Tracing the history of Scottish libraries from ecclesiastical and private collection to institutional, circulating, and subscription libraries, one would assume the Scots would have embraced the notion of public libraries. In reality? Not so much.

1. Parish to Public:
The Surprising History of
Libraries in Scotland

2. Thesis
• Tracing the development of libraries in Scotland reveals
an increasing focus on the community.
• Progressing from ecclesiastical and private collections to
institutional, circulating, and subscription libraries
inspired and directed by individual communities, the
move toward public libraries would, we might assume, be
an organic one.
• However, the formal institution of public libraries in
Scotland was met with surprising opposition, which
prompts a consideration of the roadblocks (then and now)
pertinent to the successful adoption of public libraries.
Ashley Gray

3. Note: Considering Scotland &
England
• 1603 - united under one monarch
(James VI)
• 1657 - Scotland loses independence
in English Civil War
• 1707 – Act of Anglo-Scottish
Union, Scots lose their parliament
Histories are intertwined
“…twin kingdoms, born of the same era and from the same forces” (Herman 23).
Ashley Gray

4. Note: Considering Scotland &
England
• While Scotland can claim many
“firsts” in British library history,
it is difficult to extricate what
was a purely Scottish
development and what was
borrowed from England.
• Additionally, there are far fewer
records of Scottish libraries
than there are English.
Ashley Gray

5. Types of Scottish Libraries
• Ecclesiastical
• Private
• Institutional
• Circulating
• Subscription
• Public
Pictured (counter-clockwise): Catalog page from Edinburgh
Circulating Library, Engraving of interior of Advocates’ Library
(Edinburgh), Exterior of Kirkwall Library (Orkney)
Ashley Gray

6. Chronology of the
Emergence of Scottish Libraries
1400 1500 1600 1700 1800 1900
Enlightenment
c. 1740-1790
Scottish
Reformation
1560
printing press
and the
Renaissance
c. 1450
Public
Libraries Act
(Scotland)
1853
Copyright
Act 1709
Ecclesiastical Libraries
Institutional Libraries
Circulating Libraries
Subscription Libraries
Public Libraries
Glorious
Revolution
1688-89
Private Libraries
Ashley Gray

7. Ecclesiastical Libraries
• Until the thirteenth century, monastery
and cathedral libraries contained at most a
few hundred volumes.
• Books were chained to lecterns or kept in
chests.
• As collections grew, larger spaces were
constructed to hold them: closets, small
rooms, and sometimes entirely separate
buildings.
The earliest Scottish libraries were medieval monastic libraries of
manuscripts—e.g., at Iona and Lochleven.
The dissolution of monastic libraries during the Scottish Reformation
destroyed most libraries and their contents.
St. Columba stained glass at Iona
Ashley Gray

8. Private Libraries
• Benefactors were often members of
the clergy, educated professionals, and
well-traveled bibliophiles.
• Until the mid-19th century, virtually every library
founded for public or professional use in Scotland
was built upon a bestowed personal collection.
Ashley Gray

9. Private Libraries
• Before the 16th century, private libraries largely belonged
to the nobility and the wealthy.
• Impact of the printing press and Renaissance humanism:
other social brackets were interested in developing and
could afford to cultivate personal libraries.
– By 16th century, library-owners included:
churchmen, educators, students, doctors,
and lawyers.
– By 18th century: landed
gentry, merchants.
Ashley Gray

10. Institutional Libraries
Apart from ecclesiastical collections, “most libraries
of consequence were institutional” (Bunch 59) –
i.e., libraries connected with universities and the
elite professions, such as medicine and law.
University of
Edinburgh
Ashley Gray

