SC&A in review: 2020 edition

Posted on December 16, 2020 by Joanna Baines

There’s no doubt that 2020 has been a markedly different year from the one we anticipated when writing last year’s annual review blog post. Like many of you, the Special Collections & Archives team have been working frequently from home since March – but that doesn’t mean we’ve been any less busy. As the end of year (thankfully) draws to a close, we’re taking the time to reflect on what we’ve achieved and hope that this compilation sends a little bit of archive magic out to your screens!

Karen (Special Collections and Archives Manager): “What a contrast 2020 has been compared to 2019! The SC&A team, along with most other employees at the University, moved to working from home on 23rd March and we are mostly still there. We still meet at least once a week but now instead of booking a meeting room or bagging a table (and a coffee) in the Library Café we now get together via our computer screens (coffee included)!

Working remotely has presented us with opportunities to tackle some of the tasks which get overlooked and pushed aside in a busy office. Early in lockdown much of my time was taken up working on a grant application to support a project to catalogue and promote our amazing David Drummond Pantomime Collection. Our application was not successful this time round – while it was disappointing news it has given me the opportunity to delve deeper into this wonderful collection and to discover some of its hidden treasures – I’m currently exploring boxes of libretti or books of words from the mid 19th century to the mid-twentieth century. Some of them are just books of words but some have gorgeous illustrations. So far, my favourite find is Sinbad the Sailor, closely followed by Mother Goose and Dick Whittington…I could go on…It feels especially important that we catalogue this collection given the devasting effect that the virus has had on live pantomime performances around the country this year.

Brightly illustrated programme cover for the Mother Goose pantomime at Drury Lane. [David Drummond Pantomime Collection]

Brightly illustrated programme cover for the Mother Goose pantomime at Drury Lane, 1902. [David Drummond Pantomime Collection]

Lavishly illustrated programme for the pantomime Dick Whittington at Drury Lane theatre. [David Drummond Collection]

The rest of the team have been keeping busy too: Tom has worked on and off campus on the ever-expanding University archive, while Jo has worked on new and remote ways of delivering our popular teaching sessions. Jennie has had great fun cataloguing some of Martin Rowson’s digital cartoons (so funny!) The Max Tyler Music Hall collection has benefitted from the attentions of Clair, who has now catalogued all the research files and Mandy enjoyed scanning some of the sheet music, some of which has been recorded and uploaded by Dan Harding, Head of Music Performance at Kent – it really brings our collection to life. You can listen to this recording here. Beth, our project archivist for the UK Philanthropy Archive, has continued to spread the good news about our developing collection as well as delivering an excellent online event.

Working from home has meant that much of our volunteer work stopped abruptly in the spring – we miss our volunteer community very much and hope that we can welcome back our regular team as well as some new ones – watch this space! Having said that we did manage to set up Daniella, who was able to transcribe and translate indentures from Ronald Baldwin collection from home. See her blog post here: https://blogs.kent.ac.uk/specialcollections/2020/07/08/exploring-early-modern-kent-in-the-archive-part-1-an-introduction-to-the-ronald-baldwin-collection/. Thanks to Daniella’s great work we have been able to enhance our catalogue records.”

Tom (University Archivist): “This year my highlight was the opportunity to dedicate more time than usual to looking after and developing the University of Kent Archive. This large and important collection charts the development of the University of Kent through the initial planning and development of the site in the early 1960s, its foundation in 1965, and through the succeeding 55 years of educational achievement.

Though records of the University’s activities and decision-making processes have always been collected, it was not until relatively recently these have been gathered together in a dedicated space within the Templeman Library. As a result, a considerable backlog of archival work has built up, and the collection requires sorting, duplicate-thinning, repackaging, cataloguing and being physically arranged in its dedicated storeroom.

Because my other SC&A duties have been less pressing, this year I’ve been able to make proper headway in carrying out essential collections development work with this archive, including consolidating the various caches of documents in the library into a single space, commencing weeding of the various runs of published information such as annual reports and prospectuses, grouping similar records and records from the same department together, and commencing cataloguing of important papers like those of Eric Fox, the first Registrar of Kent. This interesting collection includes papers on the establishment and development of the University and the various crises (usually student led) that afflicted the university in its first 12 years.

