Kit Baston, Jean Guild Grant awardee 2025
Project aims and background
The ‘Books and Borrowing’ project, started in June 2020, is an analysis of the Scottish Borrowers’ Registers between 1750 and 1830. The project set out to reinterpret the history of reading in Scotland during that time period by using formerly unexplored book borrowing records, and therefore created a new online resource that reveals hidden histories of book use within all social classes.
This new project, Book Borrowing Surgeons, adds another source of very interesting material, this time including the records from the University of Edinburgh Library for ‘external’ users of the Library, such as surgeons who are currently under-represented in the database. This project will reveal the books borrowed by the surgeons, medical students or their apprentices, which may have helped them deal with various conditions, ailments and illnesses plaguing people of the time. As Edinburgh was considered a centre of excellence for medicine, this project adds another element to our understanding of the people involved in this profession.
Project lead
Dr Karen ‘Kit’ Baston is a historian, bibliographer, freelance writer, and researcher who is interested in aspects of the eighteenth century, especially in a British context.
She was a research fellow for ‘Books and Borrowing, 1750-1830: An Analysis of Scottish Borrowers’ Registers‘, an AHRC-funded project at the Universities of Stirling and Glasgow running from June 2020 until December 2023.
She specialises in early modern Scottish lawyers’ libraries, Scottish legal history, the history of the book, and social history. She was Project Manager for ‘William Hunter’s Library: A transcription of the early catalogues‘ at the University of Glasgow and Research Assistant for ‘Eighteenth-century Borrowing at the University of Glasgow‘, also at the University of Glasgow. In spring 2020, she provided research assistance for ‘Identity Deception: A Critical History’ with special reference to civil law cases in Scottish legal history.
She studied for her BA at the University of Detroit, her MA at Birkbeck College, and her PhD at the University of Edinburgh.
Project activities
Kit’s research involves transcribing 183 pages from a borrower’s receipt book and register dating from the 1780s to the 1810s and recording the borrowings from external users of the Edinburgh University Library. Members of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh (RCSE) had the right to use the University Library in exchange for the donation of their books in 1763, whilst some had previously been students of the university. Transcribing these records and matching the borrowers to ones already in the database will let us know more about ‘what happened next’. As the surgeons are well-documented in other places, for example in the RCSE’s online ‘Surgeons Database’, it will then be able to enhance biographical details for them by including their life dates and dates of qualification, giving us another aspect into their lives.
As an example, the surgeon Benjamin Bell has already been discovered as a borrower from the University Library register.
Intended outputs and results
The project will run from April until September 2025, beginning with biographical research. Following this, the transcription begins by looking at the surgeon’s records and adding them to the existing Books and Borrowing Database, along with Biographical information. The transcribed pages will be freely available via the ‘Books and Borrowing’ website, which is Open Access and available to all. The borrowing register has already been digitised and made available on the website, but without transcription, bibliographical details and biographical information, it is not of great use to general users, so this will enhance the availability of online searches.
Project links and updates
Regular news updates on the project will be available to read on social media via ‘Books and Borrowing’ (@books-borrowing.bsky.social) and on (@kgbaston.bsky.social). News updates and blogs will also appear on our website and through OEC’s Facebook, X and Bluesky accounts.
Project links
Project updates
Miss Jean Ritchie Guild
This project has been supported by a Jean Guild Grant, named after our benefactor, a long-standing member of the OEC. She joined the staff of the University of Edinburgh Library in 1948, later becoming Reference Librarian, much-respected for her skills and knowledge, especially in relation to the Faculty of Arts. Later she was responsible for publicity, Library publications, visitor programmes, and the Library’s relationship with the wider community.
