The National Library of Scotland

The Statute of Anne, and What It Did Not Do

The Statute of Anne (8 Ann. c. 21; royal assent 5 April 1710, in force 10 April 1710) was the world’s first copyright statute, and it carried a deposit requirement: nine copies of every published work were to be deposited at Stationers’ Hall for distribution to designated libraries. In Scotland those were the Advocates Library and the universities of St Andrews, Glasgow, Aberdeen and Edinburgh.

That right — not any grant of national status — is what allowed a private lawyers’ library to build a comprehensive, non-legal collection and become, by the mid-nineteenth century, Scotland’s national library in all but name, two centuries before the formal one existed.

1925, and a Biscuit Fortune

By the 1920s the arithmetic had broken. The Faculty was a private members’ body maintaining an enormous collection of material that had nothing to do with law, and in 1922 it offered the library to the nation as a free gift. What made the offer viable was a £100,000 endowment from Sir Alexander Grant of Forres, managing director of the biscuit makers McVitie & Price, who gave a further £100,000 in 1928 — the two donations worth roughly £6 million in today’s money.

The National Library of Scotland Act 1925 (15 & 16 Geo. 5 c. 73; appointed day 26 October 1925) transferred to the new Board the entire contents of the Advocates Library except the Faculty’s law books, legal manuscripts, Faculty records and furniture. The gift ran to roughly 750,000 books, pamphlets, manuscripts, maps and pieces of sheet music. The Advocates Library kept its legal collection and to this day still receives law books via legal deposit, transmitted through NLS — the clearest possible proof that the two institutions are distinct.

Legal Deposit Today

NLS is one of six legal deposit libraries in the UK and Ireland: the British Library, the Bodleian Libraries, Cambridge University Library, the National Library of Scotland, the National Library of Wales and the Library of Trinity College Dublin. Only the British Library receives everything automatically. The other five, NLS included, must request in writing and within a year of publication, through the Edinburgh-based Agency for Legal Deposit Libraries.

The governing law is the Legal Deposit Libraries Act 2003 (royal assent 30 October 2003, in force 1 February 2004), which replaced section 15 of the Copyright Act 1911, extended to non-print works by regulations in 2013 covering e-books, e-journals and UK websites. Reciprocal UK–Irish collecting operates under Ireland’s Copyright and Related Rights Act 2000. In practice NLS can claim almost everything published in the UK and Ireland, in print or digital form, and states that around 80% of its intake arrives free under deposit.

61 Million Items, Carefully Read

NLS’s own collections page states that the collection “holds over 61 million print and digital items, and it’s growing by 5,000 new additions every week”. Both halves of that sentence are accurate, and both are easy to misread.

The physical anchor, as summarised by mygov.scot, is over 15 million printed items, 7 million manuscripts and over 2 million maps. The jump to 61 million reflects the counting of electronic legal deposit content: the Annual Review for 2023–24 notes almost 12 million e-journal issues and articles and nearly 900,000 eBook titles collected across the shared legal-deposit network, plus millions of archived UK websites. Physical growth is far more modest — the 2024–25 Annual Review reports total additions of 119,494 items for the year.

Earlier headline figures track the same definitional inflation: “more than 24 million items” around 2019–21, “more than 30 million physical items” around 2023, and “34 million print and digital items” on NLS’s own pages around 2022. None of this is deceptive; it simply means the 61 million number should never be set beside another library’s physical count as though the two measured the same thing.

Treasures

The John Murray Archive. The records of the London publishing house founded in 1768 by the Edinburgh-born John McMurray, and one of the world’s most significant literary and publishing archives. NLS acquired the main archive in 2006: it was offered for sale by John Murray VII for £31 million, and the £31.2 million bid was funded by £17.7 million from the Heritage Lottery Fund, £8.3 million from the Scottish Government and a £6.5 million NLS fundraising target. It holds over a million items, including manuscripts and correspondence of Byron, Jane Austen, Charles Darwin — including the letter submitting On the Origin of Species — David Livingstone and Arthur Conan Doyle.

Walter Scott. NLS holds the pre-eminent collection of Scott’s literary manuscripts, papers and correspondence, which the Library describes as arguably the largest and finest accumulation for any single author in any library. It began with the 1850 donation to the Advocates Library of the surviving autograph manuscript of Waverley, and now includes The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Rob Roy, Redgauntlet and the interleaved “Magnum Opus” Waverley Novels.

