THE NATIONAL 'LIBRARY OF SCOTLAND
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—The article in your issue of last week gave, as you said, one side of this controversy. May I say something on the other ? The Trustees ought to know their business, and they deny that the area of the site which they approve is inadequate. They claim that it is larger than the sites of all libraries except the New York Public Library and the Congress Library at Washington. They say that the site of which their critics Complain is' only one-third of the whole site. They will notadmit the figures put forward by their critics in estimating the cost of the rival plans. They say that the High Street scheme would cost £247,000: their own would cost £178,000, including provision for storage over the next fifty years, after which an expenditure of £37,000 would carry them on for a century.
Your contributor did not refer to matters of reading, though the trustees hold that a library should' concern itself with reading. They claim that their site, with the assured use of the Laigh Parliament House, in which the Library began its existence, as an exhibition room, is the best possible for readers, with its' access to the books, especially legal works, which are still the Advocates' Library. - -
Lastly, is there to' be no sentiment or gratitude ? Could the removal-to the Ill& Street site be chosen without violation of both ? The Advocates - maintained at heavy cost to themselves 'what had become in effect a National Library. They could- have gone on maintaining it adequately enough for their own-use, or have sold treasures. But they saw that they could not go on keeping it up as a National Library should be kept' They made a gift of quite incalculable value, which should never be forgotten through dissociation from the old surroundings. And is there -nothing inspiring in those unique surroundings V-1-I am, Sir,- &c.,
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