The Mills Archive is restarting our workshops on caring for your archival collections. These online sessions offer guidance on how to preserve and organise your records, old and recent.
Some of you may not think you have an archive or enough ‘old’ material. You may have newspaper cuttings, photos, technical drawings, manuscripts and letters that are centuries old or from this year. You may have emails and digital files containing recently written history. It is never too early to protect the past.
Part 1: Overview, Arrangement, Description
Saturday, 8 November, 2:00–4:00 pm GMT.
This workshop gives an overview of how and why to organise records and archives. It covers key questions: What material should be kept? How should records be described, listed and catalogued to ensure their information is not lost? We then look in more detail at the decisions that need to be made when preserving records for the future.
Part 2: Preservation and Access
Saturday, 22 November, 2:00–4:00 pm GMT.
This workshop examines the issues of preserving and providing access to records. Papers and documents need to be preserved from threats including damp and mould, pests, pollution, poor handling and disasters. Digital records must be protected from equally devastating threats.
Dates and prices
The first online Caring for your Collection workshop will take place on Saturday 8 and Saturday 22 November. Both will be between 2:00 and 4:00 pm. The price of both webinars is £50. Heritage Partners can send one delegate for free to both workshops.
We will send you a link to the Zoom meeting closer to the time.
Feel free to forward this invitation to people who may be interested. You can email me at nathan.trill@millsarchive.org for more information.
Here is the link to pay for both workshops together:
Below are the links to pay for the workshops separately:
Alternatively, you can pay by bank transfer or cheque. Please email archivist@millsarchive.org to let me know you have paid via bank transfer so you can be sent a link to the workshops. More information is available here:
Previous attendees wrote:
“I’d been given the job of looking after our village archive but was feeling quite overwhelmed by the vastness of the task ahead and the responsibility of looking after so many precious unique documents … I jumped at the chance to attend and am so pleased I did. It was run in a professional, yet friendly manner and covered so much useful content that I came away feeling much more confident about the next steps needed to organise, catalogue and care for the material we hold. The accompanying manual has been an invaluable source of reference since the course too!”
Mary-Lou, Tackley Local History Group
“Thank you for an interesting webinar. I really joined to learn how to look after a small collection of family papers. I now feel confident that I could volunteer to help with our local history group archive.”
Joanna
“As a complete amateur, I found it very intimidating to be presented with a mass of papers and artefacts. We gained our “expertise” from museum-run courses through SHARE, but archiving was not covered. So it is a relief that the methods we adopted are on the right lines”
Stotfold Watermill
“Thank you so much for such a stimulating, inspiring and extremely informative workshop. I can’t express how many elements I took for each area of the topic. The workshop has really given me confidence as I felt a little nervous to be taking on such a massive project alone. I now feel focused and confident with how I will set about this project.”
Brixton Windmill