The village of Leadhills originated as a community of lead miners working in the ore fields of the Lowther Hills on the border of Lanarkshire and Dufries and Galloway in Scotland. The miners developed a desire for both self-improvement and mutual collective improvement. In response, a group of miners and the local schoolmaster founded a lending library in 1741 to serve those in the village who wanted to have access to books that they otherwise never could have.

The library was run on a subscription basis with borrowers required to pay an initial joining fee and an annual subscription. More radically than that, the library required that new applicants were subject to approval by the membership before joining.

The library still carries its collection of important books but it no longer allows them to be borrowed. The library is in the original single-story cottage where it was founded and is currently run by a group of volunteers. The library holds around 2,500 books, a collection of other artifacts, and a large collection of "bargain books"—these are the records of contracts between miners and mine owners which show the prices paid for a pound of lead ore or per fathom for advancement in non-productive rock in the search for new veins. This is the largest such collection  in Scotland.