by Ross Horsley, Local and Family History, Leeds Central Library Last Monday, I accepted an invitation from Bob and Jacki Lawrence of the East Leeds History and Archaeology Society to speak at their monthly meeting, and decided to take along one of my favourite items from our Local History collection as my inspiration. Lord Halifax’s…
Category: Historical Figures
It’s Oliver Twist… with a Twist
by Rhian Isaac, Collections Manager, Leeds Central Library Over the next couple of weeks we’ll be welcoming two new bloggers to the Secret Library. Natascha and Jonathan are students from the University of Leeds, who joined us on a Faculty of Arts Research Placement a few months ago to experience working with our collections and bringing them to a wider…
‘Half a cup of cream which nobody else seemed to want’: The American Diary of a Leeds Librarian
Guest blogger Val Hewson is a researcher for Reading Sheffield, an oral history project about popular reading in the mid-20th century. This has led her to research library services in Sheffield and elsewhere. In the Leeds Local and Family History Library, she read a diary belonging to F.G.B. Hutchings, Chief Librarian of Leeds between 1946…
Read More: American Politics and Elections
by Antony Ramm, Local and Family History, Central Library This is an entry in our Read More series. These are ‘long-form’ articles, where staff offer a curated and detailed look at areas of our book collections, usually based around a specific theme or subject. These posts aim to guide the interested reader through to those books that offer…
Exploring Lost Expeditions in the Collections at Leeds Central Library: A Multi-Sensory Storytelling Experience
by Antony Ramm, Rhian Isaac and Ross Horsley, Central Library Thousands of people visited Leeds Central Library during this year’s Light Night celebrations and over two hundred of those experienced our interactive exhibition – or, as we thought of it: a multi-sensory storytelling experience – dedicated to four stories of loss and obsession in 19th and 20th-century exploration,…
Stories, Songs and Proclamations
By Karen Downham, Local & Family History Library This week in the blog we will be looking at Broadsides, and exploring some of those in the Local & Family History Collection. A broadside, in its simplest definition, is a sheet of paper printed only on one side. They were often posters announcing events, proclamations, and advertisements,…
John Ogilby: Road Maps & Measuring Wheels
by Karen Downham, Local and Family History, Leeds Central Library Among the many maps in Leeds Libraries’ collection is John Ogilby’s Britannia Depicta, published in 1675, a landmark in the mapping of England and Wales, and the first national road atlas of any country in Western Europe. It was a publication that would bring about…
Panic on the Streets of Birmingham: July, 1791
by Antony Ramm, Local and Family History, Central Library On the 14th of July, 1791, a group of eminent Birmingham men – including philosophers, scientists, and newly-rich industrialists – met for dinner at the Hotel on Temple Row. This in itself would not normally be cause for comment; but what sets this meal aside from similar gatherings…
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