New series of student city guides

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Art Researchers’ Guide to Leeds

Edited by Rose Roberto

It might be said that much of the information in  The Art Researchers’ Guide to Leeds  is generally available via the Internet and, in our world of increasingly sophisticated digital resources, a pocket guide may seem slightly archaic.  But there’s nothing like having a handy little booklet to carry around and place oneself, metaphorically, in the city.  Indeed, the Leeds Guide allows for a kind of perambulation of the type that Nikolaus Pevsner institutes in the ‘Buildings of England series’.  And perhaps more importantly the Guide inculcates a desire, in students in particular, to move away from the Internet (excellent though such a resource is!) and become more active researchers; the entertaining introduction in the Leeds Guide, written by Ben Read, implicitly suggests this. 

The Art Researchers’ Guide to Leeds is the first of a new series of pocket-sized booklets, specifically aimed at researchers and students undertaking research within individual cities in the UK and Ireland. These are handy, well-designed little booklets, loosely drawing on the format of the ubiquitous city tourist guides produced by publishers such as Dorling Kindersley and Berlitz.  The Leeds Guide focuses on 10 libraries, archives and repositories in Leeds with resources that would prove useful for art researchers, including those of the Leeds Central Art Library, the Universities of Leeds and Leeds Metropolitan, the Henry Moore Institute, as well as lesser-known resources such as the Leeds (Subscription) Library and the Thoresby Society. 

Edited by Rose Roberto, the subject librarian for Fine Art, History of Art, Design and Cultural Studies at the University of Leeds, the guide also includes brief contributions from leading specialists and academics from Leeds University and from museums and archives across the city.  There are short descriptions of each of the 10 repositories, with brief histories of the collections, lists of significant holdings and items of special interest, as well as key information such as opening times, transport information and contact details.   

The Leeds Guide has an informative ‘key to facilities’ and ‘key to holdings’ in the inside cover, with useful icons to help the reader quickly identify what each location has to offer.  There is also a map of the city with the locations numbered and highlighted, and good colour illustrations of the buildings, interiors and some of the key objects and artworks in each institution throughout the booklet.  At the back of the guide is a subject index to the various collections, again making good use of icons, providing an accessible, visual key.

This generally works well, but there must be omissions here?  It’s difficult to believe, for example, that the Henry Moore Institute does not have any books on aesthetics.  And the Royal Armouries, The Thoresby Society and several other locations all have ‘archives’, as the guide itself made clear in its individual descriptions.  The classifications in the subject index could also have perhaps been thought through a little more; why include ‘pottery’ but not ‘porcelain’; indeed, why not just have ‘ceramics’?  One also wonders how current the information in the Art Researchers’ Guide will be, especially with the prospective economic climate of funding cuts; one hopes that the publishers have future plans for revised editions in future years.  But these are perhaps minor quibbles – the Guide is a very useful and useable booklet.  It will be perfect for new students to Leeds, and with in excess of 50,000 students attending the city’s universities each year, the guide should be a good seller. I understand that next year there will be a guide to the archives and resources of the city of Edinburgh, and that guides for several other cities will be forthcoming in future years.

Art Researchers’ Guide to Leeds,  edited by Rose Roberto is published by Art Libraries Society of UK and Ireland 2011. 64 pp. Fully illustrated in colour, £5.95. ISBN 978-0-9562763-1-5