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The Library has been acquiring books and other materials on North America since the early 17th century, and these early items are now held as part of the Early Printed and Special Collections. Because the modern collections on Canada and USA are intershelved with the Library's other general subject collections, it is difficult to estimate their extent in numerical terms. The Library, however, is unlikely to have fewer than 10,000 separate items on North America in its post-1900 collections, and quite probably more. Subjects covered include history, geography and ecology, emigration, travel and exploration, politics and economics, law, religions, anthropology, literature, the fine arts and music. Some of these are held outwith the Main Library.

Modern printed collections

The establishment of the Centre of Canadian Studies in 1975 provided a focus for the University's long-standing interest in Canada. Since then, the University Library has been expanding its acquisitions of current and retrospective Canadiana in eight main areas of interest: history (down to township level of local history); economics; politics (with emphasis on federalism, bilingualism, and ethnic minorities); geography (including maps); law (acquired by the Law Library); literature (English and French language); culture in general; sociology (including higher education and urban conditions). Science, technology, medicine and defence are specifically excluded, with the exception of works relating to Canada's policy in these matters. The purchase of material on the Gaelic-speaking areas of Canada and on the Arctic is left to the National Library of Scotland, which has a special interest in these fields, except for works on Scottish emigration to North America which are of direct interest to the School of Scottish Studies, and support its archive of oral Scottish tradition around the world.

Focused interest in the United States is older than in Canada, but the spread of subjects is similar; a greater emphasis is placed on American than on Canadian foreign policy. The Library has significant holdings of printed editions of Presidential and other personal papers, including those of John Adams, John C. Calhoun, Henry Clay, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Benjamin Franklin, William A. Graham, Ulysses S. Grant, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Johnson, William Johnson, H. Laurens, James Madison, G. Mason, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. Holdings on slavery, Afro-Americans, and the Black Diaspora are good, and include a number of Afro-American newspapers and journals in microform (see below).

New College Library holds good collections on American philosophy, church history, and abolitionism, including runs of early 19th-century American Bible, missionary and education reports. The Law Library holds runs of the standard American law reports and journals, and a number of 19th-century items including the Reports of the Trials of Colonel Aaron Burr (1808). Recently-acquired named collections of modern books include the George Brown Collection of Canadiana (ca 120 volumes on Canadian history and politics, donated in 1968 by the Government of Ontario in memory of one of Canada's founding fathers, George Brown, the publisher of the Toronto Globe, who spent part of his boyhood in Edinburgh); the Arthur Mathieson Collection (150 modern volumes on North American Indians, gifted by Mathieson's family in 1996) and James V. Compton's library of 3,000 volumes on American history. Compton had been Lecturer in American History at the University of Edinburgh, and subsequently Professor of History at San Francisco State University, CA. He gifted his library to the University in 1997 as a resource for students of American history, and it is kept as a collection in the Department of History.

Early printed material & special collections (incl. music)

One of the Library's earliest collections, a gift of 700 books by the 17th-century poet William Drummond of Hawthornden, includes a number of items of North American interest, notably two books by Captain John Smith, an incomplete copy of A map of Virginia (Oxford, 1612) and A description of New England (London, 1616) and two original pamphlets advocating settlement on Nova Scotia, An encouragement to colonies, by Sir William Alexander, Earl of Stirling (London, 1624) and Encouragements, for such as shall have intention to bee under-takers in the new plantation of Cape Briton … by Sir Robert Gordon of Lochinvar (Edinburgh, 1625). Other 17th-century books on America include several works by Edward Winslow, The glorious progress of the Gospel amongst the Indians of New England (London, 1649) and original printings of three works by John Eliot 'The Apostle of the Indians', Tears of repentance (London, 1653), The Indian grammar begun (Cambridge, Mass, 1666), The Indian primer (Cambridge, Mass, 1669) and A Christian covenanting confession (n. p. ca 1680). New College Library holds significant collections of the works of early colonial theological and philosophical writers Jonathan Edwards, Cotton and Increase Mather, and John Winship.

As a library of legal deposit from 1710 until 1837, EUL acquired many volumes of maps and writings on exploration and discovery. Its collections on North America were enhanced by the enthusiasm of the University's historian Principal William Robertson whose History of America first appeared in 1777; the Library takes every effort to build up complete sets of the works of Robertson and other alumni with early North American associations, such as two signatories of the Declaration of Independence who were also alumni of the University, Dr Benjamin Rush and the Reverend John Witherspoon.

From the 1740s increasing numbers of men from North America, including the West Indies, came to study medicine at Edinburgh, and wrote dissertations with an American content or focus. EUL has near-comprehensive sets of these printed dissertations, including that of Benjamin Rush (1768).

