‘The List’: Statto Edition

Part III of heritage volunteer Pete Slater’s trilogy of articles based on his research into football fanzine history. You can hear Pete talk about that research at a research showcase coming up on June 26 – part of the programme for the Voice of the Fans exhibition, a co-production from Leeds Libraries and the British Library. You can also browse the full…

Football Fanzines: Creating ‘The List’

Part II of heritage volunteer Pete Slater’s trilogy of articles based on his research into football fanzine history. You can hear Pete talk about that research at a research showcase coming up on June 26 – part of the programme for the Voice of the Fans exhibition, a co-production from Leeds Libraries and the British…

Happy Volunteers’ Week!

It’s Volunteers’ Week 2025 (June 2 – June 8): a chance to celebrate the amazing achievements of our current team of heritage volunteers. Read on for some highlights from the last 12-months! Print collectionSeveral of our heritage volunteers, a student placement and a Duke of Edinburgh volunteer have all been busy working on our print…

Within Our Grasp: The archive as stimulus for a creative response

This week on the Secret Library Leeds blog we hear from a group of students who have been working on a project connected to Leodis, our online photographic archive. As third-year BA (Hons) Photography students at Leeds Arts University, we were invited to explore the Leodis photographic archive at Leeds Central Library and given a…

Football, fanzines and the media today

This week from heritage volunteer Pete Slater, who brings us part I of three articles exploring his research into the rich history of football fanzine culture. You can hear Pete talk about that research at a research showcase coming up on June 26 – part of the programme for the Voice of the Fans exhibition,…

Leeds United and the Myth of the White Strip

This week we welcome back guest author Pete Slater. Pete is one of a small team of volunteers working with us for the joint Leeds Libraries/British Libraries Voice of the Fans exhibition celebrating football fanzines and football fan culture. One of Pete’s roles has been research using our microfilmed local newspaper collection – this article…

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…

Black History Month: Leeds United’s first Black footballer

This week we welcome guest author Pete Slater. Pete is one of a small team of volunteers working on a project based on football fandom. He traced the following story during his research using our local newspaper archive, as part of that project work. We publish this piece as part of Black History Month. For…