Digital collections

Illustration from
full-text collection
'Sabin Americana'.

From our extensive digital collections we have wide range of material you can access online and by visiting us.

All our digital resources are free to use, although some collections are only available with a reader's ticket.

Visit our George IV Bridge Building for free access to thousands of full-text online research resources and abstracts. These licensed digital collections consist of:

Hundreds of full-text reference works
Thousands of full-text newspapers, journals and reports
Hundreds of thousands of digitised books, periodicals and manuscripts spanning over five centuries
Millions of records and abstracts via online services and databases.

After you register for a reader's ticket you can use any of these resources in our General Reading Room.

Remote access: We have a growing number of these resources which our registered readers can use from any computer with internet access. See our licensed collections remote access list.

Soviet poster from
the Digital Archive.

On our websites you can see:

Thousands of photographs, maps, music, books, manuscripts and more – visit the Digital Archive
Web features highlighting collection material – visit the Digital Library.

See also:

Films in digital format: Thousands of films reflecting Scotland's history and culture have been digitised by the Scottish Screen Archive at NLS. Around 1,000 short clips are available on the Scottish Screen Archive website.
Websites about Scotland: We collect selected websites reflecting Scotland's culture and knowledge. Snapshots of those we collected between 2004 and 2008 are now part of the UK Web Archive.