for the South Asia collection is on colonial and post-colonial history and on literature in English, with the addition of works of reference and some social science material.

Among recent South Asian additions are an English translation of the spiritual epic Mahabharata with original Sanskrit text, and an investigation of the ideological role of an Islamic group in Pakistani regional conflicts.

The Library also holds some special collections of interest to American Studies, notably the Hugh Sharp Collection of over 300 volumes of first editions of English and American authors, including a signed copy of George Washington's Official Letters to the Honorable American Congress, as well as works of travel and exploration in America, and the Henderson Memorial Library of Books on America (over 700 volumes), which contains mainly 19th- and early 20th-century works on history, description and travel, sociology and biography relating to the Civil War. Also of note is the Combe Collection of over 600 19th-century books on phrenology and the Birkbeck Collection which contains a significant number of American items on professional and amateur printing.

Widening Access to a Wealth of Information

Greater access to the Library's vast store of information is at the core of the Library's current strategy for change. The Chairman of the Library Trustees, Professor Michael Anderson, comments that: 'The National Library has developed a strategy to change the way its services are used. Web use has increased five-fold in recent years and it will be an area we focus on even more in the future. It allows people not just in Scotland but everybody with interests in all things Scottish to access the plethora of information that we store.'