Bill Douglas Centre

The Bill Douglas Centre for the History of Cinema and Popular Culture is both a public museum and an academic research centre, housing one of Britain's largest public collections of artefacts and ephemera with over 75,000 items relating to the history and prehistory of cinema. The Bill Douglas Centre has two museum galleries which are free to the public and open 10am to 5pm each weekday (except bank holidays). Items that are not on display can be consulted in the Special Collections Reading Room – users are advised to consult  the Centre’s online catalogue in advance of their visit.

The Bill Douglas Centre holds a research collection of international stature, illustrating the development of visual entertainment from the late 17th century through to classical Hollywood and present day films and moving image media. Anyone working in areas of film, media, social history, popular culture or the history of science will find important material among our artefacts as well as the largest library on the moving image in any British university, and the largest anywhere in the country after the British Film Institute.

The Centre is named after one of Britain’s greatest filmmakers, the late Bill Douglas. It was the collection he put together with his friend Peter Jewell that founded the Centre and remains at its heart, although many other donors continue to add to its holdings.