Category Archives: contributing libraries

SUNCAT feature library: Heythrop College, Senate House Libraries, University of London

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Here is the ninth in the series of guest posts written by one of SUNCAT’s Contributing Libraries. This guest post has been written by Michael Morgan, Librarian at Heythrop College, which is part of the University of London, and shares a library management system (Innovative Millennium) and library catalogue with Senate House Libraries and a few other libraries in a consortium setting. Senate House Libraries comprises of eight different libraries including those of the Advanced Institute of Legal Studies, the Institute of Commonwealth Studies and the Warburg Institute. Serial records from all these libraries and associate collections, such as Heythrop College and the Wallace Collection, can be found in SUNCAT.

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Heythrop College traces its history back to the founding of an English Jesuit College in Louvain, Flanders, in 1614, which moved to Liège in 1624. In 1794, it relocated to Stonyhurst in the north of England. The College takes its name from Heythrop Hall in Oxfordshire, where it was based from 1926 to 1970. In 1970, the College moved to Cavendish Square in London and became part of the University of London. This period saw the College developing from being a theological college mainly for those studying for the priesthood to becoming an institution open to the secular world.

In 2014, the College celebrated its 400th anniversary, culminating in a two-day conference with the theme, “For the Greater Glory of God and the More Universal Good� at University of London Senate House in June. The conference explored not just the history of the College, but also the Jesuit tradition in education, with a final lecture by Dr Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury. In mid-October, a book was published on the history of the College by Michael Walsh, who was formerly the Librarian at Heythrop.

To accompany the conference, an exhibition was mounted in Senate House Library of books from Heythrop College, Senate House Library and the Warburg Institute. Heythrop lent several examples of early Jesuit theology, while Senate House Library lent some of their early anti-Jesuit works. The books were not only theological, but also showed the range of creativity and scholarship of Jesuits, such as works on mathematics by Christoph Clavius (1538-1612), and a first edition of the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889).

Image of the periodicals area of Heyhtrop College Library

The periodicals area. Heythrop College Library, 2015.

Heythrop College today is an institution which has staff and students of a variety of religious backgrounds (or of none). The College is proud of its adherence to rigorous academic standards and intellectual inquiry. The Library reflects this with an excellent collection in all areas of philosophy, in addition to its collections in theology, church history and religious studies. As a College with a strong Catholic history, we are particularly strong on Roman Catholic history and theology. We have around 180,000 books in the library – which, given the number of students at Heythrop (less than a thousand), means that we have a high ratio of books to students. We also have a pre-1801 book collection of around 40,000 items.

An image of Heythrop College Library's run of the Botanical Magazine

The Botanical Magazine, Hethrop College Library, 2015.

We began automating various library procedures from the mid-1980s, and in 1990 joined a consortium based at the Senate House Library for our automated library system (which was Libertas back then). We are still in partnership with Senate House Library, and use Innovative Millennium for Circulation, Cataloguing, Acquisitions and Serials, together with our Web OPAC. We currently subscribe to around 180 periodicals, some of which are exchanged for copies of the Heythrop Journal. These are in our specialist subject areas of Philosophy and Theology. One of our most popular resources is our full run of the Tablet magazine, which began in 1840 and is used as a source for British Catholic history.

Heythrop has been at its current leafy campus in Kensington Square since 1993. However, it may be that in the near future we will again be moving as Heythrop is exploring a possible strategic partnership with St Mary’s University, Twickenham.

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SUNCAT would like to thank Michael for writing this post. If you would like to write a post on your SUNCAT Contributing Library and its serials collections please let us know.

SUNCAT reaches 100 Contributing Libraries!

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We are very pleased that SUNCAT has just added its 100th Contributing Library, the National Archives. Reaching 100 Contributing Libraries is a landmark for SUNCAT highlighting it as the most comprehensive source of journal holding information in the UK. SUNCAT contains the holdings of all the UK legal deposit libraries:

  • British Library
  • National Library of Scotland
  • National Library of Wales
  • Trinity College, Dublin
  • University of Cambridge
  • University of Oxford

In addition, it has over 50 Higher Education Libraries from across England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, including all those of the Russell Group.

