Welcome to the Sparrows' Nest Library and Archive

Based in Nottingham (UK), we look after tens of thousands of books, journals, pamphlets, zines, leaflets, posters and other items documenting the anarchist movement in the UK and beyond, as well as local radical history. Browse our catalogue, access digitised records in our free Digital Library and get in touch to arrange a visit.
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News and events

News and events from The Sparrows' Nest.

Update 19/3/2017. We have upgraded the site and the mobile issue is solved. Thanks for your patience.

Hello everyone and welcome to another round up of news on the Sparrows’ Nest.

As spring moved into summer we are happy to offer you yet more additions to our collections and another 1,000 pages or so of fresh materials for the Digital Library! We have also made a lot of progress with a number of key collections. Following a systematic inventory of our Freedom collection, we have done the same with our issues of Black Flag (thanks again for recent donations that filled a number of gaps!). We have also been able to work through more donated materials, cataloguing and/or digitising them.

It’s been a while since we added to the links and friends section of the Nest website but we are about to make up with it with a tale of books, birds and both.

Black Flag newspaper was founded by Albert Meltzer, Stuart Christie and others in 1970, incorporating the Bulletin of the Anarchist Black Cross (the Bulletin was later revived as an independent publication). It has been kept going most recently by a very determined Iain McKay (also the author of the Anarchist FAQ) with an editorial collective and contributors including the Anarchist Federation. As such it remains one of the longest running and most significant anarchist publications in Britain. Can you help us complete the collection? Those of you who have helped already thank you very much! Last updated 29th May 2017 with 6 previously missing issues.

A partial digital archive of Black Flag issues can be found on LibCom, other partially scanned issues can be found in our Digital Library (they are tricky to digitise because of their size and shape, but we will get there). Watch this space for an immanent scan of our current collection of Vol 1 (known only as Bulletin of the ABC) & Vol 2  in the period 1969-1973.

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