Category: content

Be my Valentine

/ Jane Ronson

Archives Hub Feature for February 2014

Diamond ring photo
© Image is in the public domain: Diamond ring photo [by Ruby Ran – My Ring][CC-BY-SA-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons]

The Archives Hub contains a host of romantic material linked with St Valentine’s Day, including love letters, cards and poetry. This feature picks out some of these, together with less directly connected descriptions!

Hearts and Flowers

Collections

Photographs of the film The Captive Heart, starring Michael Redgrave and Rachel Kempson, 1946.
http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb71-thm/31/thm/31/2/1/8/1-20

Songs from the Heart, 1889 (Yiddish).
http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb152-mss.240w/mss.240w/4/6/15

Records of the Health & Refugee Trust of South Africa (HEART), registered charity, Great Britain. 1984-1995.
http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb1847-ghjarc/he

Declaration of Captain William Higgins regarding the Rose, 1741.
http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb96-ms624

Records of the Princess Margaret Rose Orthopaedic Hospital,
1926-1990s. http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb239-lhb30

Girls with Eastern Rose Tea Packets. Photo, 1940s.
http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb1499-cup/cup/1/112/20

Champagne and Chocolates

Collections

File for champagne reception at the Mansion House, 25 April 1978.
Contemporary Dance Trust Archive.
http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb71-thm/22/thm/22/5/7/6

Script for Winkles and Champagne by Terry Newman and William Rowbotham, 1946.
http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb71-thm/9/thm/9/7/164

Rose Champagne
© Image is in the public domain: Rose Champagne [By FXR (aka Soundz’FX) (originally posted to Flickr as Champagne Supernova) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons]

Records for Mair & Dougall, bottlers, Glasgow. 1946-1962. They produced “Sparkling Kola Champagne”.
http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb0248-md

The Cadbury Papers, 1884-1970.
http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb150-cadbury

Certificates for Cocoa, Chocolate and Sugar Confectionary Manufacture, 1960 and 1962. Two City & Guilds of London Institute certificates presented to Hubert Walter Graham.
http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb2110-lsbu/lsbu/3/14/1

Photographs of groups of students, known as the “chocolate soldiers”, 1915.
http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb0812-hb6/hb6/4/3

Cards and Poetry

Collections

Valentine card designed by Cecil Collins for his wife Elisabeth Collins. Christmas, Birthday and Valentine cards from Cecil Collins to Elisabeth Collins, c.1930s-1980s.
http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb70-tga200015?page=1#id1563309

Handrawn Valentine’s card sent to Pontecorvo from his students at the University of Glasgow, 14 February 1950. Included in the papers of Guido Pellegrino Arrigo Pontecorvo (1907-1999: geneticist and Professor of Genetics, University of Glasgow).
http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb0248-ugc198-9?page=1#gb-0248-ugc-198-9-1-3

Valentine rhymes. Included in manuscripts belonging to Ty’n y Braich in Dinas Mawddwy, Merioneth. 18th Century.
http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb222-bmsstyb

Valentine poem by Alice Williams to the Queen Mother, 1955.
http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb106-7ahw?page=2

Doves and Cupid

Collections

Records for the Dove Brothers Ltd, builders, 1850-1970.
http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb1032-s/dov

Sketch of Cupid with poem (c.1811-1863). Attributed to W M Thackeray, the Victorian novelist. http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb982-gp/gp/3/17

Letters from John Hadfield, The Cupid Press to John Piper, 1954-1984. Specimen page for ‘Elizabethan Love Songs’ enclosed.
http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb70-tga200410/tga200410/1/1/982

Diamonds and Pearls

Collections

Papers and correspondence of Robert William Ditchburn, 1903-1987. Chair of Physics at Reading University, Ditchburn was instrumental in forming the De Beers-supported international Diamond Research Committee which he chaired from its inception in 1956 until 1982.
http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb006-ms4621:ditchburn

Menu for Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee Celebration Banquet at Beverley Assembly Rooms, 30 Jun 1897.
http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb050-uddmm/uddmm/x1/2/64

