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Guide to the National Archives of Scotland Edinburgh, HMSO for the Scottish Record Office and The Stair Society, Supplementary Vol, No 3, 1996
xv + 253 pp, L50
ISBN 1 872517 10 12
In his preface to this work, the Keeper of the Records of Scotland compares his country with some of her continental neighbours whose `records are the symbol of their freedom, the token of their democratic rights and of their national individuality.' The implication is that the Scots are more blase-or, perhaps, more ignorant-about their national archives; certainly that the records of Scotland cannot be said to fill this central role of focusing the nation's sense of its history or its current identity. If this is so, perhaps it is the very impenetrability of the Scottish archives that has caused Scots to look past them for simpler, more obvious guides and symbols. With the publication of this long-awaited Guide, however, we may hope that these national archives will now be revealed, in all their richness and complexity, as a prime source for Scotland's understanding of her past and present situation in the world at large. As the devolution debate rages back and forth, the timing is fortuitous.
The Guide to the National Archives of Scotland starts with an account of the troubled, accidentprone history of the records of Scotland in their perilous and inconvenient journeyings, by land and sea, through siege, fire and shipwreck, to their final destination in Adam's handsome Register House and its satellite buildings. The development of the present arrangements for the care and management of the records is rehearsed, and then the reader is launched straight into an Introduction to the Records of the pre-Union administration.
One rarely wants to read a guide book from cover-to-cover; one homes in on the relevant portions and skips through the rest. This Guide, however, really does require and deserve a close reading, all the way through, or else one could miss so many good things, so many...