Articles tagged with: County Local Studies Librarian

Library collections have a life of their own

on Monday, 19 April 2021. Posted in History Centre, Wiltshire People, Wiltshire Places

Local Studies Library – the elderly volumes that might surprise you!

I can’t believe it’s been 5 years this month since I was lucky enough to become the County Local Studies Librarian here at the Wiltshire & Swindon History Centre. In this time, I’ve had the exciting opportunity to learn a lot more about Wiltshire’s fantastic Wiltshire Studies collection, both at the History Centre and in the county’s many local libraries. You could spend a lifetime delving into the items we hold; there is never enough time in the day to enjoy looking at the collection and the many and varied topics, people and places that span hundreds of years.

The items in our collection have found their way to us through many different means. Some have been purchased, others gifted or donated by kind individuals, many local residents who share our belief that Wiltshire’s treasures should stay in the county for everyone to access and enjoy. Others have been in the ‘library’ system much longer, from reading rooms at places such as the Mechanics Institute in Swindon, historically part of the Wiltshire local authority before Swindon became unitary in 1997.

Local Studies libraries are classed as a ‘special collection’, and within Wiltshire’s are items dating from the 17th century to today. You would be surprised to learn how robust the most elderly items in our collection are; the acid in modern paper makes modern books more troublesome to keep safe. Even so, we like to keep an eye on our oldest items to ensure they are well looked after. I am currently conducting a condition survey to check on their wellbeing and the process has been very informative, opening my eyes to the rich variety of items we hold.

Our journey begins with some of our oldest items; Civil War and Commonwealth pamphlets from 1647-1658 (ref. AAA.946). These include the impeachment of members of the House of Commons by Sir Thomas Fairfax in 1647, an account of the speech of King Charles I on the scaffold in 1649 and a copy of the Commonwealth Mercury dated 25 November 1658, describing the removal of the body of the late Oliver Cromwell from Whitehall.

Title page with a decorative border for King Charles His Speech Made Upon the Scaffold 1648
AAA.946 King Charles Speech

History Without A History Centre: what we've been up to while you were away (Part 2)

on Monday, 31 August 2020. Posted in Archives, Conservation, History Centre, Museums, Schools

During lockdown our teams, like everyone, have had to adapt to new ways of working and think creatively about how we continued to support our heritage community and maintain our statutory services. In Part 1 Neil and Dorothy shared some of the work done by the Archaeology team and Wiltshire Buildings Record.  In Part 2 we turn the spotlight on our Archives and Local Studies team, the Conservation and Museums Advisory Service and the Heritage Education Service.

Archives and Local Studies

While lockdown forced the cancellation of our 2020 events programme, we were able to reinvent some of the activities in new formats. County Librarian Julie Davis had planned a talk on The Home Front in Wiltshire, as part of the celebrations for the 75th anniversary of VE Day in May. Instead she turned her slides into an online film show with a recorded narration. Julie also recorded readings from her recent publication From Blackout to Bungalows which explores the effects of World War Two on Wiltshire. These are available on our VE Day page on the website.

Pre-lockdown we were delighted to host a display of artworks by students from Wiltshire College in the History Centre foyer. Community history advisor Joy Bloomfield, who worked with the college on this project, redisplayed the pieces in our search room and created a more widely-accessible online exhibition available via our Facebook page

Julie's Memory Box sessions also went online. Before lockdown the group would use written sources as a springboard for discussion and reminiscence. Unable to meet physically Julie recorded several readings themed on local fairs and industries which are now online to be enjoyed at home. Similarly, Ian Hicks has replicated his popular Introduction to Ancestry.com sessions as online videos. All videos can be found on our youtube channel including four short Welcome Back films featuring members of our team. Creating video content is new for most of us at the History Centre and, we’re not afraid to say, it was a bit daunting to begin with, but we have learnt new skills, gained confidence and seen the benefits of developing online content for the History Centre. Watch this space for more online material over the coming months.

Community history advisor Ian made a video version of his Ancestry workshop.

We have also used lockdown to add more content to the Know Your Place website. Scanned copies of our tithe awards have been added to this already brimming resource. The tithe awards give details of landowners and occupiers plus land use for parishes across the county. In addition, more content has been added to pages of the Wiltshire Community History website, most notably on the subject of Wiltshire schools. Julie has also continued her engagement work with the team of Wiltshire Libraries Local Studies’ Champions to create digital material for the library service's YouTube channel.

Lockdown resulted in the disruption to many arts, heritage and cultural projects but as restrictions eased organisations looked to restart their programmes. The History Centre is delighted to be working with our new partners at Celebrating Age Wiltshire on their lottery-funded project to improve health and wellbeing of older people living in isolation. We are also feeding into the Swindon Heritage Action Zone, which is part of a wider Historic England heritage project and the project officer is working with local people in and around Swindon’s Railway Village to post old photographs onto the community layer of Know Your Place website. 

