The Scottish Maritime Museum Library

By Kirsty Gilchrist

The National Year of Reading 2026 Campaign has inspired us to highlight our museum library. Mostly organised by museum volunteers, the library is currently having a bit of a makeover to allow the space to be used more often by staff and visitors. We hope that by focusing on this space, it will encourage us all to make reading a part of our everyday lives.

Our library is currently used by staff and volunteers for several museum related activities. For example, we use the resources to help answer public research enquiries and collect information for our exhibitions and events. Although not a lending library, the space also acts as a “reading room”, where visitors can request to view specific objects from our collection that are normally held in storage.

Recently, our library has been managed by a regular volunteer. This allows for the space to be open to museum visitors on set days, normally Mondays and Thursdays. This is especially great in the warm summer months as our library is not impacted by the heat and brightness sometimes present in the Linthouse building – the space is a great place to sit if visitors need some time out in a quiet area.

The content of our library includes books that are sometimes only available in city or university libraries. Any steps we can take to improve the accessibility of these books is a benefit to our local community, and we welcome research visits for this reason.