Scotland has major historic traditions of publicly available library provision stretching back to the late 17th century, and of which the country has good reason to be proud. The first publicly available library in Scotland was founded in 1680 at Innerpeffray in Perthshire. It still survives today and is well worth a visit. It is an endowed library which means that it was founded by a wealthy patron who gave both his books and money to create a library and an income to support it thereafter. However, the model of library organisation which came to predominate and which survived into the late 19th century was the subscription library. Subscription libraries were like clubs or societies. Members paid a fee to join and an annual subscription which gave them the right to participate in the library’s activities including electing a management committee and the library’s president.There were two types of subscription library: libraries for the better off, whose members paid a higher subscription, perhaps about £1 a year, and consequently amassed substantial collections; and libraries for the (mainly) skilled working classes which emerged mainly in the 1790s and which charged only a few shillings and consequently amassed smaller collections.
The first library for the better off was founded at Kelso in 1750, and English examples soon followed, notably at Liverpool and Leeds. However, Leadhills Miners’ Library was founded in 1741 and is consequently not just the first subscription library in Britain, but also the world’s first library for working people. More generally, libraries and temporary reading societies, mainly for skilled tradesmen, did not appear in Scotland until the 1790s. Paisley, with its numerous literate handloom weavers, is a good example. So how did a small village in the Lanarkshire-Dumfriesshire border come to be a world-class centre for early library development? To understand this, it is necessary to delve not just into the history of lead mining, but also to understand learning and educational values in the late 17th and 18th centuries.
The lead mining industry in Scotland
We know that lead extraction took place in the Lowther hills before the
