This collection of c. 250 dictionaries consists of a 1916 bequest by R. Oliver Heslop, philologist and antiquary, together with a few later additions. It includes Baret's Alvearie (1580), Florio's Worlde of Wordes (1598 and 1611), Minsheu's Guide into Tongues (1625 and 1627), the works of such lexicographers as Bullokar, Coles, Holyoake and Johnson, and an almost complete set of the publications of the English Dialect Society.

This collection also contains papers comprising Heslop's research material for his work Northumberland Words, published by the English Dialect Society in 1892-1894.

This is a small collection of notebooks and photograph albums which belonged to John William Heslop Harrison (1881-1967), at one time Professor of Botany at Newcastle University. The notebooks contain notes on plant biology, pollination and plant genetics while the albums include photographs of Iraq, dated 1938-1941. The collection also includes Proceedings of the University of Durham Philosophical Society 1955-1956 in various stages of editing.

This is a small collection of papers, once belonging to Thomas Henry Havelock (1877-1968), Professor of Mathematics, Newcastle University.

This collection of illustrations by local artist Thomas Hair (c.1810-1875) depicts the mining industry and the coal trade in the North East in the nineteenth century. The illustrations are based on Hair's watercolours on the same topic. The illustrations in the collection highlight numerous aspects of the region's mining heritage, including collieries, machinery, and river trade scenes. Many of the illustrations also show the everyday workings of the industry and those involved in it.

The Grey Tracts reflect the interests of their former owner, the 2nd Earl Grey (1764-1845) whose Whig government was responsible for the 1832 Reform Act, 1833 Factory Act and the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act. The pamphlets cover a broad range of historical, social and economic subjects including colonial policy, public finance and banking, the Corn Laws and agriculture, poor relief, slavery, Catholicism, Ireland and the Greek Revolution.

Consists of 42 prints made from James Gillray's original engravings and documents relating to Newcastle University's acquisition of the prints.

This collection of early works on agriculture is rich in eighteenth and nineteenth-century reports on farming in many parts of Great Britain. The collection had as its nucleus the historical library of the late Professor D.A. Gilchrist (d. 1927), who held the Chair of Agriculture in Armstrong College from 1902 to 1927.

A collection highlight is William Billington's A series of facts, hints, observations, and experiments on the different modes of raising young plantations of oaks (1825) which demonstrates the common preoccupation of many early nineteenth-century estate owners with growing trees which would be suitable for use in shipbuilding.

Although George Gibson (1800-1850) was a farm steward to Sir M.W. Ridley, Blagdon, Northumberland, the Gibson Papers are really a literary archive, with some material which may be considered pertinent to the history of education in Gibson's ciphering book (1804) - mathematical problems, solutions and rules; a poem; information about weights, measures and the value of money as well as his many doodles. There are many short poems, such as An address to a mouse that I turned up with the plough on 2nd January 1819, Reflections on hearing the clock strike five and Farewell address to my ink bottle as well as a long poem about the difficult slaughter of a sow which was too heavy to lift, some ecclesiastical poetry, a long, anti-Catholic poem on education in Ireland and some correspondence.

This is a small collection of papers relating to the early career of Dr. Charles John Gibb (1824-1916), a local doctor who worked at the Newcastle Infirmary before setting up private practice in the city. The papers include certificates of Dr. Gibb's attendance at the Newcastle School of Medicine and his Certificate of Admittance to the Royal College of Surgeons, as well as journals of his travels in Scotland and Europe in 1848 and photographs of the Gibb family home in Sandyford, Newcastle. Dr. Gibb was immortalised in the famous Blaydon Races song: “Sum went to the dispensary, an' uthers to Doctor Gibbs”.

The Friends Collection has been built-up through purchases with funds from the Friends of the Library. It contains such rare books as Robert Boyle's Tracts: containing I. Suspicions about some hidden qualities of the air … (1674), J. Dryden's Albion and Albanius (1691), Some considerations on the consequences of the French settling colonies on the Mississippi: with respect to the trade and safety of the English plantations in America and the West-Indies (1720), various pamphlets by Thomas Paine and Edmund Burke, Newcastle songsters and other local material such as Report of the Orphan-House Sunday-School, Newcastle upon Tyne (1815-16). English literature is a particular strength of the collection.