Collections Archives - Page 3 of 5

8 October 2019

Digital relationships

Every few years, there is a gathering of a unique set of clans. In the UK, they are called ‘independent libraries’, while in the US they are ‘member libraries’; in Australia, they are ‘mechanics institutes’. All are libraries that make their own way in the world, with small budgets and even smaller staff numbers.

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19 July 2019

Fragmentary manuscripts

We are very lucky here at Gladstone’s Library to have access to around 130,000 printed items in total, including around 6,500 books printed before 1800 and some as early as the 15th Century. The majority of these older books come from a very small proportion of our collections: either our pre-18^th Century collection, the Bishop Moorman Franciscan collection, or the Glynne-Gladstone collection. Many of these older books are kept in our Closed Access rooms in order to keep them in the best condition possible – but as a result, regular visitors to the library might not be aware of what treasures lie behind closed doors!

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15 May 2019

New for 1819! Books published 200 years ago…

At Gladstone’s Library we rotate our History Room display every month to focus on a different aspect of our collection. This month we’ve dug out some of our best examples of works published in 1819, exactly 200 years ago, to give you a taste of what people were reading during the Georgian Regency period of British history.

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1 May 2019

Rare Books and Religious Texts: a reading list

Our Assistant Librarian Gary Butler gave a talk Monday night all about rare books and religious texts. In this post, he shares a reading list of books for anyone who wants to explore the themes in his talk further.

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5 April 2019

Gladstone and the Romantics: our new April display

Today when we consider the word ‘romantic’ we think of love and sentimentality, but the term ‘Romanticism’ had a much broader meaning, historically. Romanticism was a period which spanned the late 18th and early 19th centuries, emerging as a response to the disillusionment with the Enlightenment values of reason and order in the aftermath of the French Revolution of 1789. It covered a range of developments in art, literature, music and philosophy and William Gladstone himself would have been witness to its peak during his lifetime.

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1 April 2019

From the Archives...The Gospel of Wealth by Andrew Carnegie

Many of our patrons will know that in January 2018, the Library embarked on a three-year project externally funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York under the title of Digital Gladstone. The project aims to fully digitise and catalogue 15,000 nineteenth-century manuscript letters and 5,390 annotated printed books.

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4 February 2019

Tales of the supernatural: the library’s hidden creature features!

At Gladstone’s Library we rotate our History Room display every month to focus on an aspect of Gladstone the man, or our extensive library catalogue. This February I decided to give some of our lesser-known collections a little TLC by presenting a display on ‘Tales of the Supernatural: The Library’s Hidden Creature Features!’ Additionally, to give you all some extra background on this exciting topic, I’m writing this blog for our website.

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22 January 2019

Collection Spotlight: Beginning with A…

In this regular series, library staff ‘spotlight’ a single item, or a set of items, from the thousands of print and archive items held in the collections here at Gladstone’s Library. Read on and discover more about the items on our shelves…

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25 September 2018

Edrychiad i fewn yr gasgliad Cymraeg / Looking into our Welsh collection

Although not Welsh himself, in 1894 William Ewart Gladstone decided to found his library across the Welsh border for good reason. The beautiful, remote countryside of Hawarden village, as well as nearby historic areas such as Ruthin and Mold, are steeped in culture and Welsh heritage. With an abundance of hills, forests and, of course, castles, as well as the mountain range of Snowdonia, Gladstone envisaged that rather than the congested streets of London, Liverpool or Manchester, North Wales would serve as the perfectly serene backdrop for his incredible legacy as well as provide the necessary air of tranquillity for study and contemplation.

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13 September 2018

A glimpse into some hidden gems from our collection

You may have been on one of our Glimpses (our short tours of the library) before but, I promise you, you haven’t been told about these books yet!

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