Image credit: Howard Kordansky, 2024 Book Prize winner
The Anthony Davis Book Collecting Prize celebrates and encourages student book collectors who are passionate about any type of book, printed, or manuscript material. It is open to any student studying at a London-based university who has a collection of printed and/or manuscript material focused on a cohesive theme.
The winner will receive £600 as well as an allowance of £300 to purchase an item for UCL Special Collections. The prize will also include the opportunity to give a talk on your collection as part of the UCL Special Collections events programme.
Your collection should be based around a theme which has been deliberately assembled and that you intend to continue growing. Past shortlisted and finalist collection themes include post WWI Jewish experiences, transgender authors, and Arabic voices in science fiction and graphic novels.
Your collection does not need to include items that are valuable, old, or historically important. Instead, your collection can include anything from comic books to postcards, 19th century novels to modern YA fiction. As long as it has a dedicated theme, you are welcome to apply!
To apply, you must:
Be a current undergraduate or postgraduate studying for a degree at a London-based university. Both part-time and full-time students are encouraged to apply.
Shortlisted applicants will be asked to present their collection to the prize judges on May 19th.
Below are several resources that can help you plan your application. However, please feel free to contact library.spec.coll.rarebooks@ucl.ac.uk with any specific questions you might have about the prize.
Collection of Emma Treleaven, 2023 Book Collecting Prize winner
To apply or to learn more about the eligibility criteria:
On the 25th September a new exhibition, ‘Generation UCL: 200 Years of Student Life in London’, opened in UCL’s Octagon Gallery. The exhibition explores two centuries of student life at UCL, placing them at the centre of the university’s history. Mounted in anticipation of UCL’s bicentenary celebrations in 2026, it also marks 130 years of Students’ Union UCL, one of the largest student-led organisations in the world. Material has been contributed by UCL Special Collections, UCL Museums, Students’ Union UCL, and UCL alumni.
A photograph of one of the lightboxes in the exhibition stating that there is no university ‘without its students’.
The exhibition is part of the wider Generation UCL research project, which looks to explore the lives of UCL students and present them as the real ‘founders’ of the university.
Over the past 9 months, members of the Special Collections team have been working alongside Professor Georgina Brewis and Dr Sam Blaxland, of the Generation UCL team, to select and prepare material for display. Fifty of the items featured in the exhibition are taken from the University College and IOE archive collections, making it one of the largest Special Collections exhibitions in recent years.
Members of the North Star team installing Institute of Education items
Items included range from official UCL publications and records, such as student record cards, files and calendars, to union and society magazines and posters. Thanks to a recent donation by Students’ Union UCL of the collection of UCL alum, Professor Mark Curtin, we have had the opportunity to display a number of objects too. These include a 1940s blazer and silk scarf worn by Geography student Enid Sampson, a UCL Botany department microscope, academic medals and union badges.
Other objects were uncovered in the process of putting together the initial longlist. A visit to the College Archives silver store back in April resulted in the discovery of a full set of 1950s cutlery (including fish knife!) that had been used by students at Bentham Hall.
Bentham Hall cutlery on display alongside a 1918 Union Magazine cartoon, showing diners crowding around Refectory menus.
With a vast amount of material to choose from the process of shortlisting was tough! However, some clever design on the part of Polytechnic studio meant that we have also been able to display material that would otherwise have been left out. The two arches that lead into the gallery have now been covered in digitised copies of publications, posters, adverts, and invitations, which were created for, or by, UCL students. If you are in the space, see if you can spot a Student’s Guide to Computers from 1996, an advert for a 1960s Pink Floyd gig and a 1981 Student Survival guide with the title ‘Don’t panic: it’s too late anyway!’.
A snapshot of one of the arches leading into the Octagon Gallery
The exhibition is open now until August 2024 and is free for all to attend. For more information about the creation of the exhibition visit the exhibition project page.
Leah Johnston, Cataloguing Archivist (Records), shares details of the Galton Laboratory archive.
Content warning: This blog includes details of records and objects that relate to racist, ableist and classist beliefs. The ideas within this material do not reflect the current views of UCL.
The Galton Laboratory Records form a collection of archives recording parts of the laboratory’s history, from its creation in 1904, up to the late 1990s. Much of the material was donated to UCL Special Collections in 2011, with some smaller accessions added since then. Over the past year the collection has been fully catalogued and is now all available to view online.
The origins of the Galton Laboratory at UCL can be traced back to 1904 when Francis Galton established the Eugenics Record Office in Gower Street, Bloomsbury. Although the laboratory was not officially part of the university at that time, a connection was formed with Galton endowing UCL with an annual £500 Fellowship of National Eugenics. In 1906 Professor Karl Pearson took over Directorship of the Eugenics Record Office, while still informally working alongside Galton. After Galton’s death in 1911, the residue of his estate was bequeathed to the university, under the condition that it was used to establish a Chair of Eugenics, whose role would be to direct research into ‘those causes under social control that may improve or impair the racial qualities of future generations either physically or morally’.