11. • St. Andrews (1411) established a library in 1612
• Glasgow (1451) - c. 1475
• Edinburgh (1583) – 1580 (predates the university)
• Aberdeen (1494) – first known record of library in 1634
• Small collections until the Copyright Act of 1709
– “required publishers to provide, free of charge, eleven copies of all
books registered at Stationers’ Hall in London” (Bunch 86) to several
British universities and colleges, as well as the British Museum, the
University of Dublin, and the Advocates’ Library in Edinburgh.
• Practices regarding accessibility varied across the centuries and
between institutions.
• Overall, collections were generally available to professors,
sometimes to students, and rarely to persons unconnected with
the university.
Institutional Libraries:
The Four Scottish Universities
Ashley Gray

12. Institutional Libraries:
Medical/Hospital Libraries
• First Scottish medical
library was established in
1681 out of the Royal
College of Physicians of
Edinburgh.
• First hospital library in the
entire UK was the Royal
Infirmary, also in
Edinburgh, and opened in
1741.
New library of the Royal College of Physicians, 2012
Ashley Gray

13. Institutional Libraries:
The Advocates’ Library in Edinburgh
• Opened in 1689.
• Originally functioned in a professional capacity for
the Faculty of the Advocates but throughout the
Enlightenment, Faculty unofficially lent books to
nonmembers.
• Gradually acquired personal collections of
historians, physicians, and government officials.
• Expanded further under the Copyright Act,
purchases, and donations.
• By the 1850s, effectively served as the national
repository.
• In 1925, entire non-law collection—over 750,000
documents—was donated as the foundation
collection of the National Library of Scotland.
Fun fact: you can have your wedding reception
at the library, now called the Signet LibraryAshley Gray

14. Circulating Libraries
• Circulating libraries (often called lending
libraries) were commercial ventures run
by booksellers who maintained rental
shelves in the back of their shops.
• Allan Ramsay is credited with
establishing the first circulating library
in Edinburgh in the 1720s.
• At least 70 existed before 1800, but with
more than 300 booksellers in business
at the time, many more likely operated a
rental scheme.
• Thrived primarily in metropolitan
areas, e.g. market and industrial towns.
Ashley Gray

15. Circulating Libraries
• Provided the
public with a less
costly reading
option: a
subscription fee
permitted a
patron to borrow
the latest books
for several days.
• ~ 200 arose in first decades of 19th century—53 in Edinburgh alone!
• Known for their propagation of novels, but also provided plentiful
works on science, history, and religion.
Ashley Gray

16. Subscription Libraries
• Generally run by “societies” and
functioned as private clubs.
• Established with
practical, social, and cultural
aims.
• Formed mainly to facilitate the
purchase of/access to books
otherwise unaffordable by
individuals.
• Also cultivated “polite
sociability” (Towsey, “All
Partners” 41) and promoted
intellectual pursuits.
Ashley Gray

17. Subscription Libraries
• Collections were determined by
the members, who paid a fee for
a share in the library as well as a
voice in its acquisitions and
overall management.
• Popular in county and industrial
towns.
• Whereas England did not
earnestly adopt this model until
the 1820s, many smaller
Scottish towns had at least one
by 1800.
15
before
1790
37
established
in the
1790s
203
more
between
1800 and
1830
Growth of Scottish Subscription Libraries
Ashley Gray

18. Subscription Libraries
• Founders and members ranged from doctors, surgeons, lawyers, and
church ministers to
merchants, workmen, farmers, cobblers, weavers, and grocers.
• Variety of flavors: some avoided fiction in favor of more cerebral
material, others sought out controversial works, and still others sought to
instill proper conduct and facilitate spiritual growth.
• Mark Towsey’s analysis of 44 surviving subscription catalogs:
– Two-thirds offered novels, works of poetry, and other “imaginative literature”
– Many carried books of Scottish philosophy and literary criticism
– Nearly all had famous Enlightenment history texts
• Many shaped their offerings according to other collections and took their
literary cues from London, Edinburgh, and Glasgow authorities.
Ashley Gray

19. Subscription Libraries:
Leadhills Reading Society
Total collection in 1904 was nearly 5,000 volumes, the largest
subscription library collection in Scotland.
• Founded in 1748
• First subscription
library in Britain
• At its
peak, consisted of
nearly 90% of a
single mining
village.
Ashley Gray

