The research resources at Aberdeen are excellent. The Directorate of Information Technology (pictured right) offers access to the latest word-processing, text-retrieval, data-handling and graphic systems. All students receive an e-mail address and immediate access to the World Wide Web and e-mail with their registration package.
The University's Library is 500 years old and, with over a million accessions from ancient papyri to the latest monographs and periodicals (including 230 incunabula and over 4,200 titles dating from the sixteenth century), caters well for historians of all periods. It was a deposit library until 1836. It also offers state of the art electronic databases with thousands of articles, books and primary documents. Full details of its database holdings (nearly 150 in the Arts & Humanities) can be viewed via MetaLib by clicking on the Guest login. http://metalib.abdn.ac.uk Most of its current journal subscriptions are available online.
Library Resources for Historians
- Guide to Library Resources
- Online Research Resources
- Resources for Medieval History
- Queen Mother Library
- Historic Collections
- Other Archives in Aberdeen
The Department of History at the University of Aberdeen is particularly fortunate in this respect. In the areas where the Department enjoys research strength the University Library and Archives are exceptional and in certain areas hold some of the finest collections in Scotland.
Resources for Medieval History
Aberdeen Medieval Online Sources
- The Aberdeen Bestiary (England, c.1200)
- The Burnet Psalter (fifteenth Century)
- The St Albans Psalter (England twelfth Century)
Basic Texts for Medieval British History
This series of pamphlets (ISSN: 1746-0239) contains editions and translations of important texts for the study of the history of medieval Britain. The pamphlets are intended as unpretentious editions, giving no more apparatus than is absolutely essential, and may be purchased from History.
1. Brenhinoedd y Saeson, 'The Kings of the English', A.D. 682-954, ed. and trans. David N. Dumville (Aberdeen, 2005) ISBN: 0953091511
Queen Mother Library
The Queen Mother Library is the home to the working collections of printed materials for historians. Taylor Library nearby houses legal and official documents of the UK Parliament and the EU. In addition to electronic databases such as Early English Books Online, Eighteenth Century Collections Online, the Stormont Cabinet Papers, the Library still acquires primary material on microform such as: 
- American and British Newspapers, including a complete set of the New York Times and regional American papers that cover the Spanish-American war and the 1920s.
- Early modern collections of pamphlets, such as
- The Wolfenbüttel collection of sixteenth century plague tracts and the Cornell University collection of witchcraft pamphlets.
- Microfiche of Irish books of the nineteenth century and collections of Irish pamphlets, 1700-1850.
- Manuscript collections, including medieval Episcopal registers (from the diocese of York), the '1641 depositions' (dealing with the outbreak and course of the Irish rebellion of the 1640s, from Trinity College, Dublin), and the Stuart Papers (papers relating to Jacobitism from the Royal Archives at Windsor Castle).
An exceptional and friendly service
The quality of service that the University Library offers to postgraduate students is excellent. Library staff members are friendly, helpful and exceptionally well trained in the latest information technology. They liaise closely with the History Department to ensure that the research needs of postgraduates are catered for. The Department also has special funds that enable postgraduates to accumulate research materials.
Why not access some of the riches of the University Library Visit the web site at http://www.abdn.ac.uk/library/index.php or e-mail Gilian Dawson, the Department's Information Consultant at g.d.dawson@abdn.ac.uk
Historic Collections
Early Printed & Manuscript Collections
Special Libraries and Archives is especially important as a centre for historical research and contains many documents relating to the university, the city of Aberdeen and the surrounding area, Scotland and the wider world. Medieval documents range from world famous illuminated manuscripts to charters on property transactions in Aberdeen. It cares for over 150,000 printed volumes, dating from the 1460s, and is home to more than 4,000 collections of manuscripts and archives, dating from antiquity to the 21st century. Collectively, they are an outstanding resource for historical research.
Taken from the Burnet Psalter
©Aberdeen University Library
The MacBean Collection, with over 3,500 books and 1,000 pamphlets, plus numerous sermons, official reports and satirical verse, is one of the largest Jacobite collections in the country and provides invaluable insights also into later seventeenth and eighteenth century society in general.
