This week on the Secret Library Leeds we welcome Library and Digital Assistant Becky Bavill for a deep-dive into the family history archives, all sparked by some cross-departmental collaboration with our colleagues in the Music Library… In a box in the music department is a printed pianoforte piece. It’s called ‘The Dream’ by the late…
Category: Collections
Ghost Stories and Weird Experiences (Part 2)
Halloween is officially here so today we continue with some more gruesome tales from the spooky scrapbook compiled by Edwin Hick. As mentioned in Part 1, this scrapbook is officially called ‘Ghost Stories and Weird Experiences, Life after Death etc.’ and is full of newspaper cuttings from the local newspapers detailing weird and wonderful stories…
Ghost Stories and Weird Experiences (Part 1)
As we creep ever nearer to Halloween we thought it only right to regale you with a few spooky tales from a certain scrapbook in our collections. Known colloquially by staff as the ‘ghost scrapbook’ and more officially as ‘Ghost Stories and Weird Experiences, Life after Death etc.’, it forms Volume 37 of the Edwin…
Banned Books in 1975
It’s Banned Books Week this week (September 22 to September 28). We’ve recently unearthed this wonderful list of books banned by Leeds (Public) Libraries in 1975 – or, if not quite banned entirely, at least only available with Librarian approval. While we definitely don’t operate in this way anymore, we thought it would be interesting…
A Voyage of Discovery
To conclude this year’s ‘Routes – Networks – Connections’ themed Heritage Open Days, Senior Librarian for Special Collections and Heritage, Rhian Isaac, shares her journey into researching a special collection of photographs. As lockdowns began to ease during the Covid pandemic, I was finally able to return to the Central Library to check on…
Women’s history month stock display
During February and March we delved deep into the Central Library collections to curate a display highlighting the contributions of women to the fields of science, medicine, health and wellbeing. That display is now reproduced below. Most of the content was created by Library and Digital Assistant Heather Edwards and further information can be found…
A mysterious diary from the Great War (Part 3 of 3)
We welcome Library and Digital Assistant Becky Bavill back to the Secret Library this week, for a brilliantly-researched story to mark Armed Forces Day on June 29. This is the third and final part of a three part series that has run throughout June, alongside a full programme of Leeds Libraries events. You can find…
A mysterious diary from the Great War (Part 2 of 3)
We welcome Library and Digital Assistant Becky Bavill back to the Secret Library this week, for a brilliantly-researched story to mark Armed Forces Day on June 29. This is the second part of a three part series that will run throughout June, alongside a full programme of Leeds Libraries events. You can find all three…
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