We may have cheated a little with this entry, but we felt it was a good excuse to tell you a little more about what goes on ‘behind the scenes’ inside the repository. What are the repositories? Repositories (or strong-rooms) are the temperature and humidity controlled spaces which store all of the records we hold… Read more Archives A-Z: I is for Inside the repository
Digital preservation is the practice which will determine if and how we access electronically-held data in the future. Sam Johnston, the County Archivist, was recently lucky enough to attend the Digital Preservation Coalition’s awards ceremony in Amsterdam. A real hardship, you might say! Sam was very pleased to be asked – foreign travel rarely features… Read more Going Dutch for digital preservation!
Our 8 miles of shelving includes a special room for audio-visual material – film, photographic and audio records. This room is slightly drier and cooler than the paper and parchment repositories. Physical items are stored in archival packaging and labelled with a reference number so we can find them again. The challenge is that the… Read more Archives A-Z: F is for film
April sees the 18th annual International Edible Book Festival (yes, it’s a real thing!). So, we’re sharing a few examples of insects that enjoy eating books and other materials found within an archive, such as paper, adhesives and leather. Please note that these pests were not found at Dorset History Centre! We have an extensive… Read more Archives A-Z: E is for edible archives
‘Digital’ is all around us, every day. Working in archives is no different. We are just as interested in your photographs, meeting minutes or maps in a digital format as we were in paper. If something has historical value and will be interesting to be people in 50 or 100 years then we want to… Read more Archives A-Z: D is for digital
There are almost 320,000 records in our archive catalogue. This is the place where items in our collections are arranged and described so we can find what we’re looking for. If you have used archives before you will know that our catalogues aren’t arranged by place, subject or date. Instead, records are grouped according to… Read more Archives A-Z: C is for catalogues
It won’t surprise you that Dorset History Centre contains a LOT of boxes. Our environmentally controlled repositories have a capacity of around 49,000 archive boxes – not including oversize items. The boxes are made from materials that won’t have any negative effects on the unique items they contain. Collections arrive with us in various states… Read more Archive A-Z: B is for boxes
We’re kicking off our archives A-Z with a focus on our ancestors. Family history is still the most common reason for people to use our collections. Records may include information about where and when your ancestors lived, what they did for work, and who they married. Many of the most useful records for piecing together… Read more Archive A-Z: A is for Ancestors
Our recent work experience student, Ellie, shares her reflections on a week working in the county archives based at Dorset History Centre. Discovering archives I completed a week-long work experience placement at Dorset History Centre, discovering the archives and how they are managed. As this was the first time I had visited I didn’t have a clear idea of… Read more Work experience in the archives
Many of us have carefully stowed our treasured photographs and newspaper clippings into albums for safekeeping. Unfortunately some albums, particularly self-adhesive varieties, are actively deteriorating those items we hoped to protect. I had the privilege of working on a collection relating to the Burma Campaign of World War Two which included photographs, newspaper clippings and watercolours. These… Read more Remembering the Burma Campaign
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