Black and white photograph of Eric Fox, first Registrar of the University of Kent, and his wife Mary on the University of Kent campus.

Eric Fox, first Registrar of the University of Kent, and his wife, Mary. July 1982 [V.453]

Working from home has also given us the opportunity to catalogue the University’s extensive photograph collection which my colleague Rachel has been working on. Rachel is also a Kent alumna so her knowledge is proving doubly useful in getting context from the images.

Black and white photograph showing a party in the Registry Office, 1990, complete with Santa and a pantomime horse. [University of Kent Archive, 1471.2]

The University Archive also took receipt of two large and significant collections in autumn 2020: records of Eliot College and records of the Faculty Office. Watch this space for updates to our catalogue throughout 2021 as these collections are catalogued and made accessible to our readers.”

Jo (Senior Library Assistant): “Throughout this year I’ve often joked that because my job involves collections and people, 2020 has meant a definite shift in my working environment. Whilst this is true (I very much miss introducing students to our collections in person), it’s been a great opportunity to develop our digital learning offer and create content that will hopefully serve our communities for years to come.

Gif showing slides introducing Special Collections & Archives to students. There is a lot of colour and spider diagrams.

I particularly enjoyed making videos of some items from our collections to help support teaching; rather than single images, filming archives helps viewers get a sense of the physicality of the object and hopefully encourages them to come and see items in person when it’s safe to do so. Our Artists’ Books Collection was the perfect example of this: the books rely (and sometimes play with) our sense of touch to convey their meaning, and it was lovely to see some of these works and convey my knowledge and enthusiasm for them digitally. You can view an example of these videos here.

On a completely different note, there has been a wealth of digital learning and training created this year and it’s been really nice to have the opportunity to develop skills that being on campus doesn’t always allow for. Thanks to Kent’s Learning and Organisational Development team I completed six weeks of British Sign Language training over the summer which will hopefully serve our users well in future. I also finally got certification for my MA, so I guess I’m ‘officially’ a Librarian now!”

Jennie (Library Assistant – Curation & Discovery): “My role is to describe the items in our Special Collections and Archives and make them easy to find on our library search systems. Traditionally this is done with the item in hand, but of course this year a new approach had to be found. Luckily, we have a large and ever-growing collection of political cartoons by Martin Rowson in digital format just waiting for someone to add them to the catalogue – and that someone was me!

A complex cartoon by Martin Rowson entitled 'Giving up the Ghost'. Prime Minister Boris Johnson lies in a hospital bed with several other Conservative MPs looking rather ill as a ghostly Theresa May floats away. A curtain pulled back reveals a confused Jeremy Corbyn in the next bed.

‘Giving up the Ghost’ by Martin Rowson, 9th June 2019, The Guardian. MRD1351, British Cartoon Archive

I was able to download the images at home and access our archival cataloguing system remotely to add some of Rowson’s fantastic satirical cartoons to our database. My personal favourite so far is Giving up the Ghost because it took a lot of detective work to figure out who all the politicians were, and because the Nigel Farage snake under the bed makes me laugh. It also features Rowson’s famous ‘fur cups’, which I make sure to add to the catalogue record when they appear. Rowson himself explained what the fur cups mean on Twitter:

Screenshot of a Twitter conversation between John Waterworth and Martin Rowson. Waterworth asks Rowson, Great roller coaster! Can you say what the hairy teacups represent in your cartoons? Rowson responds, Fur cups. As surrealist tropes their name should be spoken with a French accent. Try it.

Exchange between John Waterworth and Martin Rowson on Twitter explaining the fur cups present in Rowson’s cartoons.

I’m sure you can work it out.”

Clair (Digital Archivist): “I’m sure I’m not the first to mention that this year has been a very different experience of working in Special Collections & Archives! For the most part we’ve been distant from our collections in a physical sense, but this in turn has provided the opportunity for us to focus on some of the more admin-heavy collection tasks that we seldom get to focus on in the “normal world”.