Visitors to the History Centre usually come to consult documents, but the Local Studies Library is also an important research tool. It contains over 50,000 volumes and is the largest collection in the world of books about Wiltshire. We are always on the lookout for new titles and actively collect any published work that is about Wiltshire or is written by someone with a strong Wiltshire connection.

New titles have been added to the extensive Local Studies collection.

The last few months have been an opportunity to catch up with the backlog of cataloguing, making over 100 new books available to users of the service. They include biographies; newly published research on the two world wars and a beautifully illustrated book of the plants found in the gardens of Salisbury Cathedral Close. Perhaps these books may inspire you to write something and be part of Wiltshire’s written history. New lists of our latest catalogued books can be found in our Local Studies newsletters.

We have also used this time to update our staff toolkit which contains key guides on various collection themes in the hope we have the answers to all your questions at our fingertips. Quite an undertaking, we’re sure you’ll agree. Colleagues have also conducted research on topics such as militia records, the architecture of Salisbury and the Kennet and Avon Canal, plus we have been putting the finishing touches to a major new catalogue for the archive of Westinghouse Rail. This has involved formatting data collected by our volunteer Mike and uploading onto our electronic catalogue.

Like most archives and museums, we have launched a new collection that will record the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our lives. The History Centre’s Living in Lockdown project aims to collect personal reflections from people in Wiltshire and Swindon on their experiences of Covid-19 and how it has affected daily lives. We are also looking for printed material such as posters and leaflets, or newsletters from local groups, plus photographs recording lockdown, such as public displays of art and craft, and how local shops, services and events have been affected. Read more about the collecting project (including how to get in touch) on our archives pages

Meticulous work by one of our object conservators.

Conservation and Museums Advisory Service

The Conservation and Museums Advisory Service (CMAS) aims to promote excellence in the care and use of collections by providing conservation advice and practical treatments to heritage organisations and the public. We also support museums in Wiltshire to meet professional standards and become sustainable, resilient organisations.

Based at the History Centre, we can normally be found working in our two conservation laboratories, or out and about giving advice to museums, archives and historic houses. Lockdown meant that, like many others, we were confined to working at home and had to find a whole new way of doing things.

Without access to the specialist equipment and chemicals in the laboratory, we had to stop carrying out practical conservation treatments such as x-raying archaeological finds, cleaning coins, reconstructing ceramics and repairing documents. Instead the conservators have taken the time to carry out a number of other tasks.

We have been developing new training and support packages for both staff at the History Centre, and other museums and archives looking to gain Accreditation or better care for their collections. This includes topics like pest management, environmental monitoring and control, collection care planning, and preventative conservation of archives and historical collections. We’ve been looking at services aimed at those involved with archaeology, such as archaeological contractors and metal detectorists. There has also been the opportunity to develop our environmental sustainability plans, becoming greener to help the Council meet its pledge to become carbon neutral by 2030.

Even though the building has been closed, the archives have still required some care and attention, so we’ve been carrying out regular environmental monitoring checks to make sure the temperature and humidity levels in the strong rooms is suitable for their long-term preservation.

Our Paper Conservator tensioning distorted parchment.

We have been exploring the digital world and finding alternative ways of working. A redesign of the CMAS web pages has begun including a simplified web address - www.wshc.org.uk/cmas - and we took part in a twitter conference organised by the Institute of Conservation (#IconArchTC) talking about our treatment of a Roman coin hoard owned by Athelstan Museum, Malmesbury. You can also watch our new video about the conservation treatment of a pair of Pele’s football boots.

Meetings have gone online, and we have been getting to grips with the technicalities and etiquette of virtual meetings, including Wiltshire Museum Group get-togethers. The team has also been available by telephone and email to answer questions and give advice to organisations and the public about all things conservation and museums.

Wiltshire’s museums have been hit hard by the lockdown, with the cancellation of events, loss of income, and other challenges that come from having to close their doors overnight.  Working with South West Museum Development, we have supported them throughout the last few months, answering enquiries to help them look after staff, volunteers and collections, providing information about the latest government guidance, and encouraging applications for the grant funding available. This has continued as museums have started to re-open. Museums in the county have been working hard to address the issues and several have now welcomed back visitors, with special measures put in place to keep everyone safe: Wiltshire Museum, Chippenham MuseumBoscombe Down Aviation Collection, REME Museum, Salisbury Museum, The Rifles Museum, Crofton Beam Engines www.croftonbeamengines.org. More will follow in the not too distant future.

Although the CMAS team is now back in the building and the laboratories, we’re not quite back to normal! It’s likely to be a little while before we’re able to make visits to organisations or carry out face to face training. So, in the meantime, we’ll carry on developing our digital delivery and because we love showing off the work we do we’re planning to add more case studies, videos and a virtual tour of the laboratories to our web pages soon.

If you have a conservation query, want a quotation to carry out some work, or would like to book a free online appointment for one of our conservation surgeries, we’d love to hear from you! You can contact the team by email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Heritage Education Service

As heritage education officer I work with schools and community groups providing facilitated sessions in schools, community settings and at the History Centre. All those face-to-face sessions ended with lockdown. The other aspect of my work involves creating classroom and online resources – and this has very much continued.

