The Folklore Society Library
Our Folklore Society Library’s Rare Books, Pamphlets, Folios and Special Periodicals at UCL Special Collections: finding aids
We reported a while ago that our FLS rare books, pamphlets, folios and reserved periodicals were moved with University College London Special Collections to temporary quarters at The National Archives at Kew. Very few of these items have been added to UCL’s online catalogue and it is likely to be many years before we can raise sufficient funds to pay for all the retrospective cataloguing. In the meantime, we have a very useful short title catalogue spreadsheet created by Dr Paul Cowdell that includes the essential bibliographical details, classmarks and UCL barcodes of all of our rare books, folios, pamphlets (both bound and boxed), and our special periodicals, including originals of our journal Folklore and its earlier titles Folk-Lore Record and Folk-Lore Journal. Here’s the list, and they’re all available for consultation via UCL Special Collections:
FLS Rare Books Pamphlets Folios and Pers FINAL INCL introduction updated 2019
Our Loan Collection and Periodicals
The Folklore Society Library (around 12,000 books and volumes of serials) is held at University College London Library, as a ‘fetch’ service: order it from UCL Library’s Stores team online and they’ll put it on the van from Wickford for collection next day at UCL Science Library. All of these are publicly available via UCL, subject to UCL Library access arrangements, and many of the books may be borrowed by Folklore Society members. Folklore Society Members seeking a ticket to borrow our books should contact thefolkloresociety @ gmail.com
Our FLS collection at UCL’s Wickford Stores is mostly catalogued on UCL’s online catalogue with the prefix FLS and our periodicals are FLS Pers. There are still c.2,500 of our books at Wickford that have not yet been added to UCL’s online catalogue, for want of funding for retro-cataloguing: but here’s Dr Paul Cowdell’s list, including all the UCL barcodes and bibliographical information needed to request them via UCL Library Stores: FLS Library Unlisted loan collection books at UCL Wickford FINAL
To order books from The Folklore Society’s collection : https://www.ucl.ac.uk/library/stores-service/store-request-form
Reference Books
We keep about 250 reference books on folklore at our FLS Office. These are not available for loan but visitors can browse and read them at our office if you make an appointment: please contact us
Folklore Society Archives
Our Folklore Society Archives and MS collections are held at University College London Special Collections. Please contact thefolkloresociety @ gmail.com for more details