20. By 1850
• By 1850, there was a library in almost every
burgh and most villages in Scotland--often more
than one.
• “The subscription libraries, embodying as they
did the principle of voluntary association, almost
anticipated the public library idea” (Aitken 25).
Operative word: almost
Ashley Gray

21. Public Libraries
Modern definition:
free for all to use and funded (at
least in part) from public sources
Historical Scottish reality:
With some exceptions (Dundee, Innerpeffray, and Kirkwall), town
and subscription libraries often carried the word “Public” in their
title but restricted loaning privileges, usually in favor of
paying members.
– E.g. Glasgow Public Town Library. (est. 1791), which lent books only
to “such citizens and inhabitants of Glasgow as should pay a life-
subscription of three guineas.”
Ashley Gray

22. Public Libraries:
Acts of Parliament
• 1845: Museum Act
– gave town councils of local governments with populations of
a minimum magnitude the power to establish museums with
monies raised from property taxes
– also posited the idea that as with “public galleries of art and
science, and other institutions of promoting knowledge”
(Kelly 9), so should libraries be made intentionally publicly
accessible institutions
• 1850: Public Libraries Act
– proposed that government funds should be directed toward
library aid and that libraries should be added to the list of
institutions able to be erected through municipal initiative
Ashley Gray

23. Public Libraries:
The Scottish Reaction
• The Public Libraries Act was not
extended to Scotland until 1853.
• Although the bill passed with little debate, it was met
with strong opposition by many Scottish cities and
towns when local councils proposed to actually adopt
it.
– Proposals were rejected repeatedly in
Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Glasgow, and Arbroath.
• By 1878, there were only six rate-supported public
libraries in the nation.
Ashley Gray

24. Public Libraries:
The Scottish Reaction
• Even after public libraries grew in
prominence, subscription libraries
did not immediately dissolve, and
many survived well into the
twentieth century.
• The Scottish Library Association was
not formed until 1908—more than
thirty years after England had
established their Library Association
in 1877.
Ashley Gray

25. Public Libraries:
The Scottish Reaction
The trajectory of the library in Scotland from the
Middle Ages to the Victorian era would seem to
promise an organic development toward the modern
public library.
Yet Scotland resisted the public library
movement, and slow growth was achieved more by
philanthropists than by public demand.
Ashley Gray

26. Why?
Why was Scotland, a nation that could claim so much
in the way of community library origins, so resistant
to the institution of public libraries?
Ashley Gray

27. Reasons for Opposition:
Practical
• Parliament granted permission for local
initiative and determined the conditions,
but to adopt the act, towns still had to
raise taxes.
– Glasgow was “not empowered to levy a
library rate” until 1899—45 years after
the initial Act—and largely thanks to a
gift from Andrew Carnegie.
– In many cases, even with gifts from
Carnegie, subsequent levies were
insufficient to maintain or further
develop a library once it was established.
“Local taxes were already
burdensome and oppressive.
The good from the proposed
library would be of a
trifling character and
confined to a few who
could easily supply their
wants otherwise.”
- Paisley Gazette,
1857
Ashley Gray

28. Reasons for Opposition:
Practical
• Redundancy—virtually every market town, significant
village, and major city already had a library or similar book-
providing establishment.
• Competition – circulating libraries feared free institutions
would drive them out of business.
Ashley Gray

29. Reasons for Opposition:
Personal
• Resentment?
– Recall centuries of English v. Scotland animosity. Anglo-Scottish
political unification did not automatically or often connote political
peace—even in something so innocuous-sounding as library
history.
• Pride?
– “In the boroughs of Ayr and Kilmarnock, and in almost every
borough in Scotland, there were excellent libraries established
without any help whatever from [Parliament]”
- Alexander Oswald, 1850
• Desire to maintain social status quo?
– James Hudson lamented in 1850 the “exclusive and aristocratic
spirit in [subscription libraries’] conditions of membership and in
the choice of works supplied.”
Ashley Gray

