Types of Records

Press catalogues

Press catalogues are lists of books according to where these are located in the library. Usually, a letter is used to indicate the bookcase or bay, a number to indicate the shelf and another number to indicate the book. Thus, we find shelf-marks such as K.11.4. From the mid-18^th century, the shelf-mark system changed and it is current to find, in the records, shelf-marks such as A.D.h.2. However, we are not entirely sure what the letters correspond to. Indeed, some shelf-marks have so many letters that it does not seem likely that these letters correspond to bookcases only. Such an example would be A.A.B.k.27. Yet, the lower-case letter is likely to have indicated the shelf.

Author catalogues

Author catalogues are registers of book titles arranged according to authors’ names. These often end up being very dense as it is difficult to anticipate how much space is going to be needed for each letter so that it will be possible to make later additions. We also find leaves that have been added inside the catalogue (‘pinned’ or glued usually) because there was no space left for any addition for a specific letter section. Most early author catalogues, although mainly arranged by authors’ names, also contain themed sections, such as ‘biblia’ (bibles) in B or ‘England’ in E, for titles related to a specific topic. It is worth noting that in most author catalogues of this period, the letters I and J, and U and V, were considered as two pairs, and we thus usually have only 24 sections in the catalogues.

Purchase books

The major part of the money used for the library was raised through student fees, collected at matriculation and graduation. The fees paid, and sometimes, the books bought with that money, are recorded in the matriculation registers. These are lists of students, usually arranged according to class and year of study. The fees paid by individual students are given, although not all names have fees given for them. In the 17^th and early 18^th centuries, students were required to pay a fee directly to their regent (Professor from 1708) as well as a fee for the library. But in the early decades of the 18^th century, matriculations and graduations declined, and this put pressure on the library’s funds which depended on the fees collected at matriculation and graduation. To counter this issue, new professors were required to pay a fee to the library from 1737. Matriculation did not become compulsory until 1810, but under the Principalship of William Robertson (1762-1793), Professors were made to collect the matriculation fee, to be used for the library, as well as their own fees.  In these early registers, we only find male students, as women were not allowed to study at the university until the late 19^th century.

Account books

Account books are most often similar to matriculation books, in that they also contain lists of students. However, they, on the whole, contain more information on how the money collected from the students was spent. We therefore find lists of books purchased with student fees but also notes of expenses made for the general management of the library, such as towards cleaning or book-binding. The earliest surviving account book dates to the middle of the 17^th century.

Borrowing registers

Borrowing registers have not been examined as part of the project of which this guide is the result. However, given that we have one example of a borrowing register in LIB/2/Da.1.34 (if not two, with LIB/1/Da.1.11), it might be worth giving an outline of what the borrowing system was like in the early centuries of the library. In the early decades of the library, the borrowing of books was not possible, but matriculated students as well as staff members were allowed to request titles for reading in the library, with the condition of swearing an oath of ‘good behaviour’. It seems that, at least in the first half of the 17^th century, only teaching staff were actively encouraged to use the library. Rules that were to be observed for using the library, as well as the restricted times when it could be used, made its use rather inconvenient. It was not until William Robertson became Principal of the university that students were automatically entitled to using the library after having paid their fee. Thus, from the 1760s, students were allowed to borrow books, providing they paid a deposit equal to the value of the item they wanted to borrow.