International History Pamphlets

The Library has an extensive collection of pamphlets on international history. Specific areas covered in this guide include the two World Wars, resistance movements during World War 2 and the peace movements of the 1920s and 1930s. There are many pamphlets from organisations such as the League of Nations Union. There are also pamphlets on the foundation of the United Nations. The Library's long standing collection within this subject area has been recently supplemented by the acquisition of a collection of pamphlets from Chatham House (Royal Institute for International Affairs). Some of these are listed in this guide and their classmarks are prefixed with "CHAT." This guide also covers the the origin of major international disputes, such as in the Middle East and the Balkans, and the Sino-Japanese dispute of the 1920s and 1930s.

Most of the pamphlets date from the first half of the 20^th century. The majority of pamphlets are in English but there are a substantial number in German, and a few in other European languages.

The Library collects comprehensively the publications and some documents of the international organisations, and is a depository for United Nations and European Union material. It also collects material from the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and International Labour Organisation. These publications are however not covered in this guide, but guides to Official Publications, United Nations and European Union material are available in the Library.

Access to the Collection

The Higher Education Funding Council has funded two projects for the preservation of and improved access to the Library pamphlet collection. The first of these was to microfilm selectively part of the collection for preservation purposes and to produce a series of thematic guides. The other project was to carry out a programme of retrospective conversion of catalogue records for all the pamphlets. These have now been added to the Library's on-line catalogue, and can be found by author, title, Library of Congress Subject headings or subject keyword. Their catalogue records are available externally via the Internet.

Pamphlets need to be fetched by Library staff and cannot be taken out of the Library. Users should check the Library Catalogue to identify the location. The majority of the Library's historic pamphlets are now kept in Archives and can only be read when the Archives Reading Room is open.

For most of the collection the classmarks reflect a rough subject arrangement, similar to the Library of Congress classification scheme. Some classmarks prefixed by E(I) for example are about aspects of international history. Also some of the pamphlets in this part of the collection have been microfilmed and given microfilm numbers, for example M(PAMPHLETS 1). Microfilms are also available via the fetch service but with approximately 50 pamphlets on each microfilm they do allow some browsing of the collection. If a pamphlet is on microfilm the reel number is displayed in the full catalogue record.

The thematic guides to the pamphlet collection give examples of individual pamphlets with their classmarks. To find other pamphlets on the same subject researchers are advised to search under the issuing bodies referred to in the guide and a selective list of appropriate Library of Congress subject headings is given at the end of each section of the guides.

International disputes

International organisations for peace

Peace movements

The post-war years

World War 1 and the Treaty of Versailles

The rise of European fascism and World War 2

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