30. Did it work?
Eventually, public libraries in Scotland became the
majority rather than the minority.
• Many library services were initiated through
Education Acts in the first decades of the 20th
century.
• By World War II, public libraries far
outnumbered circulating and subscription
libraries.
Ashley Gray

31. Conclusion:
Relevance and Further Questions
Scotland’s surprising history raises many questions
pertinent to public libraries today as we continue to
contend with the problem of a fundamental necessity
(moral, education, social, etc.) being challenged or
outweighed by financial infeasibility, uncertainty, and
prejudice.
Ashley Gray

32. Conclusion:
Relevance and Further Questions
How might we better harmonize these considerations?
What provisions must be in place?
What boundaries do we push?
What unfortunate yet undeniably human factors are at
work and how can they best be reconciled?
We know libraries make the world a better place. How
do we make the world a better place for libraries?
Ashley Gray

33. Conclusion:
Final Thoughts
Aberdeen University Library, interior
Library leaders
today will need
to act with
creativity, sensi
tivity, and
vision to
provide
beneficial
solutions to
these questions.
Ashley Gray

34. Bibliography & Image Sources
“The Advocates Library.” The Advocates Library. The Faculty of Advocates, 2012. Web. 17 July 2013.
Aitken, W. R. A History of the Public Library Movement in Scotland to 1955. Glasgow: Scottish Library Association, 1971. Print. Scottish
Library Studies.
Bunch, Antonia J. Hospital and Medical Libraries in Scotland. Glasgow: Scottish Library Association, 1975. Print. Scottish Library Studies.
Crawford, John. “Recovering the Lost Scottish Community Library: The Example of Fenwick.” Library History 23.3 (2007): 201-212.
Academic Search Complete. Web. 15 July 2013.
Durkan, John, and Anthony Ross. Early Scottish Libraries. Glasgow: J.S. Burns & Sons, 1961. Print.
Edwards, Edward. Memoirs of Libraries: Including a Handbook of Library Economy. Two volumes. New York: Burt Franklin, 1859. Print.
Herman, Arthur. How the Scots Invented the Modern World: The True Story of How Western Europe's Poorest Nation Created Our World &
Everything in It. New York: Crown, 2001. Print.
Irwin, Raymond. The English Library: Sources and History. London: G. Allen and Unwin, 1966. Print.
Johnson, Elmer D., and Michael H. Harris. History of Libraries in the Western World. 3rd ed. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow, 1976. Print.
Kaufman, Paul. Libraries and Their Users: Collected Papers in Library History. London: Library Association, 1969. Print.
Kelly, Thomas. A History of Public Libraries in Great Britain, 1845-1965. London: Library Association, 1973. Print.
Maclean, Fitzroy. A Concise History of Scotland. New York: Viking, 1970. Print.
Manley K. A. “Scottish Circulating and Subscription Libraries as Community Libraries.” Library History 19.3 (2003): 185-194. Academic
Search Complete. Web. 14 July 2013.
St Clair, John, and Roger Craik. The Advocates' Library: 300 Years of a National Institution, 1689-1989. Edinburgh: H.M.S.O., 1989. Print.
Towsey, Mark R. M. “‘All Partners May Be Enlightened and Improved by Reading Them’: The Distribution of Enlightenment Books in
Scottish Subscription Library Catalogues, 1750–c.1820.” Journal of Scottish Historical Studies 28.1 (2008): 20-43. Academic Search
Complete. Web. 14 July 2013.
Towsey, Mark R. M. Reading the Scottish Enlightenment: Books and Their Readers in Provincial Scotland, 1750-1820. Ed. Andrew Pettegree.
Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2010. Print.
Images courtesy of Flickr/Creative Commons, Wikimedia Commons, the National Library of Scotland Digital Gallery, and HistoryShelf.org
Ashley Gray