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UCL Special Collections

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

Collection Highlights

Finding Material

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


News from our blog

Students Duke and Eric Reflect on their BA Education Studies Placement with the Outreach Team

We have been fortunate to host two students on a 50 hour placement from the IOE’s BA in Education Studies, and as their time comes to a close with us, they have written a blog to share their experiences.  Both students spent time learning about the Special Collections department before immersing themselves in the delivery of an Outreach project at UCL Academy – an after school club called Illustrate! which explores the use of illustration in our collection of rare books, archives and manuscripts.

Eric Xu

Uncovering silenced voices in our rare books: the Liberating the Collections volunteer project

For most of recent history, access to the means to read, write, publish and collect texts was restricted to society’s most privileged. Most of the 150,000 rare books that are looked after by UCL Special Collections were donated over the past two centuries by members of the same privileged group. Collecting books is never neutral: the choice to purchase books in a certain discipline, or on specific topics or by particular authors also implies the choice not to purchase other materials.

‘Very coarse articles’ – celebrating UCL’s institutional archive

February 11 is generally accepted as UCL’s ‘birthday’, the date in 1826 of our founding instrument, the Deed of Settlement. This document establishes a society, called ‘The Proprietors of the University of London’, to set up an Institution with the object of ‘affording to young Men … adequate opportunities for obtaining Literary and Scientific Education at a moderate expence’.

Becoming an Historian at Kelmscott Secondary School

The Outreach programme at UCL Special Collections delivers free projects for schools and community groups in Camden, Hackney, Tower Hamlets, Newham and Waltham Forest.

We have recently completed an after-school programme with a group of talented young historians at Kelmscott Secondary School in Waltham Forest. While learning how to ‘become an historian’ they decided the following skills were essential:

A Great Historian…

Happy Hanukkah

Hanukkah, the Jewish festival of light, takes place this year from the evening of 28th November through to the evening of

Gavin’s book of witches

Hidden in the Institute of Education’s Baines Archives is a small book entitled Gavin’s book of witches (BA/1/9/78).

The Royal Bounty Archive

French Protestants became one of the largest group of immigrants in England from the 16th to the 18th century. A small number of refugees started arriving from the 1520s onwards, especially during periods when persecution increased in France.

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