Burns and the Blavatnik Honresfield Library. NLS holds major Burns manuscripts including the Glenriddell Manuscripts. In 2021–22 a UK-wide consortium led by the Friends of the National Libraries saved the Blavatnik Honresfield Library, assembled by the Rochdale mill owner William Law (1836–1901) and hidden from public view for some eighty years. The Friends raised £15.3 million, of which £15 million was the purchase price, with Sir Leonard Blavatnik match-funding half and £4 million from the National Heritage Memorial Fund; the collection was distributed to nearly seventy libraries and writers’ houses. Burns’s First Commonplace Book is now owned jointly by NLS and the National Trust for Scotland.

Gaelic collections. NLS holds what it and UNESCO describe as the largest collection of Scottish Gaelic manuscripts in the world. Its Gaelic Manuscripts Curator, Dr Ulrike Hogg, has said that “our collection of more than 60 volumes is unparalleled in its scale and coverage”, spanning the fourteenth to the early eighteenth century; the early manuscripts are inscribed on the UK UNESCO Memory of the World Register. The jewel is the Book of the Dean of Lismore, compiled around 1512–1526 by Sir James MacGregor, the earliest surviving collection of Gaelic poetry compiled in Scotland.

And more. A Gutenberg Bible, the only copy in a Scottish library, among more than 600 incunabula; a Shakespeare First Folio and early quartos in the Bute Collection; the last letter of Mary, Queen of Scots, written the night before her execution in February 1587 to Henri III of France; and Clan Sinclair manuscripts dating to 1488.

Maps and the Bartholomew Archive

NLS holds around two million cartographic items — the largest map collection in Scotland and one of the largest anywhere. Its cornerstone is the Bartholomew Archive, the business and production records of the Edinburgh map-engraving and publishing firm John Bartholomew & Son Ltd, among the most extensive cartographic archives held by any public institution.

The archive was gifted to NLS in 1995 by the Bartholomew family in memory of the cartographer John (Ian) Bartholomew (1890–1962), a former NLS Trustee, with the firm’s collection purchased the same year. It includes roughly 6,000 glass printing plates and a near-complete printing record of the firm’s output from 1877 to 1995 — which makes it the documentary counterpart to the story told on this site’s Royal Scottish Geographical Society card, where J. G. Bartholomew was a founder.

Buildings

George IV Bridge. The main building at 57 George IV Bridge was designed by Reginald Fairlie between 1934 and 1936; construction began in 1937–38, was interrupted by the Second World War, and finished in the 1950s. Queen Elizabeth II opened it on 4 July 1956. It is Category A listed, classical-modern in style, and carries seven allegorical figures by the sculptor Hew Lorimer, representing history, law, medicine, music, poetry, science and theology. Fairlie died before completion and A. R. Conlon oversaw the finish. Books sit in floor-to-ceiling stacks across ten floors, and the wider physical collections occupy 150 miles of shelving across four storage sites. In 2024–25 NLS announced plans to open the famously austere building up with more flexible event space and natural light.

Causewayside, on the south side of Edinburgh, opened in two phases in 1989 and 1995 at a total cost of nearly £50 million, houses the map and science collections and the Maps Reading Room. Kelvin Hall in Glasgow, opened in September 2016 with Glasgow Life and the University of Glasgow, is NLS’s public centre for digital and moving-image collections.

The Moving Image Archive is Scotland’s national collection of moving images: over 46,000 films and videos, more than 2,600 of them online. Its origins lie in the Scottish Film Archive, established by the Scottish Film Council in 1976; it came to NLS in 2007 as the Scottish Screen Archive, was renamed in 2015 and moved from Hillington to Kelvin Hall in 2016.

Digitisation and the Modern Library

NLS has run a digitisation programme for over twenty years, and operates a Digital Gallery, a Data Foundry offering collections as data, and a map-images site with over 400,000 zoomable historic maps. It set a strategic aim of having a third of its collections in digital form by 2025 and has reported over five petabytes of storage. It appointed the UK’s first library Wikipedian in Residence in 2013 and a Gaelic Wikipedian in Residence in 2016.

Governance was modernised by the National Library of Scotland Act 2012 (royal assent 21 June 2012, in force 1 February 2013), which renamed the governing body simply National Library of Scotland, redefined its functions as “a national resource for reference, study, research and bibliography, having particular regard to Scotland”, and confirmed accountability to the Scottish Parliament; funding has come through the Scottish Government since devolution in 1999. NLS marked its centenary in 2025 with a brand refresh, a website relaunch and the touring exhibition Outwith: National Library around Scotland.

Electronic legal deposit is a shared endeavour across the six libraries, coordinated with the British Library — a dependency exposed in October 2023, when a major cyber-attack on the British Library disrupted access to shared electronic deposit content across the network, NLS included.