Triage of photographs of research files from the Max Tyler Music Hall Collection.

This year feels like a difficult one to draw highlights from, but there have certainly been some satisfying and enjoyable moments for me. First up, we’ve taken a few steps to improving access to our collections this year. I had the pleasure of cataloguing the entirety of Max Tyler’s research files. I won’t go in to too much depth here as I wrote a blog post on the subject back in October 2020, but just to say that it’s an impressive collection that touches on many subjects, performers, and music hall songs. You can browse the entire collection here. My colleagues have made tremendous progress with cataloguing our collection of Martin Rowson digital cartoons. This is an active collection with continuous accruals, so it’s great to see them getting added to our online catalogue. We have managed to clear our scanning backlog of newspaper cartoon cuttings with help from our Digital Imaging team. And last up, our collections can now be found on The National Archive’s Discovery platform.

Finally, I had the opportunity to develop my skills in social media archiving this year, collecting tweets on the subject of philanthropy during the covid-19 pandemic for the UK Philanthropy Archive. This piece of work not only enabled me to learn some coding skills in Python programming language, but also meant I got to work closely with my colleague Beth Astridge to develop a collection for our newest archive!”

Mandy (Library Assistant – Digital Imaging): “I have really enjoyed scanning the music sheets from our Max Tyler Collection! They are so delicate and the pictures are so pretty. Seeing the music sheets as how they used to be has been great.”

Colour illustrated cover of a music sheet from the Max Tyler Music Hall Collection entitled “Victory and Peace Grand March”

Beth (Project Archivist – UK Philanthropy Archive): “As with the rest of the Special Collections & Archives team – 2020 has been a year of challenges and disruption – but also a year of new ways of working and opportunities to explore. There are several things that happened in the UK Philanthropy Archive this year that I think are worth celebrating!

I have focussed some time on making connections, spreading awareness about the UK Philanthropy Archive, and talking to potential donors about their collections. As always, it is so interesting to hear about the different trusts and foundations out there, to catch up with people who are passionate about the organisation they represent and the causes they support and begin to explore how they might ensure the long-term preservation of their archives.

COVID-19 has had a notable impact on the philanthropic sector – with many funders pausing grants, diverting funds to COVID emergency schemes, and adopting more flexible grants programmes and support mechanisms. To capture a record of some of this rapid change in the philanthropic sector we have developed an archive collection of the tweets coming from many of philanthropic sector organisations and individuals during 2020. It has been fascinating to investigate how to do this, and my colleague Clair (Digital Archivist) has written about her work on this elsewhere on this blog!

Screenshot of attendees at the official virtual launch of the UK Philanthropy Archive, November 2020.

In March 2020 we had planned a big event to launch the UK Philanthropy Archive with a seminar and the inaugural Shirley Lecture to be delivered by the wonderful Dame Stephanie Shirley. Sadly, we had to postpone, and the event was split into two separate events. We held the first of these – a virtual seminar on Archives of Philanthropy in November, which officially launched the UK Philanthropy Archive! This brought together researchers, archivists, funders and others from the philanthropic sector to talk about the opportunities and challenges of keeping archives about philanthropy. It was well attended with lots of great presentations and interesting questions – and if you missed it – the recordings are available on our website! A big thank you to all the speakers who did an amazing job in communicating why collecting archives from the philanthropic sector is so important.

There is so much to look forward to in 2021 from the UK Philanthropy Archive. As well as more collections being deposited with us, getting back to cataloguing and getting the collections available for research, and several oral history interviews planned, we have the inaugural Shirley Lecture (in May 2021), as well as another exciting seminar – so keep an eye out for more information on our webpages.”

The SC&A team wish you a peaceful and safe Christmas and New Year and we hope you can connect with loved ones near and far. We’re closed for Christmas from Friday (18th December) and will be back in the (virtual) office from Monday 4th January 2021.

