Spring is here at last, and it feels like the Congregational Library is also entering a new season. Most of our monthly updates will be following a particular theme for the foreseeable future, and that theme is “unpacking”. The library has been allotted three separate areas for its collection at Westminster College: the Cheshunt Room, the Carrie Room, and the College’s main tower. Most of the unpacking has been going on in the Cheshunt Room, where the contents of nearly 100 boxes of books are now on the shelves. The Carrie Room, however, has also started taking some of the more modern collection.

We’ve again had a busy month for enquiries, both in terms of research-based queries and questions about our collection. Keep them coming – we have a varied collection ranging from the history of Congregationalism to portraits and photographs and papers of individual ministers, via our hymn collection. If we don’t have exactly what you are looking for, we will try and help guide you to find the resources you need. Contact the Congregational Librarian Jacqueline Reiter if you would like any help with your research, or if you simply have a question you’d like answered.

As always, if you want to know more about the Congregational Library itself – our collections and our services more broadly – you can visit our website (or follow us on Twitter, or latterly on Instagram). Our printed catalogue can be accessed here, and our manuscripts handlists can be found here. Remember, books can now be ordered up to our lovely new reading room at Westminster College. It doesn’t matter if the book you want isn’t on the shelf yet: we will happily order anything in for you, although this may take a few days, so bear that in mind! Items from our archives can still be ordered to Trinity Congregational Chapel, Brixton. More details on ordering books and archives can be found here.

Photo credit for featured post: Westminster College Twitter feed