The earliest record of Black's antiquarian interests exist in his catalogues of various libraries. He catalogued the Arundel Manuscripts, at the College of Arms in 1829 (before they were purchased by the British Library) and, as the Leathersellers' Company requested in 1831, Abraham Colfe's grammar school library. From 1831 to 1833, Black worked in Oxford, compiling a catalogue of Elias Ashmole's manuscripts, published in 1845, to much esteem. Early on in his career, he was also a contributor to the works of other antiquarians, including Sir Richard Hoare, 2nd Baronet's "The History of Modern Wiltshire" (11 vols; 1822–44) and Samuel Bentley's "Excerpta Historica" (1831). Upon the 1834 Burning of Parliament, Black boasted that he had been the earliest researcher to rush into the parliament buildings in hope of saving their valuable records. Thanks to the many literary contacts he had made while a reader at the British Museum, Black obtained a position at the Record Commission, a 19th-century royal commission into the state of the nation's archives.