Scotland eschews Polonius

Inconceivable

Scotland today benefits from over 550 permanently sited public lending libraries and 93 mobile libraries. No one in Scotland is too remote to avail him or herself of the opportunities for instruction and recreation offered by the library service.

Roughly 42 million items are loaned each year from Scotland's Public Libraries: not just books but magazines, videos, CDs, DVDs and software for the latest computer games. Polonius would have had a fit! And goodness knows what he would have made of the 2428 terminals that the People's Network, a New Opportunities Fund scheme to provide free access to the Internet and on-line learning resources, is implementing across Scotland.

Of course these days it's amazing to think of it any other way. But it wasn't always so. What libraries there were for many centuries were either private or closed to members of the clergy or the universities.

Scotland's oldest public lending libraries go back more than three centuries, the first being Innerpeffray Library, established as part of a school by David Drummond, 3rd Lord Madertie in 1680. The Kirkwall Publick Bibliotheck in Orkney followed in 1683 and the Leighton Library, part of Dunblane Cathedral, was founded in 1684.

The National Library sited on George IV Bridge in Edinburgh although not constituted as such until 1925 traces its origins back to the historic Library of the Faculty of Advocates which opened in 1689. The Copyright Act of 1710 gave the library the right and privilege to claim a copy of every book published in Great Britain and today holds over 7 million printed items as well as a large collection of manuscripts.

The poet Allan Ramsay, established a circulating library in the Luckenbooths of Edinburgh in 1725 and it was in the mining village of his birth Leadhills that the oldest subscription library in the UK was founded in 1741. The second oldest was founded in the neighbouring village of Wanlockhead in 1756. These miners' libraries were made good use of and must have meant a great deal to the workers and their families, offering some the chance to escape from such a hard life through 'self-improvement'. Airdrie, in Lanarkshire, also has a long tradition of self-education and a subscription library was set up in 1792.

But it wasn't until the Public Libraries Act of 1853, whereby the way was paved for Public Libraries to be funded by local taxation for the benefit of all, that any real momentum took place. And even then growth at first was slow and there were strong pockets of uproar that taxes should be used in such a way!

It was Dunfermline-born Andrew Carnegie, who emigrated to Pennsylvania and became the wealthiest man in the world, who really moved things on by giving generous grants to build libraries. He helped to establish 2500 libraries throughout the world and his generosity started back home in Scotland where many of his libraries also benefit from the most elegant architecture and solid stone construction. The first Carnegie library was opened in 1883 in Dunfermline; Edinburgh's magnificent Central Library was opened in 1890; and in 1901 Carnegie donated 100,000 to set up a branch network of libraries in Glasgow in recognition of what the city "had done in municipal affairs to help educate other cities".