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Cambridge University Library

 

Picture credit: Detail from Reminiscences of Bombay, artist M.F. Pithawalla (RCMS 89/70/15)

Welcome to the Royal Commonwealth Society (RCS) Library

The Library is an enormous repository of information, pictorial and written, print and manuscript, on the Commonwealth and Britain's former colonial territories, founded in 1868 and home today to a growing collection of over 300,000 printed items (monographs, pamphlets, periodicals and official publications), over 900 archival collections (including manuscript diaries, correspondence, pictures, artefacts, cine films, scrapbooks and newspaper cuttings) and over 125,000 photographs (albums, loose prints, slides, glass plate negatives and lantern slides).

The RCS Library comprises the collections amassed by the Colonial Society, and its successors the Royal Colonial Institute, Royal Empire Society and Royal Commonwealth Society. It was acquired by Cambridge University Library in 1993.  Brief history of the RCS collection.





 

 

Contact us

Please address enquiries about RCS holdings to:

RCS Curator
Cambridge University Library
West Road
Cambridge
CB3 9DR

Email: rcs@lib.cam.ac.uk

Telephone: +44(0)1223 333146.

Please note that we are unable to provide valuations.  We recommend you contact a specialist antiquarian bookseller or auction house.