Collections week January 2019

During termtimes it can be hard for the team to carry out work on new collections which means that they are available for researchers to use.  During quiet periods, in common with many other archive services, we therefore close the research room usually for around a week and keep the time free of other activities such as teaching and meetings so that we can focus on big collections.  As well as having plenty of space to spread them out if a lot of physical work is needed.

During January 2019 we were closed from Wednesday 2nd – Friday 11th inclusive to work on two big collections: the Colin Challen (MP) Archive and the Sir Patrick Stewart Archive.

The Challen Archive had been boxed (around 80 boxes) on its arrival at Heritage Quay  but because of the quantity of material no other work had been done since it was transferred by Colin Challen in November 2017.  During Collections Week the team were able to survey the material and to sort it into key series, mostly corresponding with Challen’s various roles and offices as a member of the Labour Party.  The archive was also listed, and a small project identified for further detailed listing of the miscellaneous consitutency Labour parties in CHN/8 (planned for 2020). 

The catalogue is available on the Heritage Quay online catalogue at www.heritagequay.org/archives/chn and also on the Archives Hub/Archives Portal Europe.  This part of the work took around 18 person-days and involved 6 members of the team.  More details in a later post!

We had undertaken some work on the Patrick Stewart Archive in a previous collections week, and took 6 person-days this time to expand and complete some of the work previously started.  The catalogue for the Patrick Stewart Archive is at www.heritagequay.org/archives/psa/ – and again, more details to follow!

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