George IV Bridge – celebrating 50 years

On 4 July 2006, the National Library of Scotland celebrated the 50th anniversary of the opening of our George IV Bridge Building by the Queen.

To mark the anniversary, each week in 2006 we highlighted an item representing a year of collecting.

See our Collections section for more information about some of the material held by the National Library. To view digitised items, visit our Digital gallery.

• 'Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince' – 2005
• 'Eighteenth Century Collections Online' – 2004
• The Legal Deposit Libraries Act – 2003
• Edinburgh Calotype Club album – 2002
• Verdi's 'Rigoletto' – first published full orchestral score – 2001
• A German-Scottish link – 2000
• White paper on land reform in Scotland – 1999
• The Sorley Maclean Papers – 1998
• Shakespeare in miniature – 1997
• Soviet military material – 1996
• Bartholomew Collection and Archive – 1995
• Volume with William Notman photographs – 1994
• Pontus and Sidonia – a medieval romance – 1993
• Mcdouall Stuart's journey to central Australia – 1992
• Ronald Stevenson music manuscript – 1991
• Stevenson engineers' archive – 1990
• Royal Blind School Collection – 1989
• The Lindsay family library – 1988
• David Hume's papers – 1987
• The Murthly Hours – 1986
• Scottish cricket album – 1985
• A French 18th-century illustrated book – 1984
• First published account of double-entry book-keeping – 1983
• Burns poems in Chinese – 1982
• Lewis Grassic Gibbon's notebook – 1981
• The Sutherland Papers – 1980

• Classic poems printed on silk – 1979
• David Livingstone letter – 1978
• 'The Beano' – 1977
• First foreign reviews of Charles Rennie Mackintosh's work – 1976
• 16th-century autograph album – 1975
• The Blackadder Psalter – 1974
• John Oglivie's 'Britannia' – 1973
• A Jacobite journal – 1972
• Specimens of printing equipment – 1971
• Engineering papers of John Rennie – 1970
• 'The kings and queens of England' – 1969
• The Fenwick Weavers' book – 1968
• 'London OZ' – 1967
• An exceptional Scottish binding – 1966
• Mountaineering photographs by T Graham Brown – 1965
• The Kilmarnock Burns – 1964
• 18th-century cookery book – 1963
• Polish books – 1962
• Earl Haig's war diary – 1961
• The Iona Psalter – 1960
• Earliest piece of printing in the National Library – 1959
• Letter from Keir Hardie – 1958
• The Panmure Music Books – 1957
• A rare Shakespeare quarto – 1956