Out with the old in with the new catalogues

Staff kept calm and carried on despite operating under a restricted service for the last six weeks, and have been working hard to improve access to our collections whilst continuing to offer a limited public service.

We may not have been able to access the collections themselves whilst the building work was on-going, but we did have access to the old catalogues typed many years ago and to standards we no longer recognise. A process, known as retro-conversion enables us to take an old list and re-key the data into our database ensuring that they adhere to the modern standards of cataloguing and allowing us to create an on line searchable catalogue.

Collections which will be available to search on our on-line catalogue shortly include:

C DSMS - Records of the Hull Mission to Seafarers formerly known as the Mission to Seamen and associated records including Hull Mariners' Church and Sailors' Rest Society Records  1796-1977, Hull Sailors' Home Society Records 1858-1943, and Hull Mission to Seafarers/Seamen Records 1913-2002

C DDEY - East Yorkshire Deeds 1573-1826, Deeds of the Bacchus estate at Melton, Cottingham, Knottingley, 16th century-18th century; and of properties in Trippett 17th century; Whitefriargate 17th-18th century; Kendal 18th century.

The new version of the list (right) follows modern standards with a clean layout to make it easy to read 

Some of the collections were too large to complete during the six weeks so work is on-going on the following:

C DDO - a set of historical documents relating to Hull and District and old deeds covering the period 1392-1842.  Within this set is a document dated 1694 stating that one Elizabeth Crake of Lelay was to pay William Crake £3, being the amount she owed him since time began! How this was calculated we’ll never know but it would be interesting to know when William thought that time began!

C SBH - Hull School Board, 1871-1903. This vast collection contains over 1500 individual items and includes Election papers 1871-1901; minutes of the Board and the various committee papers 1871-1903; reports 1871-1903 and Letter books and correspondence 1877-1903.

C BRA – Title deeds of properties acquired by the Borough of Kingston upon Hull, 1300-1835. Originally produced as part of a Calendar of Ancient Deeds, Letters, and Miscellaneous Old Documents in the Archives of the Corporation, this collection gives a fascinating insight into the workings of the Corporation over 535 years.

L WH – The Winifred Holtby archive consists of over 9000 items and includes the original manuscript of South Riding. Although this collection can be accessed online, the absence of a hard copy list meant that it was impossible to browse a catalogue in the searchroom. The list is now well under way and will be available to read in the searchroom in the near future.

Work on Theatre Programmes continues as programmes from the Theatre Royal and the Grand Theatre are added to the 3000+ New Theatre programmes already available to search on-line.

Additions to the book stock have continued including Hull City: the Boothferry Park Years by Nicholas Turner and new OS maps have been added to our stock to replace those that were worn out through heavy use!

As we return to normal service we can reflect that the last six weeks may have had their challenges but that throughout we have managed to offer a public service and worked on collections to improve access in the future.

Carol Tanner

Access and Collections Manager, Hull City Archives