With impeccable festive timing, two copies of the latest EBS journal popped through my door this morning. The first article is mine, a major output from my research for the AHRC-funded Claimed From Stationers Hall network, for which I won grant-funding a couple of years ago.
‘A Music Library for St Andrews: use of the University’s Copyright Music Collections, 1801-1849’, in Journal of the Edinburgh Bibliographical Society no.15 (2020), pp.13-33. The final proof copy is uploaded on Pure, our RCS institutional repository, though it won’t be visible to the naked eye until the input has been authorised, so you won’t be able to see it straight away.
ABSTRACT
The author’s researches into the Copyright Music Collection at the University of St Andrews led, inevitably, to the Library’s Receipt Books, in which all loans were recorded, whether to professors, students, or “Strangers” – friends of the professors who borrowed under the names of obliging academic staff.
Several thousand pages later, every music loan between 1801 and 1849 has now been logged. Notwithstanding the difficulties of inferring much detail from over 400 Sammelbände (ie, bound collections of multiple items), there are still many interesting observations to be made.
This paper explores findings to date, outlining the progress of the author’s research into a field in which music and library history meet, thereby shedding light on early nineteenth century musical activities in a small university town.
Karen McAulay, Musicologist 