SUNCAT also has a range of specialist libraries covering a wide variety of disciplines including art; music; history; medicine; science; horticulture and the environment.

By incorporating information from all these libraries SUNCAT can help you uncover new or unique journals in a particular field, help you locate copies held closest to you or where you can apply for a copy of an article. The service can also highlight those journals which are widely held and more importantly where the one or two copies of more unusual titles are available.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank all our Contributors for working with us to keep SUNCAT as comprehensive, accurate and current as possible!

To find out more information and directions to all the locations of each of the 100 Contributing Libraries click on the library locations map.

We are not stopping at 100 libraries and are keen to add more UK Higher Education, Specialist and Public Libraries, so if you are interested in contributing please see the earlier Contributing to SUNCAT is easy post.

For further information and news about SUNCAT please see our website, follow SUNCAT on Twitter (@suncatteam), or contact the EDINA helpdesk at edina@ed.ac.uk.

 

The National Archives SUNCAT’s 100th Contributing Library!

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The SUNCAT team is very proud to announce that The National Archives is our hundredth Contributing Library. Just over 1600 serials records from The National Archives Library have been added to the database. This milestone makes it a fantastic start to the year.

Photograph of the interior of The National Archives Library

The National Archives, located at Kew in Richmond, Surrey, is the UK government’s official archive. Its collection of over 11 million historical government and public records is one of the largest in the world. From the Domesday Book to modern government papers and digital files, the collection includes paper and parchment, electronic records and websites, photographs, posters, maps, drawings and paintings. The National Archives’ present aim is to collect and secure the future of the government record, both digital and physical, to preserve it for generations to come, and to make it as accessible and available as possible.

Photograph of the interior of The National Archives Library

The reference-only Library at The National Archives has a collection of books, periodicals and directories on history (including local, family and military history), law, biography, genealogy, as well as a wide range of reference material.  A number of electronic reference resources are also available. The National Archives Library uses Koha open-source Integrated Library System, the first library using this system to be added to SUNCAT.

For further information and news about SUNCAT please see our website, follow SUNCAT on Twitter (@suncatteam), or contact the EDINA helpdesk at edina@ed.ac.uk.

 

Contributing to SUNCAT is easy!

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SUNCAT contains the serials bibliographic and holdings information of 100 UK libraries and we are continuing to expand.

Our Contributing Libraries include:

  • The British Library, National Libraries of Scotland and Wales, Trinity College Dublin
  • A range of UK Higher Education institutions, including the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Manchester, Imperial College London, University College London and the London School of Economics & Political Science
  • A range of specialist institutions, including the British Film Institute, the Institution of Engineering & Technology, the National Institute for Medical Research, the Natural Environment Research Council and the National Art Library
  • One public library so far

We are always happy to hear from institutions interesting in contributing their serials information and would like to reassure you that the process is pretty simple. All we would ask you to do is:

  • Fill in a questionnaire about your serials data
  • Send us a file of your serials bibliographic and holdings records
  • Send us regular (normally monthly) update files to keep the information on SUNCAT as current as possible
  • Add some links to and information about SUNCAT to your website (and we have a leaflet with some suggestions)

More information is available on our website

Benefits of contributing to the service include:

If you are interested in contributing please get in touch with us via the EDINA Helpdesk at edina@ed.ac.uk – you might become our 101st Contributing Library!

 

SUNCAT feature library: Religious Society of Friends

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This is the eighth in the series of guest posts written by one of SUNCAT’s Contributing Libraries. This month, Jennifer Milligan, Senior Library Assistant at the Library of the Religious Society of Friends, writes about the library, its serials collection, and being a SUNCAT Contributing Library.

