Leeds Libraries

Birth, Marriage and Death Indexes – A Beginner’s Guide

As part of a series examining family history resources for beginners, librarian Helen Skilbeck takes an in-depth look at one of the most useful resources for beginning your family history research: birth, marriage and death index records. You can find more information in our research guide. One of the main resources you will use when…

The Leeds Folk Festival

This week on the Secret Library we hear from Karen Downham, Library Officer at the Central Library. Although most music events are cancelled at the moment, Karen gives us a fascinating look back to an event that took place in the 1980s – explaining, along the way, how The Rolling Stones’ 1982 European Tour caused…

Top Tips for Family Trees

Starting your family tree can be a daunting prospect but before you leap into action using Ancestry, here are some things you can do with your family to get your research off to a good start. Dig out as many documents as possible especially birth, marriage and death certificates. Each paper certificate will cost upwards…

Ancestry for all!

As part of a series examining family history resources for beginners, librarian Helen Skilbeck takes an in-depth look at using our core genealogy subscription website, Ancestry.com… So, what is Ancestry…. Ancestry is one of the main genealogical websites in the UK. It has records that can help you to create your family tree and includes the UK census…

Visitations and Pedigrees

As part of a series examining family history resources for beginners, librarian Antony Ramm explores Visitation records – a largely neglected but extremely worthwhile set of genealogy records from the 16th and 17th-centuries… Family historians will be familiar with the difficulty of tracing ancestries prior to the almost-simultaneous start of Civil Registration and Census records in the…

Keep on Keeping On: Running a Library Department in a Crisis

This week, Antony Ramm, Librarian-Manager for the Local and Family History (LFH) department at Leeds Central Library, explains the steps staff have taken to continue operating a specialist public library department in these unprecedented times… As previously announced on the Secret Library, the Central Library in Leeds shut its doors to staff and the public…

The Maurice Rosenbaum Letters: A Leeds Connection

This week, we welcome University of Leeds students Amy Clayton and Lucy Slater as guest authors. Amy and Lucy have been investigating a new addition to the Central Library collections – the letters of Maurice Rosenbaum – over the last few months. Here, they explain who Maurice was and his connection to Leeds and Yorkshire….

Working-Class Women in Early Twentieth Century Leeds

On Wednesday the 11th March we have a talk on ‘Working-Class Women’s Autobiographies and the History of Everyday Life.’ This talk will be given by Dr Claire Martin, a Lecturer at The University of Leeds. This article will highlight interesting items from the Leeds Libraries Collection that detail the everyday life of working-class women and…