Annual Review, 2018 to 2019

National Librarian's report

Our reach across Scotland is increasing. People from the Shetlands to the Borders can engage with an increasing amount of content as we digitise our collections and make them available online. Similarly, our touring displays, snapshots of our major exhibitions, are travelling around the country. We're now entering into the third year of our touring displays, and the waiting list from libraries around the country is a positive sign of a desire to engage with the National Library.

Partnerships with Scotland's universities are an important feature of our work in promoting research and providing scholarship opportunities. Our collaboration with the University of Edinburgh allowed us to host placements for students from the Centre for the History of the Book. It also resulted in one of the most thought-provoking displays we held this year — 'Strike for Freedom' — the display of items related to the American abolitionist Frederick Douglass. Douglass resided in Edinburgh for a time in the mid-19th century and drew large crowds as a public orator. People from all over the world visited 'Strike for Freedom' to see items that were on public display for the first time. The exhibition was supported by a comprehensive series of talks, tours, events and a first-rate academic publication.

It is two years since we opened at Glasgow's Kelvin Hall, and it was time to formalise our partnership with the University of Glasgow. We have numerous collaborative doctoral partnerships with the University, in areas such as public health, the industrial revolution, and artificial intelligence. We also partner with them in delivering public and educational lectures and screenings. The sheer breadth of activity is what is most impressive and we wish to maintain the momentum.

Together with the National Galleries of Scotland, we made a major acquisition at the start of the year, the MacKinnon Photographic Collection, a cache of over 14,000 photographs of life in Scotland over the past 100 years 100 years. We have plans to take these collections to locations around the country in the next few years. The collection is being digitised, but meanwhile look out for displays at both the Galleries and the Library this autumn.

We have given new meaning to what is possible with some of our collections. The start of the year saw the first ever artistic interpretation of school exam papers. Upon digitising Scottish exam papers from the years 1888–1963 and making them available online, we offered bursaries for artistic 'resits'. Works included a short film involving an intricate dance to a geometry paper, and a punk rendition of a mathematics paper.

Our engagement with young people is a priority for the National Library. We partnered with YouthLink to deliver 'Youngwummin', a creative response to our collections surrounding the First World War. The young people carried out thoughtful research into what it must have been like to be a woman in Scotland in the early 20th century and delivered an excellent creative performance and treasures display which ran over the course of the summer. It was an excellent introduction to our major exhibition, 'A Better World? Scotland after the First World War'.

More young people are working behind-the-scenes at our buildings in Edinburgh and Glasgow. With the help of generous funding from private donors, we find ourselves in the position of being able to give young people an introduction to the skills and development they need to become conservators across a range of materials. As the digitisation of our collections accelerates, so does our protection of some of the Library's most fragile formats such as video and shellac records.

All of this work could not be achieved without the generosity of our supporters, who continue to assist in the funding of our ambitious plans. Thank you to everyone who has engaged with the Library over the last year.

Dr John Scally
National Librarian

 

Safeguarding collections

As guardian of the published and recorded memory of Scotland, we will continue to collect, preserve and make available a range of materials that capture Scotland's memory and contribute to world knowledge.

Acquisitions

Ambassador's Ball and Vasilisa and the Witch's Fire by Joanna Robson, 2018

We have added more fine books to our collections, made by Edinburgh-based illustrator and book artist Joanna Robson.

Ambassador's Ball is one of 20 copies of a limited edition. The lasercut concertina book is inspired by the Spring Festival that took place in 1935 at Spaso House, then residence of the US Ambassador in Moscow. It was an extravagant and chaotic party featuring more than 100 finches, pheasants, roosters, goats and a baby bear. One of the guests at the party was writer Mikhail Bulgakov, who used the event as inspiration for a famous scene in his novel 'The Master and Margarita'.

We also purchased one of 30 editions of Vasilisa and the Witch's Fire, which illustrates a scene from Russian fairytale, Vasilisa the Beautiful.

James Ferguson's 'Astronomical rotula' around 1752

The 'astronomical rotula showing the change and age of the moon, the motion of the sun, moon and nodes, with all the solar and lunar eclipses' is a rare survivor. It depicts a spiral of years from 1752 to 1800 and shows the ecliptic with 12 signs through which the sun travels over the course of the year. By rotating the discs the days of the new and full moons can be calculated.

A self-taught astronomer from Keith, Banffshire, Ferguson began work on the rotula as early as 1739. He had a version engraved in Edinburgh in 1742. This rotula is a later edition, printed in London, likely around 1752. Ferguson wrote accompanying instructions to explain its use, with worked examples, editions of which are in our collections.

Papers of Jen Hadfield

Shetland-based poet and artist Jen Hadfield won the T S Eliot poetry prize for her 2008 collection, 'Nigh-No-Place'.

