There is a variety of other collections and groups of collections available in Archives and Special Collections which do not readily fit into the above categorisations and which it might be helpful to approach from a different perspective. This section tries to pull together collections comprising the books or papers of some of the more eminent individuals who feature in the holdings. Then there are the family collections which contain the papers of perhaps several generations of individuals; and the collections of societies or associations: not necessarily corporate bodies, but groupings of individuals carrying out some particular function, possibly recreational, with a sense of commonality.
In Palace Green Library are also available books and other material on open access in the Barker Research Library from various specific collections, which both support the rare book and archive collections in addition to being sources in their own right for researchers.
There are also some attempts to try and draw out some of the common themes or features of the collections; for example the types of material they comprise, or the languages they are written in, things which might help a researcher looking at particular angles. Finally, there is a brief mention of the status of the Designated Collections, which have featured elsewhere in these guides but deserve highlighting again.
Click on the linked image below to open the search interface for all our library, archive and museum collections. Further guidance for searching the archives and special collections is available on our website.