University of Sussex Special Collections and Mass Observation Archive Blog

Showcasing our archives, collections, activities and projects

The First Plan

Mar

5

I had 6 months funding to complete a 3 year project.  Clearly I would have to prioritise. To be clear, my project goals were: Catalogue University of Sussex records to Item level using ISAD (G) compliant cataloguing procedures. Identify personal paper collections and assess their suitability for researcher access according to the Data Protection Act. […]

How do they catalogue that? Research, research, research.

Feb

15

It has been a couple of months since my last post and I thought I would start afresh with the first of a series of posts that will provide an explanation of the process of cataloguing a large collection of University records. Being presented with 1000 boxes of archival material and then told to go […]

Desert Island Books

Nov

29

Something a little interactive  for this week’s post: Last week, a student volunteer found a little booklet amongst a pile of miscellaneous library publications he was cataloguing, that sparked an interesting conversation in the archive about our favourite books.  Inspired by the BBC Radio 4 programme Desert Island Discs, the booklet “If you could only take […]

Be Still and Know – where does our motto come from?

Nov

13

The University of Sussex Motto “Be still and know” was adopted in 1961 during the second year of teaching at the University – a year when student fees were only £55!  It is a quote from the Bible (Psalm 46:10); the whole sentence reads: “Be still and know that I am God”.   I recently found a […]

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 […]