National Library of Scotland Unveils Landmark Centenary Programme

“Scotland will have a national library where everyone will get access to any book they desire.”  – Sir Alexander Grant, Founder of National Library of Scotland

National Librarian Amina Shah today announced plans to mark the National Library of Scotland’s 100th birthday with a year-long programme of events and initiatives. The National Library was established by an Act of Parliament in 1925, and since then has amassed and cared for a collection of more than 50 million items spanning many centuries on behalf of the people of Scotland – all of whom are entitled to free access to the collections.

National Librarian Amina Shah said: “A century ago, we were established in the spirit of egalitarianism, where our founders – including Sir Alexander Grant – held the firm belief that the people of Scotland deserved a national library to call their own, one which anyone living here could access. The Act of Parliament states that we exist to collect and preserve the national collections, and make them accessible to the public through our reading rooms, exhibitions and other means of engaging people with Scotland’s culture and heritage.

“We increased our efforts to reach more and new people with the collections in recent years with great success, and our intention is to accelerate this during the year of our 100th birthday by working in partnership with Scotland’s network of amazing libraries. And so, I’m delighted to announce our centenary programme – a nationwide libraries campaign, our major exhibition, our national tour – all of which have the potential to connect with every individual across the country. It is our ambition that the impact our centenary programme will have on communities throughout Scotland will continue far beyond 2025.”

When it was established, the National Library was endowed with the non-legal aspects of the Faculty of Advocates’ collections, ultimately making it the holder of the largest collection of antiquarian books north of Cambridge. The Library was also established as a ‘legal deposit’ library, meaning it has the right to claim a copy of everything published in the UK. This right remains today, and includes digital publications. While the National Library was awaiting a home, it started life in the Faculty of Advocates building. Work began on the George IV Bridge site in the 1930s, but due to the Second World War, most of the building work took place in the 1950s. Queen Elizabeth II officially opened the new National Library building in Edinburgh in July 1956.

Angus Robertson MSP, Cabinet Secretary for Constitution, External Affairs and Culture, said: “The National Library of Scotland has been a cornerstone of our nation’s cultural life for a century, preserving and sharing Scotland’s remarkable and complex history. For 100 years, through successive Acts of Parliament and the continued support of the Scottish Government, it has safeguarded our written and recorded heritage, from ancient manuscripts to the digital content of today.

 “With more than 50 million items in its expert care, freely accessible to everyone, the National Library is one of Scotland’s most precious national institutions. Supporting our languages, reflecting our communities, and protecting our past and present for all those who will come after us. As we mark this centenary, we celebrate not just a building or a collection, but a century of protecting our national library and sharing the knowledge, creativity, and memories of Scotland for generations to come.”

Now in its 100th year, the National Library will use its centenary as a platform to celebrate and promote libraries of all kinds, beginning with a nationwide campaign encouraging people to support and champion their local libraries around Valentine’s Day. ‘Love Libraries’ will encourage a burst of activity inviting people to show love for their libraries, in partnership with the Scottish Library and Information Council (SLIC), the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals Scotland (CILIPS), the Association of Public Libraries Scotland (APLS), and the Scottish Confederation of University and Research Libraries (SCURL).

Speaking about the importance of libraries, author, broadcaster and Centenary Champion Damian Barr said: “I believe that stories are for everybody and everybody has a story. My local library saved my life – it gave me a warm, safe place to be and the books were my passports to other worlds. These books helped me change my own story. I was encouraged and supported in my reading by skilled librarians who always found me the right book at the right time. I was a reader long before I was a writer – that’s how every writer starts. The National Library is the home of Scotland’s stories and everybody is welcome, whatever their story.”

Fellow Centenary Champion, author Val McDermid, said: “My parents couldn’t afford books but they understood they were the passport to better life chances than they’d had. But it’s not just writers who have their doors opened to the wider world by libraries. Engineers, lawyers, builders, artists, geographers, mathematicians, musicians… the list is endless. Libraries open windows that let us all fly.”

The National Library will be hosting celebrations at its Edinburgh home on George IV Bridge, beginning on 28 March 2025 with a Curtain Raiser event. This will see Centenary Champions Damian Barr and Val McDermid in conversation about their love for libraries with National Librarian Amina Shah, who will make further announcements of what’s to come throughout 2025. An audio building trail and displays exploring the history of the Library and its collections will help people find out more about the main library building in Edinburgh, before a special centenary exhibition opens in June.