Receipt for a pearl necklace (1920-1970). Lady Violet Deramore Collection.
http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb0193-vder?page=3#id752980

Macdonald Critchley: Collections on Cora Pearl and Napoleon III, 20th Century.
http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb012-ms.add.8569

Records for National Union of Insurance Workers, Pearl Section, 1926-1972. http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb152-mss.79/pa

Love and Romance

Collections

Photo of Barbara Cartland, 1925

© Image is in the public domain: Barbara Cartland, 1925

Papers of Barbara Cartland, 1993-1998.
http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb106-7bca

‘The Romance of a Plain Princess’, a children’s book, c 1973.
http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb1840-umw/umw/01/02/06

Will you be my Valentine? Drawing
[undated]. Papers of André Charlot Archive. The drawing includes the name “Joan Charlot”, Charlot’s daughter.
http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb71-thm/336

Also, on a lighter note:

Ronnie Barker Collection: Valentine’s Day sketch by Gerald Wiley, hand-written script and set plan, 1966-1987.
http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb71-thm/407?page=5

Other Valentines

Collections

Valentine Gross Archive (a.k.a. Valentine Hugo, 1887 – 1968).
http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb71-thm/165

Correspondence of Valentine Lawless, 2nd Baron Cloncurry, 1822-1848. Robert Owen Collection. http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb1499-roc?page=76#id1986019

Records of Dr James Valentine – Clinical Clerk, 1930-1939. Gartnavel Royal Hospital, Glasgow. http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb812-hb13/hb13/20/222

Valentines of Dundee Ltd, 1896-1975.
Established in 1851, the firm began as early exponents of photography, became pioneers in the postcard industry and later developed the production of greetings cards, novelties, calendars and illustrated children’s books.
http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb227-ms38562

Sentimental Journey: a focus on travel in the archives

/ Jane Ronson / 1 Comment

Archives Hub Feature for August 2013

Steel engraving of Capri from 1875 named Picturesque Europe
© Image is in the public domain

The season of summer often brings hopes and plans for holidays and this month we’re looking at the wider theme of travel.

The hundreds of collections relating to travel featured in the Archives Hub shed light on multiple aspects of travel, from royalty to the working classes, and encompassing touring, business, exploration and research, the work of missionaries and nomadic cultures.

“The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page” – St. Augustine.

Travel diaries

There are a number of travel diaries recording impressions of, and experiences in, the UK, Europe and beyond from a bygone era. ‘Grand tours’, leisurely and often luxurious, were the domain of the more privileged classes, where sometimes business and pleasure were combined. In more recent times, the pursuit of knowledge, education and ideas has motivated similar educational journeys.

Collections:

Thomas Moody, journal of a tour through Switzerland and Italy, 1822.
http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb227-msd919.m7e22

Beatrice Webb, A summer holiday in Scotland, 1884.
http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb227-msda865.w4

Harriet Susan Miller: Continental Tour Journal, c. 1856.
https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/data/gb12-ms.add.6230

Watercolour paintings and photographs of Canada by an unidentified artist, 1884.
The paintings and photographs are held within a large album, providing a record of a journey by unidentified travellers to Canada from Liverpool in 1884. http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb159-ms57

Extracts from the journal of William George Meredith during a trip to Spain and the East in the years 1830-1831.
Accompanied by Benjamin Disraeli, together with associated correspondence.
https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/data/gb206-brothertoncollectionms19cmeredith(1)

Diary of travels through Italy and France, compiled by Sir William Trumbull, 1664-1665.
http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb206-brothertoncollectionmstrvd1

Nassau William Senior Papers, 1830-1864.
Copies of journals kept by Nassau William Senior recording his visits to France, Germany, Austria, Italy, Ireland, Greece, Algeria and Egypt between 1850 and 1862. http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb222-bmssnws

Papers of Sir Leonard David Gammans and Lady Ann Muriel Gammans, ne Paul, 1916-1971.
Diaries, notebooks, etc. of Leonard David Gammans, 1916-1956; diaries. etc. of Ann Muriel Gammans, 1918-1970; tourist brochures and other printed material concerning South Africa, [1965-1971]. http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb161-mss.brit.emp.s.506