The literary archive relates to Hadfield's first two collections of poetry — 'Almanacs' and 'Nigh-No-Place' — and includes drafts, mostly of published work.

The archive also includes several notebooks and sketchbooks revealing Hadfield's creative process as she travelled overseas — chiefly in Canada and Mexico — as well as artworks, photographs, press cuttings and 'ransom-demand' poems made from 'Shetland Times' headlines.

Alasdair Gray silkscreen prints

We added a set of six silkscreen prints of images from Alasdair Gray's novel Lanark, together with a print of an image of 'Prometheus' from Gray's 1984 book 'Unlikely Stories, Mostly' to the collections. The prints are signed, numbered and dated by Gray. Lanark is widely regarded as the most significant Scottish novel published in the second half of the 20th century and these prints are an important addition to our extensive print and manuscript collections of Alasdair Gray's work.

Poster for The Artist periodical, 1897

The Artist, published monthly in London by Archibald Constable & Co., included art news from around Britain. The April 1897 issue included an article by Scottish journalist Neil Munro (1863-1930), 'The year's art in Scotland'. This lithographed poster advertising the April issue was produced, presumably for the Scottish market, by printers McLagan & Cumming of Edinburgh, from a design by young English artist and book illustrator Richard J Williams. The year 1897 marked something of a watershed in Munro's career, as he chose to cut back on his journalistic work to concentrate on writing novels.

Letter of David Hume to Rev. Robert Traill, 1755

This unpublished letter is the only known correspondence with the Reverend Robert Traill, and is on display as part of the Library's exhibition on the Scottish Enlightenment, Northern Lights.

It concerns Hume's reading of a sermon by Traill where he confronts Hume's disparaging remarks about the Scottish clergy. Written in the philosopher's convivial manner, he warmly praises Traill's sermon, but notes that it would do little to convert him to Christianity. We acquired this letter with help from the Friends of the National Libraries.

A National Bibliography fit for the 21st century

Ever since our foundation in 1925, we have been involved in compiling and publishing Scotland's national bibliography. The initial focus was on historical bibliography, but from 1956 we recorded contemporary publications, resulting in a suite of different bibliographies in various formats. More recently, we decided to unify all our bibliographies into one new National Bibliography of Scotland.

This year, we published a dataset of the first version of bibliographic records for the National Bibliography of Scotland which references materials published in Scotland and/or are in Scots or Scottish Gaelic. We are now developing a dedicated online resource to allow people to explore the bibliography. Head of Rare Books, Maps and Music, Helen Vincent, who is also Chair of the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) Rare Books and Special Collections Section, presented a paper on the National Bibliography to an international audience at IFLA's World Congress in Kuala Lumpur. The paper is available in the IFLA Library, .

Gaelic manuscripts gain UNESCO recognition

Our renowned early Gaelic manuscripts were inscribed in the UNESCO Memory of the World Register in June 2018.

We hold the largest collection of Scottish Gaelic manuscripts in the world, which are recognised for their exceptional historical and linguistic significance. The manuscripts that received the UNESCO award date from the 14th to the early 18th century — only a small number of Gaelic manuscripts with a Scottish connection survive from this early period. The majority are written in Gaelic script covering a wide range of topics, and are often attractively decorated. Medical manuscripts and poetry collections form particularly strong groups, but there are also historical texts, heroic tales, saints' lives, prayers, charms, genealogy, and place-name lore.

Antiquarian music acquisitions

This has been an unusually strong year for antiquarian music acquisitions, with a rare addition to our world-class collection of early Handel editions and a version of the British national anthem with particular significance for Scottish history.

G F Handel, edited by Hugh Bond. London, [between 1787 and 1789]

'Twelve anthems for one, two, three and four voices' is a rare compilation of anthems drawn from Handel's oratorios for use in worship. It shows the popularity of Handel's works from the early years after his death. There are only five other reported copies of this edition in the world, with this newly-recorded sixth now finding a home beside our world-renowned Balfour Handel collection.

'A Loyal Song. Sung at both Theatres, for two Voices', around 1745

This is one of the earliest prints of the national anthem. The first words 'God save great George our King' include George in larger letters to emphasise who was king when Bonnie Prince Charlie returned to Scotland, and when the term 'king' seemed to become ambiguous. The song sheet is a rare issue of the version that contains an extra 'Scottish' verse relating to General George Wade's leaving for Scotland on 6 October, 1745 and it is likely that this song sheet was published shortly after this date: "O grant that Marshal Wade / May by his mighty aid / Victory bring. / May he sedition hush / And like a torrent rush / Rebellious Scots to crush. / God save the King".

