Midlothian is situated south of Edinburgh, and emerged as a county in the Middle Ages, also being known as Edinburghshire until 1921. The Local Government Reorganisation in 1975 saw it lose vast swathes of land to Edinburgh, East Lothian, West Lothian and the Scottish Borders. Most of the settlements lost at this time were relatively […]
Putting the Music Catalogue Online: Part 3 – What this project will do for you!
In our previous two blogs of the series we gave you a general overview of the Music Retroconversion Project that the National Library is currently working on, followed by a discussion of some of the different cards we’ve been converting and the challenges these have posed. This final blog describes the benefits the project will […]
Zoom into West Dunbartonshire
Collated by: Veronica Bell. Situated between Glasgow to the west and Loch Lomond to the north, West Dunbartonshire is a county centred around three main towns: Dumbarton, Clydebank, and the Vale of Leven district. It is historically significant – the town of Dumbarton was the capital of the ancient kingdom of Strathclyde, and its famous […]
Putting the Music Catalogue Online: Part 2 – So many cards, so many challenges!
In our previous blog of this series, we gave you a general overview of the Music Retoconversion Project that the National Library is currently working on. Here we will discuss some of the different cards we’ve been converting and the challenges these have posed. The catalogues contain two types of cards: regular bibliographic cards with […]
Curators’ Favourites: Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Amateur Emigrant
The choice: Robert Louis Stevenson – The Amateur Emigrant (Edinburgh, 1895) Chosen by: Anette Hagan, Rare Books Curator (Early Printed Collections to 1700) Read or download this book from our Digital Gallery. Welcome to the latest of our new fortnightly series where we introduce you to some favourites from our collections for you to enjoy reading, all freely available online. This […]
Putting the Music Catalogue Online: Part 1 – Project Background
The National Library is working on a project to transfer its music card catalogues to the library’s online catalogue. Up until now, to search for music materials, users had the option of physically searching the Main Music Card Catalogue in the reading rooms, or they could phone the library and the librarians would check through […]
Zoom into Argyll and Bute
Collated by Veronica Bell. Argyll and Bute is the second largest administrative area of any Scottish council, with its varied geography consisting of a heavily indented coastline, numerous islands, and a hilly mainland encompassing hundreds of lochs. There is much for the historian to discover, from prehistoric monuments such as Kilmartin, to early Christian sites […]
Curators’ Favourites: Some Remarkable Passages in the Life of the Honourable Col. James Gardiner
The choice: Philip Doddridge, Some Remarkable Passages in the Life of the Honourable Col. James Gardiner. (London, 1748). Chosen by: Robert Betteridge, Rare Books Curator (Eighteenth-Century Printed Collections) Read or download this book from our Digital Gallery. Welcome to the latest of our new fortnightly series where we introduce you to some favourites from our collections for you to […]
Doors Open Day: Through ‘The Void’ to Libberton’s Wynd
During Doors Open Day, we try to take visitors to hitherto unknown parts of the National Library building at George IV Bridge. ‘The Void’ is the final destination of our tours on Doors Open Day – but what is ‘The Void’? ‘The Void’ is effectively a sub-street space between the structures of the Library building […]
Doors Open Day: The Staircase Window by Helen Monro Turner
Following his unfortunate death, to ensure continuity in the Library project, Reginald Fairlie was succeeded as the Library’s architect by one of the partners in his architectural practice, Alexander Ritchie Conlon. Conlon’s fledgling career had been interrupted by the Second World War, during which he served as an Officer with the Royal Engineers’ bomb disposal. […]