J.R.T. Pollard Papers, 1930-1999.
The collection consists of diaries and papers of J.R.T. Pollard. The diaries include details of the author’s extensive travel, particularly in Europe and observations regarding his years of army service in Africa (1941-1945). http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb222-bmssjpol

Manuscript Itinerary of Henry III of England.
Not quite a diary, but of special note, is the late 19th Century Manuscript itinerary showing the geographical whereabouts of Henry III, where known, for all dates from 1216 to 1272. http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb133-engms123

Business and work-related travel

Collections:

Records of the United Commercial Travellers’ Association (Nottingham Branch), 1908-1975.
The collection comprises accounts from 1932-1967, Committee minutes from 1908-1967 and registers from 1920-1975.
http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb159-ct

Papers of James Craig Henderson, fl. 1941-1950, commercial traveller.
Commercial traveller in the Middle East.
https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/data/gb248-ugd305

Papers of John Hunter, fl 1865-1912, carpenter’s mate, Royal Navy.
http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb248-ugc076

John William Ramsay, 13th Earl of Dalhousie: Naval Notebook, HMS Galatea , 1869-1871.
http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb12-ms.add.9279

Papers of John Wylie, merchant, Glasgow, Scotland, 1809-1840.
http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb248-ugd028

Household book of James Sharp, Archbishop of St Andrews, 1663-1666.
Household account book of James Sharp, archbishop of St Andrews, kept by his secretary George Martin of Claremont, including details of journeys to Edinburgh and London.
http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb227-msbx5395.s4m2

Exploration and research

Photograph of Icebergs, Greenland Sea by Frank Illingworth.
Photograph of Greenland Sea by Frank Illingworth. Copyright © Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge.

Contrasting with travel for pure pleasure, was travel for the purpose of exploration, discovery and research.

Collections:

William Gibb: Journals of Voyages in the Carnatic and the Yangtze River, 1838-1844.
http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb12-ms.add.9377

Johan Hjort collection, 1912.
The collection comprises of correspondence by Hjort to polar explorer William Speirs Bruce (leader of the Scottish National Antarctic Expedition, 1902-1904).
http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb15-johanhjort

Michael William Leonard Tutton: Natural History Diary, 1930-1932.
Natural history diary kept while Tutton was a King’s Scholar at Eton, which was awarded the Natural History Prize, 1930-1931. The diary contains notes on occurrences of insects, especially butterflies and moths, and occasionally birds and mammals.
http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb12-ms.add.8769

Henry Seebohm: Ornithological Notebook.
Unfinished notes of visits to Glossop, Worksop, Ashopton and other places in Derbyshire; to the Farne Islands and Coquet Islands, Northumberland; to Flamborough Head, Yorkshire; and to Asia Minor (Constantinople and Smyrna) in 1872. The notebook also includes some watercolour sketches.
http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb12-ms.add.8794

Missionaries

Collections:

Memoirs of Elizabeth Thomson, 1847-1918.
Teacher, missionary, traveller and suffragette, c1914.
http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb248-ugc053

Diary of the Rev. David Cargill, 1 May 1842 – 29 Mar 1843.
Diary kept on his second missionary journey to Tonga.
http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb231-ms0911

Papers of George Murray Davidson Short, 1890-1978.
Arts graduate and missionary, Glasgow, Scotland 1927.
http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb248-ugc049

Alexander Gillon Macalpine.
Malawi missionary papers and linguistic studies, 1893-1964.
http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb237-coll-48

Records of the Calabar Mission, 1849-1969.
http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb237-coll-212

St Joseph’s Society Missionary Society (Mill Hill Missionaries), 1865- .
http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb2254-stjosephsmissionarysociety

Romanies and Gypsies

Romany Vardo of the English Gypsies
© Image is in the public domain

Collections:

