Tolkien Society Resources - Introductory Page

The contents of the Tolkien Society archive is catalogued on the Access to Archives website.

The 1992 conference section is a useful online resource.

About the Archives

The Tolkien Society's archives are a repository both for source material, including papers relating to the history of the society and the society's collection of memorabilia. It contains various classes material:

* the papers of the Tolkien Society (minutes, accounts, etc.)

* books by and about Tolkien, including foreign editions - over 500 tiles in more than 30 languages

* journals devoted to Tolkien, or containing papers on Tolkien

* examples of the creative response to Tolkien (e.g. fan art, photographs of enactments))

* examples of the commerical response to Tolkien (e.g. professional art, easter eggs)

* press cuttings mentioning Tolkien

* printed ephemera related to Tolkien

Collections level descriptions of all of these, including a complete listing of book and journal titles is available at www.a2a.org.uk/search/index.asp, thanks to a grant from the ,Heritage Lottery Fund. To search our archives, select 'The Tolkien Society Archives' from the list in 'Location of Archives'.

The archives are growing! The Society makes best use of its limited resources to store and care for items by operating an Acquisitions and Disposal Policy. This policy sets out our priorities for collecting, and is due for renewal in November, 2008. We welcome the views of members and other scholars on this policy.

The collection is not loaned out, but it may be visited, at the Surrey History Centre, Woking ONLY by prior arrangement with the Archivist. It will take you (I estimate) about 2 or 3 months, full time, to look at everything in the archive. More - perhaps a year - if you include all the foreign language materials and the printed ephemera. Please, therefore, use the online catalogue to select the material you wish to see. Please give the archivist as much notice as you can: she has to clock out of her day job elsewhere in the building before working with you in the archive, and naturally her employers require her to think of them before the society!

Where the Tolkien Society owns copyright, or where we can easily obtain permission from the copyright owners, I can provide digital images or traditional photocopies. The charges for the digital images are as follows:

A4 basic paper £3.50 each
A3 basic paper £7.00 each
A4 photo quality paper £7.00 each
A3 photo quality paper £14.00 each

Single images can be provided on a CD-Rom at a cost of £6.00 (various formats are available: please specify what format/resolution you require.

Additional images may be added to the CD at a cost of £3.00 per image

Handling charge £2.00 for all orders

Photocopying costs 25p per A4 page, 40p per A3 page (plus postage at cost).

Each item will be assessed as to its suitability for digitizing/copying. The following information is provided as a guide:

The text on some documents may not be easily legible. Every effort will be made to provide copies to the highest standard possible for research needs.
It may not be possible to provide copies of documents in certain formats, or those which are damaged or are in a fragile condition.
It may not be possible to copy documents which have been stapled, pinned or tied together.
Be aware that if a document is heavily folded or tightly rolled and cannot be safely held down, creases and shadowing may appear in the copy.
Tightly bound, damaged, very heavy or large bound volumes may be unsuitable for copying.
There may be some restrictions in copying very large maps, posters and artwork.

Unfortunately, the individual articles within journals, and newspaper clippings are not (yet) indexed. Being a voluntary society, we rely on volunteers coming forward to manage other volunteers to do the work ... Researchers should, therefore, attempt to use the usual scholarly apparatus for building a bibliography and finding articles (your librarian can guide you to these websites and other resources - e.g. ingenta, mla, jstore). Researchers outside the UK will probably find it easiest to access these books and journals at their National Library or major regional or academic library.

If the journals or books in question are not available in a local library, or other library reached through inter-library loan, please ask the librarian to make a ILL request to the Archivist at archives@tolkiensociety.org. Or you can make an appointment to come and see them in Surrey. I have to supervise visits (and clock myself out of my day job - in the same building - while I do it), so working on ILLs during lunch half-hours is more productive than visits.

Photocopying and scanning charges for Inter-Library loans are as above.

Hebrew LotR volume 1

Among items in the archives are three volumes of The Lord of the Rings in Hebrew, presented to the society by the translator in memory of Lester Simons, who had given assistence with the translation. Here are images of the book covers.

Stunning pictures! That's definitely Hibernia's current favourite Balrog pin-up.

Cover art (and internal map rendition) by Eyal Ofek. Published by Zmora, Bitan Publishers, PO Box 22383, Tel Aviv, Israel.

Hebrew LotR volume 3


Hebrew LotR volume 3	Hebrew LotR volume 2