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Get Inspired … Alan Ball 2017 Award Winners and Entries

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Alan Ball Awards 2017

Winner Hardcopy:

Alan Roby ed.; Miss Weeton, Governess and Traveller; Wigan Archives, 2016.

(Hardback, ISBN 978-1-5262-0553-7)

A skilfully edited, beautifully produced and illustrated volume containing the letters, journal entries and other autobiographical writings of Miss Nelly Weeton (1776-1849) providing a vivid insight into Georgian England. Born in Lancaster, the daughter of a sea captain who was mortally wounded in the American War of Independence, Nelly grew up in the village of Up Holland, near Wigan. At the age of 31 she left her family home to take up employment in the houses of the gentry. She became a governess and a traveller, moving to Liverpool and the Lake District; while her writings include accounts of a journey to London, excursions to the Isle of Man and North Wales, including lone ascents of Snaefell and Snowdon.

 

Winner E-publication:

Spratton Local History Society website http://www.sprattonhistory.org/

The society’s new website was launched in November 2016 with the aim to make 17 years of research by its members available to local people and the wider public. It is part of a much larger First World War projected aided by an award from the Heritage Lottery Fund. Members researched all the men of the village who served during the war. It included the first airman to be awarded the Victoria Cross, Lt William Rhodes-Moorehouse VC RFC.

Basing research on the 1911 census, local researchers identified where each person who served lived in the village, supported by an interactive map. This research was also inked to a searchable genealogical database (6,000 names) of 2,000 families living in Spratton in the nineteenth century. The society continues to add to the website, which includes villagers who were at the Battle of Waterloo, 2000 photographs including some previously unpublished images, and a Spratton Heritage Trail.

The project enabled volunteers to develop new skills and engage with the history of their local community; while it has also connected the community to descendants of those who served and their families, who live elsewhere in the UK and around the world. It is a fantastic example of an accessible, engaging and informative online community history archive, and of the wider impact such projects can achieve.

Other Hardcopy nominations

Emma Worrall, Amy Perry and Martin Hayes ed.; Military Voices Pat and Present: West Sussex Veterans in the 20th Century; West sussex County Council Library Service; 2017.

(Hardback, ISBN 978-0-86260-593-3)

The idea for this publication came out of a previous project on the Great War when Worthing History Teacher Peter Baker offered his collection to the library service for research. It contianed 32 interviews with 1914-18 veterans. The collection is now preserved at the West sussex Record Offcice. In addiotn, project staff and 45 volunteers conducted 63 interviews with 29 Second World War and 33 post war veterans. All the interviews are available indigital form at the West Sussex Record Office. Extracts from the interviews and biographical research have been combined skillfuly into this wonderful volume of military voices recording the contribution of some of the men and women from West sussex who served thier country.

 

 Edmund Bird and Fiona Price; Lambeth’s Victorian Architecture; London Borough of Lambeth and the Lambeth Local History Forum; 2017. With photographs by Harry Orseni.(Paperback, ISBN 978-0-9926695-4-6)

This is the firth volume in the excellent series on the architectural history of Lambeth. It provides a fascinating pictorial and written record of Victorian buildings in Lambeth. These include public buildings and those relating to health, education, parks, shops, banks, transport, industry, pubs, housing and churches; with colour images and architectural summaries of hundreds of properties, sculptures and structures. There is also an introduction to Victorian Lambeth and a section on Lambeth’s lost Victorian buildings.

 

Doncaster Times, At Home At War. Issue 2: November 2016; Doncaster Library Service (Paperback)

Under the editorship of Helen Wallder, Local Studies Officer, Doncaster Local Studies Library, this local history journal was established via a HLF funded project, Doncaster 1914-18: At Home At War, supplementing a website and aimed at audiences who engage less with digital outputs. The journal is produced twice a year and this edition was submitted for the Alan Ball Award. THe journal is a great concept, containing article reserached and written by member sof the public, volunteers, local historians and staff at Doncaster Library. It covers all aspects of Doncaster’s history during the First World War. With a wide range of topics and illustrations, it helps to highlight items in the Doncaster Local Studies Collection. It has engaged a wide range of communities and individuals, and not just in Doncaster, but as far away as Europe and New Zealand.

 

Ellesmere Port Local and Family History Society, Ellesemere Port Town Centre Memories; 2016 (Paperback)

With the support of Cheshire West and Chester Libraries, the Ellesmere Port Local and Family History Society compiled this fourth booklet in the ‘Memories’ series, charting the history of the development of Ellesemere Port Town Centre, from its origins as a single farm known as Stud Farm to the present day. The memories include the local school, football ground, shops, arcades and the market; together with other developments in the civic and commercial areas of the town. It is a 104 page limited edition publication, which includes 250 photographs, maps and diagrams. It is an excellent example of community history being made accessible by dedicated group of volunteers.