Faithfully web-archived

We play a critical role in adding Scottish web content to the UK Web Archive. February saw the culmination of a focussed project to comprehensively identify, list and archive websites relating to Christian churches in Scotland. From denominational level to individual church, this involved 4,500 potential sites, with 2,700 actually being found and archived. Further to this work, 117 sites for religious groups in Scotland were also added including sites for Baha’is, Brahma Kumaris, Buddhism, Hinduism, ISKCON, Islam, Judaism and Sikhism.

 

Conservation

Ten years ago, we acquired the original stage set for The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil. Made by renowned Scottish artist John Byrne in 1973, the giant pop-up book acted as the 'scenery' for John McGrath's seminal play about Scotland's socio-economic history.

We loaned it to the V&A Dundee in June 2018 ahead of their grand opening, but not before it was repaired and preserved at our conservation workshop. As the stage set had toured the length and breadth of the country in the 1970s, we deliberately retained evidence of its travels.

In conjunction with the V&A, we photographed the stage-set from thousands of angles to create a suite of virtual 3D models, using the technique known as photogrammetry. The virtual 3D models can be viewed on our website. The physical book has pride of place in the V&A Dundee's Scottish Design Galleries.

Unlocking Our Sound Heritage

We fully commenced work on the Unlocking Our Sound Heritage project — digitising, cataloguing and clearing the rights in 5,000 sound recordings held by museums, libraries and archives from across Scotland. Highlights so far include a collection of oral history of women in the Communist Party held by the University of Strathclyde, oral histories from the Salt of the Earth collection (workers' history) held by the National Museum of Scotland, and Scotland's Record — an audio record of life across Scotland from the 1970s and 1980s with a compilation of 215 tapes.

We have been greatly assisted by the help of our volunteers — so far contributing more than 100 days to the project.

 

Improving Access

We switched our entire catalogue to a new online service that provides wider searching across the Library's collections. Library Search allows people — for the first time — to find details of our printed, manuscript and archive, moving image and digital collections in a single search.

Other improvements include being able to view borrowing history and receive notifications when items are ready to consult at our reading rooms.

Library Search replaces the 20 year-old main catalogue. Making this change puts us in good company. Thousands of academic and national libraries round the world already use a similar cloud-based system.

Digitisation

We accelerated our digitisation programme with the installation of three V-shaped scanners and the recruitment of new staff. The team is split into two work patterns, meaning our digitisation studio is staffed 14 hours a day, five days a week. We are making good progress in digitising a number of collections, including the MacKinnon Collection, League of Nations papers, Encyclopaedia Britannica and labels from the Dean-Myatt shellac record series. On a typical day, we generate more than 7,500 digital images.

Europeana: the Rise of Literacy in Europe

We are on a mission to have one third of our collections in digital format by our centenary in 2025. This year, among other items, we digitised around 2200 broadsides (proclamations, speeches or declarations) from the Crawford Collections. The broadsides are part of the Bibliotheca Lindesiana Collection, the family library of the Earls of Crawford and Balcarres. They were assembled during the 19th century and deposited at the National Library on long-term loan in the 1980s. We also digitised 50 rare book items such as hornbooks (from which children learned to read), and contributed these, and the broadsides, to a pan-European project — Europeana: the Rise of Literacy in Europe.

A digital platform for cultural heritage, Europeana hosts images from all partners, and publishes online exhibitions, blogs and galleries. 'The Rise of Literacy in Europe' tells the story of how reading and writing developed in Europe over the centuries.

The Library's contribution also includes early Gaelic books and manuscripts, mediaeval manuscripts, outputs of pre-1800s Scottish printing presses (by 1800 there were almost 40 printing towns in Scotland) and some of the staple reading material for the people of the 16th–19th centuries such as chapbooks. Our contribution also includes important milestones of printing such as our copy of the Gutenberg Bible and the Chepman and Myllar prints of 1508 — the first books printed in Scotland.

Dr Anette Hagan of the National Library has led the overall curation of the content for 'The Rise of Literacy in Europe'.

The 12 partner organisations include the national libraries of France, Latvia, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovenia, Serbia and Wales, the State Library in Berlin as well as two Italian library clusters. Europeana is part-funded by the European Commission.

Britannica digitised for all

'Encyclopaedia Britannica' was one of the earliest efforts to compile and widely share authoritative information. A key artefact of the Scottish Enlightenment, the very rare 1768 first edition — printed in Edinburgh's Lawnmarket — and hundreds of volumes of subsequent early editions are held in our collections.

In October 2018, we launched an appeal to mark Britannica's 250th anniversary. Donors supported the conservation of these rare and fragile early editions, as well as the digitisation and online publication of more than 200 volumes. This generous support also enabled us to create a digital learning resource, and feature the first edition in our major exhibition on the Scottish Enlightenment, Northern Lights.

