Researching your house's history

The National Library of Scotland is running a tutorial on researching your house's history on Tuesday 17 November, from 15:00 to 16:15. It's an online session, so you can join from home rather than heading into town.

The whole point is to show you how to dig into the past of a particular building. They'll be walking through three main tools: maps, newspapers and directories. Maps let you see how the land around a house has changed over the decades; newspapers can turn up old stories or mentions of previous owners; and directories often list who lived where and what they did for a living. When you use them together, you can start to piece together a proper timeline of who lived in your house and what the street looked like when they were there.

It's set up as a tutorial for beginners and experienced researchers alike, so you don't need to have done any of this before to get something out of it. If you've always wondered who lived in your place before you did, this is a practical way to start finding out.

As for the venue itself, the National Library of Scotland is the nation's living memory, preserving the past and inspiring current and future generations through access to knowledge, culture and innovation. It was founded by an Act of Parliament in August 1925, and its collections stretch back hundreds of years, from the earliest manuscripts to the latest bestseller. The session runs from 15:00 to 16:15 on Tuesday 17 November, and it's free to attend.