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Collaborative Seminar:

The Centre for Heritage Research, University of Leeds, in collaboration with the Leeds Library, and the Yorkshire Local Studies Network presents:

'Leeds’ Civic Heritage of Libraries and Readers'

Aims of the seminar

To share research and civic heritage expertise between University of Leeds scholars and library staff members, in relation to Leeds’ 250 years-worth of book collecting, borrowing and reading.
To open up the collections of what is the UK’s oldest private subscription library, and to facilitate scholarly research within these collections.
To provide a forum for the development of University-civic research partnerships, in relation to the Leeds Library and other civic library collections.

Speakers:-

Geoffrey Forster (The Leeds Library), ‘Collecting in Commercial Street: books and readers at the Leeds Library, 1768 to the present day’.

Mark Steadman (University of Leeds, History & Philosophy of Science), ‘Fuelling the Fires of Industry?: Institutionalising Expert Knowledge in Industrial Leeds 1771-1874’.

Rebecca Bowd (University of Leeds, School of History), 'Medics and Merchants: a comparative study of the eighteenth-century subscription libraries in Leeds'.

Helen Sutcliffe (University of Leeds, School of English), ‘‘Inappropriate library institutions and inappropriate reading’ - The Leeds Foreign Circulating Library.’

Commentators:-

Bob Duckett (retired librarian and committee member, Library & Information History Group and editor, Bronte Society).

For more information about the Centre for Heritage Research see www.leeds.ac.uk/heritage