Queen's University Belfast Special Collections & Archives

  • Other Names
    • Queen's College Belfast
  • Related Resources
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  • Address
    • The McClay Library 10 College Park, Belfast BT7 1LP, United Kingdom
  • Directions
    • There are two Special Collections locations: Special Collections & Archives at the McClay Library, situated in College Park, and the Medical Library in the Mulhouse Building, close to the Royal Victoria Hospital.
  • Opening Hours
    • Please see our website https://www.qub.ac.uk/directorates/InformationServices/TheLibrary/LibraryOpeningHours/
  • Access Information
    • Special Collections & Archives at The McClay Library is open to anyone who wishes to make use of our resources. If you do not hold a Queen's University Library Card or a staff/student card, you must complete a Visitor Registration Form for Special Collections & Archives on your first visit (this is in addition to the registration requirements to access The McClay Library building). Please see our website for further information, http://www.qub.ac.uk/directorates/InformationServices/TheLibrary/
  • Advance Orders
    • Records held in the manuscripts collections and the Queen's University Archive collection are available to view by appointment only, Monday-Friday, 9h00-17h00. All access requests for records in these collections must be made in advance to Special Collections and Archives.
  • Photocopying Services
    • Reproduction of items from the collections is dependent on their condition and subject to copyright law (UK Copyright Patents and Designs Act 1988). All requests for reproductions should be made to Special Collections and Archives.
  • Accessible
    • Yes
  • Archival and Other Holdings
    • The Queen's University Belfast Archive. The institutional archive of Queen's University Belfast, 1845-present, containing minutes of Senate, minutes of the Academic Council, faculty and departmental records, University Calendars, student registers and roll books and examination papers.
    • Waddell Collection, QUB MS 18. Papers of the Ulster writer and scholar Helen Waddell,(1889-1965), containing notes, translations, holograph and typescript manuscripts of published and unpublished works and correspondence, 1914-1936.
    • Somerville Ross Collection, QUB MS 17. Collection of personal and literary papers of Edith Somerville (1858-1949) and Violet Martin (1862-1915) alias 'Somerville and Ross', containing diaries, letters, illustrations, and notebooks.
    • Sir Robert Hart Collection, QUB MS 15. Collection of personal and official papers of Sir Robert Hart (1835-1911), who was Inspector General of the Imperial Customs, Peking, China 1863-1908, containing letters, memos, journals, notebooks, periodicals, pamphlets, books and maps, photographs, albums and slides.
    • Bunting Collection, QUB MS 4. Collection of Irish musical manuscripts, notebooks and correspondence concerning the work of the Irish Music Collector and Musician, Edward Bunting (1773-1843) arising out of the Belfast Harpers Festival of 1792 and published in "A General Collection of Ancient Irish Music" in 1796 (revised 1809 and 1840), containing original handwritten manuscripts (both music and text), notebooks, bound volumes, monographs, letters and photographic plates.
    • Hamilton Harty Collection, QUB MS 14. Collection of holograph manuscripts of the composer and conductor, Sir Hamilton Harty (1879-1941) featuring full and part scores to a range of orchestral and choral pieces composed or arranged by Harty, c 1900-1939, containing musical compositions, scrapbooks, an incomplete autobiographical memoir, letters, telegrams, photographs and various typescript copies of lectures and articles.
    • Belfast Creative Writing Group papers, QUB MS 1/204. Collection of typescript manuscripts from various authors including Seamus Heaney, Michael Longley and Bernard MacLaverty who were members of the Belfast Creative Writing Group that was run by Philip Hobsbaum, 1963-1966.
    • Forrest Reid Collection, QUB MS 44,(1875-1947). The papers of Belfast novelist Forrest Reid and it includes Reid's correspondence with EM Forster. The collection contains drafts, correspondence, notebooks and prints.
    • Stephen Gilbert Collection, QUB MS 45. The papers of novelist Stephen Gilbert (1912-2010). Includes draft autograph and typescript manuscripts of novels and short stories, proof copies and quires, correspondence, notes, synopses, draft speeches, draft poems, juvenilia, school reports, photographs, scrapbooks, and postcards.
    • Seamus Heaney Collection, QUB MS 20. This collection is primarily composed of materials relating to Seamus Heaney's translation of the Old English epic Beowulf; it also contains a small assortment of other writings and correspondence; and two of Heaney's student notebooks from his first and fourth years at Queen's University Belfast.
    • C S Lewis Collection, QUB MS 56. A collection of letters from C.S. Lewis to Captain Bernard Acworth, 1944-1960.
    • Piry Collection, QUB MS 19. Collection of private papers of Théophile Piry (fl. 1880-1915), Commissioner of Customs and first Postmaster General of the Imperial Postal Service, China, 1911-1915.
    • Scarman Tribunal (1969) papers, QUB MS 33. Material relating to the Scarman Tribunal Report into violence and civil disturbances in Northern Ireland in 1968 containing 45 bound volumes and 4 boxes of exhibits.
  • History
    • The Queen's University of Belfast was originally established as Queen's College Belfast in 1845, one of three Queen's Colleges in Ireland at that time, the others being in Cork and Galway. It was raised to the status of a full university in 1908.
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