Rolling out the Archives project

In September 2005, the 3-year Rolling out the Archives project began, funded by a grant of £196,100 from the Heritage Lottery Fund.

Rolling out the Archives is a project to improve access to the unique and irreplaceable archives that the Service holds for the people of Rotherham.

The project has three areas of work: preservation, cataloguing and outreach.

Preservation

After the first year the preservation work is almost complete. This has involved the refurbishing of the strongroom, where the archives are held in secure, environmentally controlled storage whilst they are not in use by customers. New mobile shelving was installed, a large programme of secondary protection for the material, and other work to the lighting and decorations was carried out.

A team of 12 volunteers also undertook a Preservation Assessment Survey which has helped to establish priorities for further preservation work on the collections and for in depth conservation work on individual items.

Cataloguing

The cataloguing work will last for the lifetime of the project. The project is focussing on the major sources for the history of Rotherham, and on the largest uncatalogued collections. All the catalogues will be made available online at the conclusion of the project, alongside catalogues covering the rest of the holdings of the service.

This is an image of a project archivist cataloguing documents.
Completed Catalogues

41-UD - Rawmarsh Urban District Council
367-N - Rotherham Methodist Circuit
363-G - The Feoffees of the Common Lands of Rotherham
185-B - Hart Moss and Copley (accountants)
15-C - Rotherham Police
63-B - Parker Rhodes (solicitors)
307-B - Beatson Clark (glass manufacturers)
301-F - Verelst of Aston Hall
58-N - Dearne Valley Methodist Circuit

The catalogues of Guest and Chrimes (brass founders) and Mountforth of Kilnhurst are currently in progress. The other archives to be catalogued as part of Rolling out the Archives project are Rotherham County Borough Council and the Urban District Councils of Maltby, Swinton and Rotherham Rural District Council; British Steel; estate records of the Earl of Effingham and the papers of Dorothy Greene (antiquarian).

Outreach

The third strand of the project is promoting the use of the newly catalogued archives through a variety of means. Until an archive is catalogued, it is impossible to know all the matters it covers and all the areas of research to which it may be relevant. Learning materials will be produced workshops, talks, community history days and other activities undertaken to promote the use of the archives.

Click here to view our This is an internal link icon. Educational resources page which gives access to learning resources.

Rolling out the Archive project leaflet (528 Kb)

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