Part II in a loose trilogy of posts exploring (some) meanings behind the study of local history. Part I is here and Part III is here This article is also #17 in our People of Leeds series by Antony Ramm, Local and Family History, Central Library “How much history can be communicated by pressure on a…
Category: Treasures & Discoveries
On Our Blog Post Dated 1st April, 2016
Fans of H.P. Lovecraft’s work – in particular, his Necronomicon – will have no doubt spotted our April Fool’s joke last Friday, aptly described by a colleague as a “goof and a spoof“. For everyone else, it’s time for us to come clean: we don’t really hold a book with the contents as described in that blog…
On a Mysterious and Unusual Book
As recently as our last post, we described the excitement we feel when an interesting item from our collections is brought to our attention by a reader or customer. Another such case has emerged this week: a visitor from Massachusetts asked to see a series of books held in our Special Collections that touched on the…
Lady Charlotte Guest’s Translation of The Mabinogion
by Antony Ramm, Local and Family History, Central Library Our Collections at the Central Library are, as we saw last week, wide-ranging. While we endeavor to know those Collections in as much detail as possible, we – you may be surprised to hear! – can’t and don’t know about every item we hold. That’s why…
Highlights from our Special Collections: Helvetius’ De l’esprit
by Antony Ramm, Local and Family History, Central Library The stacks in the Central Library hold around 250,000 items, a dizzying array of materials covering a vast multitude of fields. This ‘stack stock’ is split into a few main sections: around 40,000 books available for loan; our archived journal holdings; and our Special Collections. While the majority of…
From Bread to Ghosts: Speed-dating Library Treasures
by Antony Ramm, Local and Family History, Central Library Our amazing series of Library Fest events finished over the weekend and we hope you managed to attend a few! One that we particularly enjoyed took place last Thursday night, when we invited some adventurous and open-minded members of the public to “speed date” some of…
Tales From the Stacks: Solving a Mystery
by Antony Ramm, Local and Family History, Leeds Central Library EDIT: You can now find this British Association for the Advancement of Science printing block on our catalogue. Please contact the Local and Family History department to arrange a viewing. This blog was supposed to be about something else; instead, it’s about this: That question was…
“Large, loose, baggy monsters”: On Reading Really Long Books Through Winter
by Antony Ramm, Local and Family History, Leeds Central Library “Winter is coming”, they say. Well, it’s not just coming—it’s here. And, while Winter may be cold and dark and seemingly never-ending, the upside is that these characteristics surely make Winter the very best time of year to really indulge the yearning common to all readers:…
