Hello all,

I hope somebody can help me with this. I am mainly looking at early modern literature but there are a couple of medieval manuscripts I would very much like to look at. I know one of them is definitely at the British Library but for the life of me I can't find it in any of the catalogues. I want to put in a request so that I can go down to London and look at it in a couple of weeks.
I realise this a very specific and perhaps stupid request but I'm not sure who else to ask. I actually went to an open day at the BL which taught us about this kind of thing and I'm still not the wiser.
Huge thanks to anyone who can help me out!

I'm not sure how helpful I can be, since I'm in a different country with different systems...but recently I had to find some historical material, which involved a very arduous search - I ended up contacting about 15 different people/organisations before I found what I needed. However, it was a national archive instituion which eventually helped me - is there a British archive service? There must be - and they should have an online database which you can search. Find a helpful archivist and you'll be set! I also searched a whole lot of online database searches of other archival institutions specialising in my area of history.

Good luck!

I would just phone them, to be honest. My husband had to ring them a couple of times during his PhD, and each time they were so incredibly helpful and nice, and really went out of their way to help him as much as possible.

Sorry this is so late. Just want to say thanks to both of you for replying. It has indeed turned out to be much more of an arduous search than I thought it would be. I went to an open day at the BL last year and they made it sound like you could just drop in and look at any old priceless manuscript whenever you wanted- not so!

I e-mailed however and they were very helpful, told me where the texts I needed are and what I would have to do to look at them. I'm now trying to figure out whether its worth the hassle of gathering written reccomendations and taking time out to go down there when I don't really need to see them.

Anyway, just want to say thanks (up)