Fleure Library

Over the years, the GA has accumulated a huge wealth of printed material, and what remains of this is currently held at Solly Street, the GA HQ in Sheffield.
There is also a large Primary-focussed collection owned by Simon Catling, some of which is also held at the GA's HQ in a special room.
A great deal of this was initially collected and curated by H. J. Fleure, who is pictured opposite.

He looked after all donated books to the Association - some of which were sent in for review in the journals, and others from teachers who wanted to leave something tangible in the Association's archive.
Fleure was a former President, who has his own entry on the blog shortly.

He managed to find a number of premises for the library in Aberystwyth, where it stayed for many years. Fleure was the GA's Honorary Secretary at the time. It then moved to Manchester where, as I have previously mentioned, it was saved from a fire by a fast acting caretaker.

The library was housed in the Sheffield University library for many decades after it was moved from Fulwood Road in 1983 following a decision approved by the GA Council at the time. I remember visiting it there as an undergraduate.
The collection is now housed at the GA HQ in Solly Street, and several glass display cases featuring items from the library are in the Patrick Bailey room (a former GA President who will also have his own post on the blog)

For the 125th Anniversary conference, I was asked to curate a selection of items from this collection, and was aided by Ricky Buck, who retrieved the items that I suggested might tell a story of the Association, and together I chose about 100 items and provided captions for the exhibition, along with a Primary section.

One of the things that I have available to add to this collection is a set of journals called 'Classroom Geographer, which was published by Hugh Sealey. More on this in a later blog post, as the journal saw the first published work by several GA Presidents who will get their entries in time.

I have a spreadsheet containing details of all the 10 000 items which were in the collection at the time, and there is an impressive range of books and other materials there.