CILIP GIG Visit to the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office Historical Collection at King’s College London, by Rossitza Atanassova

Rossitza Atanassova  

Rossitza Atanassova is a Digital Curator at the British Library where she enables innovation with the Library’s digital collections and collaborates on digital research projects. She is an active member of the CILIP Academic and Research Libraries SIG and can be found on Mastodon, Bluesky, LinkedIn and ORCID.

In July I joined the CILIP Government Information Group visit to Kings’ College London Foyle Special Collections Library based at the Maughan Library, a Grade II listed building that housed the headquarters of the Public Record Office until 1998. The focus of the visit was the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office Historical Collection that was transferred to King’s on permanent loan in 2007. The FCDO Historical Library comprises some 140,000 volumes of books, pamphlets, reports, typescripts and manuscripts dating from the early 16^th century to the present day.

We received a warm welcomed by Katie Sambrook, Adam Ray and William Wood, who had put together a delightful display of items from the FCDO collection demonstrating the breadth and research significance of the material, as well as some of the challenges with acquiring and managing such a vast collection. Katie emphasised the scholarly value of the collection, detailed records for which have been created and published also via the Library Hub and WorldCat.

The exhibits included beautifully illustrated publications on travel, exploration and topography, as well as ephemeral and unique unpublished material, such as the logbook of George VI and The Queen Mother’s journey of New Zealand and Australia. There were examples of items that supported the work of FCDO staff and documented the workings of the British Empire: research, reports, ethnographic notes and personal accounts by colonial administration officials, designs for British Commonwealth flags, emigration tracts and a scrap books documenting the celebrations in the Empire’s outposts of Elizabeth II’s Coronation in 1953.

The ‘show and tell’ provoked conversations about the international importance and interdisciplinary research potential of the material, collection development that throws light on the hidden voices of the Empire, and the many ways the team enables engagement and outreach through MA History internship placements, exhibitions and digitisation. I was particularly interested to hear about the digitisation of the Library’s holdings, including 79 FCDO collection items that are available on JSTOR Open Communities Collections platform.

Show and tell FCDO

As well as learning about the FCDO collection, we were offered a tour of the Maughan Library building which preserves one of the original storage cells used by the then Public Records Office and has a Round Reading Room modelled on the British Museum Round Reading Room. The tour ended at the Weston Room, a former medieval chapel, where we enjoyed some refreshments and had an opportunity to network. I met colleagues from a range of institutions, The Bank of England, HMRC, The National Army Museum. and had great conversations about our employment and professional development experience.

The impressive Weston Room has been restored to incorporate many features from the former Chapel of the Masters of the Rolls and serves as the Special Collections Library exhibition and teaching space. Exhibitions are open to the general public and the current exhibition From streets to the stars: 500 years of maps is highly recommended. All items on display are from the Foyle Special Collections Library and include hand-coloured woodcuts from Ptolemy’s Geographia (1548), the oldest item in the collection, a section of Richard Horwood’s 1799 map of London showing the plot on which The Maughan Library stands today, and a French military board game made after the end of the Franco-Prussian War and used to teach military tactics.  Katie and Adam explained that the exhibition was a team effort and one of the cases was curated by their MA History intern who as part of her research on Joseph Banks (1743-1820) created an interactive StoryMaps exhibit mapping his scientific voyage on the HMS Endeavour.

This has been a memorable visit, and I would like to end by thanking the Foyle Special Collections team for hosting such a well-planned, informative and enjoyable event! And many thanks to CILIP GIG for offering the opportunity to meet its members and broaden my knowledge of historical libraries, collections research and engagement.