National Library of Scotland Unveils Landmark Centenary Programme
More images available by midday 30 January 2025
- Nationwide ‘Love Libraries’ campaign to highlight the importance of libraries and encourage people to show love to their local library from around Valentine’s Day
- Authors Val McDermid and Damian Barr named as Centenary Champions
- Major centenary exhibition, ‘Dear Library’, celebrating libraries and what people love about books and reading, opens June 2025
- Mary Queen of Scots’ last letter to leave National Library for first time in a generation to go on display in Perth Museum in special centenary loan programme, which will also see national collections travelling to Aberdeen and Shetland
- Events to look out for throughout the year include a Curtain Raiser event on 28 March, and tours and talks.
“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 (30 January 2025) 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/
Contact Information
Hannah Knox
Notes to editors
About the National Library of Scotland
The National Library of Scotland is the nation’s living memory – preserving the past, enriching the present, and inspiring current and future generations through access to knowledge, culture, and innovation. We chart the DNA of Scottish society by documenting, preserving and sharing precious collections that capture our past and present. We support education, promote inclusivity, empower informed citizenship, and contribute to the economic and social fabric of the nation. We strive to understand Scotland’s place in the world and to explore connections with our neighbours near and far. We reflect Scotland. Rich, diverse, unfiltered.
About Amina Shah FRSE FRSA
Amina Shah joined the Library as National Librarian and Chief Executive in October 2021. Amina has more than 25 years' experience in the sector, including senior positions in public and academic libraries, third sector and the arts. As former Chief Executive Officer of the Scottish Library and Information Council, she led on the development of Scotland's first National Strategy for Public Libraries. She has a strong interest in diversity and inclusion and the role libraries, literature and culture play in empowering individuals and communities.
Amina is a Visiting Professor at Robert Gordon University, previous President of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Studies, a Lay Member of Court at University Dundee, a Trustee of Glasgow Women’s Library, Scottish Library and Information Council, Friends of the National Libraries , the Institute of Advanced Studies in the Humanities at Edinburgh University and a member of the Advisory Boards for the British Library, The Huntarian Museum, Towards a National Collections (funded by AHRC) and DiSsCO (AHRC). Additionally, she is the Chair of the Advisory Group for Common Purpose Edinburgh and Chair of the Legal Deposit Libraries of UK and Ireland.
Since her time at the National Library of Scotland, Amina has been focused on resetting and reinvigorating the Library post COVID, widening and deepening the Library’s connections in communities across Scotland and beyond, strengthening fundraising and donor relationships, digital transformation, understanding audiences and non-users and preparing to mark the Library’s Centenary in 2025. In the first 12 months, she implemented a Voluntary Exit Process and resultant restructure and worked collaboratively with partners across the UK to raise £15 million to save the Honresfield Library for the Nation.
About Val McDermid
One of the UK’s most accomplished and respected novelists, number one bestseller Val McDermid has sold over 19 million books to date across the globe and her work has been translated into more than 40 languages. She has written five series of crime novels as well as several award-winning standalone novels, books of non-fiction, short story collections and a children’s picture book, My Granny is a Pirate. Her new Karen Pirie novel, Silent Bones, publishes in October 2025. She is a Fellow of both the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Society of Edinburgh and has been a judge for the Women’s Prize for Fiction and the Man Booker Prize, as well as chairing the Wellcome Book Prize in 2017. She is also the recipient of seven honorary doctorates, is an Honorary Fellow of St Hilda’s College, Oxford and a Professor at the University of Otago in New Zealand. Full bio available here.
About Damian Barr
Damian Barr is an award-winning writer and broadcaster. His new novel, The Two Roberts, is out in 2025. He is the author of the 2013 memoir ‘Maggie & Me’ and the 2019 novel ‘You Will Be Safe Here’. A Radio 4 regular, he hosts ‘The Big Scottish Book Club’ for BBC Scotland. Full bio available here.
About Treasures of the National Library of Scotland
Treasures of the National Library of Scotland is a permanent thematic display, featuring objects from the extensive collection at the Library. From early printed books to video installations, maps and medieval manuscripts to passports and letters, this changing display provides a unique insight into Scotland’s history, culture and people, and its place in the world.
‘Treasures of the National Library of Scotland’ is on at George IV Bridge, Edinburgh, and open Monday to Saturday. Entry is free.
About The Order for the Massacre of Glencoe
The National Library collects material relating to the history of Scotland, from everyday life to defining moments of national significance like The Order for the Massacre of Glencoe. Which resulted in one of the most bloody and infamous events in Scottish history.
Following the Revolution of 1688, clan chiefs who had sided with James VII and II were required to take the Oath of Allegiance to their new monarchs, William II and III and Mary II. The MacDonalds of Glencoe missed the deadline and were brutally executed with the order to ‘putt all to the sword under seventy’. The act proved particularly repugnant to Scots as the perpetrators had recently enjoyed the hospitality of their victims.
The Order for the Massacre of Glencoe was donated by Rt Hon James Ramsay MacDonald in 1925 for the founding of the National Library of Scotland.
