The Wolfson Reading Room

The Wolfson Reading Room
Special Collections Centre
University Library 
Email: speclib@abdn.ac.uk

Tel: 01224 (27)2598

Opening Hours and location
The Wolfson Reading Room is located in the Special Collections Centre and is open from 9.00am to 5.00pm Monday to Friday (9.30am to 5.00pm on the first Monday of every month). The Reading Room is located on the lower ground floor of the University Library, for location and travel details please the campus map.

Visiting the Reading Room
Aberdeen University staff and students and visiting researchers are all welcome.

Access is via the library Welcome Desk on the ground floor, where you will be asked to use your library or access card. If you do not hold a University or library card you can apply for a visitors pass. You can do this in person, on the day, at the self registration desk by the Welcome desk, or in advance by online self registration, see here for more details. Please note that in either case photographic ID will be required to complete your registration and to allow access. All visitors to the Reading Room are additionally asked to sign our Readers' Register and provide address or institution details on each visit.

Lockers
All visitors to the Reading Room will be asked to leave coats and bags in the lockers provided in the Special Collections Centre foyer. The lockers are operated by returnable £1.00 coins and are located on the lower ground floor adjacent to Reading Room.

Working in the Reading Room

Reader spaces and facilities
The Wolfson Reading Room has 36 reader spaces, a large map and print consultation table, a dedicated room for microfilm reader-printers, as well as a listening room for accessing the department's oral history and audio collections.

Reading Room Guidelines
To help us safeguard our materials we will also ask you to observe a few other guidlelines whilst working with us, please view these here

Accessing and requesting materials

Browsable collections
Our Local and S Collections - bibliographic and print history texts - are available to browse in the Reading Room along with series of historical and nineteenth periodicals.

Requesting archive, manuscript and printed materials from closed collections
Manuscripts and Archives and our many other special printed collections can also be consulted in the Reading Room. These non-browsable materials are available by request, please use our catalogues to identify materials you wish to consult. You can visit the Reading Room in person to make your requests, or alternatively please email your request(s) to speclib@abdn.ac.uk. To help us retrieve the correct materials for you, please supply archive reference or manuscript shelfmark details, as well as title, author if relevant, and publication or date information.

As these items will be fetched for you from our stores, please do allow a little time for them to be made available. Collections will be made for both morning and afternoon, and materials will be available from 9.00am if requested the previous day. Some materials may take a little longer to be fetched, or may not be available - for conservation reasons for example, or because they have already been requested or may take a little longer to retrieve - larger individual items or larger numbers of items.

To help us arrange to have materials ready for you, so that you may make the most of your research time, please do get in touch with us in advance of your visit, especially if you are travelling from outside Aberdeen. Please do contact us in advance of your visit to enquire about availability of particular materials or collections, or with any research queries or interests.

Enquiries
Please speak to us in the Reading Room or contact on speclib@abdn.ac.uk. We will acknowledge your email and give you an indication of the likely turn round time for answering your enquiry, this may depend on the extent of research that may be required to identify relevant sources.

Our enquiry service has been suspended during our move to the new Special Collections Centre, in consequence, we presently have an enquiry backlog to address. We will answer these enquiries just as speedily as we can, but please do be aware that we may not be able to provide an immediate reply to your query. Thank you for your patience and understanding meantime, It would help us to answer your enquiry if you could let us know if you require information urgently, or for a particular date or purpose, so that we can aim to respond in good time to all enquiries, and to help meet any deadlines.