Books and local studies

Background

Gloucestershire Archives holds a wide variety of books about local places, people and topics.  Many of these are part of our Local Studies collection. This collection used to be housed at Gloucester Library, but was moved to the archives in 2005. It includes books, pamphlets, photographs, journals and magazines.

What sort of books do you hold?

We hold all sorts of books with a Gloucestershire connection. This includes books about places in Gloucestershire, people from Gloucestershire and works written by Gloucestershire people. We also hold books about topics which have a Gloucestershire connection, such as fishing on the River Severn or local flora and fauna.

Our library is a reference library. You are welcome to view or read any book we hold but you will not be able to borrow any books from us.

How to find the book you want

A useful way to start is by searching our online catalogue - select “search local studies only” option. Enter the words you want to search for in the any text field. Then click on “search” and then “overview of records” to view the list of items which contains those words in the description. Click on the blue number on the left hand side to view more information about each item, including the finding reference.

Most items will need to be pre-ordered from our strongrooms. When ordering an item from the local studies collection, please use the finding reference and the title of the book/publication.

For some documents you may find a reference which looks like this: RR306.1GS* RV306.2GS

This means that we hold two copies of this item. The asterisk (*) separates the two different references. For this item you can choose to order RR306.1GS or RV306.2GS. It may be the case that the two copies are very slightly different, e.g. one might be signed or include an extra appendix or insert.