Sixteen volumes of the town's own memory
The St Andrews Burgh Records are the minute books of the burgh council. They run in seventeen volumes from 1656 to 1900. Volume 4 has been lost, so sixteen survive.
These books record how the town operated and cover its schools, finances, its harbour and its streets. They show how the council taxed, punished, and governed. Very little of this material is currently accessible to anyone outside the archive.
What we are asking for
We are raising £1,700 to have fifteen volumes photographed at high resolution. Volume 1 is already funded, and Volume 4 no longer exists. Roughly £115 photographs one entire volume.
Why imaging comes first
Digitisation is the step that unlocks everything else. Once a volume is imaged we run it through OCR to produce a first transcription. Our team then proofs and corrects that output line by line against the original. The result is a permanent and accurate text that anyone can search. None of that work can begin until the pages exist as images.
Who we are
The project is led by two doctoral candidates in the School of History, Andrew F. Simpson and Olivia Dunderdale. It is housed in the Institute of Scottish Historical Research and endorsed by Dr Derek Patrick. We work in close collaboration with the University's Special Collections and archival team. We are also recruiting graduate students and volunteers to check the transcriptions, which gives them hands-on training in palaeography, digitisation and scholarly editing.
Where it goes next
Transcription is planned as a two-year programme following digitisation. We then intend to propose the edited records to a Scottish scholarly body such as the Scottish History Society or the Scottish Records Society for publication. All images will be made publicly accessible through the University archive.
If we fall short
This campaign is keep-what-you-raise. Digitisation can be done volume by volume. If we do not reach £1,700 we will image as many volumes as the money allows, starting with the earliest and most significant. We will seek supplementary grant funding for the rest. No donation is wasted.
Staying in touch
We will post updates here as each volume is imaged and transcribed.