GALTON LABORATORY/4/1/8 – Photograph of the Anthropometric Laboratory, South Kensington, 1884.
This early history of the laboratory is recorded in a series of administrative papers within the collection. Included is early correspondence between Galton, Pearson and P J Hartog (the then Academic Registrar), regarding their proposed scheme for a laboratory at the university, plus copies of Galton’s will and related planning for the establishment of a Chair of Eugenics. While these files include high level planning, other papers record more practical decisions, such as plans for the proposed new building. Below is an estimate for blinds to be supplied by James Shoolbred & Co. Ltd, including a small sample of green cloth.
GALTON LABORATORY/1/6/3 – Estimate for blinds from James Shoolbred and Co., including a sample of fabric, 1921.
Other series include papers accumulated by the laboratory, records of laboratory publications (such as the Annals of Eugenics, The Treasury of Human Inheritance and Eugenics Laboratory Memoirs), and research working papers.
The remaining series consist of photographs, artwork, audio-visual material, and objects.
Artwork in the collection includes portraits of individuals connected either to Galton, or to the laboratory, alongside early watercolours of scientific specimens and samples. It appears from related annotations that they were either displayed in the laboratory or were used in their publications.
GALTON LABORATORY/4/2/6 – Watercolour illustrations of human eyes, 1915.
A series of photographs are similarly varied and were also used in publications, displayed in the laboratory, or kept as reference material. Included below is an image of Francis Galton seated on his porch, with his servant standing behind him and holding his pet Pekingese puppy.
GALTON LABORATORY/4/1/19 – Photograph of Francis Galton seated on his porch, with his servant Alfred Gifi, who is holding Galton’s Pekingese puppy, Wee Ling, c.1910.
This is contrasted against a more recent addition to the collection, which is one of three photographs showing women working in the laboratory in the early 1900s.
GALTON LABORATORY/4/1/17 – Women working in laboratory, early 20th century.
Alongside other UCL Library and Culture collections, the Galton Laboratory Records help to form a fuller record of the history of the laboratory and in turn, its legacy at UCL. If you would like to further explore the collection it can now be viewed on our online archives catalogue and by typing ‘Galton Laboratory Records’ into the search bar.
To make an appointment to view the records, or for any queries regarding the collection or the catalogue, please contact us at spec.coll@ucl.ac.uk.
At UCL Special Collections, we look after collections that, as a whole, tell a larger story about our shared history and culture. Some items may have a high monetary value, but many like the 1970s workbooks preserved in our Baines Archive, collectively help us understand the history of education.
‘Book of Bones’ from our Baines Archive.
Preserving history doesn’t depend on past collectors. Student Book Collectors play an important role in capturing a snapshot of history. Collections like the 2020 winner “Books that Built a Zoo” allow us to understand the intersection between children’s literature and animal conservation. “Read my Genders: A Trans for Trans Collection” captures the voices of modern-day transgender writers and advocates.
But you don’t just have to take our word for it. Chelsea Collison, Learning and Engagement Officer at LSE Library, has written about her favourite collection and how it helps her better understand history.
Tell us a bit about yourself!
I’m the Learning and Engagement Officer at the London School of Economics Library where I work closely with the curators to tell the stories of the collections to a wider audience. I do this via workshops schools and public events for university students and beyond. I specialise in using learning outside of the classroom to increase public awareness, appreciation, and curiosity for heritage, history, and nature.
Outside of work, I enjoy exploring the outdoors whether in the urban parks within London or further afield during travels outside the city. Growing up in Florida, I spent my formative years playing in the waves on the eastern coast, hiking through swamps and tree canopies, or paddling around the crystal blue springs. These memories along with an early job as an educator at a natural history museum have developed a deep feeling of awe and wonder for nature in all its forms.
Chelsea Collison, Learning and Engagement Officer at LSE Library is looking at collection items.
If you were applying for the Anthony Davis Book Collection, what would you submit?
If I were applying for the Anthony Davis Book Collection the theme would be women in natural history. In what has historically been a male dominated field, it’s important to learn about the women who have contributed to biodiversity sciences despite the many social and cultural barriers they were up against. Examples includes works by Mary Anning, Rachel Carson, and Maria Sibylla Merian (to name just a few!). I have a particular interest in scientific illustration as I’m always impressed by the level of observation skills and detail required for creating something that is scientifically accurate and not just pretty. Of course, I also enjoy these works because they are also beautiful and serve as inspiration for my own artwork! Although natural history is not something that is a specialty for LSE, there are still some gems on this topic to be found within The Women’s Library collections! Some other examples can be found on the Biodiversity Heritage Library Flickr page.
Chelsea would submit a collection of women in natural history if she was applying for the book collecting prize.
How do you choose what to add to your collection?
I would want to build a collection that would represent a wide range of ecological biodiversity within the books and illustrations (botany, mycology, entomology, etc.) but also a diversity of the women represented. I would place special interest in books that highlight geographical areas that are special to me including Florida, and now England, which have both experienced high levels of environmental degradation meaning many of species represented in older books and illustrations may now be extinct.
