In this blog post Rhian Isaac, Senior Librarian for Special Collections and Heritage, shares a deadly discovery. One weekend I stumbled upon an intriguing article in National Geographic that highlighted the Winterthur Museum’s Poison Book Project, and it instantly caught my attention. I was captivated with the idea of poisonous books lying undetected in library collections,…
Category: Child Friendly
Any work that wanted doing
This week we hear once again from artist Gill Crawshaw, who has been delving into the Central Library archives to uncover the hidden history of disability and West Yorkshire’s textile heritage. The article is published to mark the start of UK Disability History Month, which begins on November 18. An exciting exhibition of new artwork is on at…
A Brief History of Leeds #12: The 1970 and 1980s
Part twelve of a series exploring the history of Leeds, using books and other stock resources held in the Leeds Libraries collections. For all the entries in this series, see our dedicated page. The eleventh part of this series looked at the African-Caribbean community in Leeds, and ended with a reflection on the importance of…
A Brief History of Leeds #11: The Post-War City, part 2
Part eleven of a series exploring the history of Leeds, using books and other stock resources held in the Leeds Libraries collections. For all the entries in this series, see our dedicated page. In our tenth part we explored collections relating to Leeds United and its important role as a carrier of the Leeds name…
Women of Beckett Street Cemetery: Theodosia Grimshaw Wilkinson (1831-1901)
This week we hear from Jeanette B of the Friends of Beckett Street Cemetery group about the life and achievements of an inspiring Leeds woman… Whilst researching and reading on the Friends of Beckett Street Cemetery website I was very interested to find a gentleman buried in the Cemetery who was known as the ‘Blind…
Banned books!
This week on the blog we share details of a lovely display curated by staff in our Business and Intellectual Property department (BIPC) for Banned Books Week 2023 (October 1 – 7), using some treasures from our Central Library collections. The display is available to view on the 2nd floor of the Central Library. This is the…
Heritage Open Day 2023 Round-Up
This week on the Secret Library we round-up all the amazing events Leeds Libraries offered during Heritage Open Day Week! All images are (c) Leeds Libraries unless stated otherwise Local History Open DayWe kicked things off on Saturday September 9 with the second in our Local History Open Days – a chance for us to…
Opening the textile heritage of Leeds
We’re still recovering from our amazing but very-busy Open Day last Saturday, part of our Heritage Open Day (HOD) Week offer. We’ll be bringing you a full round-up of that day, and all our other wonderful HOD events in a few weeks – but today we can share a small snapshot of what we’ve been…
The Secret Library | Leeds Libraries Heritage Blog 