This October the Archives Hub is taking part in The Big Draw. We want you to make drawings on the themes of Fairgrounds or Playgrounds, or Cycling or Recycling. Scan or photograph your drawing, and then email the digital version to us. We’ll post your pics here each Friday. And we’ll give an Archives Hub notepad and propelling pencil to everyone who sends us a drawing, and the first name out of the cycle helmet will receive colouring pens, a pencil case and a notepad – all made from recycled car tyres! If you send us your postal address, we won’t use it for anything else.


1. Swing Ride Silhouette
Above: Drawing by Amanda Hill, formerly of the Archives Hub, and now relocated to Canada. This pic links to a larger version. Submitted by Amanda:"Mike says it looks like a pizza, but then he’s a complete philistine."

2. Recycle
Above: Quick drawing by Paddy of the Archives Hub. Submitted by Paddy: "I was going to try the Manchester Wheel but it looks a bit difficult… "

The very first Archives Hub feature, in September 2001, was for the papers of Robert Donat (1905-1958), the film and theatre actor and theatre director. The collections is held at The University of Manchester, The John Rylands University Library. This first feature was originally very minimal – just the collection description – but this feature about Robert Donat now includes an introduction, related collections, links, and suggested reading (with links to bibliographic records on Copac).

Plus the image above showing postcards of Robert Donat, kindly supplied by The Bill Douglas Centre for the History of Cinema and Popular Culture.

Elena Elizabeth Rathbone enjoys a game of golf at Redcar, Yorkshire, in September 1903 – looks like Elena has hit a great shot.

From Photograph Album of Elena Rathbone dated 1887-1910 (Ref. GB 141 RP XXV.7.190), courtesy of the University of Liverpool, Special Collections and Archives.

November’s feature looks at G.S. Callendar, the amateur meteorologist who established the link between carbon dioxide and climate change – 70 years ago. We also look at British scientists who were researching solar energy more than fifty years ago.

Above: Guy and Phyllis Callendar, around 1960. Photo courtesy of the G.S. Callendar Archive, University of East Anglia.

Intwine is a subject guide to all of the Archives Hub’s ‘Collections of the Month’ features, inspired by the Intute guide to web resources for education and research.

Each of Intwine‘s subject headings also provides a link to search the Hub’s Subject Finder, which will lead you to lots of extra material on the subject.

Above: Photo of Woodcraft Folk, 1920s, copyright © National Co-operative Archive.

The final installment of June’s Pick ‘n’ Mix feature has a botanical theme. Our Digital Artist in Residence, Aileen Collis, has created a design based on an image of an illustration of wild rose haups in Illustrations of Scottish Flora (1912-1913) by David R. Robinson, part of the Kinnear Collection, held at University of Dundee Archive Services.

And, above, here’s a detail of another of another illustration "Types of Bramble. Rubus Fructicocus (Rosaceæ). From Woods Strathmigle to Falkland road, July 29th, 1913".

Photograph copyright © University of Dundee Archive Services.

The latest installment of June’s Pick ‘n’ Mix feature has a seaside theme. Our Digital Artist in Residence, Aileen Collis, has created a design based on a seaside image. Aileen previously created digitally-printed fabric from a photo of Southport rock, and this fabric was used in constructing a Punch ‘n’ Judy booth – pictured here on Southport beach in Summer 2005. The Punch ‘n’ Judy booth also made an appearance at the Archives Hub’s To Boldly Go! event that July.

Photograph by Shaw + Shaw, courtesy of Aileen Collis. Design copyright © Aileen Collis.