One of the items Chelsea picked.
What does this collection mean to you?
To me, this collection would tell two hidden stories, one of people and one of place. The story of people would highlight the often forgotten or unknown women of science and their important contributions to the field. The story of place would highlight impacts of environmental degradation and climate change by showcasing illustrations of species that no longer exist in these places we have come to call home.
Thank you very much to Chelsea for talking to us! If you’d like to learn more about LSE’s Library collection, visit their website.
If you have a collection of books, postcards, leaflets or other print items that tells an important story to you or a subject your passionate about, consider applying for the Anthony Davis Book Prize! Details of how to apply, and more examples of other books collections, are available on our blog.
Colin Penman, Head of UCL Records, writes about a newly uncovered item in the UCL Records collection.
In the timely way that these things can happen, I recently came across an official souvenir programme for the coronation of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth in May 1937:
As this is the last time there was a coronation of a king and a queen consort –Charles III’s grandfather and grandmother – it has been interesting to compare the occasion with Saturday’s event. The procession and liturgy are very similar, these things changing little over time. There will be new music and prayers, and the much-publicised ‘Homage of the People’. But some elements of the ceremony date back to before the Norman Conquest, for example the Presentation, when the king is ‘presented’ to the four points of the compass.
The programme itself is quite a lovely thing, a lavish 36 page quarto booklet with decorative embossed card covers, glassine protective sheets, and nice watered-silk end papers. It seems to be bound with cord rather than staples – you can see it here at the centre pages, which show the route of the procession:
Interestingly, on the right hand side, just above the compass, is the ‘Site of New Waterloo Bridge’, not completed until the middle of the Second World War, largely with women’s labour. We can compare this route with a London Transport map which can be found in the Gaitskell papers in Special Collections, showing the route of Queen Elizabeth II’s procession in 1953:
GAITSKELL/G/MISCELLANEOUS PAMPHLETS AND OTHER PAPERS
Not much between them. King Charles, on the other hand, will simply travel up Whitehall and down the Mall to get back to Buckingham Palace:
The programme for George VI’s coronation includes a coloured, embossed title page:
and another showing the emblems of the king’s Dominions, which definitely wouldn’t look so crowded in today’s equivalent:
This is followed by a poem by the Poet Laureate, John Masefield, very much of its time: ‘Make wise the councils of the men who sway / The Britain here, the Britains far away’. There is also an interesting essay on the ceremony itself by the Garter King of Arms, the full order of service, and a genealogical table showing the king’s descent from William the Conqueror. The latter can’t compete for splendour with UCL’s own MS ANGL/3, a giant 15th century roll, 10 feet long, showing the supposed lineage of the kings of England all the way back to Adam – you can see a video about MS ANGL/3 online. However, the lineage in George VI’s programme is presumably more accurate.
I don’t know how or why we ended up with this item. It was found in a box of uncatalogued College archive material, where it obviously doesn’t belong. It’s accompanied by a card from the Vicar of St Peter, Vere Street, and a copy of his sermon, so perhaps there’s a clue there:
I have no information so far on Minos Devine, but hope to find a connection to one of our existing collections. If not, this will be an interesting addition to our London History collection.
The following is by Rozz Evans, Head of Collection Strategy and co-chair of the Library Liberating the Collections Steering Group. It was originally published in the introduction to our 2023 Exhibition Catalogue “Hidden in Plain Sight: Liberating our Library Collections” and has been slightly edited for the purposes of the blog.
Black Orpehus 20, part of the 2023 Main Library Exhibition
UCL Library Services holds a rich and diverse range of collections containing almost two million printed items (alongside an extensive digital library). These collections comprise both Special Collections (a term that we use broadly to describe our rare books, archives and records) and Teaching Collections. As Head of Collection Strategy, I work closely with our Head of Special Collections, Sarah Aitchison. We are responsible not only for the development, care and curation of our collections, but also for ensuring that we prioritise our effort and resources in the form of money, staff and space. An important aspect of this is our commitment to uncovering the hugely diverse material within our existing collections, enabling us to give a voice to those who have been historically less visible.
As an institution, UCL has been very public about its commitment to addressing issues around Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) for some years. Arguably the most high-profile work has been around eugenics, UCL’s part in its history and its enduring impact.
However, institutional effort goes far wider than this. For example, UCL was one of the first institutions in the UK to set up its Liberating the Curriculum project in 2016 to improve the inclusivity and diversity of its reading lists. One of the outcomes of this was a community of practice, bringing together colleagues from across the university who are working in this area; this now has a broader remit than the original project.
“Early Efforts by the Misses Moss”
It is this group that inspired the name of our Library Liberating the Collections Steering Group (LLTC), which we set up in July 2020 to plan, monitor and oversee our work in this area. We have developed an action plan based around three key themes of Description and Visibility, Collection Policy and Communication and Engagement.
