St Peters House Library has a Special Collection located on the ground floor containing rare, valuable, and delicate books, illustrated books, artists’ books and handmade items.
All items can be consulted within the library during opening hours.
The collection can be searched online using the library catalogue - to search for just material held in the Special Collection use the search loantype:"spec coll" and add your keywords alongside them. For example: loantype:"spec coll" wonder* will return the books Alice in Wonderland and other books.
St Peters House Library also has a large microform collection containing a wide range of historic material. Material can be viewed and print or electronic copies made using the digital microform reader / scanner. For a full list of the collection content see here.
The Screen Archive South East and the Design Archives are based at Grand Parade and hold incredibly valuable and useful collections which you are able to access.
For full information please see their websites:
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The Michael Aldrich Archive covers the period 1977-2000 and encompasses developments in the new rapidly-changing IT industry. The archive is held in both digitised and hard copy formats.
On the 1st floor of St Peters House Library you will find filing cabinets and shelves containing original retail catalogues from the 1970s to the 1990s, plus original men’s, women’s and lifestyle magazines from the 1960s to the 1990s.
The catalogues are filed alphabetically by subject area.
If you are interested in using archives from across the UK, the best place to start is the Archives Hub. It lets you search across descriptions of archives held at more than 250 UK institutions.
Rare Books at Jubilee Library
Jubilee Library has a rare books room. They have a rare materials membership scheme which is separate from their public library service. To sign up for a rare books membership, you will need to provide two passport sized photos, and proof of your signature and address.
The Keep is an centre for archives providing public access to the following local collections:
The Keep also houses records from the Sussex Family History Group and the East Sussex Historic Environment Record (ESHER); a database of archaeological sites, finds and historic monuments in East Sussex and Brighton & Hove.