About the Glenriddell manuscripts
The Glenriddell manuscripts contain some of Burns’s most important works and span the majority of his literary career. Burns presented these manuscripts to his friend, Robert Riddell of Glenriddell (1755–1794), as a token of his friendship. He filled them with poems and songs as well as highlights from his correspondence. His rediscovery of this old manuscript captures the hopes and dreams of his early literary ambitions.
In 1913, to much anger in Scotland, they were sold at auction. However, the American buyer, John Gribbel (1858–1936), gifted them to the nation. Following the creation of the Library in 1925, they found their permanent home.
About Mary Queen of Scots’ last letter
At 2 am on Wednesday 8 February 1587, Mary, Queen of Scots wrote what is believed to be her last letter. Her execution on the block at Fotheringhay Castle was a mere six hours away. It was written in French and is addressed to Henri III of France, brother of her first husband, Francois (Francis) II, who had died of an ear infection in 1560 at the age of 16.
The letter was in the archives of the Scots College in Paris until the French Revolution, when it passed into the hands of the Chevalier d`Hervilly, and subsequently became the property of Messieurs Feuillet de Conches and B Fillon. Eventually it became part of the celebrated collection of autographs formed by the great 19th-century collector Alfred Morrison.
In 1917 the last letter of Mary Queen of Scots was bought from Morrison’s widow by 26 subscribers and presented to the Scottish nation through the National Art Collections Fund in 1923. It was held by the Advocates Library until 1925, when it was presented to the National Library of Scotland on its foundation.
To see an English translation of the letter please click here
About Perth Museum
The new Perth Museum opened its doors in March 2024 after a £27 million development project. This world-class cultural and heritage attraction highlights the fascinating objects and stories that put Perth and Kinross at the centre of Scotland’s story. At its heart sits the Stone of Destiny, also known as the Stone of Scone, one of Scotland and the UK’s most significant historical objects. Returning to Perthshire for the first time in over 700 years, the Stone is the centrepiece of the new Museum and is free for all to view. Alongside the stone, the Museum will display Perth & Kinross’s Recognised Collections of National Significance as well as iconic loans and exhibitions from the UK and abroad.
About Culture Perth and Kinross
Culture Perth and Kinross is a charitable Trust responsible for the delivery and development of the archive, library, museum and galleries, and creative learning in Perth and Kinross.
Their vision is to be at the heart of a cultural community that connects people, ideas, knowledge, and collections. With a mission to develop and deliver a range of sector-leading services, public programmes and partnerships which engage a wide and diverse audience in the best of local, national, and international culture.
About Aberdeen Art Gallery
Aberdeen Art Gallery is Aberdeen City Council’s flagship cultural venue and is home to one of the finest collections in the UK. The Art Gallery opened in 1885. The Cowdray Hall concert venue was added in 1925, supported by a gift from Annie, the Viscountess of Cowdray, "with a view to encouraging the taste for art and music in the City of Aberdeen". The Art Gallery underwent a landmark £34.6 million redevelopment between 2015 and 2019, supported by Aberdeen City Council and the National Lottery Heritage Fund. It is a joint winner of Art Fund Museum of the Year 2020, the world’s largest museum prize and the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland Andrew Doolan Award for Scotland’s Building of the Year 2020. Find out more here.
About Shetland Museum and Archives
Shetland Museum and Archives is a vibrant visitor attraction located in the heart of Lerwick, the capital of Shetland. Managed by the Shetland Amenity Trust, a dedicated charity preserving Shetland's natural and cultural heritage, Shetland Museum and Archives offer an engaging journey through the islands’ rich history and unique culture.
Visitors can explore world-renowned collections, including Recognised Collections of National Significance in Textiles and Archaeology, as well as a wealth of artefacts and documents that tell the fascinating story of Shetland’s past. With free admission and a warm welcome, the Museum and Archives invites both visitors and researchers to discover Shetland’s heritage in a dynamic, educational environment.
In addition to its exhibits, Shetland Museum and Archives provides an extensive education programme, featuring workshops and outreach sessions that bring the collections to life for the community.
Listings
Curtain Raiser: Launch of the National Library’s Centenary Celebrations
National Library of Scotland, George IV Bridge, Edinburgh, EH1 1EW
Friday 28 March, 6–7:30pm
Centenary Time Machine Trail
National Library of Scotland, George IV Bridge, Edinburgh, EH1 1EW
Saturday 22 March 2025 – March 2026
Treasures of the National Library of Scotland
National Library of Scotland, George IV Bridge, Edinburgh, EH1 1EW
New items on display from late March 2025 – March 2026
Dear Library
National Library of Scotland, George IV Bridge, Edinburgh, EH1 1EW
Friday 20 June 2025 – Monday 20 April 2026
Outwith: National Library around Scotland
Aberdeen Art Gallery, Saturday 13 September 2025 – Sunday 4 January 2026
Display of John Forbes' 'Songs and Fancies', published in Aberdeen, 1682
Perth Museum and AK Bell Library, Friday 23 Jan 2026 – Sunday 19 April 2026
Display of Mary Queen of Scots' last letter at Perth Museum, and related collection items by Robert Burns and Liz Lochhead displayed at AK Bell Library (both part of Culture Perth and Kinross)
Shetland Museum and Archives, Saturday 28 March 2026 – Saturday 20 June 2026
For more information please see https://www.nls.uk/whats-on/