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The Library of the Religious Society of Friends has one of the largest collections of materials in the world relating to Quakers and their activities. As well as the central archives of Britain Yearly Meeting, it also holds printed material, manuscripts , pictures and museum objects.

Image of the Library of the Society of Friends Reading Room

The Library of the Society of Friends Reading Room

The Library was founded in 1673 when the Second Day Morning Meeting agreed to acquire two copies of everything written by Quakers and one copy of everything written against them.

The Library now holds about 1000 periodical titles and currently receives about 250 current titles. Many of these are only available in the UK at this Library or the Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre in Birmingham. The Library’s collection of periodicals covers Quakerism and matters with which Friends have been concerned. This includes Friends organisations (such as the Friends Ambulance Unit), special interest groups (such as Quaker Action on Alcohol and Drugs and its predecessors) and informal groups. Its holdings go back to 1780 with the first Ackworth School annual reports.

An image of a page of the First Annual Report of the Friends Ambulance Unit (1914-1919).

The First Annual Report of the Friends Ambulance Unit (1914-1919).

The Library also holds historically rare and important titles such as William Allen’s ‘The Philanthropist’ and ‘The Monthly Record’ and journals of various Friends missions in places such as Pemba, Tanzania and Madagascar.
It also collects serials produced by organisations with which Friends have traditionally had strong links, such as the Central Board of Conscientious Objectors and the Anti-Slavery Society, and titles connected to Friends testimonies, such as Peace News.

Image of a page from the UK's first anti-racist publication 'Anti Caste'.

Anti Caste (ed. Catherine Impey) , the UK’s first anti-racist publication. The Library holds the only complete set known to have survived in this country.

The Library contacted SUNCAT about the possibility of us submitting our serials holdings and in October 2011 I was delighted to be approached to do this.  The Library uses ADLIB which means our records are not set out in UKMARC format. However, I was reassured by staff at SUNCAT that this would not be an issue as they had uploaded records from other collections using ADLIB. We also do not use Library of Congress subject headings and set out our authority file information such as corporate authors differently. I was again reassured that this would not be an issue. I sent some examples of our serials records for consideration. I was advised as to what fields would be required and how the data should be set out.

I uploaded the records using FTP and it was an incredibly quick and simple process. I checked with the staff that they had received the records. By February 2012, our holdings had been uploaded to the main SUNCAT catalogue. I was extremely pleased with SUNCAT’s staff swift work and the quality of the records. I have sent two updates to SUNCAT since the initial upload.

The Library has also found SUNCAT a useful tool for helping to locate titles in other collections. We are able to advise readers who are not able to visit the Library in person where the location is of the nearest collection that holds an item they are interested in consulting in. I personally find the new SUNCAT interface very user friendly. There is evidence that some of our users have been alerted to the existence of a title in our collections because of SUNCAT.

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SUNCAT would like to thank Jennifer for writing this post. If you would like to write a post on your SUNCAT Contributing Library and its serials collections please let us know.

SUNCAT’s newest Contributing Library – The British Museum

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We are pleased to announce that just under 5,200 serials of records of the British Museum have just been loaded into SUNCAT. The British Museum is SUNCAT’s seventh new Contributing Library of this year. This brings the total number of libraries in SUNCAT to 99, plus the CONSER database, ISSN register and Directory of Open Access Journals. Who will be the hundredth?

The British Museum, which is located on Great Russell Street in Central London, was founded in 1753 and was the first national public museum in the world. The founding collections largely consisted of books, manuscripts and natural specimens with some antiquities (including coins and medals, prints and drawings) and ethnographic material. In 1757 King George II donated the ‘Old Royal Library’ of the sovereigns of England and with it the privilege of copyright receipt.

