Printed Collections
Special Libraries & Archives cares for over 200,000 printed volumes, dating from the 1460s to the late-twentieth century.

Until the fusion of King’s and Marischal Colleges in 1860 to form the University of Aberdeen, both hitherto independent institutions had their own students, their own teaching staff and, importantly, their own libraries. King’s College was founded in 1495 and its library came into being some few years later. Marischal College, founded in 1593, had to wait until 1614 when library accommodation was found for the first of a number of substantial seventeenth-century benefactions.

The older printed collections of Aberdeen University continue to reflect directly the richness of these legacies from the two antecedent colleges, and several collections are now considered to be of international significance. These older collections, enhanced by donations, bequests and purchases of printed and archival material made since the mid-nineteenth century, enable the University of Aberdeen to provide a set of resources of outstanding importance to scholarship and research.

The printed collections fall into two main administrative groups: chronological, and named.

The major chronological collections are:

Inc: incunabula (i.e. books printed pre-1501)

π (pi) : 1501-1600 (European) - 1640 (English) – 1780 (Scottish).

SB: all other pre-1841 material , and, additionally, scientific and medical material to 1860

Lib R: all other rarities, including topographical material to 1860.

There are, additionally, forty separate named collections of printed material, most of which have come to the University since the mid-nineteenth century, that cover a wide variety of academic subjects.

For further details of our chronological and named collections, please look here