The Gypsy Collections, c.1860-1998.
The collection consists of two separately-catalogued but interlinked parts, the Gypsy Lore Society Archive (GLS) and the Scott Macfie Gypsy Collection (SMGC).
https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/data/gb141-gls%26gb141smgc

Manuscripts relating to gypsies and other travellers collected by Sir Angus Fraser, 1752-1976.
http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb206-brothertoncollectionmsrom-fraser2

Georg Althaus Photographs (including Hanns Weltzel Papers and Photographs).
1907 – 1960s.
http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb141-glsadd.ga

Letters of Jeanie Robertson, 1954-1956.
The Scottish traditional folk singer Jeanie Robertson is regarded as a seminal figure in the music culture of Scotland’s travelling people. The collection includes letters from Robertson to the poet Hamish Henderson (1919-2002).
http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb237-coll-725

Miscellaneous and related information

The Records of the Traveller’s Aid Society, 1885-1939.
The Travellers’ Aid Society was initiated in 1885 by the Young Women’s Christian Association to aid female passengers arriving at ports and railway stations, where they were met by accredited station workers who reported to the Travellers Aid Society Committee.
http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb106-4/tas

Cold Comfort, The Franklin expeditions (previous feature).
http://archiveshub.ac.uk/features/jul04.shtml

Charles Darwin and the Beagle Collections in the University of Cambridge: a Voyage Round the World (previous feature).
http://archiveshub.ac.uk/features/darwin.shtml

Romanies and Gypsiologists (previous feature).
http://archiveshub.ac.uk/features/jun06.shtml

200 years of railways (previous feature).
http://archiveshub.ac.uk/features/railways.shtml

Sea-Fever: Britain’s maritime heritage (previous feature).
http://archiveshub.ac.uk/features/apr05.shtml

Also of interest

Perthshire Cant: Secret language of Scottish travellers, BBC History:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/0/22874080

20 Gorgeous Posters From a Time When Travel Was Glamorous blog post:
http://gizmodo.com/20-gorgeous-posters-from-a-time-when-travel-was-glamoro-758243140

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Blowing the dust off Special Collections

/ Jane Stevenson

Guest Blog Post by John Hodgson

Mimas works on exciting and innovative projects all the time and we wanted Hub blog readers to find out more about the SCARLET project, where Mimas staff, academics from the University of Manchester and the archive team at John Rylands University Library are exploring how Augmented Reality can bring resources held in special collections to life by surrounding original materials with digital online content.

The Project

Special Collections using Augmented Reality to Enhance Learning and Teaching (SCARLET)

SCARLET addresses one of the principal obstacles to the use of Special Collections in teaching and learning – the fact that students must consult rare books, manuscripts and archives within the controlled conditions of library study rooms. The material is isolated from the secondary, supporting materials and the growing mass of related digital assets. This is an alien experience for students familiar with an information-rich, connected wireless world, and is a barrier to their use of Special Collections.

The SCARLET project will provide a model that other Special Collections libraries can follow, making these resources accessible for research, teaching and learning. If you are interested in creating similar ‘apps’ and using the toolkit created by the team then please get in touch.

SCARLET Blog: http://teamscarlet.wordpress.com/

SCARLET Twitter: twitter.com/team_scarlet

The Blog Post

Blowing the dust off Special Collections

The academic year is now in full swing and JRUL Special Collections staff are busy delivering ‘close-up’ sessions and seminars for undergraduate and postgraduate students.

A close-up session typically involves a curator and an academic selecting up to a dozen items to show to a group of students. The items are generally set out on tables and everyone gathers round for a discussion. It is a real thrill for students to see Special Collections materials up close, and in some circumstances to handle the items themselves. The material might be papyri from Greco-Roman Egypt, medieval manuscripts, early printed books, eighteenth-century diaries and letters, or modern literary archives: the range of our Special Collections is vast.

Dante Seminar

Dr Guyda Armstrong shows her students a selection of early printed editions of Dante.