The Thomson, Herald and King collections consist of thousands of pamphlets dating from the seventeenth to the early twentieth centuries. Their richness reflects the local, national and international interests of people living in the North of Scotland.
For modernists, too, there is a wealth of primary source material in large pamphlet collections and other contemporary publications. The extensive newspaper collection includes a virtually complete run (from January 1748) of the Aberdeen Journal and its successor the Press and Journal, the UK's oldest newspaper.
Archival collections include the records of the Aberdeen Trades Council (the oldest in Scotland) and the papers of a number of large nineteenth-century paper-manufacturing companies.
The extensive O'Dell Collection is one of the largest railway collections in the country, with c.10,000 monographs, maps, plans covering many parts of the world, in particular Britain, Europe and the Empire. The papers of many North-East estates provide a mine of information not just on the estates themselves, but also on aspect of national history and on local links with plantations and settlements in North America, the West Indies, Ceylon and elsewhere. 
Intellectual and cultural history may be explored through the records of the Philosophical Society or the many papers deposited by former University students and teachers, such as the Duncan Liddell, professor of Mathematics and Medicine in Germany before retiring to Aberdeen in 1613, and Classicist James Melvin, whose extensive library bequeathed in the mid-nineteenth century includes works dating back to the fifteenth century. Other areas of particular strength are sixteenth and seventeenth century medicine and early atlases.
Photograph Collections
The Duke of Cumberland's lodging
©Aberdeen University Library
But the Library's holdings include more than written and printed documents. Over c.40,000 glass plate negatives, dating from the 1850s to 1908 from the firm of the internationally respected pioneer photographer George Washington Wilson, have been described as 'the most valuable storehouse of topographical material'. The collection provides vivid insight into the social life of Victorian Britain throughout the period, and of South Africa, Australia, and the Mediterranean area around Gibraltar around the turn of the century. This collection is available to search on-line, alongside the extensive Aberdeen Harbour Board photographic archive.
George Washington Wilson Collection
Aberdeen Harbour Board Collection
Visit Historic Collection's Web Page
The printed collections held in Special Libraries & Archives are listed on the main library catalogue and can be searched for specifically. In addition, a separate Collection Level Database is also available to search, which provides a useful overview of the four main chronological runs and the forty plus named collections.
A separate catalogue of the University’s archives and manuscripts is available to search on-line. CALM currently holds over 1,000 collection level descriptions and over 12,000 individual descriptive pages.
Many of the objects from Marischal Museum’s extensive collections can also be searched online using the LEMUR database.
Special Libraries & Archives is located on the east side of King's College, overlooking the playing fields. Most of the printed collections are for reference only and advance notice, generally half a day, is required to fetch material from remote storage.
The Reading Room is open Monday to Friday, between 9.30 and 4.30. They can be contacted in advance of a visit either by e-mail or by phone on 01224 272598.
Do you want more about services, liaison with Department and teaching?
Other Archives in Aberdeen
City Archives
Elsewhere in Aberdeen, the City Archives possesses the oldest and most complete burgh archive in Scotland and has one of the best collections of medieval and early modern archival material in Europe. The Council Registers, for example, date from the fourteenth century, while the Sasine Registers (a greatly underused source) are extant from the fifteenth century.
The City Archive’s collections, along with the collections of the Northern Health Services Archives can be searched via the website of the Scottish Archive Network.
The City's Archaeology Unit also possesses a wealth of data on the skeletons and artefacts discovered in one of Britain's most thoroughly excavated towns.
Links with other libraries and archives
The Department also enjoys close relations with the National Archives of Scotland, the repository for national records. The NAS, in collaboration with the Department, organises a course for all new postgraduate students and NAS archivists offer advice to students on the records available for their own particular topic of research. Similarly, for those who need to consult documentation in London, the Department has funded attendance at the introductory course for postgraduate research and methodology, organised by the Institute of Historical Research in London.