Archive of the month

The Archive of the Month feature raises awareness amongst students and staff about the variety of material that we hold. In particular, the old Bangor photographs appear to spark a lot of interest and debate on the University’s Facebook pages.

Every month, an item is selected to be showcased. The item is scanned and a short piece of text written about its history.

May 2018

BEETLE MANIA!

The Archive of the Month for May has attracted quite a lot of attention from University staff and those on the Archives and Special Collections mailing list.

As a result, we looked again at the large volume of coloured plates of various genera of beetles and weevils and discovered an accession number pencilled in the front cover.

Thankfully, the Archives houses the early accession books for the Library of the University College of North Wales and these revealed that the book was received by the University back in 1945 and that it was one of 2 volumes described as “Penser’s [sic.] Plates”.

The search was on for the missing second volume, which was soon discovered amongst the rare science books.

Loosely inserted into the first volume of plates was a note stating :
“Illustrations of German Coleoptera from ‘Fauna Insectorum Germanicae’ by G.W.F. Panzer being 1343 coloured plates of beetles taken mainly from the first edition of 1793-1809 and arranged alphabetically by genera and species in two volumes”.

A letter and invoice revealed further that the items were purchased by an F. Talfourd Jones Esq. of Llanfairfechan in 1930 from Bernard Halliday, Bookseller of Leicester for the princely sum of £5 5 shillings along with 2s 4d for carriage.

The two volumes of “Panzer’s Plates” were later donated to the University in 1945.

pThis "Archive of the Month" was created by Elen Wyn Simpson, Archivist

Click on the links below to view all our showcased documents.