University of Sussex Special Collections and Mass Observation Archive Blog

Showcasing our archives, collections, activities and projects

Archive discovery

Oct

31

The pleasure of opening a box and discovering something that hasn’t been seen by human eyes in years is a pleasure that an archivist experiences more than most.  I have been fortunate in opening many such boxes in the past year as I have been cataloguing the University of Sussex Collection held in Special Collections in the University of Sussex Library.  This is the story of how this project has been going and how it will end.

The 2 year cataloguing project will result in:

  • The creation of an online catalogue that will be available on the Special Collections website and from next year on the website of the Keep – a new purpose built building that Special Collections is moving to in 2013.
  • The creation of 30,000+ item level catalogue records.  These records all represent individual items that fill almost 700 archive boxes!
  • Developing processes that ensure new accruals to the collection will be described and arranged according to the new catalogue schema.
  • A catalogue resource for researchers interested in the history of the University of Sussex both from an institutional and student perspective.
  • An opportunity for researchers to learn more about some of the individuals who have shaped the development of the University since it opened in 1961.

This is being achieved with the help of a small team of student volunteers giving up some of their time during their studies to trawl through the boxes and list their contents.  The volunteers will also be sharing some of their discoveries on this blog!

The remarkable variety of the University of Sussex Collection has made it difficult to manage since it was deposited in Special Collections in 1999.  Formerly known as The Campus Collection, it was first created in the early 1970s as a collection of official and ‘pressure group’ publications.  It subsequently became a natural home for material collected by various library staff, and it also became a repository for a number of University committee papers.  Various members of staff also sent material they had gathered over the years to the library on an ad hoc basis.  The lack of a formal acquisition process has allowed the collection to grow organically over the years.  This project will be the last in a long line of smaller cataloguing projects and will finally enable us to gain full intellectual and physical control of the collection.

We saw a remarkable increase in the collection’s use during the University’s  50th anniversary celebrations, and the researcher’s enthusiasm for the material they found and the use they found for it is testament to what a fantastic collection the University of Sussex Collection really is.   In this blog I will provide a commentary on the process of cataloguing the collection and the difficulties that need to be overcome to open up the collection for more researchers.  I’ll be sharing new discoveries along the way!

Comments are closed.