Over the past ten years the Secret Library Leeds blog has seen a host of guest authors writing about their projects, studies or interests. Here we look back at just a few of them. Guest authors come about in a variety of ways. Sometimes a researcher will approach Leeds Libraries with a query and in…
Celebrating a decade of the Secret Library Leeds: 2014 – 2024
This week Librarian Antony Ramm looks back on a special anniversary for the Secret Library blog… “I go into my library and all history unrolls before me.” Alexander Smith The Secret Library Leeds officially launched on Friday February 7 2014 – exactly ten years ago today (to the minute: 3.29pm). Ten years! A full decade,…
A Book to Dye For
In this blog post Rhian Isaac, Senior Librarian for Special Collections and Heritage, shares a deadly discovery. One weekend I stumbled upon an intriguing article in National Geographic that highlighted the Winterthur Museum’s Poison Book Project, and it instantly caught my attention. I was captivated with the idea of poisonous books lying undetected in library collections,…
Healing the City: Health and Wellbeing in the Leeds City Council Archives
This week on the Secret Library we hear from one of our heritage volunteers on a significant piece of cataloguing work we’ve asked them to help us with… Hi. My name’s Andy Armstrong and I have taken on the task of sifting through 200 years of Leeds City Council papers held by the library to…
An American Exchange in Aireborough
This week on the blog Helen Skilbeck recounts a fascinating story about a 1940’s library exchange. Back in 1948 two female librarians – one from Aireborough and one from North Carolina – applied to exchange roles for a year. Margaret Scoffield had been appointed the first full-time professional librarian for Aireborough Libraries in 1942. Virginia…
Fantasy: Realms of Imagination and Leeds Libraries Special Collections
On this week’s Secret Library Heritage Blog, we hear from Librarian Josh Flint who will be exploring a few of his favourite special collection items from the Leeds Central Library’s Fantasy exhibition which was inspired by The British Library’s Fantasy: Realms of Imagination. The exhibition will be ending on the 17th January so make sure…
A Brief History of Leeds #13: Modern Leeds
Part thirteen of a series exploring the history of Leeds, using books and other stock resources held in the Leeds Libraries collections. For all the entries in this series, see our dedicated page. Many of the themes identified at the start of this history – innovation, Leeds’ place in national and international networks of trade…
Brigandines
This article is part of our series on the current Fantasy: Realms of Imagination exhibition, taking place at the Central Library until January 2024… There are lots of exciting things to discover in the Local and Family History department at any time, but if you visit during the Fantasy exhibition, it’s even more exciting! Amongst…
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