‘Liberating’ is a term that already has currency in UCL and beyond. It conveys an active approach to this work and its broadness demonstrates how this group is working to uncover, identify and promote a more inclusive collection in relation to all under-represented voices. This means that although there will be specific projects in the realm of decolonisation, for example, the remit is broader than race and racism. We feel strongly that it is important not to use terminology such as decolonisation as a shorthand for wider issues around diversity and inclusion.
UCL Library Services’ collections were initially built from departmental libraries, gifts, donations and bequests, supplemented by some purchases. In the library’s earliest accessions registers it is clear that the focus was on generating teaching collections and filling shelves. This meant that there was no strategic approach to developing a collection, and therefore was primarily reflective of the status of donors. This is very different to how we acquire material today. This involves a much more selective, considered and proactive process, governed by clear and transparent collection policies that are available on our website.
Our newly reclassified copy of “The New Tribe”
This also means that in some cases – particularly in our older material – our collections tend to reflect historic bias and structural inequalities in the university and in the society of the time. These include a normalisation of white, male, Western-centric theories, views, experiences and opinions. This certainly does not mean that we do not hold material which relates to under-represented authors and communities. However, it has become apparent that many of the systems and processes traditionally used by libraries in the curation, management and description of the collections serve to perpetuate systemic bias and can make it difficult to discover this material. For example, the widespread adoption of international cataloguing standards, such as Library of Congress Subject Headings, makes it difficult to challenge or change the use of outdated or discriminatory language in catalogue records.
We are also aware that our collections include content that is now considered discriminatory or harmful, and we must be explicit that its existence in our collections does not represent UCL’s current views.
Traditionally libraries have hidden behind ‘neutrality’ as a way of preserving objectionable content without proper contextualisation, regardless of the harm it can cause to our academic and cultural understanding of these items. However, their historical importance means that we cannot simply remove or delete such items from our collections. Instead we are looking at how we can contextualise such material, acknowledging where necessary the harm these items might do to some of our users and alerting them to problematic content where we can. Pairing re-contextualisation with a celebration of previously ignored voices allows us to have a fuller understanding of our history and culture.
“Girls Education: What do you think?”, part of the Mariana Foster archives collection
Working in this space tends to require a lot of background research and reflection before any work can begin, much less before the books and other materials are made available for use. “Hidden in Plain Sight” does not represent a finished project, but sets the scene for ongoing investigation, discovery and promotion. Staff and volunteers have been working for many months or years, and this will continue to be the case. In the next few years we hope that more of our collections – already full of interesting stories, diverse voices and differing perspectives on colonialism – will be accessible to students, staff and researchers. “Hidden in Plain Sight” is thus a teaser of things to come.
We hope that this exhibition also embodies a spirit of hope and excitement, as well as an ongoing commitment to ensuring that UCL Library’s collections are truly reflective of the richness and diversity of our shared history.
The Anthony Davis Book Prize is open to any student studying at a London-based university who has a coherent collection of printed and/or manuscript material. The winner will receive £600 as well as an allowance of £300 to purchase an item for UCL Special Collections and the opportunity to give a talk on their collection as part of the UCL Special Collections events programme.
Items from the collection of 2022 winner Hannah Swan
The collection should be based around a common theme which has been deliberately assembled and that the collector intends to continue growing. However, the items in the collection do not have to be valuable or historically important – anyone who collects items from comic books, to postcards, to modern publications is welcome to apply!
Books from Daniel Haynes’ collection, the 2021 winner
The prize is intended to encourage the collecting of books, printed and manuscript materials by students by recognising a collection formed by a London student at an early stage in their collecting career. All current undergraduates and postgraduates studying for a degree at a London-based University, both part-time and full-time, are eligible to enter for the prize.
Books from Alexandra Plane’s 2020 winning collection
For more information:
To apply or to learn more about the eligibility criteria:
Our new Main Library exhibition “Hidden in Plain Sight: Liberating our Library Collections” is now open! The exhibition is free and open to members of the public.
Across UCL Library Services, staff members, students and volunteers have been working together to discover, record and celebrate the diverse voices in our collections. Through a number of projects, overseen by the Library Liberating the Collections Steering Group, we have gained a better understanding of our collections and improved their accessibility. However, we are at the early stages of this important initiative and there is still more work to be done.
The exhibition is located in the Main Library Staircase and First Floor. It is open to the public – just speak to a member of the Main Library front desk about getting a 15 minute pass to see the exhibition.
A catalogue for the exhibition is available online.
Leah Johnston, Cataloguing Archivist (Records), explores documents in the College Archives relating to the history of UCL’s Wilkins Building
We are fast approaching UCL’s bicentenary in 2026 and much of its almost 200-year history is recorded within the documents, plans, drawings, photographs, and ephemera of UCL’s College Archive. The archive spans the period from its establishment in 1824, to the present day, and covers everything from founding deeds to student magazines, along with Council minutes, student registers and files, correspondence, and publications about the university.
