To those who understandably take offence at what they see as an unjustified attack on Aberdeen University's splendid new library and its archival facilities, I would confirm that nobody is in any doubt that the Scottish Catholic Archives would be extremely well looked after, were they to be housed in Aberdeen University Library (Letters, May 26).
I am not so sure about a dilapidated, asbestos-ridden former convent at Hamilton Avenue with floor-loading problems, whose cost is spiralling, nor of the stagnating Blairs College redevelopment project, five miles out of Aberdeen.
But that is not the issue. What is wrong with the dispersal of the Catholic archives from Edinburgh to Aberdeen and Glasgow is that it rips the heart out of Scottish Catholic history by imposing the barriers of a day's travel and several days' accommodation between the constituent parts which will be created, while also destroying the synergies of a close geographical location between Columba House and the National Library of Scotland, the National Records of Scotland, the National Museum of Scotland and the National Galleries of Scotland.
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