Aberdeen University’s Special Libraries and Archives provides a unique and internationally significant range of printed, archival and other documentary sources for the benefit of the higher education community and beyond.

The richness of these collections extends across all the disciplines of the medieval and early modern university curriculum and across the European world of learning.

Major themes and subject areas within the archival and printed collections include: family, estate, and business papers relating to the North-East of Scotland; Hebraica and Judaica; Humanism and neo-Latin literature; institutional history of King’s College (founded 1495), Marischal College (founded 1593) and the University of Aberdeen (founded 1860); Jacobitism; Law (and canon law); 19th-century literature; science and medicine, from the Renaissance to the 20th century; Scottish traditional music, balladry and folksong; Scottish Enlightenment philosophy; and theology from the 16th to the 19th centuries.