As UCL Record’s Cataloguing Archivist, it is currently my job to catalogue some of the many collections we hold. I have recently begun work on the College Correspondence, which covers a variety of matters relating to the early administration of the university between 1825-1890. Although most of this collection has already been processed there are still around 200 letters left to be documented. The collection is often used by UCL’s Records’ team to answer enquiries about the early history of the university so it is important that we know what each letter relates to and where it can be found within the 164 boxes in which they are all stored.
While working on a folder of correspondence from 1827 I came across several letters from the architect, Sir William Wilkins who designed UCL’s Wilkins Building. In 1826 he entered a competition set by the Council to submit a design for the emerging university’s main building. Architects submitted their designs in March 1826 and after much deliberation Wilkins’ design was chosen. As noted by Dr Amy Spencer in her lecture ‘The beginnings of UCL in Bloomsbury: some parallels with UCL East’, this was mainly due to the fact that it offered the largest square-footage for the lowest estimate.
UCLCA/CORR/3076: Letter from William Wilkins to the Council, dated 17 February 1827, requesting that they delay setting the first stone.
In this letter dated 17 February 1827, Wilkins requests that the ceremony of the setting of the first stone be postponed for another month. It seems that due to a hard frost at the time Wilkins believed it would be nearly impossible to break ground and he urged the Council to reconsider the intended date.
Other collections within the College Archive include drawings, plans and photographs of the Wilkins building from its inception in 1826 until the present day, allowing us to trace its history through the decades.
College Collection I 16C: West Front of the University of London, 1828
This print shows how the building would have looked upon its opening in October 1828. Although Wilkins’ estimate was relatively low the university struggled to secure the required funds and as a result the two wings of the building were unable to be built. It wouldn’t be for another 158 years until the building’s quadrangle was completed in 1985, an occasion marked by a visit of Queen Elizabeth II.
The Queen is pictured during a visit to UCL in 1985 to mark the official completion of the Main Quad.
College Collection X 65: William Monk’s etching of the Wilkins’ Building Portico (c.1900-1920)
Over the years the building has become a well-known landmark of the Bloomsbury area and has been reproduced in drawings, paintings, and later photographs. This print is a copy of an etching by the Victorian artist William Monk and shows the distinctive 10 column Portico some time at the start of the 20th century.
In contrast this image taken by UCL Media Services team in November 2008 shows the same aspect portrayed in Monk’s engraving. Although the images are almost a century apart the Wilkins Building has remained almost unchanged.
Colin Penman, Head of UCL Records, writes about the internal documents that sheds light on the history of LGBTQI+ student life at UCL.
In March 1972, Jamie Gardiner, a PhD student in the UCL Department of Mathematics, now a lawyer and human rights activist in Australia, founded the Homophile Society, or Gaysoc at UCL. As far as we know, this was the first gaysoc to be founded in a UK university and affiliated to its student union.
This Thursday, 17 June, Dr Luciano Rila, who – appropriately – teaches in the Mathematics department, will give a talk on Zoom, ‘Gaysocs: a brief and incomplete history’ partly based on the registration file that is preserved in the College archive to help tell that story.
I don’t want to cover the same ground as Luciano, but thought it might still be interesting to share a few images from that file, and why we have these records (and why we don’t have others).
Regarded as an object, the file is as dull as every other UCL administrative file of its time. It’s one of many others recording the registration of affiliated societies, the kinds of societies that students have always liked to form: political and social, serious and frivolous. But this file is a bit different. The title of this piece comes from a letter written by Dick Bishop, Head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, to the College Secretary, Arthur Tattersall, demanding to know ‘Who decreed that it is in the general interest that the College should be identified with sexual predilections in this way?’
UCLCA, Secretary 180/155 fol. 6
And J.T. Aitken, Professor of Anatomy, was ‘disturbed … I cannot understand why people should be allowed to make a parade of their aberration’. Tattersall shared these concerns, and involved the Dean of Students, Professor Eric Brown, who wrote to the President of the Union, Pete Johns, about the ‘risk of offending individuals in the College’. Fortunately, Johns declared his absolute opposition to suppressing Gaysoc, suggesting that the authorities should surely be more concerned about those societies that were based around socialism and anarchism, which are dedicated to ‘overturn[ing] the whole fabric of society itself’.
UCLCA, Secretary 180/155 fol. 15
As I’ve said, we have records of a lot of these societies, because there happened to be an established process for authorising them, which meant the central bureaucracy kept files meticulously, with reference numbers, information about who has consulted them, everything properly attached, and every page numbered. They are usually very slim files, containing only one or two pages, just recording the foundation, subscription, office-holders and so on. The Gaysoc file, on the other hand, contains a whopping 22 pages, and it’s not hard to see why: nobody cared much about the Northerners’ Society or the Brewing Society, but some members of UCL were definitely alarmed by the ‘Homophile Society’.
