Museum of London Library
Due to critical collections work, including the complete reorganisation of the museum’s storage, research access to the Library will be closed from the end of December 2022 for two years; this will be reviewed after 18 months.
About the library
The Library holds around 30,000 volumes (including monographs, periodicals and maps) and covers subjects of interest to the museum such as the history and archaeology of London, museum studies and conservation, fashion, decorative and fine arts, and social history.
The Library has over 5,000 rare books, including some important individual collections: Bell Collection (on the Great Plague and Fire); Tangye Collection of Cromwelliania; Warwick Wroth Collection (scrapbooks on Vauxhall Gardens and South London Pleasure Gardens) and the Mary Young Papers (household papers of an early 19th century middle-class family). The Museum of London Library also includes the Port of London Authority library collection.
The library catalogue is available online. Please note we are currently improving our existing bibliographic records, editing data and adding controlled vocabulary to facilitate the discovery exercise; errors and duplication may occur during your search.
Access and enquiries
During our period of closure, researchers are welcome to enquire about items in our collection not broadly available in other libraries. Please send your enquiries to [email protected].