P.G. Williams

Between 1st and 15th August 1939 the Institute of Sociology, Le Play House, 35 Gordon Square, London held a field study meeting in Galloway. Centred on Newton Stewart the group set out to investigate the natural history, history and social science of the

Dumfriesshire and Galloway Natural History and Antiquarian Society’s lending library was already established by 1864. In 1904, when the Ewart Public Library opened, books of local importance were transferred to the Ewart Library and formed the core of the ‘Local Collection’. Over the years many of the remaining books have been dispersed either by donation or sale. In 2011, the Council of the Society formed a committee2 to assess the residue of the Society’s library and to organise its disposal, also to collate and catalogue the archive collection relating to the Society.3 This article recounts the history of the Society’s library and records the actions taken by this committee.

At the Dumfriesshire and Galloway Natural History and Antiquarian Society meeting on the 17 October 1913, Mr Hugh S. Gladstone MA, FRSE, FZS, FSA(Scot) read as his Presidential address: Addenda to the Statistical Account of Dumfriesshire and Galloway written at the end of the Eighteenth Century by Capt. Robert Riddell LLD, FSA(Scot).3 Gladstone had found in his own library six volumes of the Statistical Account of Scotland, volume I and volumes III to VII. As Volume I and volumes III to VI contained annotations by Robert Riddell, Gladstone assumed that Riddell had annotated all of the first six volumes. He regretted that all his efforts to trace volume II had failed and hoped that the publication of his paper would lead to its discovery.