The Society's library
This is housed in the Great North Museum at the Hancock, jointly with the Natural History Society of Northumbria and the Cowen Archaeology Library. It was formerly in the Black Gate. The library is fully accessible for anyone with disabilities. Opening hours are currently 10.00 to 4.00, Monday to Friday. Please e-mail with any queries, or for library queries only. phone on 0191 222 3555. Volunteers are needed to staff the library on a regular basis, and to carry out other tasks. Please contact the librarian if you think you may be able to help.
The library will be closed over part of the summer for maintenance and improvement to the spaces in which our controlled collections are held. Provisional date of closure is 28 June; further details will be available in due course
Our collection consists of some thirty thousand volumes mainly relating to the Society's area of interest covering all periods of the history of the north east of England. Currently 91 journals are taken either by direct subscription or by exchange for Archaeologia Aeliana with other societies in Great Britain, Ireland and Western Europe. Members may follow this link to download a copy of the shelf list.
All members are welcome in the library. If you bring your SANT membership card, you can then borrow books from our section. (You are welcome to consult books from the other sections while in the library, but not to take them away.) Click here for a list of the new pubiications that we have been given, or have bought, in the last few months.
Apart from the recent acquisitions, all our books are now recorded in the Newcastle University library catalogue. (There is no need to log in to use this, and you will find the "A-Z browse" button much more useful than the Keyword search.) Lists of our earlier acquisitions are in our Archive section. If you cannot find a book on the shelves, please ask the librarian - there could be several reasons, apart from it being out on loan, for it not being there.
We welcome suggestions of books to purchase or receive by donation, but please first check our holdings in the catalogue to be sure we do not already have it. It is useful to give the full book title, author(s), publisher, date, ISBN and price. Send your suggestions direct to the our librarian. Book suggestions are considered at our regular library meetings. Our budget is limited, and we need to be selective, but do our best to cater for members' interests.
If you need a book and it is not in our library or the University's, you might like to consult COPAC (the National, Academic, and Specialist Library Catalogue) to find out whether there is another library nearby which does have it
Collections
Objects housed in the Great North Museum University of Newcastle upon Tyne
Objects housed in the Castle Keep, Newcastle upon Tyne
Manuscript collections at Northumberland Collections Service, Woodhorn
Bagpipe collection at Morpeth Chantry Bagpipe Museum
Dispersal of collections from the Black Gate
With the Society's move from the Black Gate, the Collections Committee have spent much time arranging for the collections built up over many years to have new homes.
All the prints and paintings are now residing in the SANT Office in the Great North Museum, properly wrapped and awaiting a conservation assessment.
The only objects now remaining without a home are a set of 17th century chairs and a 'secretary's chair'; if anyone knows of an institution which might like them, please let us know! For further information about these, see article by Thomas Wake, 'Some early furniture in the Keep and Black Gate, Newcastle upon Tyne' in Archaeologia Aeliana
4th series, VIII (1931), 166-181.