1947: Some illustrious Nigerians at the School Museum Service

One of our latest accessions is a visitors' book from Derbyshire's School Museum Service. It was a pioneering institution, established in 1936 following a Carnegie Trust grant. Small wonder it attracted visiting students from the Institute of Education in London, now part of UCL. Some of the students were from today's Ghana, Zambia, South Sudan …

In the footsteps of Len

Alistair, from our Modern Records team, has been cataloguing a collection maps and plans about which we know remarkably little: only reference numbers for each document and the shelf on which it sits. Since resuming work on the premises, Alistair has described one-third of the 360-ish rolls. I'll let him pick up the story from …

Merry Quizmas!

Here's a festive little quiz for you, based on ten original sources held at Derbyshire Record Office. When you've finished, scroll back up to see how many you got right. There are no prizes. You are, however, entitled to boast if you score more than five.

Records Management in the news

My role at the record office revolves around the original archives generated by Derbyshire County Council but my overall mission is to encourage all departments to keep their records well. Good records management is all about maintaining information systematically. Our records contain valuable information, which is evidence of what we do: everything from looking after …

The Digital Preservation Awards 2020

https://www.youtube.com/embed/8kQnMDm7YdU Last week, the eyes of the world were drawn to a single momentous contest: who would be the winners of this year's Digital Preservation Awards? Wonder no more: you can find a full list of winners on the Roll Of Honour. You can also click on the embedded clip above to hear about finalists …

Preparing for re-opening

With lockdown restrictions being gradually lifted, Derbyshire Record Office begins operating a limited public service from today. This is the third time I have seen us in relaunch mode.  Relaunch 1: Towards the end of 2011, we closed our New Street site to everyone other than contractors in their yellow vests and hard hats, and …

Survival Of Archives; Archives Of Survival

In a previous job, I glimpsed the Laycock military papers, among them documents created by Capt. Evelyn Waugh somewhere in the Mediterranean during the Second World War. There was no time to pore over them, as I was just processing a copy order – but it struck me that their survival (complete with scorch marks …

“The Hard Way” The story of Hannah Mitchell by Louise Jordan

I don't know how many of our followers are in London, or within striking distance thereof - but this sounds like a very stimulating event.  The London School of Economics is staging a free performance tomorrow, Wed 26 June 2019, at 6.30pm, viz., a one-woman show entitled 'The Hard Way': the story of campaigner Hannah Mitchell …

The future history of the school admission register

I’m recycling this image of Steve Bloomer’s school admission record (blog posts passim.), and throwing in a question: have you used our admission registers on Find My Past in your research? And do you think historians a century from now will have the same level of interest in us? Old-style admission registers like this are very …

Nellie Kirkham: archives of busy local historian

This post about the arrival of the Nellie Kirkham collection is almost three years old. I was saddened yesterday to read on the PDMHS Facebook page of the death of Dave Williams. Dave is pictured mid-way down the post, on the day he deposited the Kirkham material. He will be much missed.

Derbyshire Record Office

It was in November this year that we heard from Dave Williams of the Peak District Mines Historical Society, to say that the Society had recently taken on responsibility for the papers of the historian, artist and writer Nellie Kirkham (1896-1979).  Dave, and other active members of PDMHS, were anxious to find a permanent home for the papers, lest the information contained in Kirkham’s research notes be lost to future generations.

Dave brought in box-files, folders, and index cards at regular intervals over subsequent weeks.  The final lot of material came in metal trays that had been removed from a filing cabinet:

I then began the process of transferring the papers to our own folders.  I shouldn’t really have used the acid-free folders until the papers had gone through our quarantine procedures, but they were all I could lay hands on at the time!  They may well be replaced by custom-built packages later on.  Here’s…

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