The BBC's "Who Do You Think You Are" Magazine new November 2025 issue's "Gem from the Archive" features the Signet Library's @oldedinburghclub.bsky.social funded project on the records of John Watson's Institution, research undertaken by @kgbaston.bsky.social @johockey.bsky.social

Before and after of this cracker from the Trials Collection at the @signetlibrary.bsky.social

And yesterday, this account of the trial of those involved in the Battle of Bonnymuir, during the Radical War of 1820. Part of the spine was detached, so a very satisfying fix! Part of the Trials Collection at the @signetlibrary.bsky.social www.maggiecraig.co.uk/2020/04/05/t...

A small display of decorative books, maps, manuscripts and photographs for an academic society visiting the Signet Library this afternoon.

Signet Library graffiti left by craftspeople from the 1850s into the Great War period behind the cases in the Upper Hall. The names and signatures of painters, glaziers and related trades in paint and pencil on the unpainted timber surface.

Today's bookpost: the final three volumes of Sir John Baker's magisterial Seldon Society edition of the notebooks of the great English lawyer Sir Edward Coke (1552-1634), shown beside a selection of Coke's works from Signet Library collections.

A spotlight on this book on ‘Auld Ayr and some of its Characters’ by the prolific artist Robert Bryden in 1897. Bryden was granted the title of Royal Engraver in 1899. The engravings are such expressive portraits. From the Burghs and Shires Collection at the @signetlibrary.bsky.social

A progress report on our John Watson's Institution archive project, funded by the fantastic Old Edinburgh Club Jean Guild grants scheme. We are on the hunt for a portrait - can you help?

Alexander Mill, "Prince of Indexers", assistant librarian at the Signet Library for over sixty years (1873-1935), with his grandson c. 1930. The last here to remember David Laing, Mill's index to Scottish Court of Session Papers is still in constant use, the only one of its kind.

The Society of Procurators in Perth are celebrating their bicentenary. Writer to the Signet Robert Macduff Duncan tells the story today for Scottish Legal News: www.scottishlegal.com/articles/our...

This copy of the Scottish Licensing Act of 1903 at the @signetlibrary.bsky.social today, with some very on topic advertising.

Our upgrade is complete (and we have also resolved issues accessing our catalogue via the new Firefox v.140 and this is now back to normal).

A quick heads-up that our online catalogue will be offline for an upgrade on Wednesday morning (9th July) - all being well, we'll be back by lunchtime.

A quick heads-up that our online catalogue will be offline for an upgrade on Wednesday morning (9th July) - all being well, we'll be back by lunchtime.

To commemorate the 297th birthday of the great Scottish architect Robert Adam, his drawings - amongst his last - for a new Signet Library in Royal Mile premises for the College of Justice in Edinburgh.

This book of instruction for newly qualified legal clerks in 1727, discovered yesterday by @lixmount.bsky.social at the @signetlibrary.bsky.social has several detailed pages on how to ‘write well’. Anyone who has toiled over a page of Secretary Hand might find it of interest..

Congratulations to all involved in the superb new Aberdeen Student Law Review, especially to our former WS Summer Scholars Christiana Cameron, Valentina Menendez Ron and Matthew Paton. Lady Dorrian writes that it “demonstrates the strength of legal scholarship and analysis at the University”

This may be the only surviving copy of this 1770s proposal for woollen manufacture in Dundee: we can't trace more, and given that this predates jute in Dundee, we wonder if a digital facsimile might be of interest to e.g. the Verdant Works, the universities and city library, the McManus Gallery etc?

Examining application forms of 1836 for entry to the John Watson Institution as part of @kgbaston.bsky.social’s project to document and research the archive of the School held by the @signetlibrary.bsky.social This form has a letter still attached by a sealing wafer.

The return of our historic c. 1820 Regency sofas after restoration and reupholstering. They were originally made by the Chippendale of Scotland, William Trotter, at his manufactury on Canal Street. Photographs by @johockey.bsky.social

An exhibition of work by photographers Thomas Annan, James Craig Annan and Country Life staff photographer A.E. Henson prior to Professor Godfrey Evans' lecture on Hamilton Palace at the Signet Library last night.

Thanks to this terrific funding we are already some 149 records into the project and learning more and more about the social networks and milieu of the early John Watson's Institution. Much more to come: watch this space.

A display today at the @signetlibrary.bsky.social by @lixmount.bsky.social featuring Slezer’s views of Edinburgh and Dunotter (the ships!), William Stukeley’s illustration of Avebury, and a dining table-sized map of Glasgow (1842)

A major addition to the WS Society's Heritage Portfolio site today in the shape of @johockey.bsky.social 's essay "Minding Your Beeswax. Seals and Surveillance: The Post Office in the 19th Century" on an extraordinary episode of native espionage: www.wssociety-heritage.co.uk/seals-and-su...

