Hansard

I declare an interest, which has already been alluded to. As the MSP for Edinburgh Central, I am one of the ex officio members of the board of the National Library of Scotland under the 1925 act as amended. However, I will be happy to play the role of a turkey voting for Christmas when I press my voting button to send that interest into oblivion at 5 o’clock. Sadly, that will also put an end to any forlorn hope that I might follow in the footsteps of Guido Biagi, who was the librarian of the Biblioteca Nazionale in Florence in the late 19th century and with whom I share a common but, I admit, rather distant ancestry.

As a member of the NLS board, I am in very good company. Membership is also held by the Lord Advocate, the Lord President of the Court of Session, the dean of the Faculty of Advocates, the minister of St Giles, the lords provost of four cities, five further representatives of the Faculty of Advocates, four representatives of the universities, two representatives of the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities and the Queen’s and Lord Treasurer’s Remembrancer. I admit that I do not know who or even what that is, but it sounds very important. That is by no means the entire list. It is, therefore, no wonder that an overhaul of the governance of the NLS is needed, because it is a 21st century organisation that faces all the challenges of a modern NDPB.

In my brief hello as a member of the board, which has since given way to a long goodbye, I was introduced to the NLS’s organisational to-do list. It is a familiar story to anyone who administers a public body in Scotland. It includes balancing budgets, managing limited staff resources, dealing with the ever-present question of public sector pensions and pursuing shared services, on which the NLS is powering ahead by merging departments with the National Galleries of Scotland, with the NLS taking the lead where it is more established and the National Galleries doing so where it has something to offer.

The National Library is more than just a technical or a regulatory NDPB. As Scotland’s only copyright library, it is a national institution. It offers a first-class service that is unrivalled anywhere. One of my first visits coincided with a study visit by a friend of mine who is a PhD student in Birmingham and who was consulting some of the primary sources that are held uniquely at the NLS. Cross-border movement in such research is common, as researchers go where the books are. I note with interest that the UK Legal Deposit Libraries Act 2003 confers continued rights on the library of Trinity College Dublin to receive UK published books and that that is reciprocated by the Republic of Ireland’s Copyright and Related Rights Act, 2000, which confers the same rights on UK libraries to receive Irish public books. Books are not separated by national borders, nor should they be.

As Scotland’s central library, the National Library has undergone a remarkable transformation in the past decade, in particular. Gone, for anybody who was familiar with the library 10 years ago, are the security barrier and the unwelcoming entrance with a security guard who asked for credentials. Those used to be the first things that users of the library saw. Instead, there is a visitor area with a cafe and exhibitions. The NLS is realising its role not only as a library of last resort but as an inclusive and important part of central Edinburgh’s cultural life.

For example, last year I enjoyed the banned books exhibition, where a publication that had incurred a fair amount of ire from Sarah Palin in Wasilla, Alaska sat alongside “The Love That Dares To Speak Its Name”, which was the last victim of the UK’s blasphemy laws in 1976, and even one of the Harry Potter novels, which I understand has been accused of turning the world’s children to witchcraft. That is news to me.

We can all appreciate that growing openness. It is not everyone who has to consult a copyright library, but everyone can find something there of interest.

As somebody who has been in a few copyright libraries in my time, I think that the NLS ranks high for atmosphere. I always found the British Library unwelcoming—not to mention ugly and full of bricks—and, to be honest, I found it harder to look at the Bodleian in Oxford after I learned that part of it was the architectural inspiration for the temple of the dark lord in the works of that former Oxford professor J R R Tolkien. I always rather liked the Radcliffe camera myself, but clearly he had a less positive experience than many people have had with the NLS and other libraries since then.

Such is the openness of the NLS that it is now actively working across Scotland, and one of its priorities is to expand its reach through local libraries and the innovative use of information technology. By doing that, it will become a truly national institution and be part of the cultural life of not just Edinburgh but the entire country from Stranraer to Shetland. That sort of public involvement and promotion of books and learning in the wider sense is not in the 1925 act—very little is. Section 1(1) of the act states:

“There shall be established and founded in Scotland a library with the name of the National Library of Scotland”.

That is similar to the oft-quoted first line of the Scotland Act 1998. That act goes on in considerable detail, which the 1925 act does not, although it does go into such detail as to set out the librarian’s pension. Given that the 1925 act has worked in some respects for 90 years, they clearly do not make legislation like they used to.

The bill sets out not just the powers of the NLS, as the 1925 act did, but its purposes, and that has been particularly welcomed by the chair of the board and the national librarian. It provides a clear, updated and usable governance framework for the institution, which can only help the NLS to continue to grow and to develop its first-class provision for Scotland and beyond.

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