Exploring the online versions, which have now received thousands of views, provides a fascinating glimpse into the knowledge and mores of the time. This exponential increase in the number of people who can now enjoy this iconic publication furthers original editor William Smellie's quest to provide authoritative, affordable and accessible information for all.

Mediaeval manuscripts

We are in the middle of a three-year project to digitise some of our most important mediaeval manuscripts which date from the late 10th to the 16th centuries. These form part of our collection of Advocates' Manuscripts including the Scottish treasures Barbour's 'Bruce', Blind Hary's 'Wallace' and Wyntoun's 'Original Chronicle'.

The wide-ranging, multicultural collection also includes very early Irish Latin manuscripts, French mediaeval romances, manuscripts of Middle English verse, and early Italian manuscripts.

The images will be made accessible on our website, with access to full descriptions. A project cataloguer began the descriptive work in November 2018, and is expected to complete it by the end of 2019. Our conservators are carrying out repairs as required; digitisation is expected to begin later in 2019. The project is scheduled to run until the end of 2020. We are grateful for the generous funding received from Alexander Graham for this project.

Digital Gallery viewer now open source

We are now using Universal Viewer (UV) as our main image viewer on our Digital gallery. The viewer allows users to easily zoom in and out and pan across images — examining them at an extraordinary level of detail — flip through the pages of digitised books and manuscripts, and download images to use, re-use and share.

UV is a community-developed open source project which has been adopted by a growing global community of national libraries, museums and other cultural and academic institutions. The Library is an active participant in the project both as sponsor and member of the UV Open Collective Steering Group.

Intake and cataloguing

As a Legal Deposit Library, we receive millions of items every year — which makes for a lot of cataloguing. We continue to work on our 'hidden' (uncatalogued) collections — we estimate this stands at around 1.1 million items, representing around 4.5 per cent of our physical collections.

Over the course of the year we unearthed 40,382 items from our 'hidden' collections. Highlights include the cataloguing of the Dean Myatt collection — around 3,000 sound recordings on fragile shellac records. Cataloguing this collection has been made possible by the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation. We're digitising as many of the recordings as possible, and these sounds will soon be available on our website.

The National Library of Scotland Foundation continues to support our manuscripts retro-conversion (digitisation of old catalogue records) project which is helping us reduce our hidden collections. We have also scanned several thousand printed music catalogue cards as part of the music retro-conversion project, and once complete, they will be made available online.

This year's intake includes:

• 3,538 microforms
• 6,773 ephemera
• 19,156 newspapers
• 50,165 serials
• 64,914 books
• 200,652 e-books
• 224,441 manuscripts
• 1,620,198 e-journal articles

We also added two million websites to the collections, in collaboration with our legal deposit library partners. In 2018/19, the total number of websites archived was around 10 million, amounting to more than two billion webpages, which can be accessed through the UK Web Archive.

 

Promoting research

Research is a defining characteristic of the Library. We develop collaborations across the humanities, science and business, and we support the provision of open access data.

Curator's doctoral research on Anne Lister

Kirsty McHugh, Curator of the John Murray Archive & Publishers' Collections, is undertaking a PhD at the University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies. Her research on manuscript journals of tourists to Scotland and Wales in the Romantic period includes working on the diaries of Anne Lister. Anne Lister, the subject of this year's television series 'Gentleman Jack', recorded her life as a lesbian and landowner in her four-million-word journals now preserved by West Yorkshire Archive Service.

Kirsty has painstakingly interpreted Lister's tiny abbreviated script and coded entries and will shortly publish 'Sightseeing, social climbing, steamboats and sex: Anne Lister's 1828 tour of Scotland' in 'Studies in Travel Writing' (an international, refereed journal). This will be the first study of Lister's Scottish tour — a fascinating section of her diaries, which is not only interesting in the context of the history of tourism, but significant in understanding her relationship with Scottish aristocrat Sibella Maclean.

Graham Brown fellowship in mountaineering

Artist, photographer, curator and researcher Alex Boyd FRSA was the first National Library of Scotland Graham Brown Research Fellow. The focus of his research was the social, cultural and literary significance of Scotland's mountains. He prepared a personal list of 100 iconic peaks, inspired by a classic mountain text '100 mountains of Japan' by Ky'ya Fukada.

He said: "The fellowship provided the opportunity to work closely with an impressive collection of material spanning the history of mountaineering, allowing me to place the history and development of the pursuit of high places in Scotland in an international context. The chance to focus on my own research in a supported and knowledgeable environment has proven invaluable, with access to collections and staff — especially that of maps — providing me with the stimulus needed to write several chapters of a new book which I hope to release in 2020.

"The fellowship has also allowed me to share the first results of this work with a wider audience through its public lecture series, which itself was a useful and encouraging way to celebrate the collections of the National Library of Scotland."

