Archives and Special Collections Team Pick!

To mark International Archives Day, which falls on 9^th June, I asked my colleagues in Archives and Special Collections to choose one of their favourite collections from our holdings. We hope that this will give you a flavour of our collections and some indication of their range. We really do have something for everyone!  

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To explore our archive holdings, use the catalogue. For help finding material, or to make an appointment to use our reading room, you can email us (specialcollections@leicester.ac.uk) or call 0116 252 2056. 

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Dr Simon Dixon, Head of Archives and Special Collections: One of my ‘desert island archive items’ is Dr Astley Clarke’s scrapbook on the foundation of and early development of the University. Dr Clarke painstakingly cut out and pasted every news article on the early history and foundation of what was then Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland College. Also included is his little handwritten notebook recording the donations he secured during the early years. It’s very moving to see a handwritten note of £500 given by Dr F. W. Bennett to the honour of his nephew, Garth Taylor, of the Sherwood Foresters. Killed in action. 

Vicky Holmes, University Archivist: It’s very hard to choose a favourite archive, but mine is usually the one of the institution I am working for, currently the University of Leicester, purely because I spend so much time getting familiar with all of it and looking after it. I think of the archive as the memory of an institution. This is particularly useful for Leicester which is now over 100 years old, has gone through many changes, and is of a more complicated structure than any one person could know about or recall every detail of. Although I am responsible for gathering in material of all formats (including digital), if I had to choose just one thing from the archive as my favourite, I would probably say a postcard produced by the Leicester School of Art (now De Montfort University), because I like the 1920s style design and colours.  

Sarah Wood, Assistant Archivist: My favourite collection would have to be the letters, photographs and student memorabilia belonging to Sylvia Dowling, who studied for a BA in History between 1955-1959. The items are very personal and offer an insight into a young woman’s experience of moving to an unknown city, studying for a degree and making new friends. The collection contains four bundles of letters, all written to Sylvia’s parents whilst she was in Leicester. Particularly poignant is Sylvia’s description of her new room in College Hall, which helpfully includes a diagram of the bedroom layout! Sylvia’s letters also provide a social commentary on life at the University during the 1950s. They offer a student’s perspective on notable events such as Queen Elizabeth II’s visit (1957), RAG weeks, the opening of the new Percy Gee Building and the infamous Freshers’ Flu! In 2020 we worked with students from the University’s MA in Museum Studies to design an online exhibition showcasing items from this unique collection. Learn more about Sylvia’s time in Leicester here!

Ruth Maguire, Digital Archivist: I am currently working on bringing together an archive of born digital material generated by the University relating to the discovery and identification of King Richard III in 2012-2013, ‘The Greyfriars Project’. My favourite item we have brought in so far is from a collection of emails from Richard Buckley, the project’s lead archaeologist. In August 2012, he emailed Dr Jo Appleby inviting her onto the project as an osteology expert in the ‘unlikely’ event human remains were discovered during excavation.  He wrote “Whilst I think it is rather unlikely that we will actually find the remains of the king given that we are not sure where the church is, where he was buried and whether his remains were exhumed at the Dissolution, we need to be prepared!” I love that at that moment in time, no one really expected to find the remains of the king. Reading it with the benefit of hindsight gives me chills and puts the magnitude of this achievement into perspective. Keeping emails in an archive may be surprising to some but since it is one of the most used forms of communication, we need to preserve important emails as evidence of business, or as a social or historical record. 

Corinne Lambert, Metadata Specialist: My favourite is the library archive. It is fascinating to see all the changes in the library and academic communities, the University buildings and the library services offered. The archive also captures the library staff who made the library function over many years, from a small team early on, to the bigger teams in 1970s/1980s when self-service was not available and the library staff shifted hundreds of books at the Issue Desk and reshelved them. Hundreds of new books and periodicals were bought and processed in acquisitions, all to support the academic community. New technology came and went, but the library staff adapted to it and continued helping the readers with their enquiries. I also like the photos of non-work events in the library, its use as a film location and the library social events, recording and celebrating the many people who have worked here. 

Richard Wheelbrand, Audio Preservation Engineer (East Midlands Oral History Archive): I like the Bernard Greaves Collection [EMOHA154, not yet catalogued], which contains discussions and news clips of gay rights in the mid 1980s and has some very rare or unique recordings of Leicester Sound, an independent local radio station. This was the most challenging collection to digitise and required a lot of cassette tape surgery. The worst tape was a chewed up and split C120, which has the thinnest tape. I had to carefully crack open the cassette shell, remove the two small reels, and rehouse them in a brand new cassette tape shell. The next step was to flatten out the distorted tape to find the broken tape ends and splice them back together with splicing tape. After that it took a fair few goes to wind the thin creased tape back into the new cassette shell without any loops or kinks. 

Eleanor Bloomfield, Library Advisor (Archives and Special Collections): My favourite is probably the Majut Collection, but since I covered this in an earlier post I will choose the ‘Woman at War’ section of the Woollatt Collection. Through drawings and photographs, this collection documents more than a century of railway history. During the Second World War thousands of women worked on the railways, in what had previously been male-only jobs, in order to free up men to take front-line fighting roles.