Coronavirus: collecting your experiences

Posted on April 8, 2020 by Joanna Baines

SCA wants your experiences of the coronavirus pandemic – in any form you’d like

All of us are experiencing an exceptional time in our lives, where the COVID-19 coronavirus has had an impact on how we live, how we work, and how we interact with each other. Archives have an important role in recording these extraordinary times. In Special Collections & Archives we preserve the history of the University of Kent and the history of the regions and communities of which the University is a part, and we would like to create an archive collection that records the experiences of people in Kent in relation to the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.

We would like to collect records of your experiences of – and responses to – the pandemic. Your record of your experience can be anything – including diaries or journals, artistic responses, poetry, short videos, and photographs. This can be in digital or physical form and we invite responses from all members of the community – whether you are juggling working at home with caring responsibilities, trying to carry on studying, volunteering in your community to shop or chat to others, or working on the front line as a keyworker.

Your contribution to the archive will be kept by Special Collections & Archives as a donated item and we will catalogue and preserve it alongside our other archive collections. It will also be made accessible to others in our reading room, contributing to research and engaging people with this important part of history.

If you would like to contribute something, then please start to make your record in whichever form you choose. We’ll provide more information about how to send your responses in at a later date. If you have any questions about this project, then please contact specialcollections@kent.ac.uk

For information about Templeman Library resources during this period please click here. If you’d like to know about how Special Collections & Archives can support your research digitally please click here.

Templeman Library Closure: SC&A digital resources

Posted on March 25, 2020 by Joanna Baines

In light of recent Government announcements, the Templeman Library closed at 5pm on Tuesday 24th March and will remain so until further notice. This includes Special Collections & Archives; our team is working remotely away from campus.

The Templeman Library is closed from 5pm on Tuesday 24th March until further notice.

Our Reading Room may be closed, but many of our collections can still be accessed remotely! Here’s a list that we’ll keep updating throughout this period, curated in roughly alphabetical order:

Our archive catalogue contains details of the collections we hold along with images for some collections
The British Cartoon Archive’s catalogue has thousands of images of artwork along with publication details – click on the image in the record to view it full screen
Some of the Buffs (Royal East Kent regiment) collection – namely the ‘Dragon’ journal – is available to view through LibrarySearch. This includes the Dragon’s issues from the First World War.
If you’re interested in Local History, we have many images of mills from Kent (and beyond) for your perusal
The wonderful Prescriptions: Artists’ Books collection has been catalogued through LibrarySearch and there are images of every item we hold
Our next Templeman Gallery exhibition, Printworks, will be explored in this blog over the next few weeks so you don’t miss out

If you’d like to access any other material digitally – or have any other queries – please do get in touch with us. We hope you’re all safe and well and look forward to welcoming you back to the Library soon.

SC&A Highlights: 2019 edition

Posted on December 18, 2019 by Joanna Baines

As once again we enter the season of festive goodwill and sparkling lights, the SC&A team are preparing for the winter break and the new decade – but not without a good look back at our favourite memories of the year. As ever, we’ve asked everyone across our team for their highlights and they’re curated for you below:

Karen (Special Collections & Archives Manager): “It’s hard to believe we have reached the end of 2019 already. This year has been a whirlwind of exciting activity in Special Collections & Archives (SC&A). In March we welcomed our new project archivist Beth, who has joined the team to help develop our latest archive. See Beth’s post below to read more about it. We said to goodbye to Elspeth, our Digital Archivist, in September and welcomed Clair to the team soon after.

Pantomime, music hall and stand-up comedy all in one blog!

The Templeman Gallery space has hosted some amazing exhibitions throughout the year. In May we worked with Olly Double to mount ‘Alternative Comedy Now’, an exhibition celebrating 40 years since the arrival of alternative comedy. We displayed some fabulous items from the British Stand-Up Comedy Archive. ‘Keep Smiling Through: Humour and the Second World War’ was an exhibition showcasing items from the British Cartoon Archive. It certainly kept visitors entertained. We are ending the year with a double exhibition showcasing material created from projects we were involved with. Firstly ‘Diaries of the Here and Now’ in which people were asked to create a diary of the 11^th November 2018, 100 years after the end of the First World War. Secondly we have’ Radical Roots and Dangerous Ideas’ created as part of the 50^th anniversary since Gulbenkian was opened – see Tom’s post below. They will be up until the end of January 2020 so do pop in and have a look if you are passing.