The fellowship is generously supported by the Graham Brown Trust.

Fullbright Scholar — Greg Baldi

"It was my great pleasure to spend autumn 2018 as the J. William Fulbright Scholar at the National Library of Scotland researching the history of the Scottish National Party (SNP).
My time at the National Library was spent largely in the Special Collections Reading Room (where readers can enjoy one of the best views in Edinburgh), reviewing primary documents. For decades, the SNP and its leaders have donated papers to the Library, and its collections on the Party and Scottish politics more broadly is unrivalled in the UK.
I was fortunate to experience the Library as a site for learning, exchange, and dialogue. I helped organise and moderate a roundtable discussion on the SNP in the 1960s and 1970s that included several current and former party leaders. The discussion will be made available to researchers.
In an era in which information is produced and consumed in ever shrinking snippets, the Library reminds us of the enduring value of a deep engagement with a nation's documented history and culture."

Incunabula seminar

Incunabula — universally recognised as cultural treasures — are books published in the earliest days of printing, before 1501, and we have one of the largest collections in Scotland with more than 600 items. We hosted a seminar to mark the completion of a project to catalogue these works: 'Incunabula: people, places, products and their relationships' in October 2018.

Thirteen papers were presented to 40 attendees, who came from around the UK and European countries including Hungary, Italy and Norway. One of the papers was presented by Rare Books Curator Robert Betteridge on the Library's collecting of incunabula during the Second World War.

Scotland's mediaeval chartularies

Funded by the Royal Society of Edinburgh, this one-year project enabled a series of collaborative research workshops and post-graduate seminars. These brought together academics from the University of Glasgow, with curators and conservators from the Library and the National Records of Scotland.

Chartularies present challenges for the scholar, the curator and the conservator. Research into chartularies has developed significantly in recent years, and has led to a re-assessment of the role of these manuscripts and their purpose in monastic communities. Tight bindings present issues for conservation and digitisation. The complex contents — which sometimes grew over several centuries — present particular challenges for cataloguing.

This collaboration allowed experts in their fields to consider research approaches, care, digitisation and curation of chartularies in the major Scottish collections.

We hold the largest collection of Scottish chartularies that survive from pre-Reformation Scotland, and our workshops allowed hands-on experience to consider the materiality of these significant records of mediaeval society.

Age Scotland uncover their story

As part of a National Lottery Heritage Fund project to celebrate 75 years of older people's groups in Scotland, Age Scotland formed a team of 'history detectives' to explore their predecessor charities' publications in our collections and uncover more about their history.

Age Scotland was particularly pleased to be able to examine Homes for Old People in Scotland (1947), a directory listing 109 homes for old people, produced by the Scottish Old People's Welfare Committee.

The Library also holds all copies of The Old People's Welfare, Scottish Bulletin, from 1951–1973. The bulletins, combined with other documents and photograph albums, and the oral history testimony of those involved in member organisations, meant Age Scotland was able to piece together its history:
"We're enormously grateful to the National Library, who helped us shed light on the remarkable and neglected story of older people's groups and organisations in Scotland and their considerable achievements over the past 75 years. Without their work caring for documents, this important social and political history of Scotland would have been lost."

Partnership formalised with University of Glasgow

We officially agreed on a programme of greater collaboration with the University of Glasgow following a period of increased activity between our two institutions.

In November 2018, we signed a Memorandum of Understanding to ensure we continue to deliver innovative partnerships in the areas of research, teaching, access to collections, knowledge exchange, public engagement and outreach.

Existing and future areas of collaboration include the Library's contribution of expertise to the CREATE copyright research centre hosted by the University; a collaborative research project on the complete works of Allan Ramsay; and skills exchange in archiving and cataloguing.

Text and data mining

We ran a series of workshops through 2018 to explore the state of development of text and data mining in Scotland. In particular, the workshops focused on the development of computational analysis tools and considered the role of libraries and other organisations in the application of these methods.

The series brought together participants from academia, the digital industry, heritage organisations and independent innovators. The series was led by the National Library in collaboration with the University of Glasgow with funding from the Royal Society of Edinburgh's Arts and Humanities Research Grants scheme.

 

Supporting Learning

We ensure our collections and services make an important contribution to the education, learning and advancement of our citizens and the success of our nation.

Creative re-sits of old exam papers

Upon digitising our collection of Scottish school exam papers, we invited Scotland's creative community to dance the 1932 Geometry (Higher) paper, paint the 1937 Day School (Higher) paper, and sing the 1962 Mathematics (Higher) paper.

