Deposited Collections and Manuscripts
There are currently over 1800 separate collections which have been deposited at Senate House Library. There is also a large collection of autograph letters.
Many of the individual manuscripts are part of a named collection, in particular the Goldsmiths’ Library of Economic Literature which was given to the University in 1903, and therefore their subjects very broadly cover social and economic history between the 15th and 19th centuries. The important Fuller Collection of documents, 13th-20th centuries, was presented to the Library specifically to promote the teaching of palaeography and diplomatic.
Finding out about our holdings
Deposited collections are described and catalogued as part of the online archives catalogue. Hard-copy catalogues are available in the Special Collections Reading Room. Collection-level descriptions of deposited collections are also online at aim25.com. Senate House Library has contributed to other external projects, such as Access to Archives, to make complete catalogues available online. We participated in the Charles Booth Online Archive project, with the result that the Library’s catalogue of the Booth Family papers can now be searched online.
There are several published catalogues to our holdings:
- Catalogue of manuscripts and autography letters in Senate House Library by R. A. Rye (University of London Press, 1921)
- Catalogue of the Goldsmiths’ Library of Economic Literature (vol 3 1982)
- The Sterling Library: a catalogue of the printed books and literary manuscripts (Privately printed, 1954).
More recent accessions are described in:
- Percival, Janet, A guide to archives and manuscripts in the University of London (LRCC, 1984).
The National Register of Archives indexes contain references to archives, including those held at Senate House Library. Further links regarding archives, repositories and professional help can be found on the subject gateway page.