From our point of view, it’s really rewarding and enlightening to work alongside enthusiastic teachers such as Guyda Armstrong, Roberta Mazza and Jerome de Groot. The ideal scenario is a close partnership between the academic and the curator. Curators know the collections well, and we can discuss with students the materiality of texts, technical aspects of books and manuscripts, the context in which texts and images were originally produced, and the afterlife of objects – the often circuitous routes by which they have ended up in the Rylands Library. Academics bring to the table their incredible subject knowledge and their pedagogical expertise. Sparks can fly, especially when students challenge what they are being told!

This week I have been involved in close-up sessions for Roberta Mazza’s ‘Egypt in the Graeco-Roman World’ third-year Classics course, and Guyda Armstrong’s ‘Beyond the Text’ course on Dante, again for third-year undergraduates. Both sessions were really enjoyable, because the students engaged deeply with the material and asked lots of questions. But the sessions also reinforced my belief that Augmented Reality will allow us to do so much more. AR will make the sessions more interactive, moving towards an enquiry-based learning model, where we set students real questions to solve, through a combination of close study of the original material, and downloading metadata, images and secondary reading, to help them interrogate and interpret the material. Already Dr Guyda Armstrong’s students have had a sneak preview of the Dante app, and I’m look forward to taking part in the first trials of the app in a real teaching session at Deansgate in a few weeks’ time.

For many years Special Collections have been seen by some as fusty and dusty. AR allows us to bring them into the age of app.

HubbuB: August 2011

/ Jane Stevenson

We are out and About in August. Jane and Joy will be going to the Society of American Archivists’ Conference this year, speaking as part of a panel session. We will be talking about Discovery, the Archives Hub and Linked Data. We’re also very excited to be visiting the OCLC offices in Dublin Ohio.  Lisa and Bethan will be at the Archives and Records Association conference in Edinburgh, so go and say hello if you are there. Lisa is also speaking at the conference.

Our Monthly Feature is all levitating women and mustacheod men, as we take a trip into Magic and Illusion at the Fairground Archive: http://archiveshub.ac.uk/features/magic/. Some great images, and a lovely photograph of Cyril Critchlow, a wizard in his 80’s, performing as ‘Wizardo, Harry Potter’s grandfather’!

We’ve recently created a page of Top Tips for Cataloguing: http://archiveshub.ac.uk/cataloguingtips/. These are some of the key areas that we believe are important for good online catalogues. We do still find that archivists don’t always think about the global online environment, so it’s worth setting out some of the most important points to bear in mind. It’s partly about thinking of the audience, browsing the Web, using Google, scanning pages for relevant content, and it’s partly about descriptions – ensuring that the title is as clear and self-explanatory as possible, thinking about how best to describe the archive in a way that is user-friendly.

We’ve been talking about ways to help get descriptions onto the Hub when they are created in Microsoft Word or Excel. We’re just exploring possibilities at the moment, but we are interested in anyone who uses, or knows anyone who uses, Microsoft Word to catalogue. Maybe smaller offices, or maybe you ask volunteers to do some of this?

We know people do use Microsoft Excel as well. We are thinking about ‘Tips for using Excel’. Would this be useful? We don’t necessarily want to give the impression that Excel is the most appropriate choice for cataloguing – its a spreadsheet software, not really for complex hierarchical archives. But we do realise that for some people, the choice of what to use is limited, and we want to do our best to accommodate the realities that people are faced with.

We’ve had some interest in the idea of researchers being able to request digital copies of archives through the Hub. That is, a researcher comes across an archive they would like to see, and they would like digital copies, so they indicate this in some way. Not yet fully thought out, but again, we’d need to know if there is a need for this. How many officers are starting to digitise on demand?

Finally, we’re covering music, dance, plants, medicine and the Middle East with our latest contributors. Check out who is recently on board on our contributors’ page:
http://archiveshub.ac.uk/contributors/

HubbuB: July 2011

/ Jane Stevenson

Diary of the Archives Hub, July 2011

Contributor Forum

We had a forum this month that included both Contributors’ Forum members and Steering Committee members. It was a really useful and productive morning. The write-up from this can be found on our blog: http://archiveshub.ac.uk/blog/?p=2677.  For me and Joy, this kind of feedback is invaluable in helping us to plan for the future, and we are very appreciative of those who came along and participated.

