About

Special Collections holdings at Queen’s University Belfast include over 100,000 published books, pamphlets and journals. Many of these titles are rare, early or significant printed works. These print holdings date from the 15th to the 21st Century and are considered to be of lasting research value. The books are managed as discrete collections according to subject matter, collector or donor.

Personal and Institutional Collections (PIC) allows you to quickly browse and search individual print collections. Books and pamphlets in Special Collections can be challenging to locate in the general Library catalogue. By using PIC to browse and search titles you will find them in context, situated in their original collection, thereby increasing research possibilities whilst also narrowing the focus of search should this be required. A summary description of each collection is provided. For your convenience it is also possible to search across the collections available in PIC. All titles are fully catalogued and available in Queen’s Library catalogue, every record in PIC includes a link back to the Queen’s Library catalogue. There are 5 discrete print collections currently available in PIC but this number will continue to grow as we have 30 discrete print collections in our holdings at present.

Those Special Collections titles which are catalogued but not currently available through PIC can be searched in the Library Catalogue. Listings for book collections not yet catalogued are available on the Book Collections web page, or can be requested from Special Collections, collection level descriptions are available through RASCAL (Research & Special Collections Available Locally).

Visit our website for information on how to access all Special Collections resources and services.

If you require any further assistance please contact us.