Senate House Library and Heythrop College Library, University of London

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Senate House Library was founded, as the University of London Library, in 1871, following the gift to the University of the libraries of Augustus De Morgan and George Grote. Rapid expansion followed through both gifts and purchases, culminating in the gift of the Goldsmiths’ Library of Economic Literature by the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths in 1903. The Library moved to its current Bloomsbury site in 1937. The Library’s core mission from its inception was as a central research library, covering the wider arts, humanities and social sciences.

Heythrop Library was until 2018 part of Heythrop College, originally founded in 1614. Since the closure of the College, its owners (the Jesuits in Britain) have continued to develop this collection in philosophy and theology, and provide access to it.

The printed special collections held by Senate House Library are particularly fine, and number around 250,000 titles. Details of the Library’s named special collections can be found here.

Heythrop Library contains an important collection of c.15,000 pre-1801 items, of which the core is books by and about the Jesuits.

The records submitted to the HPB database have been drawn from the current on-line computer catalogue, extracting items published in and before 1830. They represent only a proportion of Senate House Library’s early holdings. There is an ongoing process of retro-conversion of records from the card catalogue, and further relevant material will be added to the HPB in due course. The records cover both monographs and serials.

Senate House Library’s printed special collections are catalogued with reference to the Library of Congress Descriptive Cataloguing of Rare Books (DCRB) and its successor Descriptive Cataloguing of Rare Materials (Books) (DCRM(B)).

Information on provenance is included in many records. Entries are added for the names of former owners.

Forms of name for personal and corporate authors, and subject headings, follow Library of Congress authority files as far as possible. Where a personal name does not appear in the LC authority files, and no dates have been located for the person concerned, titles and epithets have been used as qualifiers. Most but not all records have Library of Congress subject headings (in American English).

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