The Canadian bibliophile Lawrence Lande recently presented the Library with a set of his bibliographical studies of John Law of Lauriston (1671-1729), the Compagnie des Indes and the establishment of economic and banking systems in New France and elsewhere in North America.

The Reid Music Library holds scores by the major American composers, including Barber, Carter, Copland, Ives, MacDowell, Piston, Schuman and Varèse. The Reid Music Library also holds a set of the Recorded Anthology of American Music.

Manuscripts & archives

The Library does not actively acquire manuscript material on Canada or the USA, but documents of North American interest are to be found among the MS collections. The Index to Manuscripts includes 19 entries for Canada, four for Nova Scotia, and 34 for North America. There are a number of items relating to North America in the Laing Manuscripts, a collection bequeathed to the University in 1879 by David Laing, the Scottish antiquarian.
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Microform & audiovisual collections

To supplement its own collections of historic Canadian printed books, the Library has acquired three complete and two part-segments of the Pre-1900 Canadiana on microfiche published by the Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions (CIHM). The former, which were completed by a generous gift from the Government of Canada, are English-speaking Language and Literature, History and Geography, Native American Studies, French-speaking Language and Literature, Education, Sociology, Politics and Annuals. Individual titles are not yet listed in the Library's on-line catalogue, but the Library also has on microfiche the complete catalogues of the Pre-1900 Canadiana on microfiche. Like all the research microfiches in the Main Library, the CIHM fiches may be consulted in the Special Collections Department. Further information about CIHM, and access to facilities for searching the catalogue online, are available on the institute's home page on the World-Wide Web. Its URL is
http://www.nlc-bnc.ca/cihm/cihmfm.htm

Of non-music sound recordings two are of historical interest: Scotland and Canada. The speech made . . . 1975 by the Hon A J MacEachen . . . to open the library's exhibition marking the inauguration of the Centre of Canadian Studies in 1975, and E. B. Moogk, Roll back the years; history of Canadian recorded sound and its legacy (7" EP, National Library of Canada, 1975.)

In 1982 the University Library received a gift of recordings from Canada House which links up usefully with a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation donation to the Department of Music. The sound archives of the School of Scottish Studies include a number of tapes of Gaelic and Scots tales, songs and accounts of traditional ways of life relating to areas of Scottish settlement in Canada.
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Official publications

The Library has been a selective depository for Canadian Federal publications since January 1975, and material is requested within the subject guidelines noted above, although recently the number of documents taken has been reduced to the main Parliamentary series and occasional others. Provincial official publications are not obtained unless specifically required for their subject interest.

The Library's holdings of US official publications include (on microform) Debates and proceedings; Register of Debates; Congressional Globe; Congressional record (1873-1916) and a number of census reports: those of the 1st, 9th and 11th, as well as sections of the 1950 and 1960 censuses of business and manufactures. The Economic Report of the President is held from 1961. In 1937 The Library of Congress gifted to EUL the Journals of the American Constitutional Congress 1774-1789 (34 volumes, Washington 1904-1937)

Maps and visual resources

The University's map resources are divided between the Department of Geography and the Main Library, with some Geological Survey of Canada material in the Department of Geology. The Department of Geography has been a depository for topographic maps of Canada produced by the DEMR Surveys and Mapping Branch since the mid-1960s. The Department's map library holds current sets at 1:250,000, 1:500,000 and 1:1,000,000, and special sheets. The larger-scale maps, the 1:50,000 and 1:25,000 series have been transferred to the Main Library.

The Map Collection in the Main Library was created in 1968 to support the teaching and research needs of the University, and it incorporates maps and charts deposited by the Royal Scottish Geographical Society as well as the material transferred from the Department of Geography. Several series of Canadian thematic maps together with geographical papers and reports are obtained through the main Library's selective deposit privilege. Among the antiquarian maps is a Canada Company map showing land-holdings in Ontario. The Library holds the National Atlas of Canada and the principal Provincial atlases. Reprints of Ontario atlases of the 19th century have been acquired. Provincial gazetteers prepared by the Canadian Permanent Committee on Geographic Names are held. The bibliographical section includes catalogues and guides issued by the Canadian National Map Collection.

A number of early American maps are held in the original or in facsimile. The modern USA is covered only to a very basic level; the Library does not acquire the current major US topographic series.

The Main Library holds a few sets of slides on urban Canada and the USA in the middle of the 20th century. The Department of Architecture holds extensive sets of slides on urban planning in the USA, notably in New York, Philadelphia and Washington; of architectural history of New York, Massachusetts and Williamsburg; and of individual architects such as Mies van der Rohe, Saarinen, and Frank Lloyd Wright.

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