Rare Books Collection

The Rare Books Collections

The Archivist is responsible for the management of the University’s rare books collections: the Henry Davis Collection in the Coleraine library, the Magee Rare Books Collection and the Derry and Raphoe Diocesan Library, which has recently been lodged at Magee.

Details of the rare books collections have been added to the RASCAL (Research and Special Collections Available Locally) database, hosted by Queen’s University, which lists special collections in Northern Ireland, and which was launched in 2002. Inclusion in RASCAL has resulted in a number of enquiries about all of the collections.

The Henry Davis Collection consists of some 200 rare and early printed books, housed in environmentally-controlled conditions at Coleraine since 1977. The collection continues to attract attention from outside the University, as well as visits from classes of students of the Faculty of Arts. This year’s visitors have included the Chancellor, Sir Richard Nichols, visiting academics and local community groups.

The Magee Rare Books Collection has moved from its previous cramped conditions to a superior environmentally-controlled room in the new Learning Resource Centre. Because of the special nature of the books they were not included in the contract for the library move; instead the Archivist was assisted by a small enthusiastic team of Magee library staff who packed and carried boxes of books from the old to the new building, and arranged them on their new shelves.

Derry and Raphoe Diocesan Library. The major area of rare books activity throughout the period of the report was the planning and implementation of the move of the Derry and Raphoe Diocesan Library from the Church of Ireland’s Diocesan offices in the city centre to the Magee Learning Resource Centre. This unique collection of some 7,000 volumes had been kept in unsuitable conditions for many years, and the University was anxious to help the Diocese preserve and house the books appropriately. The Department of Information Services contracted two conservators, Caroline Bendix and Dr Nicholas Pickwoad, to carry out a conservation survey of the books through much of 2002.  The Archivist and Caroline Bendix then planned the move, which, with the help of Library and other Information Services staff from across the campuses, was carried out in the last two weeks of June 2003. During the move each book was individually cleaned and wrapped in acid-free tissue before being packed in crates and moved in batches to Magee, where more volunteers shelved them, still wrapped pending further conservation work. Such was the condition of the books that staff had to wear protective clothing and FFP2 masks to guard against mould spores.

This marvellous collection, described as “a hidden treasure” and “a Cinderella among Irish libraries” is now physically safe, but the quest for funding to catalogue and conserve it to make it usable will occupy the Archivist for some considerable time to come.

The Magee Community Collection.  Not a rare books collection, the Magee Community Collection of old photographs of the North-west of Ireland generates similar enquiries to those received about the rare books collections, which is why responsibility for them has devolved on the Archivist, and why they are included here.  The negatives, many of them glass and in a fragile condition, are housed in the Magee Learning Resource Centre.  The pictures themselves have been digitised by Mr Ted Leath, then in the Faculty of Informatics, now Engineering, and placed on the Web.  Permission to use these in publications can be obtained for a fee, and the University is acknowledged in any publication.  Recent customers have included Derry City Council, the Western Education and Library Board, Gill and Macmillan, the Guildhall Press, the Four Courts Press and the University of Notre Dame.

Contacts:

Mr Joseph McLaughlin
University Archivist and Rare Books Curator
Telephone: 028 7012 4671
E-mail:      jfe.mclaughlin@ulster.ac.uk

Mrs Fiona Clyde
Record and Archivist Assistant
Telephone: 028 7012 4062
E-mail:      f.clyde@ulster.ac.uk