In other words, it’s only where there’s been some kind of trouble that there’s a bit more information. And this is how an institutional archive like the College archive tends to work. We have a lot of registers, minutes of Council and other administrative bodies, staff and student personal files and so on, because that’s our main function. But there are other aspects of life at UCL that, in the past, we were never required to preserve, the unofficial side that would tell us more about how life was actually lived. The Gaysoc file happens to contain a Freshers’ Week programme for 1972, which I think is unique in this series of files:
UCLCA, Secretary 180/155 fol. 7
It was originally preserved as evidence of ‘concern’ about ‘homosex’, but now it can tell other stories, about gay social life at this time, about links with the Gay Liberation Front and Campaign for Homosexual Equality. We are lucky to have in the College archive other material that tells these unofficial stories of staff and student life at UCL: rag mags, periodicals, campaign literature, photographs. But these have come to us in a really unsystematic way, sometimes without any context. For example, we don’t know why we have a copy of this wonderful poster by Alan Wakeman, published by Gay Sweatshop:
COLLEGE COLLECTION C9
or this terrifying account of gay-bashing, in a 1976 leaflet:
COLLEGE COLLECTION C9
We’ve recognised that this has implications about representation in the archive, that doing only ‘top-down’ collecting silences important voices and stories. We have a rich collection in the College archive, but will certainly be doing more ‘ground-up’ collecting to ensure those voices can be preserved and heard for the future.
To learn more about UCL Records, check out their main page. To book a ticket for ‘Gaysocs: a brief and incomplete history’ please visit their Eventbrite page.
How do you make a library? In our current exhibition in UCL’s Main Library, we suggest that all it takes is three basic ingredients: books; somewhere to keep the books; and people to read and look after the books. Nice and easy… right?
Of course, From Small Library Beginnings: A brief history of UCL Library Services very quickly shows us that it’s not that simple. Tracing UCL’s libraries back to the start of UCL itself, we find that a lack of funding meant that the planned Great Library was never built, and the very first library was named instead the Small Library – a diminutive start for a university library service that today supports over 40,000 students.
Buildings need to be built: it shouldn’t be surprising that they’re occasionally difficult to come by. But even at a university, people can be in short supply, too. Certainly, the library doesn’t seem to have ever lacked for users, and one never has to look far to see traces of past borrowers in the form of notes scribbled in the margins of textbooks*. However, staffing a library can be a different matter, and for some 40 years, until 1871, UCL dispensed with the role of Librarian entirely, employing only an assistant – sometimes. A lack of funding was once more to blame.
Evidence of library users. (Side note: please don’t write in your library books.) [GRAVES 4.i.26]
That only leaves books. Here, it seems, UCL has been more fortunate. From the beginning a large number of books were donated, bequeathed, gifted and even bought, so while they may not have had a home or been well looked after, they were at least available to be read…
…Until the London Blitz, anyway. The Second World War saw the most precious books and manuscripts in the library’s collections sent to the National Library of Wales for safekeeping. Of those left behind, an estimated 100,000 were lost or damaged when the university was hit during a 1940 air raid.
We’ve been careful to label the exhibition as a ‘brief’ history, and it would certainly be difficult to present a full narrative of the service’s 17 sites and almost 200 years of existence in just one display. But you’ll still find plenty of fascinating stories here: a library bell made from 17th Century parts; the student life of famed librarian S. R. Ranganathan; the rise and fall of school libraries, and the impact of this on information literacy at universities.
For more on these stories and the items that tell them, download the exhibition catalogue, which includes an introduction by Anne Welsh from UCL’s own Department of Information Studies.
From Small Library Beginnings runs until Friday, 13 December in UCL Main Library, and is open to the public on weekdays, 9.30am-5pm.
*Marginalia can be fascinating and tell us a great deal about a book’s use and its previous owners. That being said, please don’t write in your library books.
The College Plans, belonging to the Records Office Collections within UCL Special Collections, Archives and Records Department, are housed in part at the National Archives and in part at UCL. They are architectural plans and drawings of several landmarks of the UCL campus, such as the Cruciform, the Rockefeller Building of the “New” Chemistry building.
If most of these plans and drawings, dating from the end of the 19th and early 20th century are in stable condition, some show conservation pathologies that prevent their usage by students, scholars or the public, or would impede their handling for digitization and cataloguing purposes.
They present naturally occurring conditions in working documents, such as pin holes, folds, dirt and smudges, creases… but these objects are also often torn, cockled, warped, and bear historic repairs, many of which are made with pressure-sensitive adhesive tape that needs to be removed. Those conditions are worsened by the fact that most paper substrates are brittle, particularly the different kinds of tracing paper.
A conservation campaign was then launched to stabilize as many records as possible. The work started with surveying 485 items of the collection, and identifying the unstable ones.
The plans and drawings were prioritized according to their state and their relevance for the curators of the collection, and were treated according to a protocol aiming at stabilizing them with minimal intervention:
Setting of tears using wheat starch paste
Repairs and consolidation of regular paper objects using different thicknesses of remoistenable repair tissue prepared with wheat starch paste and methylcellulose.
Some of the tissue was toned with black acrylic paint for the repairs over black media on the recto of objects.
Repair and consolidation of tracing paper using remoistenable tissue prepared with Isinglass: a fine protein adhesive prepared using swim bladders of sturgeon fishes.