 

Other E-nominations

Know Your Place South West http://www.kypwest.org.uk/

Know Your Place is a digital heritage mapping project designed to help you explore your neighbourhood online through historic maps, collections and linked information. It was initially developed by Bristol City Council in 2011, primarily as a planning tool. In 2015, funding was granted from the Heritage Lottery Fund to extend the map across six further counties in the West of England: Gloucestershire, Somerset, Wiltshire and the former Avon area (the unitary authorities of South Gloucestershire, Bath & North East Somerset and North Somerset). It received Heritage Lottery funding to run an extension project from June 2015 to the end of July 2017. This was added to by match-funding and in-kind support from local authorities and heritage groups in the region.

The project has been delivered through a complex partnership involving Museums, Bristol’s Know Your Place team, Archives and HER Officers in the six counties, and national partners including the British Library, who have supported the project by making available and digitising some of the maps. Other partners have included exhibition hosts, and smaller organisations which have provided match funding.

This funding and support has enabled the project to build a mapping resource that covers 4689 square miles (12,149 km), using maps from nine separate national, regional and local map collections and archives, and now makes the archaeological records, listed buildings and monuments data for those areas more publicly available. A notable feature of Know Your Place is its presentation of comparative historical maps for each area, making it possible for the site user to “whizz through history” looking at maps from different periods on the same screen.

The Know Your Place team also carried out an outreach programme to extend awareness of the site, that was made up of exhibitions, events and workshops. An online and touring exhibition was developed with content from 22 collections, while a range of outreach events attracted over 2,000 people. These were a combination of drop-in events and more structured workshops. 107 people were trained in using Know Your Place to map their organisation’s heritage information. The tangible outcome from these workshops is becoming apparent, as more information from the workshop locations appears online. 100 volunteers supported the project, including 70 people who helped crop or geo-reference maps. By the end of the project, 35 people were continuing to work regularly to ensure that new maps continued to appear on the website.

 

Flintshire War Memorials http://www.flintshirewarmemorials.com/

This is a community website on which the stories behind the names on Flintshire’s WW1 memorials are told. The project is ‘staffed’ by volunteer researchers – all amateur historians – who take on responsibility for a particular memorial and research the stories of those named on that memorial. (There are currently 24 researchers). Each researcher has a password and user name and has received training in how to add their research to the website. Once a story is posted on the website, members of the public can contact the website via the contact page and send in additional details and scanned images of documents, photographs personal memorabilia. These are added to the relevant pages and so the stories grow almost organically.

The project is managed by the two founders of the website who began by researching their own local memorial (Eifion and Viv Williams). It was financially supported in its early days by Flintshire Local Voluntary Council and by Heritage Lottery Wales. It has also been financed through a programme of talks to various community groups where a fee is charged. Some volunteer researchers have raised funds in other ways. Throughout the centenary period there has been an annual study visit to France/Flanders for researchers and other interested Flintshire residents.

Why not enter for the 2018 award … see details posted on this site

 

Top tips on Reminisence work for local studies and archive professionals

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On 12 April 2016 LSG and ARA NW held a joint training session on reminiscence work and dementia awareness. It was run by Libby Lawrence who gave us plenty of practical advice on how to run a reminiscence session and how to use our resources.

Libby stressed that the most important thing to remember when we’re dealing with people with memory problems is that they may be in a different timespace and we have to accept their truth not try to force them into ours. We shouldn’t be afraid of people becoming upset as it may be helping them to express some buried emotion. It is most important to listen properly (and she described some of the ways of developing listening skills), to be non judgmental and genuine. The session included lots of practical tips on managing groups or one-to-one sessions.

It would be difficult to run a reminiscence session without training, not least because you need something like this to give you confidence, but there are many other ways that local studies collections can be vital. Libby suggested that sessions should be themed and that trigger items are needed. Our collections include plenty of trigger items such as old photographs and adverts, music or other sounds, newspapers etc. There should be a set of prompt questions with each item which may, or may not, be needed and our collections will be a source of information for these questions to be compiled. Libby stressed that trigger items should be multi-sensory so that people who can’t see can hear or smell, and there should be a chance to do something, even if it’s just stirring a cake mixture, as that can trigger memories for people who are less able to participate in a group. Many will be objects (easily available from car boot sales) but a local studies collection could provide useful information about objects which would help in compiling prompt questions.

For libraries who wish to get involved in reminiscence but don’t have the skills – or staff time – to run sessions creating a few themed boxes of trigger items and prompt questions might be a possibility. Libby was adamant that only a few items are needed per session.

Many care homes now try to provide Life Story Books for their residents so that their memories are validated and they can show other people. If they don’t have their own photographs and other material it may be possible to compile something from a local collection.

Libby recommended the book The Reminiscence Skills Training Handbook by Ann Rainbow (2003). The Age Exchange Reminiscence Centre at Blackheath can also advise and provide resources – http://www.age-exchange.org.uk

9 unexpected ways local studies have made a difference

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The news about East Sussex is very disheartening, especially as it’s being replicated elsewhere – the Community History staff in Lancashire Libraries have also all gone. The threat to the collections, and the loss of the staff to maintain and give access to them, seems very short sighted just as the Libraries Taskforce consultation document is encouraging libraries to concentrate on learning, digital skills, community cohesion, sense of place, health etc – all areas where local studies can play a very important role (though local studies don’t seem to be mentioned at all in the consultation document). After decades working in local studies I decided to list some of the more unexpected uses of the collections which I remember –

Local studies libraries can provide important supporting material for HLF bids in other parts of the authority, for example refurbishment of Victorian urban parks.The extensive descriptions in the newspapers when the parks were opened often allowed the original planting to be reinstated and the huge number of Edwardian postcards and other illustrations meant almost entire parks are recorded. Staff can also point out biographical material on the benefactors to the parks.

