Corstorphine Library

Our opening hours have varied quite a lot for Edinburgh Libraries, including a period during 1939 when we closed at dusk, as part of air raid precautions! Remember that these will change with the Future Libraries strategy in the coming year. As with the past 90 years, whenever we are open, we'll be here to serve the Corstorphine community as best we can.

We were very touched that Gylemuir's P2 classes, along with our regulars at Crafternoons, decorated a lovely cake for the library's birthday!

The full list of Heritage resources for researching your family and community history is available on our website:
https://yourlibrary.edinburgh.gov.uk/web/arena/heritage

One of the resources you can use to research history yourself is the British Newspaper Archive! You can register for an account when logged into a library computer or with your own device when using the Library Wi-Fi, and access a vast collection of newspaper articles going back to 1710!
https://yourlibrary.edinburgh.gov.uk/web/arena/bna

This was a useful source of information about the library's history:
£10 (over £1000 in today's money) was raised at a concert in 1876 for the Corstorphine Public Library fund. This was supplemented in 1901 by great patron of libraries, Andrew Carnegie, who provided £1000 for construction of the older library building next door.
The old library was agreed to be sold to the 10th Midlothian Boy Scout group to be used as their headquarters in 1935.
While there was no formal opening of the new building, Corstorphine Library was advertised soon after it opened its doors on 29th May 1936: 90 years ago on Friday!

British Newspaper Archive - Edinburgh The British Newspaper Archive offers online access to millions of pages of British and Irish newspapers from 1700s to 1990s. It's a fantastic resource for everyone interested in history, and especially for family and local historians.