Abstract

Science historians need two major kinds of literary resources, old books, journals, patents, plans and other documents from which to quarry their facts, and critical tools such as histories of science, bibliographies and biographies. Provision of the second category needs positive planning; the first is often itself an accident of local history. Among the factors which have shaped Newcastle upon Tyne may be numbered a Roman river crossing, a Norman castle, mediaeval walls, powerful charters granted by Tudor and Stuart monarchs, a favourable site in a coalfield, and a phenomenal succession of inventive entrepreneurs in mining, chemicals, shipbuilding, and mechanical and electrical engineering. Its scientific and cultural institutions are of respectable maturity, and in addition the town possessed by 1815 several chapel and meeting-house libraries, a newsroom and subscription library in the Assembly Rooms together with three circulating libraries run by prominent booksellers. Present resources are concentrated in six organizations, with two more in the near future