The Library awarded small bursaries to several exceptional proposals. The finished works included charcoal vignettes depicting the nature of the crow, an illuminated manuscript produced on road-kill vellum parchment, a short contemporary dance film set in a school hall in the Highlands, a geometric pas de deux, an algebraic octet based on exam instructions, a punk performance which reconciles equations, and a film of a semi-improvised performance at the Dun Beag broch on the Isle of Skye involving a choir of 20 volunteers.

These astonishing artistic responses are hosted on our Scottish school exams website, along with the digitised exam papers and other interpretive content.

Incunabula placement

Every year, the Consortium of European Research Libraries (CERL) offers internship and placement grants to allow librarians and scholars to work on CERL projects. Alongside Cambridge University Library and Yale University Library, the National Library was selected to host an intern.

We hosted Dr Krisztina Rábai, Assistant Professor in Mediaeval and Book History at the University of Szeged, Hungary, who worked with our recently catalogued collection of incunabula, adding data to CERL's Material Evidence in Incunabula. This database allows scholars to track the movement of incunabula across Europe and the wider world from the 15th century to the present. More than 270 of our 15th-century books are now included in the database.

Centre for the History of the Book placements

The Library hosts placements for students taking the MSc in Book History and Material Culture offered by the Centre for the History of the Book at the University of Edinburgh. Students have researched the collections, enhanced catalogue descriptions, and produced articles about their work, giving them valuable experience of the professional skills involved in working with rare books and manuscripts.

Margaret Stephen worked in our Archives and Manuscripts Collections Division, creating a box list of the HappenStance Press archive which was donated to the Library in 2018. Fife-based HappenStance Press is a publisher of poetry pamphlets mainly by new Scottish writers. Box listing is the first stage of facilitating public access.

Ted Simonds spent his placement at our Maps Reading Room. He said:
"My time here has involved listing and researching early historical maps from 17th, 18th and 19th-century atlases. I have handled a range of materials, early printed maps and reference resources. By creating map-level descriptions, the potential to find and understand the collections in the future increases. Beyond making map listings, I have been introduced to the scope and range of the Library’s map collections, cataloguing systems, and geographical information systems. It has helped inform my current thesis on maps in early modern bibles, and provided key insights into the workings of a map library."

Conservation students gain work experience

We hosted a group of student volunteers for a conservation programme that's specifically targeted at those with an interest in developing careers in the cultural heritage sector.

Throughout the summer, volunteers spent one day per week working en masse to complete a range of tasks like cleaning and stabilising items from the collections — including newly acquired material — and rehousing printing plates, photographs and pamphlets.

Volunteers gained invaluable work experience and we benefited from their enthusiasm at the conservation workshop. It's proving to be a popular programme — the Library will run it again this year.

Library branches into fashion

In autumn 2018, we held a competition for students and recent graduates of design courses (such as fashion or textile design) in Scotland.

Called 'Re-Fashioned', the competition invited entrants to produce a creative response to 100 years of social, political and cultural change since the Armistice, tying in with our major exhibition — A Better World? Scotland after the First World War.

Submissions went on display at our George IV Bridge building the following January. Judges — drawn mostly from the fashion industry — were unanimous in selecting the winner — Brian McLysaght, who is studying Fashion at the University of Edinburgh. Rosie Baird, who is studying Fashion at Edinburgh College of Art, was the winner of the People's Choice Award.

Brian received a career development award of £750 and saw his winning creation brought to life at the Library with a professional photo shoot at our reading rooms.

Preservation for the next generation

We took on three excellent trainees to help us preserve our most vulnerable sound, moving image and paper collections. Alex Graham, a television producer by trade who was responsible for the hit series 'Who Do You Think You Are', funded the traineeships — the single biggest private investment we've had so far for helping young people into employment. He cites a love of libraries from a young age, and the assistance he received in producing the series — which could not have been made without the dedication of hundreds of years of archivist time.

Jarvis Gray, based at the Library's Moving Image Archive at Kelvin Hall, is working on restoring and digitising the 1980s Grampian TV (now STV North) Archive. Most of the footage is on VHS tape, which, in 2016, the British Film Institute warned was at risk of being lost forever within five years. Jarvis — an aspiring filmmaker — said he has found "watching thousands of hours of film so beneficial".

The latest to join us for her traineeship, Nicola Reade is digitising our collection of 3,000 shellac discs. By the end of her traineeship Nicola will have made incredibly rare recordings of music hall entertainers, Highland reels and Scots medleys available for the first time.

Claire Hutchison has completed her internship in our conservation workshop, where she assessed and treated a sample of our collection of two million newspapers. "Newspapers were only made to last a day, of course. One of their components is acid, which causes them to self-destruct. Big binding buckles and straps have also torn big chunks of material. But newspapers are the Library's most frequently requested collection and so accessibility is key. Everything I'm doing is with a view to them being used and handled again."

