CLEAN HANDS, A LOVE OF STAMPS, AND ONE FUTURE PRIME MINISTER… Armley Library To begin our celebration of local Leeds Libraries during National Libraries Week, we need to go back to 1868 when the Public Libraries act was adopted by Leeds; it didn’t take long to get organised and by 1870 branch libraries began opening…
Category: Leeds Public Libraries
National Libraries Week 2020
It’s National Libraries Week 2020 so we decided to celebrate ourselves and the libraries we have provided all the way back to the 1870s when our first ones opened. Local Libraries hold a soft spot in the hearts of their borrowers (no, not the short folk living behind the skirting from Mary Norton’s classic work…
Family History Resources: Historical Trade Directories
This week on the Secret Library we hear from Local and Family History’s Josh Flint, who will be exploring the excellent family history resource, historical trade directories. This article will help family history researchers understand what trade directories are, how they can be useful for family history research and finally where to find them. This…
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…
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…
Fake News 21st August 1934
Fake News is a new project, by Tim Knight, which uses Local and Family History’s newspaper archive to publish a fictional front page every month. Curated from cuttings of The Yorkshire Post and The Yorkshire Evening Post—Leeds’ oldest continuous newspaper—Fake News will explore the goings-on, mishaps and miscellany of Yorkshire through the ages. Today’s edition, a…
My week in the Local and Family History Department
This week we hear from Thomas Wootton, from Leeds Trinity University, who as part of his work experience spent a week in the Local and Family History Department. As part of my degree in History and Politics from Leeds Trinity University, I was required to undertake a work placement and I decided to undertake part…
Leeds in The Builder
This week we hear from Library Officer Kiera Falgate on images of historic Leeds in the Central Library’s collection of The Builder, an architectural journal that begin in the mid-19th-century… The Art Library on the first floor in Leeds Central Library holds the complete collection of The Builder from volume 1 in 1843 to the final volume…
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