Adhesive removal using poultices prepared with methylcellulose and ethanol, or heated spatulas and other solvents.
Structural infills
Photographic and written documentation:
Condition and treatment records
Housing in polyester pockets.
These interventions were carried out by paper conservators at UCL Special Collections Conservation Department, and also involved the participation of UAL – Camberwell College MA Conservation intern students, who were given the opportunity to add working collection objects treatments to their portfolios while learning and practicing different techniques, such as preparing Isinglass, removing adhesives or repairing tracing paper.
Priority was given to stability for handli
ng purposes, also respecting the nature of each substrate. For instance, repairs on tracing paper were done with extremely thin tissues to avoid being visible by transparency. Due to their aesthetical value, some objects were nevertheless given extra care, with the usage of toned tissues for repairs and infills. One plan with a large lacuna even received an infill digitally produced to minimize the visual impact of interrupted lines.
In the images, one can see the detail of record Ref. Nº ROC 86, a drawing for a decorative swag of the Board Room in the Rockefeller building before and after conservation. It was extremely rewarding for the conservators to discover that the ornament was still in place. As recommended in writing on the May 1907 document, the sculptor hadn’t “adhered” exactly to the drawing, but his execution of the motif still allowed super-imposing the final result with architect J. Carmichael’s vision.
Volunteers’ week may be long over but that doesn’t mean we can’t say thank you to our volunteers throughout the rest of the year! This time I would like to introduce some of the work done by one of our volunteers, Ashley Zuelke, who you may have come across before in one of the Volunteer Week posts. As well as volunteering in Special Collections we have been lucky enough to have Ashley volunteering with us in UCL IOE Archives. Ashley has worked on catalogue enhancement of Minute Books of the London branch of the National Union of Women Teachers (NUWT). The account which follows is a fascinating analysis of what she uncovered and gives an insight into the interesting stories that can be found in these unassuming looking volumes.
Minute Books Offer Glimpses into the Organisation of Women Teachers at the Turn of the 20th Century
By Ashley Zuelke Summer Volunteer with Special Collections, Archives and Exhibitions studying for an MSc in Business Analytics and Management
In the early 1900s, British women teachers formed their own associations, branching out from the primary teaching organizations of the time to advocate for emerging issues including equal pay, pensions, and the management of “combined” boys and girls school departments. Reading the first minute books kept by the London Branch of the National Union of Women Teachers – then known as the National Federation of Women Teachers – is like sifting through snapshots of history taken every few months.
Entries from 1908 to 1922 reveal glimpses of the expansion of women’s rights and education in the U.K. before, during and after World War I. Discussions on proposed resolutions for national meetings reveal issues on which broad consensus prevailed, such as supporting aging women teachers, as well as points of disagreement, which included Parliament extending the vote to women. In history books, women’s suffrage seems like a natural course within a history punctuated with equal rights victories. The minute books, however, present a more nuanced picture with a spectrum of views and no certain results.
Demonstration by the London Unit against the allocation of the Fisher Grant, 1918
The year 1918 marked a watershed moment for the organisation: Parliament passed landmark education reform legislation and the group merged with the Women Teachers Franchise Union to create the London Unit of the National Federation of Women Teachers. The Franchise Union at the time was a politicised organisation, which prompted some members to urge that the group not advocate for political issues. The group did not accept those proposals, though the organisation unanimously postponed advocacy on political issues during the war. With the merger, the group codified its practices into a constitution and began to persistently advocate for equal rights and the implementation of the Education Act of 1918, which was designed to improve school conditions and to study the UK educational system – objectives for which public support increased dramatically after the war.
Within 10 years, the group grew from a handful of regular members to more than 50 subscribers in attendance at annual meetings representing nearly all parts of greater London. The organisation’s behaviour evolved as well. Initial notes that focused mostly on social gatherings and group administration became disciplined accounts of proposed resolutions and active correspondence. Early schisms dissolved as rules and procedures were finalised. By 1916, the group even published meeting minutes in newspapers as public record. Members, some of whom participated in the group for more than a decade, built seniority. The group developed a clear, ringing voice on important issues. The women’s dedication is evident, with many lines commemorating achievements of group presidents and expressing condolences for members with illness or those who passed away.
The minute-book entries represent many hours of work for members outside the classroom, often on weekends. They offer readers a new perspective on events in the first two decades of the 20th Century. The books show how one organisation developed, enduring setbacks and victories on a path that many organisations today would likely recognise. And the books open windows into time as a group made changes and won rights for women and children that today many of us could not imagine doing without.
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Thanks so much Ashley for writing up such an interesting account of the early minute books of the NUWT and for all your work in expanding and enhancing the catalogue description for these.
For more information on the National Union of Women Teachers please refer to our libguide or our online catalogue.
On 9 February, I delivered a UCL Lunch Hour Lecture entitled ‘The youth of our middling rich’: how egalitarian were UCL’s founders? It was a reflection on research I have been carrying out over the past year on UCL’s much-touted radical and egalitarian credentials, particularly the claim that is often made that it was the first English university to admit students ‘regardless of race, class, religion or gender’.
