About the Library

The Global Philatelic Library is an initiative to provide a consolidated listing of philatelic publications, archives, museum items etc. held by libraries.
So far 27 libraries have contributed their listings.

Founding Libraries

By clicking on the APRL or RPSL library logos below will be redirected to the ‘union catalogues’ developed by those organisations to hold copies of holdings for several libraries. Eventually, a free-standing search function / database will be provided.

Not all libraries are held in both databases – see contributing libraries page for more details.

The Royal Philatelic Society London

900,000 entries

The American Philatelic Research Library

300,000 entries

Smithsonian Libraries and Archives National Postal Museum

40,000 entries

The Catalogue of the Crawford Library of Philatelic Literature at the British Library.
Click the British Library logo to search the index.
Launched 30 May at NY 2016 show.
Click here for more information.

News

Oct 2023 Update of the site on a modified platform.

July 2018 Brian Birch has provided several of his bibliographic documents for public download: click Birch on the menu

We are delighted to report that the Global Philatelic Library website was awarded a Gold Medal at the 2014 IPHLA literature exhibition in Germany.

The following libraries have joined recently:

  • May 2016 – Finland Postal Museum
  • 2015 – The British Library (UK)  list allows people to see the index to the fabulous Crawford Library which contains many rare or unique items.