Elaine Mundill

Wed, Jun 17th 2026 at 12:40 pm - 2:00 pm

Elaine will properly introduce herself to the Club members

Krishna Bangarpet welcomed visitors from N Carolina. He then spoke of the Life Sciences Day held in the university to introduce school students from Fife schools to the possibilities of studying science after leaving school. After lunch he introduced the speaker, most recent member to join the Club, Elaine Mundill, who spoke about her own interesting life with clarity and humour in a talk she called ‘Chapters: Life. Librarianship and Everything’. She started with her childhood in Kirkcaldy where her father was on the Town Council, became Bailie and President of the local Rotary Club, and where she discovered her early love of books and reading. Then it was to St Andrews to study English where Jack Daniels in the Careers Office gave her a leaflet on Librarianship which she followed up in a post graduate course in Aberystwyth, only to return to St Andrews Public Library. She thus became one of ‘the stampers’ -stamping books in and out, using catalogue cards and the Dewey Decimal System. She married Robin and they had three girls. There followed a time at Christ’s Hospital School in West Sussex where she was College Librarian and ran a girls’ boarding house, then it was to Glenalmond where Robin was Head of Histroy and Elaine was Librarian, running reading challenges for the students and radically overhauling the library. Retirement in St Andrews has found Elaine very busy, volunteering at the Heritage Museum, gardening at Craigton, assisting at Toppings’ events and becoming an Elder at St Leonard’s Church. She had never enjoyed sport but has challenged herself with the ‘Couch to 5K’ and raised over £4,000 by covering 25 Park Runs. Children, grandchildren and friends take up much of her life but she looks forward to contributing to Rotary. Angela Fowlis gave the vote of thanks.