Local and family history services

The Local and Family History Library aims to acquire, conserve and make available to the public all materials published on Leeds and significant publications on Yorkshire, with the emphasis on West Yorkshire. The library holds about 180,000 items including books, journals, directories, maps, photographs and prints, playbills and microfilms.

The library is concerned with two distinct subject areas:

Local History - anything to do with Leeds and Yorkshire – history, geography, religion, education and natural history.

Family History – a fast-growing area of popularity, for which we have a wide variety of resources.

Research services
If you are unable to visit the library, staff will answer quick enquiries received by e-mail, letter or telephone free of charge. For more detailed research requests a charge is made, £5.00 per 30 minutes for Leeds residents and £10.00 per 30 minutes for customers who live outside Leeds. Contact the Local and Family History Library for more information.

You can use our online form to make a request for local and family history information.

Future Events

Look out for our new series of lunch time talks beginning on Friday April 9th at the Leeds Central Library, with Kitty Ross from Leeds Museums speaking on the subject of "Leeds in Victorian Paintings".

Contacts