Welcome to the Congregational Library’s update for September! It’s slightly late, but better late than never…
This month has mainly been spent preparing the library’s Reference books to go on the shelves. It has also been spent unpacking the “Misc. Adds.” collection onto one of the empty bays in the Cheshunt Room. “Misc. Adds.” is exactly what it sounds like: it consists of books additional to the main run, usually acquired via donation and not obviously fitting into any particular part of the main collection. Some of them are recent publications, some fragments that cannot easily be identified and which will require further research.
Some date back to the Civil Wars, for example a collection of speeches, precedents, and other political materials by John Pym and Oliver St. John, among others, relating to the trial of the Earl of Strafford in 1641 (CL Misc.Adds.4.22).
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Some are even older, such as a collection of early 17th century pamphlets (CL. Misc. Adds. 3. 21).
Very few of these books have yet been properly catalogued, but we have detailed lists of them and they will be added properly to the catalogue very soon.
The other big news this month is that the Librarian, Jacqueline Reiter, has now also taken up the duties of Congregational Library Archivist. She has expanded her hours and is now in the office 08:30-16:30 Tuesday to Friday (the library continues to be closed on Mondays). While she is a qualified librarian, she is not yet a qualified archivist; she has therefore begun studying for a Diploma in Archives and Records Management with the University of Aberystwyth in Wales. This is normally a distance-learning course, but early this month Jacqueline attended the Department for Information Studies’ “Summer School” for distance learners. She hopes to complete the course over the next two to three years.
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Our catalogue is still available online if there is anything you would like to see – some items may still be offsite, so give us a week of notice if you’d like to consult our collection. If you need more information about us or about the activities of the Congregational Memorial Hall Trust more generally, please visit our website – and of course follow us on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook.
See you next month!