Timeline

1. 1532

   The College of Justice founded

   The Faculty of Advocates traces its origins here

2. 1682

   The Advocates Library established

   Under Sir George Mackenzie's deanship; some sources date collecting to 1680

3. 15 Mar 1689

   Formal inauguration

   Mackenzie delivers his Latin Oratio Inauguralis

4. 1710

   The Statute of Anne

   Legal deposit: nine copies at Stationers' Hall, one claimable by the Advocates Library

5. 1752–1757

   David Hume serves as Keeper

   His tenure ends in a row over ordering “indecent” French books

6. 1850

   The Waverley manuscript donated

   The seed of the world's pre-eminent Walter Scott collection

7. Late 19th c.

   Legal deposit finally enforced rigorously

   Until then the collection relied heavily on purchase

8. 1922

   The Faculty offers the library to the nation

   The non-legal collection had outgrown a private members' body

9. 1925

   The National Library of Scotland Act

   Appointed day 26 October; about 750,000 items transferred

10. 1928

    Sir Alexander Grant gives a second £100,000

    The two gifts are worth roughly £6 million today

11. 1934–1938

    Fairlie designs George IV Bridge; building starts

    Interrupted by the Second World War

12. 4 July 1956

    The main building opens

    Opened by Queen Elizabeth II; Category A listed

13. 1976

    The Scottish Film Archive established

    By the Scottish Film Council; later the Moving Image Archive

14. 1989 and 1995

    Causewayside opens in two phases

    Nearly £50 million; maps and science collections

15. 1995

    The Bartholomew Archive comes to NLS

    Gifted by the family and the firm's collection purchased

16. 1999

    Funding passes to the Scottish Parliament

    Devolution changes the accountability line

17. 2003

    Legal Deposit Libraries Act

    Royal assent 30 October; in force 1 February 2004

18. 2006

    The John Murray Archive acquired

    A £31.2 million bid, lottery and government funded

19. 2007

    The Scottish Screen Archive transfers to NLS

    Renamed the Moving Image Archive in 2015

20. 2012

    National Library of Scotland Act 2012

    Governance modernised; in force 1 February 2013

21. 2013

    First UK library Wikipedian in Residence

    A Gaelic Wikipedian follows in 2016

22. Sept 2016

    Kelvin Hall opens in Glasgow

    With Glasgow Life and the University of Glasgow

23. 2021–22

    The Blavatnik Honresfield Library saved

    £15.3 million raised; Burns's First Commonplace Book shared with the NTS

24. Oct 2023

    British Library cyber-attack

    Disrupts shared electronic legal deposit access

25. 2025

    NLS marks its centenary

    Brand refresh, website relaunch, and the touring “Outwith” exhibition

Did You Know?

• A biscuit fortune made the national library possible: Sir Alexander Grant of McVitie & Price gave £200,000 across 1925 and 1928.
• David Hume ran the Advocates Library from 1752 to 1757, and left after a row about “indecent” French books.
• The library's founder is also remembered as “Bloody Mackenzie” for prosecuting the Covenanters.
• The Advocates Library still receives law books under legal deposit — passed on through NLS.
• NLS holds the letter in which Darwin submitted On the Origin of Species to his publisher.
• Mary, Queen of Scots' last letter, written the night before her execution, is in the collection.
• The Gutenberg Bible at George IV Bridge is the only copy in any Scottish library.
• The Bartholomew Archive includes about 6,000 glass printing plates.
• Seven allegorical figures by Hew Lorimer stand on the George IV Bridge façade.
• NLS appointed the UK's first library Wikipedian in Residence in 2013.

Honest Caveats

NLS was not founded in 1682 or 1689. Its predecessor was. Use both dates, labelled.

Legal deposit was not automatic from 1710. Enforcement came late, and purchase filled the gaps.

The 61 million figure is composite. Give around 15 million printed items as the physical anchor whenever comparing libraries.

“Second-largest in the UK” is unverified, and not a claim NLS makes.

“26 miles of shelving” is a tourism figure. NLS’s own current figure is 150 miles across four sites.

Collection totals are institution-supplied. Attribute them to NLS rather than treating them as independently audited; a reconciled print-versus-digital split would need the full audited Annual Report and Accounts.

Founding-date variants are milestones, not conflicts: 1680 earliest collecting, 1682 establishment, 1689 inauguration.

Antiquity claims need framing. As a national library, 1925 is late; the distinctive thing is the age of the predecessor collection and the unbroken deposit lineage.