About the National Burns Collection

The National Burns Collection (NBC) is made up of priceless manuscripts, books, relics, art and memorabilia, which help shine light on the person and work of Scotland's National Bard, Robert Burns.

The NBC is cared for by a network of museums, libraries, galleries, archives and other bodies; the main custodians of Burns heritage in Scotland formed the National Burns Collection Partnership in 2008, but the NBCP relies on a much wider partnership of organisations and individuals to coordinate access to, and facilitate the preservation of, a distributed collection of national significance.

The NBC grew out of a project called The Distributed National Burns Collections Project (November 2003-March 2005), a 16-month Strategic Change Fund initiative which sought to encourage those organisations in Scotland holding Burns-related artefacts to work in partnership to improve access to, and stewardship of, the distributed national collection.

This website is a direct outcome of a scoping study report published by the DNBC Project in April 2004 (a PDF download is available below) which for the first time surveys the National Burns Collection and describes some of the issues associated with caring for a collection of national significance.

The National Burns Collection Partnership works together to tackle challenges such as improving conservation and documentation of the distributed collection, increasing access for differencet audiences, and realising the enormous learning potential of the National Burns Collection.

For more information on the NBC, please use the Contact Us pages of the website.

• Read the Executive Summary of the Scoping Study Report undertaken by the Distributed National Burns Collections Project published in April 2004
• Read the full Scoping Study Report
• Read the Road Map to 2009