In the early part of the nineteenth century there were a number of high profile acquisitions. These included the Rosetta Stone (1802), the Townley collection of classical sculpture (1805), and the Parthenon sculptures (1816).
In 1823 the gift to the nation by George IV of his father’s library (the King’s Library) prompted the construction of today’s quadrangular building designed by Sir Robert Smirke (1780–1867).  In 1997 the books of the King’s Library were transferred to their new home in the King’s Library Tower in the new British Library building at St Pancras, London. The books currently occupying the cases in the King’s Library are on long term loan from the House of Commons library. The King’s Library, now known as the Enlightenment Gallery, was restored between 2000 -2003.

Sir Augustus Wollaston Franks (1826–97) expanded the collection in new directions, collecting not only British and medieval antiquities but also prehistoric, ethnographic and archaeological material from Europe and beyond as well as oriental art and objects.

During the beginning of the twenty-first century, the Museum has continued to expand its public facilities with the opening of four new permanent galleries in 2008/9.

The British Museum has a number of departmental libraries, including those of:

  • Ancient Egypt and Sudan;
  • Anthropology Library and Research Centre;
  • Asia;
  • Coins and Medals;
  • Conservation and Scientific Research;
  • Greece and Rome;
  • Middle East;
  • Prehistory and Europe;
  • Prints and Drawings.

The Anthropology Library is renowned for its extensive journal collection: over 1,500 periodical titles are currently subscribed to with approximately 4,000 titles held in total.

The Library of the Department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan has a particularly strong collection of older material (including journals going back to the nineteenth century), museum and exhibition catalogues (around 1,800 items), auction catalogues, and the Nubia and Sudan section. Special collections include the Rare Book Collection, Pamphlet Collection and the Roxie Walker Collection (books on Physical Anthropology). The library also houses over 200 runs of journals, of which 110 are current.

For further information and news about SUNCAT please see our website, follow SUNCAT on Twitter (@suncatteam), or contact the EDINA helpdesk at edina@ed.ac.uk.

SUNCAT feature library: Institution of Civil Engineers

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This is the seventh in the series of guest posts written by one of SUNCAT’s Contributing Libraries. This month, Annette Ruehlmann, Librarian at the Institution of Civil Engineers, writes about the library and its serials collection.

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The Institution of Civil Engineers was founded in 1818 by a small group of idealistic young men and granted a royal charter in 1828 where it declared that its aim was to “foster and promote the art and science of civil engineering”.

The Library was founded in 1819 when the first periodicals were purchased and books presented, including the personal library of the Institution’s first president, Thomas Telford. Located on the first floor of the ICE headquarters at One Great George Street, the ICE Library collection was designated as being of outstanding national importance by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council. With over 130,000 titles, the ICE Library is the largest single resource in Civil Engineering in the world.

Interior of the Institution of Civil Engineers Library

Inside the Institution of Civil Engineers Library. (© Institution of Civil Engineers Library)

Its serials collection spans the globe, with titles in over 30 languages, and dates from the seventeenth century to the present, covering all aspects of civil engineering and related sciences. It includes, for example, not only a complete set of the ICE’s own publications but lengthy runs of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London and of the Franklin Institute Journal, along with important nineteenth century and twentieth century technical periodicals such as The Engineer and Concrete and Constructional Engineering.

In total, the Library holds over 5000 periodical titles and technical report series and subscribes to approximately 300 current journals. A similar number are received under an exchange programme with engineering organisations from all over the world – a unique collection in the UK.

Some print journals found in ICE Library

Some of the print journals you can find in the Institution of Civil Engineers Library. (© Institution of Civil Engineers Library)

Recently the Library has increasingly moved to electronic provision, with the digitisation of the Institution’s proceedings and subscription to electronic access where possible. Over three hundred journals are taken in this form, with access to many more through the databases to which the Library subscribes. These expand the library’s provision to the newer related sciences in the environment and ecology, as well as to legal and management titles.

You are welcome to visit the Library & Archive in person or request photocopies or PDFs either directly or through the British Library interlibrary/document supply scheme.

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SUNCAT would like to thank Annette for writing this post. If you would like to write a post on your SUNCAT Contributing Library and its serials collections please let us know.

