In the second of a series on the railway plans we hold at Dorset History Centre, Colin Divall, emeritus professor of Railway Studies at the University of York, describes why the railway plans are such an important source of information. — Building railways meant land, and land meant property. By the 1830s, when mainline railways… Read more The Importance of the Railway Plans and Sections
Within the strong rooms of the Dorset History Centre are a collection of extremely popular and highly used documents. It may come as a surprise to some that these documents are plans of railway undertakings. Whilst they don’t have the immediate visual appeal of an illuminated manuscript or estate map, the information they provide can… Read more Getting the records back on track!
Weekly at the Dorset History Centre we receive a range of collections from various bodies, from public institutions to private collectors. As an archive, most of the collections are paper or parchment format, and are stored in the thousands of boxes in the strong-rooms. To both assist online demand and to preserve the documents with… Read more Digital Preservation at DHC
Dorset Archives Trust (DAT) is an invaluable supporter of the work of Dorset History Centre and we feel it is about time we shone a light on their efforts and activities! DAT, through various methods, raises money and awareness of the work and collections held at DHC, and helps us develop our services and resources.… Read more Dorset Archives Trust
It is impossible to list all the additions in the Extra Illustrated Edition of Hutchins, but several items catch your eye as you browse the second volume; the drawing of a maze at Pimperne, a rubbing of a coat of arms alongside sketches of archaeological finds from a house at Langton Long, the account of… Read more Hutchins’ Extra Illustrated Volume 2 – The Pitt family, a piano player and a plague of caterpillars
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
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