Social Policy pamphlets

The Library was founded in 1896 as the library of the London School of Economics and a national library for the social sciences. Since that time the collection of primary source material such as pamphlets has been an important part of the Library's acquisitions policy. Most of this material is published by pressure groups, political parties and trades unions. This is real ephemera and unlikely to be re-issued. In many cases it will not have been collected elsewhere and it is this, together with the overall breadth and scope of the collection, that makes it a unique resource. The Library has always tried to collect opinion and propaganda from all points of view, no matter how extreme. Subjects covered include political, economic and social science, history, statistics and jurisprudence. The historical focus of the collection is the 19th and early 20th century because of the connections of the Webbs and other Fabian Society members but it has been maintained up to the present day.

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 HV or HD/7 for example are about aspects of social policy. 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.

DIGITISATION

The majority of pamphlets listed in this Social Policy Pamphlets guide have been digitised and are available via the Internet. If the classmark for a pamphlet is highlighted, click on it to obtain access to the pamphlet itself. You will need to have an Acrobat reader on your PC in order to do this. Digitisation has been carried out as part of a project by the Higher Education Digitisation Service based at the University of Hertfordshire, and funded by the Higher Education Funding Council.

Health

Housing

Pensions

The Poor Laws and the Origins of the Welfare State

Unemployment Insurance

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