UCL Archives: new library database

UCL Library Services has launched the first phase of 'UCL Archives', an online database of archive holdings for UCL Special Collections and the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES). 

The database features catalogues and lists of archive and manuscript holdings from UCL Special Collections and UCL SSEES and is searchable by a variety of options, including date range, personal names and subject terms indexes. The archive and manuscript collections cover a wide range of subject areas and fields of study, including:

• papers of former professors such as Sir William Ramsay, discoverer of the inert gases, 1894-1898;  Sir  Ambrose Fleming, inventor of the thermionic valve, 1904; Karl Pearson, mathematician and biologist; JBS Haldane, scientist;  Sir Victor Horsley, surgeon;  and Dame Kathleen Lonsdale, chemist and crystallographer

• letters and manuscripts of writers, poets, painters and politicians such as the letters of Emile Zola, Arnold Bennett's manuscripts, and the letters of Dante Rossetti.  

• Jewish collections including early manuscripts, family and other papers of eminent Anglo-Jewish figures such as Moses Gaster and Alexander Altmann.

Major highlights of the collection include the George Orwell Archive, containing Orwell's notebooks and diaries; the papers of the scientist Sir Francis Galton; and political papers of  Hugh Gaitskell, Leader of the Labour Party, 1955-1963.

Further catalogues, lists and links to digital images will be added to 'UCL Archives' throughout the year.

To access the catalogue and for more information, follow the links at the top of the page.

Images

Top: alpaca wool sorting in Latin America, twentieth century.

Right: Illuminated manuscript calendar for 1471, showing the occupations for each month. March shows hoeing the ground.

Left: 'Inflammation of the Pia Mater of the Brain', watercolour drawing by Sir Robert Carswell, 1827-1838.