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ÂÒÂ×Ðã Special Collections

Everyone can access ÂÒÂ×Ðã Special Collections digitally or in person. Our collections of rare, unique and historic archives & books cover themes including history of ÂÒÂ×Ðã, education, arts and sciences.

Collection Highlights

Finding Material

  • You can search for rare books and other printed material on Explore.
  • Archives and manuscripts are found on the .
  • Search for digitised and digital content on Digital Collections.Ìý

For more information and video tutorials on how to use these resources to find material held by ÂÒÂ×Ðã Special Collections, learn about Our Collections.


News from our blog

This guest blog post was written by Dr Steph Carter, who spent six months volunteering at ÂÒÂ×Ðã Special Collections as part of the Liberating the Collections project

For the last year or so I’ve been working on a project to catalogue the administrative records of the National Survey of Health and Development (NSHD) – Britain’s longest running birth cohort study. Although this project has been a little disrupted by the pandemic, I’m very happy to say the cataloguing is now complete!

French translations of Beatrix Potter, English testimonies to the Holocaust and women of the South Asian Diaspora – these were just some of the collecting themes amongst the applications for this year’s Anthony Davis Book Collecting Prize, which is open to all students at London-based universities. The prize, which is generously funded by Anthony Davis, aims to encourage collectors who are at an early stage of collecting books, printed materials or manuscripts.

Colin Penman, Head of ÂÒÂ×Ðã Records, writes about the internal documents that sheds light on the history of LGBTQI+ student life at ÂÒÂ×Ðã.Ìý

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In March 1972, Jamie Gardiner, a PhD student in the ÂÒÂ×Ðã Department of Mathematics, now a lawyer and human rights activist in Australia, founded the Homophile Society, or Gaysoc at ÂÒÂ×Ðã. ÌýAs far as we know, this was the first gaysoc to be founded in a UK university and affiliated to its student union.

This blog post was written by ÂÒÂ×Ðã student Sae Matsuno (MA Library & Information Studies) as part of a two-week work placement at ÂÒÂ×Ðã Special Collections. Sae’s Twitter handle is Ìý

The Outreach team at ÂÒÂ×Ðã Special Collections have been working hard on a new community collaboration with – The New Curators Project. This project set out to provide 10 young people from East London the chance to develop the skills and experience needed to start a career in the cultural heritage sector. Successful applicants would receive a bursary, training from industry experts and they would create an exhibition and online event for a real-life audience as part of Newham Heritage Month in May 2021.

Dishes you would expect to find in a book entitled Jewish Cookery Book probably do not include jam roly-poly, shepherd’s pie and Cornish pasties. Yet, these traditional British recipes are all listed in this curious cookery book, which was recently acquired for ÂÒÂ×Ðã Special Collections.

The Anthony Davis Book Collecting Prize is an opportunity to celebrate student collectors and the diverse collections they build and nurture. Last year we wrote about how you can be a . But what is the difference between a book collector and someone who just owns a lot of books? For us, and the judges on the Book Collecting Prize panel, the difference is collecting with intention.

The 2020 winner of the Anthony Davis Book Collecting Prize, Alexandra Plane, has written about her book collection: ‘Books that built a zoo.’

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