SUNCAT’s new Contributing Library – Royal Veterinary College

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We are pleased to announce that just over 750 serials records of the Royal Veterinary College have just been loaded into SUNCAT. This makes six new Contributing Libraries added so far in 2014. This addition brings the total number of libraries to 98, plus the CONSER database, the ISSN register and the Directory of Open Access Journals.

The Royal Veterinary College is one of the world’s leading specialist veterinary institutions. Founded in 1791, the RVC has a unique heritage of innovation in veterinary and biomedical sciences, clinical practice and education.

The RVC Library is divided between two sites; Camden, located in central London, and Hawkshead, located near Potters Bar, just north of the M25. Both are intended primarily for use by students and staff of The Royal Veterinary College, but external visitors may consult the libraries’ stock by prior arrangement only.

The material at Camden reflects the pre-clinical and taught post-graduate courses there, while the Hawkshead stock covers the clinical and taught post-graduate courses at that site. Most veterinary material is at Hawkshead.
The RVC Library is a member of the M25 Consortium of Higher Education Libraries. Other members who are SUNCAT Contributing Libraries include: Courtauld Institute of Art; London Metropolitan University; Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew; Senate House Libraries; The Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust & Genocide; Wellcome Library.

For further information and news about SUNCAT please see our website, follow SUNCAT on Twitter (@suncatteam), or contact the EDINA helpdesk at edina@ed.ac.uk.

SUNCAT’s new Contributing Library – Royal Veterinary College

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We are pleased to announce that just over 750 serials records of the Royal Veterinary College have just been loaded into SUNCAT. This makes six new Contributing Libraries added so far in 2014. This addition brings the total number of libraries to 98, plus the CONSER database, the ISSN register and the Directory of Open Access Journals.

The Royal Veterinary College is one of the world’s leading specialist veterinary institutions. Founded in 1791, the RVC has a unique heritage of innovation in veterinary and biomedical sciences, clinical practice and education.

The RVC Library is divided between two sites; Camden, located in central London, and Hawkshead, located near Potters Bar, just north of the M25. Both are intended primarily for use by students and staff of The Royal Veterinary College, but external visitors may consult the libraries’ stock by prior arrangement only.

The material at Camden reflects the pre-clinical and taught post-graduate courses there, while the Hawkshead stock covers the clinical and taught post-graduate courses at that site. Most veterinary material is at Hawkshead.
The RVC Library is a member of the M25 Consortium of Higher Education Libraries. Other members who are SUNCAT Contributing Libraries include: Courtauld Institute of Art; London Metropolitan University; Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew; Senate House Libraries; The Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust & Genocide; Wellcome Library.

For further information and news about SUNCAT please see our website, follow SUNCAT on Twitter (@suncatteam), or contact the EDINA helpdesk at edina@ed.ac.uk.

Welcome to the London Library – SUNCAT’s new Contributing Library

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We are delighted to announce that the London Library has just been added to SUNCAT, making this our fifth new Contributing Library of 2014. Just under 2,500 of its serial records has just been loaded into our service. This addition brings the total number of contributing libraries to 97, plus the CONSER database, the ISSN register and the Directory of Open Access Journals.

The London Library was founded in 1841, and is the UK’s leading literary institution. With more than one million books and periodicals in over 50 languages, the collection includes works from the 16th century to the latest publications. Membership is open to everyone.

Since its foundation the Library has collected and bound academic journals and publications of a remarkable range of learned societies both in the UK and abroad. Additionally a wide range of periodicals of cultural, social and political interest are taken, with the current collection exceeding 750 titles and extensive back runs for over 2500 further titles many of which began in the 18th century. As well as print copies the Library subscribes to over 200 online versions of its journals, augmented with access to the online periodicals archive JSTOR (offering access to over 1000 titles).

For further information and news about SUNCAT please see our website, follow SUNCAT on Twitter (@suncatteam), or contact the EDINA helpdesk at edina@ed.ac.uk.