We’ve made lots of new friends this year – including our four bursary interns and a whole host of new volunteers. The involvement of all these people really does help us to progress the work on our collections and enables us to make even more of our material available to our users. Clair and I attended the Comic Forum in Leeds, taking items from our cartoon collection to their market place event. This has led to some new links with other Universities and we hope to share more about this next year.

Clair (Digital Archivist): “2019 has been the year that I had the fantastic opportunity and privilege of joining the Special Collections & Archives team on a permanent basis.

Personally it’s been a bit of a whirlwind year, with lots of professional development alongside new challenges and exciting opportunities. One particular highlight for me was our Hands-on History event in June. This event saw us welcoming ten volunteers in to special Collections for a two week period to learn some archives and cataloguing skills, and to work on the Max Tyler Music Hall collection.

Volunteers are examining documents from the Max Tyler Music Hall collection in the Special Collections & Archives Reading Room

Volunteers working on our Music Hall collection

The first week focussed on the team sharing expertise and experiences with the volunteers in the form of presentations and workshops, whilst the second week was very much hands-on with the volunteers cleaning, repackaging and describing materials from the collection. This included music hall ephemera such as posters and programmes, Max’s research notes, photographs, musical and lyrical songsheets, audio cassettes and even Max’s suit and straw hat!

It was a really positive and productive week with the volunteers producing a total of 291 catalogue records, which is a testament to how dedicated and proactive the group was. It was an absolute pleasure to have them working with us, and we’re lucky enough to still have some of the group volunteering with us on an ongoing basis.

Another exciting project that I’ve been involved with this year is the return of the Beaverbrook Cartoon Collection to the University of Kent.

This cartoon collection holds what is widely regarded as some of the most important British political cartoons from the twentieth century. It features work by artists David Low, Victor Weisz (‘Vicky’), Michael Cummings and Sidney Strube.

Selection of political cartoons found in the Beaverbrook Collection

Selection of cartoons found in the Beaverbrook Collection

The collection has been beautifully repackaged by the Beaverbrook Foundation and they have now loaned the artworks back to us so that they can be made available for teaching and research. Although the artwork can already be found on our British Cartoon Archive catalogue, we will be re-digitising the entire collection during 2020 to a high archival standard.

It’s a really exciting time for the Special Collections team with lots of exciting projects in the pipeline… I can’t wait to get stuck in in 2020!!!”

Jennie (Library Assistant, Digital Curation & Metadata): “This year I’ve really enjoyed working to add two collections to our catalogue – the Max Tyler Collection and the Peter Baldwin Collection.

One of the toy theatres in the Peter Baldwin collection undergoing preservation

Both archives are related to theatre, albeit toy theatres in the case of Peter Baldwin! I’m looking forward to our first request for these items to be brought up to the reading room for consultation – especially some of the scenery and figures for Peter Baldwin’s toy theatres. Describing them for the catalogue has been a bit of a challenge, but it is exactly the sort of thing I enjoy and I’m sure that 2020 will bring even more of it!”

Jo (Senior Library Assistant, Special Collections & Archives): “Since September 2018 we’ve been working regularly with sixth form students at Simon Langton Boys School. Under the supervision of their History teachers they’ve been coming up weekly to research the life of Hewlett Johnson, better known as the ‘Red Dean’ of Canterbury Cathedral due to his socialist views. As Hewlett was Dean from 1931 – 1963 he was well connected with hugely influential political figures and thus his archive is a fantastic snapshot of 20th century society.

Dean Hewlett Johnson

It’s been a real joy to see students develop their archival research skills across the year – many of the 2018/2019 cohort are now applying to read History at university which has in part been decided by their visiting us. The 2019/2020 cohort, having completed a training day about how to use archives, are now fully immersing themselves in the collection and are asking so many great questions along the way.

