News
Re-opening of Special Collections Reader Service
We are delighted to announce that, following the relocation of the Library’s Department of Special Collections to its temporary home on the North Haugh, we are now open for personal research with effect from 27 June 2011. Reader space is very limited in our new facilities, and it is therefore important to note that access to the Reading Room will be strictly by appointment only.
To make an appointment, please either email to speccoll@st-andrews.ac.uk or telephone Ext. 2339. (The telephone may not always be answered immediately, but the voicemail messages will be checked and responded to regularly.) You should provide us with your preferred date and as much detail as you can of what you wish to consult. We will be open between 9.30 and 4.30 over the vacation period, and staff will discuss with you an appropriate time and duration of visit. Directions to the new facility will be supplied when bookings are made.
All of the collections have been re-located, and some have had to be outstored due to shortage of space in the temporary premises. Fetch times may therefore be more extended than previously, our ability to fetch on demand will be very limited, a small amount of material may be unavailable or may take up to 24 hours to retrieve, and there may also have to be limits on how much material can be consulted at any one time. We therefore ask our readers to bear with us through any teething problems, and will welcome feedback.
We would like to thank all our users for their understanding and support.
We have invented a new word!
Our Muniments Archivist Rachel Hart recently received a request from the editor of the Oxford English Dictionary to check the source of the English usage of the word pro-rector.
In 1908, St Andrews University Librarian James Maitland Anderson had confirmed for the OED that the term had been used in Latin in the University's Acta Rectorum in 1685, and in English in its Senate Minutes of 1858.
Rachel's more recent researches, however, have now revealed an even earlier use. She discovered that a controversial pro-rectorial election in 1739 had resulted in a Senate committee looking back through the records to see whether there had been an earlier pro-rector. This led her to the "Rector's New Book," now known as Acta Rectorum Volume 2 (UY305/2), which contains a reference in Latin to the appointment of a pro-rector in the absence of a new rector. The first Latin usage of the word can therefore now be established as 1662 and the first English usage as 1739.
Rachel has communicated this to the editor of the OED, and in due course the entry for pro-rector should be updated.
We look forward to seeing the Library's further contribution to the history of the English language in print!
