National Libraries Day 2015

Saturday 7 February 2015 is National Libraries Day, a chance to celebrate libraries and find out more about them and their collections. Their website has a list of related events on the day, and this blog post aims to highlight other libraries with Special Collections which you may find useful in your research or which have exhibitions you may want to visit.

• As well as access to books and reading rooms, the British Library has a permanent exhibition: Treasures of the British Library (free) and temporary exhibitions (some free, some admission by ticket).
• Guildhall Library is a public library specialising in the history of London. It has extensive reference collections, as well as exhibitions.
• MASC25 aims to highlight printed collections of resources in libraries in higher education institutions in the London area.
• Hillingdon Local Studies, Archives and Museum Services – find out more about objects, archives, photographs, maps, films, newspapers and books from the local area.

Don’t forget that, as well as printed collections, many special collections contain archival material as well. To find out more about these try:

• Archives Hub is a gateway to search for archives on any  number of subjects in the UK.
• Discovery you can use to find records from the National Archives and over 2,500 archives across the UK.

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LGBT history month

A blog post by Jemima, library graduate trainee.

Each year, over the month of February, the lives and achievements of the LGBT community are celebrated, the history of the gay rights and civil rights movements is remembered and awareness is raised for issues still faced by LGBT people across the world today. Since LGBT history month was last celebrated in 2014, equal marriage has been recognised and legalised in England. Whilst in the world of film, the release of the award winning The Imitation Game has brought attention to Alan Turing, a key figure in cracking Nazi Germany’s naval Enigma code which helped to win WWII, only to later be criminally prosecuted for his homosexuality, leading to Turing taking his own life. This last year has also seen Estonia become the first former Soviet country to recognise same-sex partnerships, Michael Sam, an American football star, made sporting history by coming out as gay and Russia’s anti-gay law sparked protests across the world in the run up to the Sochi Olympic Winter Games. Here at Brunel Library we have our own collections of work by LGBT authors which will be promoted over the month of February through our Pinterest page and ground floor book displays. However, works by or relating to the LGBT community do not exist only on our shelves. If you wish to discover the work of Maya Chowdhry who explores lesbian relationships and female identities in her writing, or to introduce yourself to the Indian photographer Sunil Gupta who produced work on the experience of gay men in India, or if you are interested in the exploring the area of sexual orientation in sport, you need to visit Brunel’s Special Collections.

Bitch lit

Our Maya Chowdhry collection includes Bitch Lit, a cleverly subversive celebration of powerful, female anti-heroes; Acts of Passion: Sexuality, Gender and Performance, which focuses exclusively on lesbian performance work from representations of lesbian sex in the media to what the term “lesbian playwright” means within contemporary culture, and Lesbian Self-Writing: The Embodiment of Experience, a collection of writing by lesbian women on their own lives and experiences. The Sunil Gupta collection includes information on his gallery exhibits and newspaper reviews of his work, with significant media focus being placed on his decision to document himself receiving treatment for AIDS through photography.

Visit Special Collections over February and discover something new this LGBT history month.