Artwork by Carl Giles for the Ministry of Information film ‘The Grenade’

My other highlight of the year was working with our two wonderful interns, Thomas and Nicola, to develop an exhibition exploring humour and the Second World War. This was a great chance to explore our British Cartoon Archive in a lot of depth; Thomas and Nicola established some great themes which allowed the exhibition to discuss political cartooning trends from 1914 to the present day. My favourite part of the exhibition was how Alex, our Digitisation Assistant, transferred two animations from VHS onto DVD: the films were created by cartoonist Carl Giles for the Ministry of Information during the war. They’re really funny sequences and added a lot of atmosphere to the exhibition.”

Beth (Project Archivist for the UK Philanthropy Archive): “The UK Philanthropy Archive is a new project to identify, collect and preserve archives that record the activities of philanthropists, philanthropic trusts and foundations, networks and other related organisations. These archives are important and are an essential component in supporting research in the history and current practice of UK philanthropy and charitable giving. Our aim is that the material in the archive will represent the history, experiences and perspectives of philanthropists, trusts and foundations and their impact on the UK and globally, and will form an important and well-used research resource, and a tool for engaging more people in philanthropy.

Beth and Dame Stephanie passing on the first items from the Shirley Foundation Collection

We are fortunate to be supported in this project by Dame Stephanie Shirley and the Shirley Foundation – the papers of which also form our founding collection. Dame Stephanie is a tech entrepreneur and philanthropist who focussed her giving on women in tech, IT projects, and autism research and education. One of the highlights of the year was our first trip to meet Dame Stephanie and talk about her collection. This was quickly followed by receiving the first deposit of material including the project files with details of all the projects supported by the Shirley Foundation over its lifetime. This collection is now being catalogued and should be available for research early in 2020. We are also fortunate to have the philanthropic papers of Amanda Sebestyen, a journalist, activist and feminist interested in human rights, women and social justice. This interesting collection is also being catalogued ready for 2020. In the first year of the project we have been focussing on planning and developing contacts to encourage new donations – and we are delighted that this is now bearing fruit with negotiations underway with several trusts and foundations about their archives. Watch this space for more about this in the new year!

Some of the items in the Shirley Foundation archives

We have planned a seminar event about archives on philanthropy to mark the end of the first year of the project and to officially launch the UK Philanthropy Archive. This will be followed by a wine reception and our inaugural Shirley Lecture – to be delivered by Dame Stephanie Shirley. This will be a fantastic event on Wednesday 11^th March and we are really looking forward to welcoming people to the library to learn more about archives, philanthropy, and the life experiences of Dame Stephanie.

Another highlight for the project has been in developing our approach to collecting to ensure that the UK Philanthropy Archive reflects the variety and diversity of the philanthropy sector as a whole – including both the activities and perspectives of philanthropists and grant-givers, but also the impact that funding has had on grant recipients. We believe that collecting the records of some of the organisations and initiatives that have been supported by philanthropists represented in our collections will provide a more comprehensive picture of grant funding and philanthropic practice in the UK. We are very excited by the possibilities of this approach and we look forward to seeing how the collections develop as a result.

It has been a fantastic experience working in Special Collections & Archives so far – the collections are brilliant and have so much potential, the special collections team are wonderful and supportive – and I can’t wait to see what 2020 brings.”

Rachel (Liaison Librarian for the Arts and Humanities): “I was involved in the Hands on History event in June and talked about finding aids and online resources with a particular focus on the Gale Newsvault.

My daughter came to the library for her school Year 9 Welcome to Work Day in October and gained a valuable insight into the work we do as well as into the world of work. She particularly enjoyed her introduction to Special Collections and Archives.

Special Collections and Archives supported an ‘ArtsBites’ event in the library in November celebrating the academic output of the School of Arts, with a bookpod and accompanying talk by Dr Sophie Quirk, a drama lecturer in School of Arts.

Poster, 1980. Originally a venue, The Comic Strip collective quickly embarked on a national tour, released an LP and produced TV series “The Comic Strip Presents…”

Materials from the Stand-Up Comedy Archive were displayed alongside the bookpod and talk ‘Why Stand-Up Matters: Comedy and its Politics’ .”

