Digital Library
To access the catalogue and to search for digitised documents, please use our Search function.
In order to make the materials held at the Sparrows’ Nest easily accessible, we have been digitising materials since the early 2010s. Please note that the digitised materials are but the tip of the iceberg, materials continue to keep coming in much faster than we can catalogue (let alone scan!) them, so if you cannot find what you are looking for, please get in touch, we may well have a copy.
We continue to add materials to our Digital Library and will also update our collection in the Internet Archive. To make sure you are being kept up to date, please get in touch to be added to our (low traffic) mailing list.
We are always happy for users' suggestions which documents to digitise next, so if you have any proposals, please contact us.
Of course, we can only do what we do because people donate their stuff to us. So if you have any materials or if know anyone who has any documents which might be of interest, please do not chuck them out, but get in touch with us!
Content and trigger warning
Most materials in our collections offer awesome and inspiring content, but you may encounter historical materials which are not anarchist/left-libertarian/anti-authoritarian. Furthermore some materials contain triggering content which is racist, sexist, misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic, nationalistic, anti-Semitic, ableist, ageist, or otherwise not representative of the movement. Also be aware that some of the materials contain sexually explicit content and/or depictions and descriptions of physical and psychological abuse, sexual violence, etc. If you wish to access information but do not want to take the risk of being exposed to potentially triggering and/or traumatising content, please do not hesitate to get in touch, we will be happy to assist you as much as possible.
Highlights
Anarchy Journals (First and Second Series)
Independent Nottinghamshire LGBTQ+ Magazines
We were finally able to systematically process all our items related to Class War, ‘a UK-based anarchist tabloid newspaper founded in 1983’ (quoted from a post by the CWF on Libcom).
Freedom is a London based anarchist newspaper, published by Freedom Press since 1886.
We have digitised 2,145 issues, which you can all access below.
The quality of the scans is as good as we can achieve with our current equipment/software. There were some challenges resulting in some warped and/or skewiff pages that could not be avoided, but all should be very comfortably readable. Please note that we digitised Vol:51 (1990) as a test batch back when we first experimented with our camera rig for oversized docs. Although the quality is perfectly fine, we could produce much nicer versions now, but alas - we have no time to rescan stuff as so many more items need our attention!
Our sincere thanks to everyone at the WCML who loaned us their collection of early Freedom newspapers to be added to our digital collection.
All issues feature good quality OCR. Any problems, dead links etc, please get in touch.
This time we are putting our spotlight on some of the many independent local newspapers, bulletins, etc. that were produced in Nottingham over the last five decades.
Read more: Spotlight on: Nottingham's Radical and Alternative News Media
This time we want to put the spotlight on records documenting the campaigns against the Poll Tax in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
In 1984, the organisation then known as the Anarchist Communist Federation began to publish a magazine entitled Virus, which ran for 13 issues before being continued as Organise! from 1989.