What Scotland means to our young people

As 2018 was Scotland's Year of Young People, we partnered with the Scottish Youth Film Festival to invite young people to enter a competition with films entitled 'What Scotland Means to Me'.

The winning film in the '12 years and under' category From Dancing Dundee, was made by Sen and Lucy as they danced their way around Tayside and provided an insight into their view of Scotland.

The '13 years and over' category was won by St Thomas Aquinas Acrostic Account where a group of pupils shared their thoughts about what Scotland means to them, using individual pieces to camera.

Shortlisted films will be added to the Library's collections and preserved in perpetuity.

 

Inspiring engagement

We design and deliver public engagement programmes that educate, entertain and inspire the communities of Scotland.

Strike for Freedom: Slavery, Civil War and the Frederick Douglass family

4 October — 16 February 2019

In a world first, items belonging to the Frederick Douglass family were displayed to the public at the Library to mark the 200th anniversary of the prominent abolitionist's birth. The letters, speeches and photographs were on loan from the Walter O. and Linda Evans Collection.

The display was complemented by a series of talks, outreach events and heritage walks delivered by co-curator Celeste-Marie Bernier, Personal Chair in United States and Atlantic Studies at the University of Edinburgh. The entire series was fully booked.

With more than 17,000 visits, the display had massive local and universal appeal. Many were residents of Scotland, but many also came from the US, and from as far as Taiwan and India. One visitor said:
"I am here because he was. Thank you for this amazing exhibition that brings the equation of racial equality into being. Frederick Douglass's life is testimony that whatever we do today paves a way for future generations." Barbara, Kampala, Uganda.

Celebrating 25 years of bookbinding

21 February — 13 April 2019

We established the Elizabeth Soutar Bookbinding competition in 1993 to support excellence in craft bookbinding, with the first prizewinning ceremony taking place in May 1994. It was generously sponsored by Mrs Elizabeth A Clark (formerly Soutar) of Moray — in memory of her late parents — from 1993 until her death in 2008. Thanks to a bequest from her, the competition has continued with support from the Magnus and Janet Soutar Fund.

Over the last 25 years, we have received many visually stunning and highly original examples of bookbinding, many of which went on public display this year.

Gutenberg Bible pop-up day

Thursday 22 November 2018

One of the world's most treasured books, the Gutenberg Bible, went on public display for one day in Edinburgh. Despite gloomy weather conditions, more than 1000 people flocked to the Library to get a glimpse of the first major book published using moveable type in Europe, produced in the 1450s by Johannes Gutenberg in Mainz, Germany.

Visitors were also treated to a viewing of a variety of other incunabula (books printed before 1500 in the infancy of printing). The Library's copy of the Gutenberg Bible is one of 20 complete copies still in existence.

Beano pop-up day

Saturday 28 July 2018

More than 800 people came along to Kelvin Hall for a one day pop-up exhibition to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the publication of the Beano. On display was our copy of Beano issue no.1 (one of perhaps only a couple of dozen in existence) alongside some other special Beano items from our collections. We were delighted to also have on display original artwork from the DC Thomson archive, loaned to us for the occasion.

Activities included a prank workshop (which had to close for 20 minutes when it ran out of pranks), an animation station with an animator-in-residence, a 'whoopee' noise listening post (extraordinarily popular with all ages), and a football session for kids.

One-day display on Burns Day

Friday 25 January 2019

Burns fans flocked to Kelvin Hall on Burns Day for a glance at manuscripts containing some of his most provocative social commentary.

A collaboration between the National Library and Glasgow's Mitchell Library, Holy Willie's Prayer (1785) and The Ordination: A Scotch Poem (1786) — both of which explore the use and misuse of religious power in 18th-century Scotland — sat side-by-side for the first time in many years — possibly ever.

Mary, Queen of Scots

Friday 8 and Saturday 9 February 2019

To coincide with the release of the feature film, 'Mary, Queen of Scots', we held a two-day event in Edinburgh where enthusiasts got to view unique and rare material from our collections.

Many hundreds of fans came from far and wide for the event, which explored depictions of Mary Stuart through the ages — from the lavish engravings of a Mary Queen of Scots-themed masked ball in 1820s France to 20th and 21st-century film scripts and ephemera.

Visitors also viewed an early charter with Mary's Great Seal, her childhood correspondence with her mother, Mary of Guise, and a letter to the French ambassador in England written in the early days of her captivity.

Your vote to chart the past

A selection of items, all scheduled for repair in our conservation workshop, were displayed at George IV Bridge in late 2018, and pre-treatment photographs were posted on social media. We asked the public to vote for the collection, and the treatment, that they most wanted to follow. The winning collection — an assortment of rolled geological charts — was selected. Library paper conservator, Shona Hunter, documented her work through video and stills, and the treated charts then went on display in 2019. The display also included documentation of the treatment as well as several tools of the trade.

