Since its foundation in 1962, the association of Friends of Edinburgh University Library has contributed greatly to the acquisition of whole research collections and of individual items for existing collections, notably the University Collection and Archives, Halliwell-Phillipps II, the letters of Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle and of Walter De La Mare, and the papers of Arthur Koestler, Hugh MacDiarmid, Norman MacCaig, George Mackay Brown, Sydney Goodsir Smith, John Middleton Murry and John Wain.

The generosity of individual members also has brought to the Library
the bases of new research collections and enhancement of others.
They include:

• W. Fraser Mitchell
• John Dalziel Wyndham Pearce

• Kenneth Swanson Ryrie
• George A. Shepperson
  
• Alan F. Stark