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…
John Searle Ragland Phillips (1850-1919) and the Growth of Journalism – Part 1
This week we welcome guest author, retired librarian Lucy M. Evans, who enjoys delving into the obscure Victorian world of northern librarians and learned societies. She has previously written about the longevity guru Maurice Ernest, Andrea Crestadoro, a Chief Librarian in Manchester (copy available at LCL), and is currently finishing a biography of his friend…
Searching for Black History in the Leodis Archive
We mark Black History Month 2024 by welcoming back regular guest author Danny Friar, who has unearthed some fascinating examples of Black History in Leeds in a important piece of research… Searching for local Black history can often be challenging. There’s no easy way to do it. I find a snippet here and a snippet…
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…
It Could Happen to You: The Mystery of the “Metcalfe Millions”
This week the staff in our Local and Family History department bring us a wonderful story sourced from a recent customer enquiry and some dogged detective work in our resources… One of the joys of working in the Local and Family History department are the occasionally offbeat enquiries we get, and the many wide and…
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…
Heritage Open Day 2024: What’s in a Name?
To mark the upcoming Heritage Open Day Week (6-15 September 2024), Library and Digital Assistant Becky Bavill brings us some fantastic detective work in our Central Library archives to (re)discover the site of a long-forgotten mansion in the centre of Leeds… Join us on Saturday September 7 in the Central Library’s Local and Family History…
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…
The Secret Library | Leeds Libraries Heritage Blog 