Youngwummin

21 June — 29 September 2018

As part of the Year of Young People 2018 and the centenary of the First World War, the Youngwummin project helped young people conduct research on the impact of the war on young women in Scotland.

We worked in partnership with YouthLink and a range of local authorities to support the training and development of youth workers from across Scotland. The youth workers developed their heritage skills by examining items from the First World War in the national collections. Young people also visited the Library in preparation of their display, which we hosted over the summer months.

The project was funded by The National Lottery Heritage Fund.

A Better World? Scotland after the First World War

16 November — 27 April 2019

Marking 100 years since the Armistice, this major exhibition explored many aspects of life in Scotland in the aftermath of the war, including demobilisation, commemoration, the struggle for better working and living conditions, the changing political landscape, and an emerging Scottish cultural and political identity.

The exhibition was named after a phrase used by the Ministry of Reconstruction, which was formed in 1917 to rebuild the nation after the war. The Ministry developed the idea of rebuilding a society that was fairer than it was before the war, stating that "the idea of … a simple return to pre-war conditions, has gradually been supplanted by the larger and worthier idea of a better world".

 

Reaching out

We will continue to develop the National Library as an exciting and memorable destination for both onsite and online visitors, and explore opportunities to establish our physical presence throughout Scotland.

Energy targets surpassed

In July 2018, we announced we had exceeded the Scottish Government's 2020 climate change target, and our actions have been recognised with a gold pledge award from Zero Waste Scotland. The Government set the targets in 2009, and since then, we reduced our carbon emissions by 62 per cent — 20 per cent more than the 42 per cent target. Energy use was also cut by 52 per cent, far surpassing the 40 per cent target.

Upon visiting the Library, Marissa Lippiatt, Head of Resource Efficiency, Zero Waste Scotland said:
"The Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009 sets ambitious targets to reduce carbon emissions by 42 per cent by 2020, and earlier this year announced a new target of 66 per cent reduction by 2032. That's why it's fantastic to see that the National Library has already surpassed their goal. They have done an amazing job of putting a realistic and measurable plan in place that involved everyone in the organisation."

Library on tour

Our touring displays have enabled us to continue to reach new destinations and forge new relationships with organisations in the heritage and culture sectors. The displays are drawn from a selection of our previous exhibitions and take the form of portable graphic banners, accompanied by facsimile collection items.

This year, 'Lifting the Lid' — an exploration of Scotland's rich food history — travelled to Elgin — the furthest north any display has travelled so far. In the southwest, visitors to Stranraer Museum discovered the magic of the movies with 'Going to the Pictures'.

Support from the Library Foundation has aided greatly in the development and delivery of the project — potential venues have a choice of three portable exhibitions they can host, free of charge. Many choose to augment the displays to suit their locality.

Lifting the Lid

This display travelled to the following venues:

11 June — 14 August 2018 — Carnegie Library, Ayr

21 August — 16 October 2018 — Inverclyde Libraries

The display travelled to venues including Gourock Library, Port Glasgow Library and the Inverclyde Heritage Club.

19 November — 20 January 2019 — Kirkaldy Galleries, Fife

26 January — 23 March 2019 — Elgin Library, Moray

Going to the Pictures

This display travelled to the following venues:

11 June — 2 September 2018 — East Renfrewshire Libraries

8 September — 4 November 2018 — Stranraer Museum, Dumfries and Galloway

8 November 2018 — 8 February 2019 — Motherwell Library and Cumbernauld Library, North Lanarkshire

Now on tour is 'You are Here' based on the 2016 exhibition of the same name, which explores the beauty and ingenuity of maps.

 

Mòd Dhùn OmHain

12-20 Dàmhair 2018

We made our annual visit to the Gaelic Mòd, which was held in Dunoon, in October 2018. Our information stand captured the attention of a large number of Mòd competitors and friends — an excellent way of engaging with people clearing their attics. Unsure what to do with the music, Gaelic and local pamphlets they had found, they may well have filled gaps in the national collection. We also screened films at the Mòd Fringe at Dunoon's new library, and encouraged people to use or help us build our Dunoon collections. We managed to collect information and publications which we previously didn't have, for example a large run of Cowal Highland Gathering programmes from the 1930s to date — an important acquisition as this is probably one of the largest Highland games in Europe, celebrating its 125th anniversary this year.

 

Funding our work

Income 2018/19

Grant in Aid
£15,280,000

Charitable activities
£662,000

Donations and legacies
£852,000

Investments
£215,000

Other trading activities
£129,000

Spending 2018/19

Staff
£10,739,000

Building maintenance
£1,026,000

Depreciation
£2,899,000

Other running costs
£1,909,000

Other property costs
£853,000

Collection purchases
£988,873