National Library of Scotland

The John Murray Archive is one of the larger collections at the National Library of Scotland, consisting of over one million items. It contains various documents, letters, manuscripts, and business papers all related to the House of John Murray, a British publisher known for publishing the likes of Jane Austen, Herman Melville, Charles Darwin, and Lord Byron. Also included within the collection is the Archive of Smith, Elder and Company, as well as the Charles Elliot papers. The Library continues to receive additions to the archive on an ad hoc basis.

Photograph of bhang drinkers from the India Papers collection, 1893

There are over 4,200 bound volumes (40,000 individual reports) within the India Papers collection. The archive consists of reports, photographs, government correspondence, and various other miscellaneous material related to the British Raj. The collection is rare and is the largest of its kind in the UK behind the India Office Records at the British Library. It contains items related to medicine, travel, the arts, human rights, and military history, as well as many others. One of the bigger sections, the Medical History of British India,[16] has been digitised and is available to the public online. One of the highlights from the collection is the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission report.

The Minto Papers are over 2,000 documents relating to the Elliot family, a British family of aristocrats founded in the 17th century. This collection is a valuable source of study for British politics, Scottish history, and the affairs of 19th century Canada, Italy, and British India.

The Patrick Leigh Fermor Archive is a collection of different items related to Patrick 'Paddy' Leigh Fermor, a British travel writer, adventurer, and veteran. The Archive was purchased by the Library in 2012 from Fermor's estate, using funds from the John R. Murray charitable trust. There are over 10,000 items in the collection including photographs, sketches, films, war reports, books, manuscripts, and postcards.

The Moving Image Archive is a collection of over 46,000 moving images (films, television shows, and short video clips). The Library acquired the collection as the Scottish Screen Archive in 2007, though it was renamed in 2015. Over 2,600 items from the collection have been put online and are freely available to the public for viewing in the venue at Kelvin Hall.

The Bartholomew Archive is a notable map collection that was gifted to the Library in 1995 by the Bartholomew family in memory of Scottish cartographer John Bartholomew (1890–1962). The archive provides information about the Edinburgh-based firm of map engravers, printers, and publishers, John Bartholomew and Son Ltd. It is one of the most extensive cartographic archives available for research in a public institution.[17][18]

Lighthouse Image from the Stevenson Collection at National Library of Scotland

The Library holds roughly 375 military maps and plans that were prepared by the Board of Ordnance in the 18th century for government troops during the Jacobite period. Within the collection are maps of routes, fortifications, and Highland towns. The items in the collections were donated to the library in the 1930s by a government department descended from the Board.

The Stevenson Collection is a collection of 19th and 20th century manuscript and printed maps, drawings, and building plans from the Stevenson family, a Scottish engineering family specialising in building lighthouses, harbours, and other civil engineering works. The collection mostly covers their work in the United Kingdom, although there are some works concerning Japan and New Zealand, and several other countries.

Many of the theatre-related items from the 20th and 21st century are held by the Library.[19] These include plays and unpublished manuscripts; music hall and pantomime material; posters, playbills and programmes; reviews and news cuttings; theatre company archives; and material from the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. The general public are able (and encouraged) to view these items at the Special Collections Reading Room in the library's main building, a space where people can consult rare books, manuscripts, and music. Theatre of the 20th century is also well represented on film and can be viewed by the public at the library's Moving Image Archive.

The Cheviot, the Stag, and the Black, Black Oil is a Scottish play by playwright John McGrath.[20] The play tells the history of economic change and exploitation in the Scottish Highlands,[21] from the Highland Clearances all the way through to the contemporary oil boom at the time of its initial production. The stage set for the play, designed and painted by Scottish artist John Byrne, was made in 1973 and is in the form of a giant-sized pop-up book. The Library acquired the set in 2009, although it is currently on loan to V&A Dundee and is on display at the museum until 2043 as part of a 25-year loan agreement with the NLS.

Title page for William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Nights Dream

Measuring over 4 metres in length when opened and over 2 metres tall, the Cheviot set is the largest book at the National Library of Scotland. It consists of 5 different scenes painted by Byrne, including: a Highland landscape, a croft house, a poppy-covered war memorial, and a Native American Tipi. The physical set is made from cardboard, however it has been digitised in 3D by the NLS, meaning it can be viewed online via the Cheviot 3D section on the NLS website while it is on loan.

Title page from a William Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew

The library holds various items of early modern and restoration English drama, mainly within the Bute Collection. Notable items that can be found here include early editions of William Shakespeare's plays, namely A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Taming of the Shrew, Hamlet, and Othello. The Bute Collection hosts other Elizabethan, Jacobean and Caroline dramatists as well, namely George Chapman, Thomas Dekker (including an intact copy of the Converted Curtezan of 1604), John Lyly, Philip Massinger, Thomas Middleton, and John Webster.