Linking Lives: a Linked Data project

You will be pleased to hear that we secured funding for an enhancements project, called ‘Linking Lives’. This project aims to work with our Linked Data output from Locah to create a names-based user interface, with links to other data sources. All will become clear as I start to set this out and blog about it. We showed a mock-up of the sort of interface that we want to create to the Forum, and it was well received. We’re very excited about this project, because it really does enable us to start to think about presenting archival descriptions in a new way, and integrating them much more closely with other data sources.

Feature for July

We are pleased to say that the Victoria and Albert Museum Theatre and Performance Collections are now contributing to the Hub and this month we feature their wonderful collections along with some great images: http://archiveshub.ac.uk/features/theatreperformancecollections/

Content negotiation

You now have ability to retrieve records as XML or text files simply by adding the requisite extension to the persistent URI, e.g.

http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb029ms207.xml
http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb029ms207.txt

This may not be immediately useful to your average user, but it is working towards the idea of flexible access for different uses, thinking beyond the traditional web-based interface. It certainly helps me, as I often want to check the encoding behind the descriptions!

Browser Plugin

We now have a simple plugin to search the Archives Hub. It enables the Hub to be searched via the search box in the top right of the browser, providing another means of access to the Hub. If you go to the Hub homepage, you can see the drop-down list of search plug-ins available and you will have the opportunity to add ‘Archives Hub’. This is indicated by blue highlighting on the drop-down arrow.

Reference and Former Reference

We’ve had quite a bit of difficulty with how to deal with records that include both a reference, and a ‘former reference’. These are generally from CALM. We have found that for some contributors the ‘former reference’ is exactly that, but for others it is actually the reference they want to use. We therefore feel that the only option is to display both references on the Hub. If any contributor would like us to globally edit records to remove one of the references, we can do that for you. For example: http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb0370pp1. We hope that this works for people. If it doesn’t, we can gather feedback and consider a different approach.

Reinventing the wheel: the new Hub website

/ Jane Stevenson

promotional postcard On 1st April 2010 the Archives Hub website changed. It was not just about a new look and feel, but a whole new site. The Hub team spent several months planning the new architecture, navigation and content. Most of the content was rewritten and this gave us a great opportunity to think about a coherent approach where we could be consistent in our tone and terminology and really think about what each page should say. We wanted the site to be intuitive and for each page to be useful and attractive, and not give an overwhelming amount of information.

We decided to introduce plenty of images, to lift the site visually, and we wanted to keep plenty of whitespace, to make it easy on the eye. In addition, the website designers, True North, helped us to think about our identity and the importance of presenting the Archives Hub in a way that conveys confidence, self-belief, professionalism and warmth.

The Archives Hub has getting on for 200 contributors now, which is quite an achievement, and we are very appreciative of the effort that our contributors put into creating descriptions for the Hub. We want to continue to develop the site with a focus on archivists as well as on researchers, as we see both groups of users as vital to us, and in fact they often overlap. We hope that our ‘Archivists’ section is helpful and informative for contributors and other information professionals interested in what we do and in issues around online data and interoperability.

Our Features section takes over from the old ‘Collections of the Month’ idea, bringing the same message about the breadth and depth of Hub content and enabling us to showcase contributors and wonderful collections.

Our ‘Researchers’ section is going to be expanded, although we are keen to keep it focussed and easy to scan and digest. We are looking at ways that we can continue to support researchers in using the Hub to the greatest advantage. Of course, the main way is to provide an effective search interface and to continue to expand the content.  And this brings us on to the search – as well as a whole new information site, we have upgraded our software. We are now using ‘Cheshire 3’, which enables us to provide functionality that we could not provide before. We will be talking more about that in subsequent blogs. The new software is running on all-new hardware, so in fact we really have fundamentally changed the whole Archives Hub, but we hope that we have retained what is good about the site and about our service.