The Rural History Centre Library cataloguing project: assimilating the MAFF Library

Project start date: 2003-04

Project end date: 2004-10

The library of the Museum of English Rural Life is the national library for the history of farming, food and the countryside. During 2002 the library was able to enhance significantly its collections through the donation by DEFRA's library of: • about 250 shelf metres of periodicals, dating from between the late eighteenth and late twentieth centuries • the Fussell collection of 600 classic farming texts from about 1750 onwards • a large collection of parliamentary papers and royal commission reports from the mid-nineteenth century onwards • about 100 bound volumes of trade and other pamphlets since the late nineteenth century • about 4,000 books The Project, which started in November 2003 and was completed in September 2005, enabled this collection to be physically integrated into the existing MERL library, and the records to be created for the online catalogue, transforming the accessibility of these resources for researchers.