A music library for St. Andrews? The considerable use of the University’s copyright music collection

My researches into the Copyright Music Collection at the University of St Andrews led me, inevitably, to the Library’s Receipt Books, in which all loans were recorded, whether to professors, students, or “Strangers” – friends of the professors who borrowed under the names of obliging
academic staff. Several thousand pages later, I have now logged every music loan between 1801 and 1848.
Notwithstanding the difficulties of inferring much detail from over 400
Sammelbände (ie, bound collections of multiple items), there are still many interesting observations to be made.
In this paper, I shall share my findings, and give an update on the progress of my research into this little-known subject, in which music and library history meet, thereby shedding light on early nineteenth century musical activities in a small university town.