History Dissertation Workshop

Finding primary source material in Special Collections

• manuscripts
• printed books
• Sp Coll web page resources
• printed guides and resources in Special Collections Department
• contact

Manuscripts Catalogue

Some 60,000 items are indexed on the manuscripts catalogue

The catalogue may be searched via name, document or collection: for more guidance see the help page (from the drop down menu at the left of the screen).

Some search strategies: -

• to find any items relating to James I, use the Name Search option, typing 'James I' in the top name box
• to find any items produced in the eleventh century, use the Document Search option, typing '1000' in the Year of Creation after box and '1099' in the and before box
• to find any items relating to child evacuation use the Document Search option, typing 'evacuation' in the Word (or Phrase) in Description box

NB: Use the Word (or Phrase) in Description box for keyword-type searches; note, however, that the manuscripts catalogue is not currently subject indexed, and successful searches therefore rely upon matching words that have been used in the descriptions section of the record.

Printed Books

Records for all the printed material held in Special Collections are indexed on the main library catalogue

Use the Advanced Keyword Search option to limit searches to material held in Special Collections and/or by date:

• to find any books relating to witchcraft published before 1736, use the Advanced Keyword Search option, typing 'witch' in the main search box and '1736' in the Year: Before box in the Optional Limits section; try the same search using 'witches', 'demon', etc as keywords.

There are separate rare books indexes available for the extra fields provided in the catalogue records for pre-1800 rare books. These fields include details of early printers and booksellers, places of publication in standardised form, provenances and standard references:

• to find any books published in Mainz in the fifteenth century, type 'mainz 14' in the rare books search box (at the bottom of the main catalogue menu amongst the 'Other search' options)
  
  

NB. There are also separate catalogues for:

• the Scottish Theatre Archive
• Scottish Chapbooks

Other useful resources on the Special Collections web pages 

Collection Descriptions

Each of the collections is described fully along with guidance about finding aids (including links to relevant catalogue records) on the collections descriptions page.

Use the selective subject index to ascertain which of the collections might be of most relevance to your topic.

Collections that might be of particular interest:

• Bissett: left-wing pamphlets, largely published in Glasgow
• Ferguson: includes substantial collection of witchcraft literature
• Hunterian: wide ranging 18th century library (including many early printed books & medieval manuscripts)
• MacCallum Scot Papers: politics during World War I and 1920s
• Murray: collection strong in west of Scotland regional history
• Ogilvie: English civil war pamphlets
• Schlesinger Papers: Soviet history & German communist party
• Spencer: Darien scheme

Virtual Exhibitions and Book of the Month

The virtual exhibitions page can provide a useful starting point for searching for material by subject.

Some exhibitions that might be of particular interest to historians:

• Americana relates to the history of the Americas
• The Damned Art highlights books relating to the history of witchcraft and demonology
• The Ephemera of John Smith introduces a selection of ephemeral items giving a broad picure of daily life in Glasgow in the first half of the nineteenth century
• Scottish thought & letters in the Eighteenth Century highlights books illustrating the ideas & work of the Scottish Enlightenment
• Women and Books examines women and the written word from the sixteenth century onwards
• The World of Chaucer provides information about and images from some of our medieval manuscripts

More in-depth articles on specific books may be found in the book of the month archive.

Some book of the month articles that might be of particular interest to historians:

• Belägerung der Statt Ostende (Sp Coll RF 875) on the siege of Ostend
• James VI and I Speeches (Sp Coll Bf72-e.5)
• Historia de Tlaxcala (Sp Coll MS Hunter 242) on the history of the province of Tlaxcala from the beginning of the conquest of the region by the Spanish
• The Aldgate Cartulary (Sp Coll MS Hunter 215) documents relating to medieval London
• Archbishop James Sharp Letterbook (Sp Coll MS Gen 210) on the history of the Covenanters
• The Chronicles of England (Sp Coll Hunterian Bv.2.17) a fifteenth century version of history
• The Fifth annual report of the Magdalene Institution, Glasgow (Sp Coll BG54-c.11) on Victorian control of 'wayward' women
• Newes from Scotland (Sp Coll Ferguson Al-a.36)  the earlies tract on Scottich witchcraft
• Rider's British Merlin (Sp Coll BD1-l.10) an annotated almanac from 1701
• Official Guide & Daily Programmes (Sp Coll Mu25-a.29) from the Glasgow International Exhibition 1901

Course Material

The Course material pages have been set up to support the teaching of specific courses and new pages are continually being added.

For course material pages specifically set up for historians, see:

• Scottish criminal records in Special Collections
• The development of the state (text)
• Scottish tourism and leisure in the nineteenth century
• The History of crime and punishment in Britain, 1790-1870
• Glasgow broadside ballads: cheap print and popular song culture in nineteenth-century Scotland

Printed guides and resources in the Special Collections Department

Sheaf binder indexes

While most of the records for Special Collections material are now on-line, there are additionally a number of (incomplete) indexes available for consultation in the reading room. These include a partial subject index, and indexes of newspapers, maps and views, ephemera, broadsides and chapbooks. Although these are no longer kept up-to-date, they can still provide a useful starting point by subject.

Exhibition catalogues

A series of old exhibition catalogues of Sp Coll material are also available for consultation in the reading room (some of these have been digitised and appear as virtual exhibitions); again, these are useful for a subject approach.

Reference material

There is a small collection of reference material in the reading room, including (mostly superseded) guides and hand lists to some of our named collections, as well as some guides and descriptions of other Special Collections.

Contact

I am always happy to try and help locate relevant material and advise on best use of the collections:
Julie Gardham: j.gardham@lib.gla.ac.uk; 330 3791 (office); 330 6767 (Special Collections reading room).