Why literary archives must be protected
AMONG the many things I’ve missed this past year is working in the National Library of Scotland. With its studiously hushed reading rooms, Pickwickian shelves of leather-bound books and trolleys piled with returns, like upmarket Scotrail buffet carts, the NLS is a haven for anyone who needs access to the millions of books, manuscripts and images held in its bottomless archive.
Every title published in the UK is kept here, most of them stacked in the seven storeys that lie below the entrance level on Edinburgh’s George IV Bridge. The hours I have spent within its walls could not be calculated. They began when I was a student, an era when braving the officials at the front desk was like trying to sneak through Checkpoint Charlie with fake ID. These grizzled custodians were but a taster of the frosty librarians upstairs, who treated readers, whether undergraduates or lecturers, as if they were wasps, to be swatted away on sight.
These days the library actively welcomes the general public, enticing them in with an airy cafe and bookshop, exhibitions and librarians who patiently answer queries. Just writing this makes me feel nostalgic. The NLS is one of the most important institutions in the country, and yet you could be forgiven for walking past it without even noticing it was there.
Where the National Galleries are flamboyant and eye-catching, and the National Museum akin to ancient Rome in its grandeur, the NLS is so unassuming as to be self-effacing. What is true architecturally holds too in terms of status. A deposit library is a keystone of civilisation, keeper of its printed record; but in terms of political profile and cultural heft, the NLS receives far less attention – and money – than it deserves.
The outgoing head of the library, Paisley-born John Scally, who retires this autumn, has helped to redress the balance. In a frank interview recently, he admitted that he almost fell off his chair on his arrival when he discovered that the library’s annual budget for buying literary papers was a meagre £150,000. He has since persuaded Holyrood to increase this to £1 million. This has not only allowed the NLS to buy the rest of Muriel Spark’s papers, a longterm project kick-started by a donation from Ian Rankin, but means the library can try to compete with rival international institutions keen to purchase Scottish literary assets. American libraries in particular have deep pockets when it comes to bidding for the written memorabilia and notebooks, the drafts, manuscripts, letters and diaries of authors they deem important. As a result, you have to go to Texas, to the Harry Ransom Centre at the University of Austin, to examine crucial documents relating to Robert Burns or Robert Louis Stevenson, Compton Mackenzie or Naomi Mitchison, not to mention relatively minor figures like Fred Urquhart.
Thinking of such material being held so far away feels wrong, like seeing the contents of a family home scattered to the four winds. And yet, the loss to our literary heritage is nobody’s fault but our own. Until Scally’s campaign to raise funding, nobody in government gave this steady draining of the treasure chest a moment’s thought. Indeed, you wonder how many of our lieges, whose offices are a short walk away, have ever set foot here? Unless they lose their seat or retire and decide to write their memoirs, they are rarely to be seen.
Among other notable acquisitions, Scally has secured Ian Rankin’s archive, and hopes to persuade Alexander Mccall Smith and Val Mcdermid to follow suit. Alasdair Gray’s papers are also high on his agenda, but while he made no mention of luminaries such as James Kelman, Ali Smith or Douglas Dunn, one hopes they, and many others, are on the wish list he bequeaths to his successor.
Yet since the NLS has to fund match the Government’s “largesse” with private grants, you suspect that bestselling novelists are those most likely to attract patronage. In terms of public support, it is understandable that while people can easily be galvanised into outrage at the prospect of Landseer’s The Monarch of the Glen or a Lewis Chessman being lost to the nation, it is a tougher task to rouse enthusiasm for boxes of diffuse papers and jotters. Donors and benefactors can be coaxed into writing cheques for galleries and museums, where their gifts are prominently honoured, their names put on plaques and guidebooks, and they can schmooze those they wish to impress at receptions in their magnificent halls.
Finding wealthy and enlightened figureheads to fund literary acquisitions is much harder. Writers’ private papers are seen as the preserve of professors, PHD students and biographers rather than priceless national treasures. You can’t stand sipping champagne while staring at a crate filled with printouts, no matter how fascinating their contents. An author’s correspondence, tax returns or scribbled plot outlines, or their unpublished poems or stories, do not have the immediate allure or impact of an iconic work of art. Even though they are fundamental to understanding a cultural arena in which Scotland made its name centuries ago, and continues to excel, they lack pulling power. The NLS understood this when it managed to secure the spectacular John Murray archive, funded by a multi-million pound lottery grant, or Muriel
Spark’s peerless collection of papers, in part financed by bequests.
To some extent the NLS has been culpable until recent years for perpetuating its dry, standoffish image, thereby allowing its significance to be downplayed or ignored. Galleries and museums, by comparison, have done everything in their power to draw in visitors as well as generous patrons. Equally to blame for the library’s status as a poor cousin, however, has been a lack of imagination, curiosity and understanding on the part of politicians, philanthropists and the public.
Thankfully, the NLS’S days of cultivated froideur are long past.
Until the happy hour when its doors reopen, those of us desperate to return can meantime access its growing digital collection. Indeed, before writing I was browsing its history archive. Soon I’ll be heading into the rabbit warren of sources available to readers – anyone, anywhere – from home. I may be some time.
Where the National Galleries is flamboyant and the National Museum akin to ancient Rome in its grandeur, the NLS is so unassuming as to be self-effacing