Welcome to the third edition of the Gloucestershire Heritage Hub newsletter.

Since April, the Heritage Hub site – both outside and in – has been a hive of activity. 

Externally, we've been creating firm foundations.  The 26 tonne piling rig shown below arrived on the back of a lorry from Devon.  It drilled 87 piles 10 metres deep to underpin our new strong rooms in a matter of days.  

Paul Lander, Lakehouse Site Manager with Kim Kenny, 'For the Record' Project Officer.

Internally, the temporary forest of scaffolding poles is disappearing as the new Hub area develops.   Surprisingly, it’s due to be ready for us to move into in early October 2017.  We – that’s the Archives, Gloucestershire Family History Society and Gloucestershire Police Archive volunteers – are keen to set up our new home quickly, ready for visitors.  So it’ll be a case of ‘all hands on deck’ as soon as we get the keys!  The Archives research room will be closed whilst we do this and we reckon it’ll take just two weeks to get everything done and dusted.  We’ll keep you updated with the latest news, including the opening date for the Hub, via our blog and website gloucestershire.gov.uk/archives.

Left to right: views from former strongroom and former locker room into research room; old front door.

Our move won’t be the end of the journey for Hub building works. These will continue for a further six months, creating a new main entrance, foyer, training suite, strong rooms and community garden.

House History

In recent weeks staff at Gloucestershire Archives have presented 2 free sessions on House History, for people researching the history of their homes. The events were supported by Gloucester City Council’s Townscape Heritage Initiative. The focus of this Heritage Lottery funded project has been refurbishing residential, ecclesiastical and commercial properties in historic Southgate Street, in Gloucester. The sessions took place at the Frith (the temporary search-room lite), and there will be a full programme of such events in our new, spacious premises once the Heritage Hub is open.

For more information about City Council’s Townscape Heritage Initiative visit

http://www.gloucester.gov.uk/news/pages/southgate-street-townscape-heritage-initiative.aspx

There will also be a programme of training courses, offered by Gloucestershire Archives’ staff, as part of the offer from the new Heritage Hub, and this is something we are planning at the moment. We really want the new Hub to be a busy place, a place of discovery, welcoming, and with something to offer young and old alike. Our partners will have an important role in making this vision a reality.

261 fish in the Archives?

Gloucestershire Archives staff have been busy trying to make some of the help information about the Archives' online catalogue much more accessible. We’ve planned a series of videos and the first, called ‘The Basics’, is now available from the Gloucestershire Archives website. It is free to access, lasts for about 6 minutes and aims to give a brief introduction to our catalogue, as well as some hints and tips on using it.

The video show us searching catalogue descriptions with the word 'fish’ in them - you just need to replace this with your own search term and you'll be on your way!   

We’ll be following it up soon with a second video - ‘Searching Smarter’.

Blogging for Gloucestershire Archives

As well as the popular 'Blogging a Building' series other members of staff and partners have been using their blogging skills to give other information about the Archives.

Take a peek at some of the latest blogs.

Gloucestershire archives revealed (1) -

There are countless hidden gems in Gloucestershire Archives’ collections.  These range from beautifully illuminated medieval manuscripts to nuggets of priceless information and funny facts, often concealed in ordinary-looking documents.  These treasures are usually uncovered in the Archives’ research room, either by visitors using our collections or by Archives staff that handle them as part of our access arrangements.

It seems a shame to keep these special finds a secret so we thought we’d set up a new blog series to share them with you, beginning with a post we’ve written ourselves.....

gloucestershirearchives.wordpress.com/2017/05/05/archives-revealed-1/

Or how about.... 

New arrivals in our strong rooms -

Each month new archives arrive at Gloucestershire Archives – either as gifts or as deposits on indefinite loan. We regularly process between 25 and 35 new batches (or ‘accessions’). All are logged into our collections management database and stored securely.

gloucestershirearchives.wordpress.com/2017/05/31/new-arrivals-in-our-strong-rooms/

And a blog written by one of our partners....

Ab initio – or from the get go

Self service at Gloucestershire Archives

Earlier this year Gloucestershire Archives applied for – and were successful in obtaining - a grant of £15,000 from the Local Government Association (LGA) digital channel shift programme. This project will help transform our customer experience.

Background

10,000 customers use our research room each year to consult original documents in our collections. They range from local and family history researchers (mostly older people) to professionals who require our documented evidence to do their day jobs e.g. council colleagues dealing with rights of way and planning issues. 

Currently two of our key research room processes are inefficient because information is double entered, firstly by the customer and then by us. We will use the grant to introduce systems that will allow customers to enter data directly into our database.

Outcome

By the end of September this project will offer our users an improved and streamlined experience, and some of the funding will go towards making sure there’s as much information about the new system as possible. We’ll be writing user guides/help sheets/making videos and training volunteers to help customers get the most out of the new system.

Fancy a peek inside the developing Heritage Hub?

There a few spaces left on the ‘hard hat tour’ at 1pm on Thursday 6^th July.  And you can join us if you take the right size shoes!  This isn't a mysterious form of selection.  Rather, we have to wear safety shoes and our supply of sizes 5, 7 and 10 have already been taken for this tour. 

Email brenda.fenner@gloucestershire.gov.uk , giving your shoe size, to book your place.

We’ll be offering more ‘hard hat tours’ as slots in the building work emerge.  If you’re interested, please keep an eye on our website where we’ll be advertising them.  Due to the nature of building works, there’s likely to be limited advance notice.   

Sorting websites…

In order to help us design the best website for the new Heritage Hub, we’ll be adding a sorting exercise to the Gloucestershire Archives website within the next couple of weeks.

Look out for it if you’re on the site!

gloucestershire.gov.uk/archives

Thank you to our funders, part 2

In this edition, we’d like to thank Arts Council England

Gloucestershire Archives is delighted to have received funding from Arts Council England to work with 5 artists, creating original artwork for the new Heritage Hub.

This collaboration of heritage and art will bring together the local community, members of the Gloucestershire Heritage Hub network and our partners with the artists to create beautiful, eye-catching public artworks that tell the story of Gloucestershire’s history.

The five artists are Imogen Harvey-Lewis an illustrator, Julia O’Connell, a textile artist, Natasha Houseago, a sculptor and TomatoJack Arts who are mosaic artists.

 Click on the images below to read more about the artists and see examples of their work.

          Imogen Harvey-Lewis                                  Julia O'Connell                              Natasha Houseago              TomatoJack          

The artist activity will continue until July 2018.