Queries from Legal departments. The minutes of old council meetings were often found to be very basic records of decisions, and if the accompanying reports have not survived, newspaper accounts of the meetings were often required to fill in the background.

Maps are often used for boundary disputes and disputes over rights of way. I remember a young couple in their first house who visited because they had chopped down some trees which were inside their fence only to find that their neighbour claimed the land and the trees. The old OS maps confirmed their boundary line and by talking to other neighbours and comparing information with the old voters lists they were able to track down previous residents who had photographs which helped them.

We regularly used maps for the local homing pigeon society. Each new member’s house had to be pinpointed on the map and the exact grid reference noted.

Missing people. The old voters lists and Kellys Directories have often helped track down missing people, from family members to old school friends. They are important in providing proof of residence for legal reasons too, especially for people whose right to be in this country is being queried.

Local businesses sometimes want historical material for promotional purposes. I remember a graphic designer who had set up in a very unusual building on a corner. Staff were able to point him to a printed history of the local co-operative society which included a history of the building, which had been one of their shops, and several photographs. He incorporated this information into his prospectuses.

Many people (men!) who spent their working life in one trade want to keep themselves active by restoring some piece of old equipment connected with their work. Our large collection of cotton textbooks (used by workers who were trying to get on by studying their trade at night school) often helped later generations in their restoration projects. Sometimes we had the makers’ trade catalogues for the relevant machines too.

I’m sure many local studies libraries are contacted by people now living in the USA wanting proof that they finished their schooling. As we don’t have the “high school diploma” they need proof of their O levels and A levels. Often the list found in old newspapers is adequate, but the paper will also give a clue as to which exam board was used by each school so the enquirer can approach them too.

Most of these are very practical uses of our collections, but we all have stories of the emotional value of local materials. Since Who Do You Think You Are many people get very emotional as they find out about their family’s past and this helps link them to the area and build local identity. But I also remember doing a talk for a group who met at one of the lending libraries. I played extracts about housework from our oral history collections and was a bit worried that one woman seemed to take the event over, she kept adding her memories of helping her mother. I was afraid the rest of the group felt excluded until one of the others told me later that this lady had never even spoken at any previous meetings of the group. I also remember a girl whose father had committed suicide when she was very young. She was seeing a counsellor who had suggested that she find out more about how he died so she came to read the newspaper account of the inquest. She was very upset, but glad that she knew what had happened.

I feel very concerned that these important collections are under threat and that we are losing the staff who can preserve them for the future and help people get the most out of them today.

Do you have any other examples of how local studies work has made a difference to the local community or individuals within it? Please leave a comment to this blog

Local Studies refreshes the parts other depts cannot reach

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Guest blogger Anne talks about her time in local studies….

I was very fortunate to work in several Local Studies Libraries fulfilling a range of roles as a Librarian. One of the roles that ran through all posts was that of “user engagement” and “user education” – dull words for essentially ensuring that customers, readers, researchers could use and access the resources they needed. Levels of interest and need varied from schoolchildren, parents, students, historians, artists and novelists, planners, architects, farmers …… I can remember one schoolteacher saying that she felt that as a result of class visits to the local studies library, her students’ A level results had improved.

In addition to their value to researchers and heritage, Local Studies collections (and projects) have the powerful potential to engage people from widely different backgrounds and generations. Interesting and creative projects have the power to motivate individuals to overcome barriers to learning digital technologies, to build new social networks (combatting isolation, depression and related health issues), to rekindle an in interest in life and learning through informal learning opportunities. Librarians and archivists working creatively and in partnership with a wide range of educational providers, facilitators and artists, and others, can ensure that opportunities exist to engage different levels of ability and ranges of interest (rather than engaging the same school or group of participants each time because its easier to do so).

There used to be a concern that libraries attracted more female readers than male. Local Studies and Heritage related projects attract both, and appeal to different age ranges. I met a student yesterday who is thrilled to know that the new library opening this summer will have a local studies section. This is heartening – except that the existing library already has a local studies section and a collection which dates back to the 1890s.

Unfortunately use of print based materials (including maps, ephemera, etc) in a local studies library rarely count when library usage is measured, as the items are not “issued” on computer. In addition, once materials are digitised readers are often denied access to print based originals, or facsimiles, which effectively alienates a large part of the population, existing and potential users, who have yet to be engaged with digital technology. Access to resources in various formats supports research, and can help the learning process and appeal to different learning styles. This is something that experienced librarians will be aware of – but whose voices may be lost in the need to cut floor space and costs, with an eye also on income generation.