Part of the historic county of Renfrewshire, Inverclyde is situated in the crook of the upper Firth of Clyde as it bends east toward Glasgow. Its largest towns, Greenock and Port Glasgow, were historic centres of shipbuilding. From the eighteenth century they were key ports for the British trade in goods from overseas, including commodities, […]
Category: 21st-century items
Zoom into Clackmannanshire
Collated by Charlotte James Robertson. This time in our ‘Zoom into…’ series the spotlight is on Clackmannanshire. Affectionately known as ‘The Wee County’ it is mainland Scotland’s smallest council area by population. Clackmannanshire borders the council areas of Stirling, Fife, and Perth & Kinross. The town of Clackmannan was the county town up until 1822 when Alloa became the main administrative centre. […]
21st Century Periods
In early 2020, following the Government’s Period Poverty Bill and the subsequent Let’s Call Periods, Periods campaign, we committed to supplying free sanitary products in our buildings. By happy coincidence, General Collections curators Dora Petherbridge and Jan Usher had been working with Professor Bettina Bildhauer and Dr Camilla Mørk Røstvik of St Andrews University, who […]
Celebrating Scottish Publisher Legacies at the Edinburgh Book Festival
The weekend saw the launch of the Edinburgh Book Festival 2020, an online pageant of literary events about the latest page-turners including several events by authors signed to Scottish publishers. From Canongate to 404 Ink and other greats in between, publishers are essential to keeping the National Library of Scotland’s catalogue full of the latest […]
Pressing forward
At the National Library, we delight in seeing the reactions of visitors to our exhibitions, in welcoming people to our reading rooms, and constantly turning the page on materials that make up the nation’s permanent collection. It’s a privilege to share in the discoveries made by people visiting the Library that help us all to […]
Zoom into the Orkney Islands
Collated by Alison Leslie. Orkney, or the Orkney Islands, is a group of 70 islands off the north coast of Scotland. They became part of Scotland in 1469 in lieu of an unpaid dowry from Norway. Today Orkney is best known for its historic sites, the dive sites around the scuttled World War One German fleet, its birdlife, its food and drink, and the North Ronaldsay sheep […]
Happy 60th Birthday Ian Rankin
Today marks the 60th birthday of the UK’s number one best-selling crime writer, Ian Rankin. To celebrate Mr. Rankin’s latest milestone, we thought it appropriate to dedicate this post to his other love: music.
Archiving Scotland’s response to COVID-19
If you look at traditional media such as newspapers and magazines just now it often feels like everything is about coronavirus. The National Library of Scotland as you would expect will collect the newspapers, official publications and magazines that appear during the pandemic and when they are published the inevitable books that will chronicle this […]
A Library placement
Hi there! My name is Tara and I am an Information and Library Science MSc student at the University of Strathclyde. From January to March I was on a student placement at the National Library of Scotland. This was a fantastic opportunity for me to gain some real work experience and put theories from my […]
Dungeons & Dragons at the National Library
Dungeons & Dragons is a fantasy table-top roleplaying game that combines improvisation, storytelling, and strategy. It was born out of a combination of war-gaming, in which participants simulate historic battles using miniature figurines, and the fantasy literature of J.R.R Tolkein, Jack Vance, and Poul Anderson. It was first published in 1974 by Tactical Studies Rules, […]