A Moving Story
The excitement of building two centres with archives being available in east Cheshire for the first time comes with some critical decisions to make about our collections, and we have been asked ‘what will go where?’ lots of times. It is never right to split collections in two, but as long as our decisions are based on sound criteria grounded in collections care and accessibility for our communities, and we can clearly explain our reasoning, we reckon we won’t go far wrong.
With a couple of years to go we developed a pecking order based on what we know about our collections and our customers. Trumping all other considerations is collections care. The oldest and most complex documents that often need a conservator’s help before being looked at have to stay close to the conservation unit that will be in Chester. It would have been wasteful to duplicate specialist equipment and conservators at two centres – and Chester’s medieval collections defined where that concentration of expertise should be.
Half of all our collections will continue to be kept offsite – records that will not be looked at for decades, or that should not be looked at because we have digital alternatives, will not qualify for more costly accommodation in our centres. Records that need to be consulted east and west will also be kept in the salt mine at Winsford and delivered to either centre as required – the records of the old County Council are the best example of this.
Next, we respond to archive owners, users, and their expectations. Some types of collections are best collected and best used locally. Records of schools, churches, businesses, and local councils are mainly looked at for particular self-contained research reasons - for example, an anniversary celebration or a local decision. We hope to welcome many more primary school visits to our new centres than was ever possible here at the Record Office. Whenever we did children loved seeing their school’s logbooks. They work like headteacher’s diaries through the decades, and show what children’s school lives were like in the past. Schoolchildren across Cheshire will now have this opportunity east or west.
And finally, some collections really do sit well together, such as stories of engineering in Crewe, and the chemical industry in Chester. There is no doubt that the heavy engineering work which shaped Crewe led to a concentration of the same activity in the vicinity. In the same way, we will concentrate collections that complement one another for the benefit of researchers.
We won’t move collections between Chester and Crewe (apart from permanently if we need to), but we’ll be clear about where collections can be accessed in advance of visits, and we’ll have the technology to beam a document into the other centre. For now, we will continue to allocate boxes to their future homes with a low-tech blue or green sticker and can’t wait to see how it all works out.
By Lisa Greenhalgh
