Dr Karen Elisabeth McAulay, BA, MA, LTCL, DipLib, PGCert, FHEA, FRCS, FRHistS

I’m a musicologist of Scottish music history. Since July 2024, I’ve worked part-time as a post doctoral research fellow at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. I’m also open to other parallel part-time work opportunities that use my expertise.

I’ve specialised in music for my whole career. After an Honours Music degree at Durham, and a Masters by research at Exeter, I trained as a librarian at the College of Librarianship Wales (University of Aberystwyth).  I had it in my mind that I’d be a scholar-librarian in some shape or form.

For most of my career, I worked as a chartered librarian at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, curating the music collection and helping our talented musicians with their information needs, also gaining Fellowship of CILIP mid-career. Practical musicianship in my spare time consists of being an organist and directing a choir.

“Many thanks for all your efforts in finding all this music! As you stated the [section] was seriously depleted and this will give us a good kick start.” 2002

“Thank you so much – that’s really helpful. Will mention your wonderful help in the programme notes!” 2016

“This is super-useful! Thank you!”  2022

However, whilst holding down a full-time job, raising three sons and supporting my husband through arthritic impaired mobility, I also studied for a PhD at the University of Glasgow, graduating in 2009.

Three young boys, all in navy blue anoraks.
The three younger members of Testosterone Towers, now adults!

(We call it the year of two new knees and a PhD: his knees, my PhD.)

The latter part of my librarianship career was actually split between the library and research. (You could say I’d  realised my scholar-librarian ambition. )  I was a postdoctoral research assistant on the AHRC Bass Culture project; won an AHRC grant for the ‘Claimed from Stationers’ Hall’ historical music copyright network; published my first book and began research on another. If you delve back far enough, you’ll find my posts about Claimed from Stationers’ Hall, which explored the music surviving from the old Georgian British copyright libraries.

From September to December 2023, I was the inaugural Ketelbey Fellow at the University of St Andrews in the School of History, as part of the Institute of Scottish Historical Research, and in 2025, I’ve been an Heritage Collections Fellow at IASH at the University of Edinburgh.

My second book was published at the end of October 2024. It’s about the social history of amateur music-making and Scottish national identity, and focuses on Scottish music publishers between 1880-1951. I’m currently about to write a proposal for my third book.

I’ve been connected with several research networks, and continue to watch out for more! In 2024 I was elected a Fellow of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (FRCS) and in 2025, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (FRHistS), too. I am on the Editorial Board of the Review of Scottish Culture, a wide-ranging open access journal where I feel much at home.

I am Honorary Librarian of the Friends of Wighton, a charity supporting the historical Wighton Collection of Scottish music at Dundee Central Library, a role which enables me to put my book knowledge to good use.

ORCID ID:- https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4437-2872

So, am I a librarian, a musician, a musicologist, or a scholar? A bit of all of these! I do have a diploma in oboe performance, but I haven’t played for ages. However, I’ve been an organist and choir director for over 40 years. In trad music circles, it’s quite common to make mention of your musical lineage, but I’m afraid my only historical link with ‘the tradition’ is that my late mother-in-law was the first student dance accompanist for Miss Jean Milligan at Jordanhill teacher training college, and once when Miss Milligan taught a Scottish country dancing course on Tyneside, she specifically asked for Mam to play for it. To my shame, I have ‘two left feet’ and don’t dance at all.