Taking over two of the Library’s exhibition spaces, ‘Dear Library’ will be an open reading room for Edinburgh. Produced in collaboration with people and partners across the country, the exhibition is a love letter to libraries. Visitors will be able to browse through bookshelves filled with recommendations gathered from a public callout and from well-known Scottish figures, and be invited to consider and share the books that shaped them. The exhibition will also contain depictions of librarians and libraries in popular culture, protest banners and badges reflecting libraries under threat, footage from the Moving Image Archive bringing libraries of the past to life, as well as items loaned from specialist libraries from around Scotland: the Nature Library, Glasgow Women’s Library, Innerpeffray Library, Skye Zine Library and the Library of Mistakes.

In the Treasures exhibition, founding collections items gifted to the Library in 1925 will go on display in a special Centenary exhibit. The Glenriddell Manuscript, which contains some of Robert Burns’s most important works and spans the majority of his literary career, as well as the Order for the Massacre of Glencoe, which resulted in one of the most infamous events in Scottish history, will be on public view for a year, along with other important artefacts from the Library’s founding in 1925. Displays relating to the Library’s history and collections will also take place at the National Library’s Glasgow home, Kelvin Hall.

To mark the Library’s centenary with communities around the country, selected treasures from the collections will be leaving Edinburgh to go on display outside of the central belt. ‘Outwith: National Library around Scotland’ will begin in Aberdeen Art Gallery in September 2025 with a loan of an early edition of Scottish secular music, John Forbes’ ‘Songs and Fancies’, published in Aberdeen in 1682. This display will coincide with the 100th anniversary of the Art Gallery’s concert venue, the Cowdray Hall. Celebratory events for both cultural centenarians are due to be announced in the summer, along with an engagement programme taking place in and around Aberdeen Central Library with National Library colleagues and partners.

Then in January 2026, Mary Queen of Scots’ last letter will leave the National Library for the first time in a generation to go on display in the heart of the new Perth Museum, close to the Stone of Destiny. Written by Mary Queen of Scots the night before her execution on 8 February 1587 to her brother-in-law, Henri III of France, this nationally prized item was last publicly exhibited at the Library’s George IV Bridge building in 2017 where queues formed to see the item during its one-day display.

The Library is collaborating with Culture Perth and Kinross – the charity that looks after Perth Museum – on a series of complementary events and activities, including loans of related collection items to AK Bell Library such as archive material of Liz Lochhead’s play ‘Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off’ and manuscripts relating to Robert Burns.

Helen Smout, Chief Executive of Culture Perth and Kinross said: “We are overjoyed to be a key partner in National Library of Scotland’s centenary celebrations. It is an honour that the Library has entrusted us to display Mary Queen of Scots last letter at Perth Museum in 2026 as part of this programme. This precious document will sit alongside our other iconic displays including the Stone of Destiny.

“Perth and Kinross is at the very heart of Scotland’s story and Mary had significant links to the area, notably her abdication and 11-month imprisonment at Loch Leven Castle. This will be the first time the letter has been seen north of Edinburgh in modern history, and the longest period it will be on public view for more than 20 years.”

Shetland Museum and Archives will also be taking part in the ‘Outwith’ programme, with island-related loans and other activities taking place from late March 2026.

National Librarian Amina Shah said: “We’re thrilled at the prospect of people engaging with us in locations around the country. By the time we launch our next strategy in September, our ‘Love Libraries’ campaign will have a presence throughout the country, and we will embark on the first stage of our ‘Outwith’ programme. A key tenet of our new strategy is about connection in all its forms. We look after the collections on behalf of the people who live in Scotland, so our focus will be on helping them access their national collections through community participation and partnerships.

“While we have a strong digital presence throughout Scotland with at least 40,000 active members at any given time, not everyone can make the trip to visit us in Edinburgh or Glasgow. Through the ‘Outwith’ programme, people will be able to get up close to national treasures that have a resonance specific to their locality. We have learned that people can’t get enough of seeing the actual items. It’s as close as you can get to a particular time in our history or culture.”

The Centenary Programme has been kindly supported by the Garfield Weston Foundation, the NLS Foundation, The William Grant Foundation, CILIPS Research Fund and Alex Graham and all funds raised by the National Library’s Centenary Appeal, which launched earlier this month, will go towards funding the ‘Outwith’ programme.

Consultation on the National Library’s 2025–2030 strategy, called ‘The Next Chapter’, begins today and runs until end March.

To find out more about what’s on at The National Library of Scotland in its centenary year, please visit https://www.nls.uk

To support the National Library’s Centenary Appeal, please visit https://www.nls.uk/centenary-appeal/

To find out more about the National Library’s 2025–2030 strategy consultation, please visit https://www.nls.uk/about-us/what-we-do/our-strategy/strategy-consultation/