Fans of H.P. Lovecraft’s work – in particular, his Necronomicon – will have no doubt spotted our April Fool’s joke last Friday, aptly described by a colleague as a “goof and a spoof“. For everyone else, it’s time for us to come clean: we don’t really hold a book with the contents as described in that blog…
Year: 2016
On a Mysterious and Unusual Book
As recently as our last post, we described the excitement we feel when an interesting item from our collections is brought to our attention by a reader or customer. Another such case has emerged this week: a visitor from Massachusetts asked to see a series of books held in our Special Collections that touched on the…
Lady Charlotte Guest’s Translation of The Mabinogion
by Antony Ramm, Local and Family History, Central Library Our Collections at the Central Library are, as we saw last week, wide-ranging. While we endeavor to know those Collections in as much detail as possible, we – you may be surprised to hear! – can’t and don’t know about every item we hold. That’s why…
Highlights from our Special Collections: Helvetius’ De l’esprit
by Antony Ramm, Local and Family History, Central Library The stacks in the Central Library hold around 250,000 items, a dizzying array of materials covering a vast multitude of fields. This ‘stack stock’ is split into a few main sections: around 40,000 books available for loan; our archived journal holdings; and our Special Collections. While the majority of…
Festival of the Body: Exploring Women Explorers
by Antony Ramm, Local and Family History, Central Library Throughout March our multi-use arts space – Room 700 – will be playing host to Festival of the Body, a wide-ranging celebration of International Women’s Day organised by F=, an interdisciplinary research group based at Leeds Beckett University. Part of that eclectic programme of events will be “Women, Visibility…
Alf Mattison: A Hidden Figure
by Rhian Isaac, Leeds Central Library I was inspired to take a closer look at our Alf Mattison Collection after I heard Professor Malcolm Chase from the University of Leeds deliver a talk a few weeks ago to a busy room about this fascinating but somewhat shadowy figure. This was a man who despite his…
From Bread to Ghosts: Speed-dating Library Treasures
by Antony Ramm, Local and Family History, Central Library Our amazing series of Library Fest events finished over the weekend and we hope you managed to attend a few! One that we particularly enjoyed took place last Thursday night, when we invited some adventurous and open-minded members of the public to “speed date” some of…
Ralph Thoresby and the Ducatus Leodiensis: A Curated Display
by Antony Ramm, Local and Family History, Leeds Central Library There are still five days to enjoy the fantastic series of events we’re holding for our 2016 Library Fest. Among that panoply is a display celebrating the life and works of Ralph Thoresby – in particular, the 300th-anniversary of his Ducatus Leodiensis. That book – often referred…
The Secret Library | Leeds Libraries Heritage Blog 