National Library of Scotland Zoom

Presentation by the National Library of Scotland (NLS): Resources for Researching Brewing History – 9 October 2025

This online presentation was a new venture for the BHS – a ‘virtual’ event that would give members a chance to hear from a specialist on a brewery history-related subject using modern technology (a ‘Teams’ meeting) all from the comfort of their own homes!

Following an initial approach by Jeff Sechiari, NLS agreed to host a one-hour presentation followed by a Q&A session.

Being an online event, there was no restriction on numbers, although in the end only 15 members tuned in.

Our NLS hosts were Laragh Quinney, Maps Reading Room Manager and Suzanna Beaupre, Curator of Industrial Era Collections.

The presentation started with an overview of the NLS and its vast holdings – over 13 million printed items held on 50 miles of shelving plus a growing collection of moving image and sound archives. These include Scottish county maps, town plans, Goad Insurance maps, and thematic maps.

Although the library is principally the repository for Scotland, NLS does also hold collections that go far beyond, including a complete archive of historic Ordnance Survey maps of England, Wales and Ireland. The presentation also highlighted the many other online resources that might be of interest to those researching brewing history. Although many of us will have done the odd search on the NLS maps website, it was very useful to get a full tutorial on how to conduct detailed searches on specific subjects such as brewery locations.

For example, using their search tools, it is possible to highlight every brewery in England that appears on the OS 1900’s 6-inch maps and then zoom in to an individual location. We shall be providing a link on the BHS website so that members can view the presentation and download the slides.

For those wishing to explore the NLS map collection go to www.maps.nls.uk.

Should members have suggestions regarding future online presentations then please forward your ideas to visits@breweryhistory.com

Some guidance notes were provide:-

"Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland" https://www.breweryhistory.com/BreweryHistory_NLSmaps1.pdf]]

"Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland" https://www.breweryhistory.com/BreweryHistorySociety_NLS.pdf]]