What is an archive?
The term archive(s) can be thought of in TWO different ways. It can refer to a building that holds a collection of historical records or it can refer to the collection itself.
In our Special Collections we hold a number of archives, alongside books, periodicals and journals within our reference library. These archives document community activity, business or institutional operations, and more often than not, tell us about the experience of an individual or group who has lived through both the ordinary and extraordinary. This is why archives (and their records) are important to our understanding of the past, because they provide a contemporary account through the voice of those who have lived it.
To learn more about the value of archives, for both your personal study or wider research, please visit our pages on:
Primary sources
Secondary sources
Research guides
Case studies
Using our archives
Our archives include a variety of media including handwritten or typed documents, photographs, film and sound recordings, and when records are deposited or transferred into our collections, this material is listed and placed into environmentally-controlled storage.
We have arranged our archives into management groups, which include our University Archive, the Archive of the Irish in Britain, the Trades Union Congress Library Collections, E&A Wates Ltd, and the Frederick Parker Chair and Archive Collections.
To help you search our archives, content information is organised using international standards like ISAD(G), and grouped by Collection, Section, Series, File and Item level(s). These different levels can, for example, reflect the operational function(s) of an organisation or how the archive was collected by an individual or community. By using these standards, our catalogue work remains consistent and the research of our listings is made easier for users familiar with archive catalogues in other institutions.
If you're new to using an archive catalogue, we have created a Help guide to provide a brief introduction.
Access to our archives is on request, if source material has not been digitised and is not available online. Instead, you can view this material in the Special Collections reading room. One reason we cannot provide online access to all our holdings is because some of the material, like a journalistic photograph or advertising poster, might be owned by a third-party rights holder. Onsite access is available to this material, under relevant Copyright exceptions.
Restricted access to material, either online or onsite, will also be in place for any documents that include personal information and could breach GDPR compliance.