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National Library of Scotland

Classes of Information

Last updated
17 July 2025
Estimated reading time
7 minutes

Class 1: About the Library

General information about the Library

The National Library of Scotland is the successor to the historic library of the Faculty of Advocates, which opened off Edinburgh's Royal Mile in 1689. Today the Library is Scotland's foremost general research library and the world's leading repository for the printed and manuscript record of Scotland's history and culture.

We are the legal deposit library for Scotland, entitled to request a copy of all UK and Irish publications. Approximately 6,000 items a week reach us this way.

Three centuries after its foundation, the Library now holds 15 million printed books, seven million manuscripts items, almost two million maps, and 100,000 journal, magazine and newspaper titles.

Our principal address is:

National Library of Scotland
George IV Bridge
Edinburgh
EH1 1EW

Further general information about the Library:

Governance, legislation and legal status

The Library was established in 1925 by the National Library of Scotland Act 1925 (PDF) (103 KB; 8 pages). The governance of the Library was amended by the National Heritage (Scotland) Act 1985 (PDF) (77.4 KB; 6 pages). The Scottish Government passed the National Library of Scotland Act 2012 which further amended the governance of the Library.

We are governed by a Board, and managed by senior managers under the leadership of the National Librarian and Chief Executive, Amina Shah.

We are a non-departmental public body, funded by the Scottish Government, reporting to the Cabinet Secretary for Culture, Tourism and External Affairs. The relationship between the Library and the Scottish Government is set out on the Framework Document:

Framework Document 2023 (Word document) (95 KB; 15 pages)

We are also a Registered Scottish Charity (Scottish Charity No. SC011086).

We benefit greatly from our status as a legal deposit library, and have done since the library of the Faculty of Advocates was given this status in 1710. This status is currently conferred on us by the Legal Deposit Libraries Act, which was amended to reflect the increase in non-print publishing output.

Key corporate documents

Reaching people: Library strategy 2020-2025 (PDF) (2.33 MB; 24 pages)

Library Plan 2021-2022 (PDF) (2.62 MB; 38 pages)

External relations

The National Library of Scotland works especially closely with the other copyright libraries covered by the legal deposit legislation, specifically:

The Agency for Legal Deposit Libraries (ALDL) manages the receipt of legal deposit material. The agency is jointly owned and funded by the legal deposit libraries.

We collaborate with other nationwide and local library organisations, and also work closely with other collecting organisations in Scotland, principally:

You can read further information about this on our Partnerships page.

As a charitable organisation, we conduct fundraising activities to help to develop our collections and services. You can read online about our fundraising activities and how you can support the Library.

Keeping others informed

There are a number of other ways that you can find out about what we are doing:

Class 2: Our functions and services

The Library collects, preserves, and makes available millions of items to customers in Scotland and across the globe, both in our buildings and on our website.

Mainly because of the physical scale of our collections and the way we store them, but also for reasons of security and preservation, customers are unable to browse our miles and miles of shelves. Instead, customers can search our catalogues online or in person at the Library. Many of our digital collections can also be accessed on our website.

One of our key functions is to preserve our collections for future generations.

Everyone is welcome to use the National Library of Scotland. You can join the Library either online or in person at our George IV Bridge Building in Edinburgh. Use of our reading rooms and collections is governed by our terms and conditions.

For more information about our collections and services, see:

The Library is committed to widening the diversity of those who work here and those who use our collections and services. The Equality Act 2010 requires us to publish information about what we have been doing and what we plan to do to deliver equality and encourage diversity and good relations between people and communities.

Our Equalities Mainstreaming and Outcomes Report includes:

  • Equality outcomes

  • Equal pay (gender) audit

  • Statement on equal pay and occupational segregation.

Equalities Mainstreaming Reports:

See other equalities documents on our Corporate documents page.

Although you are free to explore our collections for yourselves, you can also contact our collection specialists if you need help by using the online enquiry service.

The Library provides copying services and a limited inter-library lending service.

We have put together some guides on our website for with further information about the Library and how to use our services. There are guides for:

See tools for research for further information.

Class 3: How the Library decides

The Library is governed by a Board, and managed by the National Librarian and Chief Executive, Amina Shah. Strategic decisions are made in line with the Library's strategy and the Library Plan. Strategic decisions are recorded in the minutes of the Library Leadership Team.

Class 4: What and how we spend

Our annual report and accounts give a detailed breakdown on the funding that we receive and the things that we spend it on.

Under the terms of recent legislation (the Public Services Reform (Scotland) Act), the Library now also publishes the following information on the following areas of expenditure:

  • Public relations activities

  • Overseas travel

  • External consultancy

  • Hospitality

  • Transactions over £25,000 and Government procurement card transactions over £500 are available as organisational data on our Data Foundry site. Please note these datasets are presented in Microsoft Excel CSV format.

You can read details of our expenditure in these areas and information about the steps that we have taken to improve efficiency and effectiveness in the expenditure disclosure documents:

We manage our finances and budgets in accordance with the following policies and supporting documentation:

Class 5: How we manage our resources

The Library employs approximately 300 people. We use an external recruitment system to advertise jobs online.

We have the following policies in place:

  • Annual Leave Policy

  • Attendance Management Policy

  • Bullying and Harassment Policy

  • Career Breaks Policy

  • Code of Conduct

  • Discipline and Grievance Policy

  • Family Friendly Leave Policy

  • Induction and Probation Policy

  • Learning and Development Policy

  • Performance Management Policy

  • Recruitment Policy

  • Redeployment Policy and Procedure

  • Volunteers Policy

  • Whistleblowing Policy (Word document) (84 KB; 9 pages)

The Library has eight buildings in total. Five are occupied by staff, and the other three are used for storage. We have four buildings in central Edinburgh, two buildings at Sighthill on the outskirts of Edinburgh, one premises at Kelvin Hall in Glasgow, and one at Kirkintilloch. We manage our estate in accordance with our Property Asset Management Plan.

In 2010 the Library made a commitment to reduce its carbon footprint by 30% over five years. By the end of March 2016, we had made a reduction of 47%.

You can read reports on recent progress we have made:

Health and Safety at the Library is managed in accordance with three policies:

In addition to our collections, we hold corporate information about our business, our staff, and our customers. We manage these information resources in accordance with:

We publish data relating to the use of facility time — paid time-off during working hours for trade union representatives to carry out trade union duties — in accordance with the Trade Union (Facility Time Publication Requirements) Regulations 2017. This data is also reported on the UK Government website.

Class 6: External procurement

As a public funded body, the National Library of Scotland has to procure its goods, services and construction-related activities sustainably, ethically, fairly and transparently in line with European Union and Scottish Government Guidance.

Our procurement documentation — including our procedures, policies and register of contracts awarded — is available online.

Class 7: How the Library is performing

On our website we publish both our annual report and accounts (which gives a statistical breakdown of our funding, spending, and statutory compliance), and an annual review, which looks at the performance and development of our services more generally.

The Library Board receives quarterly reports on the Library's progress on the Annual Plan. Board meeting minutes.

We also publish our Mainstreaming Equality Reports and employee and board equality monitoring reports produced under the Equality Act 2010 (Specific Duties) (Scotland) Regulations 2012. See equalities documents on our website

Class 8: Our commercial publications

In recent years we have published several books about Library collections and history, and occasionally we collaborate with other publishers.

Class 9: Our open data

We publish open data in accordance with Scotland's Open Data Strategy. Our Open Data Publication Plan and our open data are available on our Data Foundry site.