On Thursday September 6th, for the first time ever the Library at Sheffield Hallam University will be taking part in Heritage Open Days, the UK’s largest heritage festival which was established in 1994 and since held annually in early September.
Heritage Open Days have to meet the following four criteria: be free to attend; open up a site (or part of a site) that isn’t usually open to the public, or offer free entry to a site which usually charges for entry; provide information to make the site interpretable to visitors (e.g. by guided tours or exhibitions) and take place within the festival dates (6-9 & 13-16 September).
Two tours are on offer on the 6th. The first will comprise a tour of the Library’s Special Collection rooms at the Adsetts Centre, with the opportunity to view items from the Collection including student artworks, rare books, and material relating to teaching at the School of Art. The Collection also contains pamphlets and books from the 1951 Festival of Britain, paintings and drawings including examples by Etty and Fullard, student films made on 16mm film from the 1960s onwards (including student work by Nick Park of Wallace and Gromit/Aardman Animation fame), admin material from the Art School, a Latin dictionary dating from 1547, and several photographic collections including David Morgan Rees’ shots of Yorkshire craftsmen and women at work and Undermined, a series documenting the Miners’ Strike of the 1980s. The second is a more general tour of the Adsetts Centre, one of the University’s two library sites, which is based in the city centre. This will give an opportunity to gain some insight into the organisation of an academic library, as well as seeing parts of the building that are normally ‘behind the scenes’, such as our automatic book sorting machine which allocates returned books to the correct floor.
Special Collection tours will run on the hour at 10:00, 11:00, 12:00, 14:00, 15:00, with the General Tour of the Adsetts Centre being conducted on the half hour at 10:30, 11:30, 12:30, 14:30 and 15:30, giving interested parties the opportunity to move straight from one tour to the other.
Whilst we are looking forward to welcoming members of the public who may never have previously visited our Library for the Heritage Open Day, it is important to stress that people with an interest in using our collections for research are welcome throughout the year! More information on what resources visitors can access, when, and how can be found here: https://libguides.shu.ac.uk/visitors Researchers are also welcome to use the Special Collection by pre-booked appointment; relevant information can be found here: http://libguides.shu.ac.uk/specialcollection/visit
Places on both tours are limited and must be booked in advance. Information on how to do so can be found on the following pages:
https://www.heritageopendays.org.uk/visiting/event/sheffield-hallam-university-library-special-collections-tour (Special Collections Tour)
https://www.heritageopendays.org.uk/visiting/event/sheffield-hallam-university-library-general-adsetts-library-tour (General Tour of Adsetts Library)
