What will you discover on the Archives Hub?

Posted on December 13, 2018December 13, 2018 by Sarah Wickham

We’ve recently updated a lot of the catalogue information we contribute to the Archives Hub and the Archives Portal Europe.

As of right now (!) the Archives Hub contains information about 1,439,837 archive collections in 341 different repositories across the UK.

The Archives Portal Europe currently contains information about 270,327,385 descriptive units of archives in 7,036 institutions across Europe.

Using portals like the Archives Hub is an effective way to discover unique and often little-known sources to support your research. New descriptions are added every week, often representing collections being made available for the first time. Use the portals to instantly scan the archival landscape and bring together diverse sources held in repositories across the continent.

Whether you are just starting out or are ready to explore your subject in depth, portals can help inform your work. They represent a huge diversity of content, from the archives of industries, institutions and researchers to the letters and manuscripts of writers and poets.

You can see all our descriptions and other information on the Archives Hub at https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/search/locations/627a22c9-d85c-3c8a-bb43-6daed9e6aa00

HLF project update

Posted on April 9, 2014 by Sarah Wickham

There’s been lots of activity since I last posted about how the overall project is progressing – and still more going on behind the scenes getting the final specifications for the building works right, going through the tender process, and so on.

As well as making a lot of progress with our name and branding for the new centre, we’ve also been out to tender for conservation services to repair records that are too damaged to use without intervention, and for digitisation services to help us preserve vulnerable formats like Betamax video and audio cassette tapes, as well as digitising a selection from the collections to make them available off site.

Regular readers will have noticed, however, lots of collections updates on the blog recently – and the most exciting and tangible thing to report is our Collections Access Officers (both HLF and National Cataloguing Grants Programme) are in post and going full steam ahead on uncovering and exposing the collections entrusted to us. Kelda’s already posted about her work so far on the Rugby League board archive and Rob on the discoveries made so far in the British Music Collection, and they’ll be posting regularly.

For me, these two pictures encapsulate a lot of what our HLF project is all about: making the collections more available, and in better facilities than those available to us at the moment (this is the Library’s seminar room, used for a couple of hours in between teaching so that Kelda & Rob can spread material out to sort it):

Kelda Apr 2014 — Kelda working on rugby league

Rob Apr 2014 — Rob working on the composer files from the British Music Collection

Collections Information Policy

Posted on November 13, 2013 by Sarah Wickham

The Service has recently completed drafting our first Collections Information Policy. This focusses on the provision of intellectual access to collections, both by users and by staff for management purposes. It will assist the Service in decision making and prioritising work in a range of circumstances, including:

Providing access to the holdings which is balanced with their long-term preservation and legislative requirements;
Cataloguing work by staff and volunteers;
The submission of funding bids with a cataloguing and information enhancement aspect.

If you would like to comment on the draft Collections Information policy please leave a comment on this blog page, or email archives@hud.ac.uk. The policy consultation period will close on Friday 13th December 2013.