Although Scotland's first public theatre did not open until 1736, plays were performed at alternative venues like schools, courts, and local festivals.[22] The collections at the National Library of Scotland include early editions several Scottish plays, printed before 1736, that would have been performed like this.

Also held at the NLS are a small number of early editions of The Gentle Shepherd (1725) by Scottish poet Allan Ramsay which was turned into a ballad opera and became a favourite of the Scottish stage.

There is a large collection of Edinburgh Theatre Royal playbills at the library, advertising performances and events from 1807 to 1851. The library also holds a few texts of stage adaptations of the novels of Sir Walter Scott. As well as this, the NLS has books from the lawyer and author Sir Theodore Martin, which mainly relate to his wife, actress Helena Faucit.

The Weir Collection is one of the biggest resources at the National Library of Scotland for 19th century materials related to the theatre. The collection is an Archive of over 500 19th-century playbills, posters, programmes, photographs and newspaper cuttings, presented to the library in 1970 by Kathleen Weir, who inherited them from her father, James J. Weir. One of the earliest playbills in the collection advertises a performance of Rob Roy on 11 March 1829 with Charles Mackay playing Bailie Nicol Jarvie. Particularly attractive are the examples of the pictorial posters of the later part of the 19th century, featuring scenes from plays or portraits of the leading actors and actresses.

Thomas Graham Brown

The Graham Brown collection was acquired by the library in 1961 via the bequest of physiologist Professor Thomas Graham Brown. There are over 20,000 items within the collection, including written works related to the history of Alpine climbing, books on Arctic exploration, mountaineering journals, over 250 press cuttings, postcards, manuscripts, and photographs. Much of the material within the collection is personal; there are Brown's climbing diary notebooks, papers related to his time as an editor of the Alpine Journal, correspondence, and his book The First Ascent of Mont Blanc (1957). The Graham Brown Collection also contains a large number of 19th and 20th century maps, many of them Swiss, French, and Italian – the earliest of these is a 1783 map of the Kingdom of Sardinia. Additions to the collection continue on an ad hoc basis.

Himalayan View, from the NLS Graham Brown Collection

The Graham Brown Research Fellowship was initiated in 2018 and supports a three-month period of research for fellows to explore any aspect of mountaineering, including literature, history, and environment. The first National Library of Scotland Graham Brown Research Fellow was Alex Boyd FRSA, an artist, photographer, and curator.[23] He focussed on the cultural and literary significance of mountains in Scotland.[24]

The Lloyd Archive consists primarily of books and journals on the Alps and was bequeathed by former Vice-President of the Alpine Club, Robert Wylie Lloyd. Lloyd was interested in entomology and collecting art. There are roughly 2000 items in the collection and many of them in English, although there are 300 in French, over 100 in German, 20 in Italian, and some works in Latin. Books in the collection that were published before the middle of the 1700s are concerned with the history and topography of Switzerland, whilst the works from later in the century are more related to the natural history, geography and geology of the country. Also included within the Lloyd collection are guidebooks on Switzerland and illustrated journals of Alpine tours.

The Wordie collection consists of works on Arctic and Antarctic exploration and was formed by Sir James Mann Wordie, a British explorer and scholar. The library obtained the collection in 1959, containing nearly 5000 items including books, journals, pamphlets, maps, and correspondence. The collection includes not only technical reports of scientific expeditions, and the results of polar research, but also popular accounts of travel and exploration, whale-fishing and folklore. The oldest item in the collection is the second edition of Purchas his Pilgrimage (1614).

The Library holds various documents and publications relating to Scottish Parliament including the proceedings from the first surviving Act of Parliament in 1235. All Acts of Parliament are deposited at the Library as a result of the 1925 National Library of Scotland Act,[25] and the public may consult the material in the reading rooms at the library's main building. Also held at the library are various business publications of Scottish Parliament, available in print to consult physically at the library are those dated up to September 2015. Publications dated after September 2015 can be viewed digitally.

The Library holds a comprehensive collection of the publications of the UK Parliament from the 19th century to the present day. The Library holds copies of the House of Lords Journal, which dates from 1509 to the present day and is the Library's oldest currently published periodical. The journal records the proceedings of the House of Lords. The Library, in partnership with ProQuest and the House of Lords digitised 3,000 volumes of material related to the House of Lords.

From 1950 to 1994, the Library received, under an exchange arrangement with the Library of Congress, a collection of US federal government information. Over that period the Library received approximately 10% of the United States monthly output of official publications. The collection has not yet been completed, and much if it is uncatalogued.