Family and local history

Draughtsmen hard at work in 1895

The NLS holds the archive of James Bartholomew and Sons, engravers and mapmakers. As well as being a fascinating source of information about maps and mapmaking, the archive contains extensive staff records which will prove very useful to family historians. Covering the period from the 1880s to the 1970s it contains wage books and cards, in-house magazines and a collection of photographs of staff and social events. The one here shows the firm’s draughtsmen in the 1890s.

You can take a look at items from the archive in our Maps Reading Room at Causewayside – or if you can’t visit in person, you can take advantage of our remote enquiry service to ask about particular staff members.

There is also an exhibition about the archive currently running in George IV Bridge, which is well worth a visit.

The library’s newest web feature has gone live. The digitised Scottish Post Office directories for 1773 to 1911 is now fully searchable. You can search by place, name and year, as well as viewing complete books in PDF format. The original adverts from these directories have also been digitised, including this image from the 1905 Glasgow Post Office Directory.

There is also a really interesting ‘Did you know’ feature, which provides information on subjects as diverse as shipping, telephones and dentistry.

A recent enquiry reminded me of the usefulness of company magazines for both family and local history research. Many businesses and industrial companies produced in-house publications aimed at staff and customers and the Library has rich and varied collections of these. The example shown here describes itself as ‘An illustrated social magazine for the workers and staff of the Burntisland Shipbuilding Company, Limited’. As well as providing a snapshot of the shipbuilding industry at the time in the form of technical articles about ship design and commentary on the state of the industry, it also chronicles the achievements of the many shipyard sports clubs such as the football, cricket and badminton teams. This is typical of this type of publication which often contain articles about company events, sometimes including photographs, as well as articles about individual staff achievements.  Coal, the magazine of the former National Coal Board in the UK, is another example. The articles in this publication range from accounts of mining disasters to descriptions and photos of company events such as colliery brass band competitions. If you have a family member who worked for a particular company then you may want to check our catalogue http://www.nls.uk/catalogues to see if we hold any publications relating to that company.