An absolute treat this week at the @signetlibrary.bsky.social, A.S. Boyd’s Glasgow Men and Women, 1905, every page filled with delightful depictions of Glasgow people at work and play. This post details his life and prolific works. bearalley.blogspot.com/2019/02/a-s-...

Back to Leith with this ‘Guide to the Forth, Leith to Stirling’ by the Galloway Saloon Steam Packet Company in 1898, complete with fold out balloon map of the river. Part of the Travel Guide Collection at the @signetlibrary.bsky.social

At the @signetlibrary.bsky.social today, this 1903 copy of ‘Glasgow and Lanarkshire Illustrated’, published by the Hamilton Herald, New Brunswick. ‘Come for the advertising, stay for the advertising’

Leaves from a pair of short texts on early Scottish music in the hand of the antiquarian Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe (1781-1851) in Signet Library collections. Unpublished? but difficult to date. The first page mentions Writer to the Signet and historian William Tytler (1711-1792)

We are thrilled to announce that a Signet Library project to conserve and digitize our archive of records of John Watson's Institution has been awarded a Jean Guild grant by the Old Edinburgh Club: www.wssociety-heritage.co.uk/2025/03/20/j...

The Signet Library was founded as part of a sequence of reforms within the Writers to the Signet led by Deputy Keeper to the Signet Thomas Pringle. This proclamation anent intrant writers comes from the foundation year, 1722.

The last of these - Dr. Anita Gillespie's "An Impartial and Genuine List of the Ladys on the Whig or Jacobite Partie Edinburgh 1745" is based on a manuscript here at the Signet Library: the Scottish Record Society were absolutely superb to work with despite the difficult conditions of Covid etc.

Today marks the 135th anniversary of the opening of the Forth Bridge. Left, from Phillips' 1889 "The Forth Bridge in its various stages of construction.."; right, Wilhelm Westoven's 1890 "The Forth Bridge". More in alt.

Edinburgh Book Fair, Free entry, Friday/Saturday 28/29 March at 19-21 George Street Edinburgh

The Douglas Cause of the 1760s was arguably Scotland's greatest legal controversy of the century and which ended in both wild celebrations and riots. This huge volume is a set of the legal papers from the case belonging to Robert McQueen, one of the advocates in the action.. (1)

This apse appears in a set of late 1890s glass plates newly donated to the Signet Library. We're stumped as to the church, but it may be Lothians/Borders, somewhere between Innerleithan and Penicuik. Does anyone recognise it, please?

In the early years of the Signet Library's current building, there was a "Map Room" in the lower corridor, which had maps on rollers mounted on the wall. These details from David Wilkie's "The Letter of Introduction" of c.1813 show how this arrangment may have worked -

On the anniversary of the beheading in Whitehall of King Charles I in 1649, the Signet Library 's copy (17th edition, 1st state) of John Gauden's Eikon Basilike with its iconic representation of the King at prayer.

20 years before becoming Signet Librarian, John Philip Edmond, bookbinder and publisher, saw into print a series of beautiful facsimiles of early Aberdonian printing and literature. This is one of the loveliest of these, 1580's "Ane breif descriptioun.. of the well of the woman hill besyde Abirdene"

Please note that the Signet Library will be closed all day tomorrow Friday 24th January in view of the weather warning now in place. Staff will be working from home and all services not requiring physical access to the Signet Library building will continue as normal.

The Signet Library team assembled a Zoom lecture on our 1846 album of Hill and Adamson calotypes for the Royal Photographic Society's Historical Group : this can now be viewed online www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaRp...

A full house last night for Richard Blake's brilliant, world-spanning lecture "Sugar, Slaves and High Society: The Grants of Kilgraston 1750-1860" which was based upon his magnificent recent book of the same title - www.waterstones.com/book/sugar-s...

The Hill & Adamson St Andrews album ready for its Zoom presentation at the @signetlibrary.bsky.social for the Royal Photographic Society.

A freezing Thursday night saw the first of our three January talks, with @kgbaston.bsky.social speaking about the Bibliotheca Polonica, the library of Polish books given to Scotland in the 1820s which stands as one of the great enduring symbols of the friendship between the two nations.

Delighted to have our own archives included in this important and groundbreaking project. Fantastic work by all involved in getting things to this vital stage.

Looking at Erskine Beveridge’s ‘Wanderings with a Camera 1882- 1898’ published in 1922. Images of the American Mid West and the North West coast of Scotland. This pair of volumes are part of the @signetlibrary.bsky.social photographic collection.

Founded by Writer to the Signet John Hope. @andymitchellmedia.bsky.social and John Hutchinson's fantastic book "1824: The World's First Football Club" tells the whole story of the club and the background in society and culture that gave birth to it.

Collotypes produced by the Autotype Company and issued in an edition limited to fifty volumes.