Access to books at the History Centre

We are now four months in to the Unlocking the Treasures project and we thought we’d take a moment to provide a progress update, but also help you get the best out of using the Hull Libraries to access books at the History Centre.

At present, over 1,200 books have being catalogued. Some are newly catalogued making them available on the Hull Libraries Catalogue for the first time, while others have been edited to ensure they can be found more easily when searching. We hope to have all our books available to search on the Hull History Centre’s online catalogue shortly.

With just a fraction of the books catalogued, we still have a long way to go. But in this short time a good range of subjects have been added to our already extensive book stock. Recent catalogued subject’s include geology, medicine, the supernatural and ghosts, temperance and religion. These complement our existing book stock on transport, natural history, trade and industry, architecture, literature, biographies, family history together with Hull and East Riding history.

Storage rack of newly catalogued books

You can search for books held at the Hull History Centre (and across all of Hull Libraries) by using the library catalogue. Searches can be carried out by ‘word’ or ‘phrase’, ‘author’, ‘title’, ‘subject’, ‘series’ and ‘periodical title’. Some books at the History Centre can be borrowed using a Hull library card. Look out for ‘DUP’ when viewing a catalogue entry as this means they can be borrowed. Books can be borrowed for 3 weeks.

Hull Libraries catalogue search

Books that cannot be borrowed will be shown on the catalogue as ‘Reference Material’. You can still access these books it just means you will need to view them in our search room. This is because some books are rare or out of publication, and these are very difficult to replace. Also the search room is environmentally controlled meaning some of our older, more fragile books will be preserved for future generations.

A selection of books from the local studies collection

Joining Hull Libraries is simple. You can join online by visiting the Hull Libraries website. You can also join in person. And remember anyone can join, just remember to bring some proof of name and address. So go on, search the Hull Libraries Catalogue today and see what you can discover!

Neil Chadwick, Project Officer