History of the UCL Institute of Archaeology Library

Founded in 1937 as part of Mortimer Wheeler’s ground-breaking institution for the practical training of archaeologists, the UCL Institute of Archaeology Library is one of the foremost libraries for Archaeology and Cultural Heritage in the world. In 1986, following the merger of the Institute with UCL, the Institute of Archaeology Library became part of UCL Library Services.

Although the history of Archaeology is a vibrant area of research, little attention has been paid to libraries, which played a key role in the development of the subject and its community from its earliest days. Surviving letters and documents in the Institute Library Archives, Annual Reports and the Institute’s Management Committee Minutes allow the rich and varied history of the Institute’s library to be reconstructed in fascinating detail.

Histories of Archaeology tend to focus on famous academics, but here we have rare glimpses of the ‘hidden’ agents also fundamental: booksellers, publishers, librarians, curators, administrators and even students. They spring to vivid life: exchanging, buying, and stealing books, teasing, grumbling, squabbling and sharing news, grieving for friends; immediate and accessible in their emotions and actions. Pride of place must go to the four formidable women who built the library into an international institution: Dame Kathleen Kenyon (1906-1978); Joan Du Plat Taylor (1906–1983); Geraldine (Gerry) Talbot (1908–2000) and Heather Bell (1920–). Kenyon and Taylor were both also highly influential archaeologists, Taylor famously establishing the pioneering discipline of Underwater Archaeology from the Library Office.

For more about the Library’s history and colourful characters, including Colonel Browne, its first librarian, adept party fund-raiser and lover of Kipling’s poetry, see the full online article in Archaeology International 18 (2015): ‘The Institute of Archaeology Library 1937–1986: Collections, Communities and Networks’.

Katie Meheux, Acting Librarian, UCL Institute of Archaeology Library.