The Library holds 300 items on the subject of phrenology, donated in the 1970s by Miss Frances Hedderley, former President of the British Phrenological Society. The collection includes rare editions of the works of George Combe, the most influential British phrenologist and founder of the Edinburgh Phrenological Society. The Whipple Library has an important collection of nineteenth-century material, a total of over 2000 volumes, which has been acquired since the original bequest by Robert Whipple. This includes books donated by George Parker Bidder on biological sciences and the Sleeman and Steward collections on chemistry and physics. Other strengths include books on natural history, medicine, scientific instruments and popular science.
Many items also have an interesting provenance.
For example, part of the collection previously belonged to James Clerk Maxwell. Between them, the partner institutions hold a wealth of major research resources across the field and they have selected key holdings for retrospective conversion and conservation treatment. At the Whipple Library, the HOST programme consists of the retrospective cataloguing of all 19th-Century items and conservation of 150 items. The project was successfully completed in December 2000. During the process of retrospective cataloguing, it was discovered that the Whipple Library holds many of the works of Reverend John George Wood, a popular and prolific writer of the 19th Century.