The Guild Library is a service offered to all members of the Guild. It aims to support their information needs as current ringers and to provide material for research into the history of ringing, particularly ringing in Devon.

To this end the Library maintains a collection of:

• nearly 300 ringing books and pamphlets
• files of journals and leaflets, including a complete file of The Ringing World
• some original documents, such as minute books and the first Guild Peal Book
• photographs
• gramophone records, CDs and DVDs.

Many of these items can be borrowed or photocopies or scanned copies can be supplied to meet requests for specific pieces of information.

A Summary List of items held in the Library is available if you click here.

More details on the library services are available.

On-line resources

A trial project to make available digital copies of key resources in the Library is now underway. The Guild Annual Reports for the First and Second World War years (1910 - 1920 & 1936 - 1950) are available here. You can browse the report for a particular year by clicking on "Browse from GDR Home" and then opening the folder "gdr001" to see all the years available. You are recommended to use the pdf version of each report to get the clearest view of the text. Searching for personal names or places using the ocr text and the search box is unlikely to give a reliable, definitive search as text conversion by ocr from older documents is very prone to error. This resource has been made available to assist researchers wishing to check for ringers in rolls of honour and on war memorials.

What's new in the Library

Regular purchases of new publications are made and details of these are published in Ringing Round Devon from time to time. 

It is normally the Library's policy to acquire only general ringing books and those relating to ringing in Devon and the neighbouring counties of the South West.

Donations of all materials relating to ringing and particularly ringing in Devon are welcome on the understanding that decisions on whether to retain or dispose of items donated rest with the Librarian. Many local and ephemeral items such as orders of service for rededicated bells or ringers' personal records are of particular interest to the Library as they might otherwise be lost to future researchers.

Contact

The Librarian may be contacted using the email address on the Guild Officers page or using the details contained in the latest Guild annual report.