It’s easy to forget that, in 1825, no university had been founded in the British Isles in over 200 years, and there were only two universities in England, where – at least if you wanted to take a degree – you had to be a member of the Church of England. This created a problem for the growing portion of England’s population that didn’t belong to the established church, such as Jews, Catholics and dissenting Protestants. These people could go abroad, if they had the money. There were academies for dissenters in England – but they weren’t universities. Or there were Scotland’s five universities, which had no religious tests for students, and that’s the path many took, including many of UCL’s founders.
The man who deserves the credit for changing this was the poet Thomas Campbell who, impressed by the liberal education on offer at the recently-founded universities in Bonn and Berlin, wrote to The Times in February 1825:
The plan which I suggest is a great London University. Not a place for lecturing to people of both sexes (except as an appendage to the establishment), but for effectively and multifariously teaching, examining, exercising, and rewarding with honours in the liberal arts and sciences, the youth of our middling rich people, between the age of 15 or 16 and 20, or later if you please. By the middling rich I mean all between mechanics and the enormously rich…
This got the ball rolling remarkably quickly: a preliminary meeting was held in April, and the first prospectus appeared in July. The land for the building was purchased in September, a Council elected in December, and on 11 February 1826 our first foundation document, the Deed of Settlement,
was signed. The foundation stone was laid in April 1827, and the first students arrived in October 1828. That Deed of Settlement says the object of the university is:
The advancement and promotion of Literature and Science, by affording young Men … adequate opportunities for obtaining Literary and Scientific Education at a moderate expence.
It was to be a joint-stock company, selling shares for £100 each to Proprietors, who would elect the Council at an annual general meeting. The professors would be paid a ‘modest’ salary for three years only, as they had to support themselves directly from the students’ fees – a precarious system that lasted decades.
And students would not live on the premises, which meant fees really could be set at a comparatively modest level, giving access to university education to the sons of the new middle classes. This occasioned the kind of mockery that appeared in John Bull magazine, where it was claimed:
Each Dustman shall speak, both in Latin and Greek,
And Tinkers beat Bishops in knowledge –
If the opulent tribe will consent to subscribe
To build up a new Cockney College.
What doesn’t appear in the curriculum, an area which Campbell deliberately avoided in his letter, is religion, which brings us back to the treasured notion of a supposed principled opposition at UCL to the teaching or promotion of theology. In fact many, possibly most, of the founders were men of faith, such as the Catholic Duke of Norfolk, and the Baptist minister Francis Augustus Cox. They were anxious to provide some kind of religious teaching in the new institution, and planned to have professors of theology.
However, ultimately it proved impossible both to keep to the principle that there would be no religious tests or barriers, and to teach theology to the satisfaction of the different religious groups involved. Instead, the spiritual and moral welfare of the young men who didn’t live at home were to be overseen by boarding-house keepers with ‘satisfactory religious habits and morals’ who, among other things, would ensure their charges attended public worship regularly: in other words, it was a last ditch compromise, designed to keep everyone on board.
So, to go back to the title of the lecture – how egalitarian were our founders? Well, if we measure UCL against the criteria I mentioned, that it was ‘the first English university … to admit students regardless of race, class, religion or gender’, we would have to say:
On race: no university in Britain discriminated explicitly against students on grounds of race, and we know that some non-white students did study at our universities before UCL was even thought of.
On class: there were certainly no barriers in terms of class, except in the sense that you needed the money to pay, and UCL was much cheaper. But you could say the same about Oxford and Cambridge – there were no actual class barriers: if you were Anglican, and could pay, you could come, and some students did have very humble origins.
On religion – in this context, UCL represented a revolution, making a university education available to those who were not members of the Church of England. But this was partly because the men who founded this institution cared deeply about faith and the religious and moral well-being of its students.
On gender – this is really part of a different story, but the answer would probably be: ‘it’s complicated’. UCL was the first to admit women to degrees (fifty years after it opened) but actually not on equal terms for a further forty years.
In these ‘post-factual’ times, I think we need to be careful about UCL’s myths (and what better way to do that than resort to our own amazing archives). The new university didn’t ‘open up’ education to everyone from the outset, and we do ourselves a disservice if we buy too much into the ‘godless’, ‘Cockney university’ image, because that would overlook the fact that this was hostile propaganda on the part of a threatened establishment. The truth is richer and more interesting: UCL did make university education affordable and available to a much more representative cross-section of society, largely the new middle classes who had been, for the reasons I’ve discussed, excluded from it. And it did it in new and ground-breaking ways.
We are currently digitising the Council minutes and student registers, which will enable us to do so much more, and faster. I’m particularly interested in mapping the origins and subsequent careers of our earliest students, and automating the transcription of the earliest minutes and correspondence. So this lecture was a great opportunity to share some of my findings, but there is a fascinating story still to be told, and we’ve so far barely scratched the surface. UCL’s 200th birthday in 2026 is fast approaching – watch this space for further developments!
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