Tom (University Archivist): “My highlight of 2019 was working with the Gulbenkian to help celebrate their 50th anniversary with their National Lottery Heritage Fund project ‘Radical Roots and Dangerous Ideas’. This saw us delivering a number of workshops using the University and Gulbenkian archives to help set the context for the establishment of the Gulbenkian and focusing on its place in the new university and the radical student politics of the time. Groups from the various youth groups of the Gulbenkian came to look at architectural plans, production files and posters, photographs, prospectuses and student publications and newspapers amongst other archive items. It was great to have a younger audience using our collections and to see how they responded to the archives. In addition to the workshops, the project generated an exhibition curated by ART31 and displayed Colyer-Fergusson, Beaney House of Art and Knowledge and the Templeman Gallery. We also recruited a team of volunteers and an intern to help repackage and enhance the catalogue records for the production files from the Gulbenkian collection (by the end of the project the first 20 years will be completed), improving the accessibility and ensuring the preservation of this collection.

Youth groups exploring the Gulbenkian archive

One of the most exciting things about the project was that it generated new content for the Gulbenkian Archive, including oral histories with Kent staff and alumni from the late 1960s and early 1970s on their memories of the early years of the Gulbenkian. It also resulted in a zine containing original creative writing inspired by the collections, a copy of which will in turn become part of the archive.”

Zine from the Radical Roots project

See this blog post for more on the Gulbenkian at 50: https://blogs.kent.ac.uk/specialcollections/2019/12/11/radical-roots-and-dangerous-ideas-archives-and-gulbenkians-heritage/

Alex (Digital Imaging Assistant): “The year 2019 began with a rescue mission – a collection of VHS Videotapes donated to the University by the late comedian and activist: Jeremy Hardy. To ensure that the British Stand Up Comedy Archive had digital copies of this material before the magnetic VHS tapes suffered any further deterioration I duplicated the relevant content to digital file.

Jeremy Hardy

Amongst the various sketches and stand up sets was a (possibly unique) American recording of a fresh faced Jeremy at the famous New York comedy club; “Carolines”.

From Spring 2019 I began work on archival digitisation of the more than 800 analogue recordings of Open Lectures given at the University over the past 50 years. These recordings feature many well know speakers and experts in their field. I have already unearthed many highlights in these recordings. Topics have included the truth behind the “Bridge over the river Kwai” myth by a soldier who lived through the experience and “Stonehenge Decoded” by a noted archaeoastronomer.

Our audiovisual digitisation equipment

From the content I’ve digitised so far I’m sure that there will be many more gems as I work my way through this collection in 2020!”

On behalf of the whole SC&A team, we hope you have a lovely Christmas break and we’ll see you in 2020! The Reading Room reopens on Monday 13th January.

Advance notice: SC&A Christmas Closure 2019 – 2020

Posted on December 5, 2019 by Joanna Baines

As the weather turns frosty and deadlines loom, we at Special Collections and Archives are already turning thoughts towards the new decade! With this in mind, the advance planners among you may like to know that our closure dates for the winter break are Thursday 19th December (2019) – Friday 10th January (2020).

Special Collections & Archives Christmas closure dates for 2019/2020 featuring a snow-topped windmill

No windmills were harmed in the making of this graphic.

This period is inclusive, so our last open day before Christmas will be Wednesday 18th December (9.30 – 4.30). We’ll be open again on Monday 13th January from (1 – 4.30) as usual. Just like last year, this closure is a bit longer because we’ll be spending the first week of January working in our basements, looking after our collections and preparing everything for the new year and beyond.

In true SC&A style, a blogpost featuring the team’s highlights will be up before term ends; as ever, if you have any queries do get in touch with us.

We hope you’ve had a wonderful Autumn Term (and 2019) so far and look forward to seeing you all in the new year!

University of Kent Special Collections & Archives

News and views from the Special Collections & Archives team at the University of Kent.

Category Archives: News

SC&A in review: 2020 edition

Coronavirus: collecting your experiences

Templeman Library Closure: SC&A digital resources

SC&A Highlights: 2019 edition

Advance notice: SC&A Christmas Closure 2019 – 2020