Government of Canada

Edinburgh University Library’s general collections are rich in historical and recent material on and from the Commonwealth of Nations, including Canada. Its first books relating to Nova Scotia, now part of Canada, were gifted in the 1620s by William Drummond of Hawthornden, who was a friend of their authors, Sir William Alexander, Earl of Stirling and Sir Robert Gordon of Lochinvar. The books were written to encourage the wealthy to purchase Baronetcies of Nova Scotia.

With the establishment by the University of a Canadian Studies Committee in 1973 and the Centre of Canadian Studies in 1975, the University and the Library have received great support, in kind as well as in coin, from the Government of Canada, through the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Foundation for Canadian Studies, and always through the Academic Relations Division of the Canadian High Commission in London. For many years the Library has been assisted with matching grants for the purchase of Canadian books, and a series of gifts of tranches of the enormous collection of "Pre-1900 Canadiana" on Microfiches, published by the Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproduction, have extended the Library's historic collections of books on Canada.