In anticipation of the lockdown the History Centre could see that digital resources – our website, blog and social media platforms – would be our way of keeping some of our services operational and allow us to stay in touch with our community of users and volunteers. With that in my mind my role morphed into coordinating the History Centre’s digital services and joining with colleagues in Libraries and Leisure to develop and deliver online services to replace, as best we could, the wide range of physical services provided by our teams. This resulted in the Active Communities webpages and a host of downloadable resources on the Wiltshire Council website.

Screenshot of the Active Communities web page on the Wiltshire Council website.

As our services resume, with new policies and procedures in place, my work on the History Centre’s digital strategy will continue alongside creating classroom resources for teachers. I am also delighted that many of the projects we support are getting back on track, including the Salisbury Soroptimist’s Her Salisbury Story project (funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund) celebrating the women of Salisbury past and present. I will be providing support and training to the group and their volunteers as they work on this wonderful project.

For schools and teachers looking for new curriculum resources please contact me on This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. I am currently updating the education web pages but please do visit  the education home page for links to online resources.

What Next?

After meticulous planning and much hard work we are delighted to have welcomed out first visitors back into the search rooms on 25th August. Making sure the History Centre is COVID-secure for staff and visitors does mean we have had to put in new procedures for accessing our services and these follow national guidelines and regulations. We are now operating an appointments-only system for accessing our services and face coverings are mandatory for all visitors. To book your archives and local studies visit go to our website.  http://wshc.org.uk/visiting-the-centre.html For other teams please telephone ahead to make an appointment.  

We look forward to welcoming you back.

 

David Plant, Archivist

Heather Perry, Conservation and Museum Manager

Ruth Butler, Heritage Education Officer

Neil Adam, Assistant County Archaeologist

Dorothy Treasure, Buildings Recorder

Getting the most from the History Centre website

on Friday, 10 April 2020. Posted in Archives

To all our visitors and researchers who are enduring lockdown with the rest of the country, first and foremost, we hope you and your loved ones are safe and well in these difficult times.

While the History Centre is closed we wanted to reach out and let you know that the world of heritage is still accessible in many forms online. In the first of a series of blogs we highlight all that is available on our website and draw your attention to external websites that you can connect with from it. This is a generic overview and we will be publishing more detailed blogs on specific resources and how to best use them at home in due course.

The Wiltshire & Swindon History Centre website is a gateway to vast amounts of accessible information. On the Archives home page you will find useful starter packs for family history, ideal for anyone considering taking up genealogy as a pastime whilst in isolation, also house history and town and village history.

Using the ‘Our Services’ tab you will unearth huge amounts of useful research tips and tools within the Archives section, from tips for the advanced family historian to how to research LGBT history. You will also see links to information which may be of interest, such as the work of an archivist – discover what we do behind the scenes (spoiler alert, we do not spend all day reading in the basement looking at dusty documents). There really is too much to highlight in just one blog post, so head over to the Archives page and explore for yourself.

Work of an archivist

In the Local Studies section of the website you will now find video recordings of County Local Studies Librarian Julie Davis conducting a virtual memory box reading group. Simply follow this link and then choose from the sessions by following the blue links listed after each session. Enjoy! 

Memory Box Reading Group

In this section there is also a link to the Wiltshire Community History website which is a wealth of information in itself, providing information on 261 Wiltshire Communities. This is well worth checking out for anyone interested in Wiltshire as a whole, but especially for more specific locations. It is arranged very simply in alphabetical order by location and every community page already has certain basic information, such as early maps, local administrative bodies, population from 1801, newspapers for its area, lists of local maps, the registration district, information on buildings and links to other sites of interest, plus a thumbnail history of the parish.

Of course our archive collection, the largest source of information in the History Centre, is locked away in the strong-rooms and is inaccessible for the foreseeable future. However our archive and library online catalogues remain accessible. The archive catalogue will give you a descriptive overview of our collections, but please be aware you cannot view the documents online. With that in mind, make a note of the reference number of any items you may wish to consult in the future once we reopen. If you are looking for new books or magazines to read, you can search the library catalogue. If you are not already a member you can sign up to access eBooks and eMagazines. The library service is also developing more online resources, such as poetry readings; keep an eye on their website for details.

Within the ‘Explore’ tab of the History Centre’s home page there are links to fabulous websites for all forms of local history. For those of you interested in researching local maps follow the link to Know Your Place West of England, which has historic maps for all participating counties in the region, though the Wiltshire map is available here.

It is an interactive website that layers historic maps of Wiltshire, which allows for easy map comparison and is useful for seeing how your local area developed over time. Watch this space though, as we are working on adding more useful information to it in the near future.

The Creative Wiltshire link is also well worth having a browse at, the project aim was to collect and celebrate the work of the county’s creative people, and the latest blog tells the story of the project as it reaches its conclusion.

Creative Wiltshire

This really is just a starter and, as mentioned above, there is so much more available on and via the website. So, whether you are a keen researcher already, or new to this heritage game then have an explore but also keep an eye out for the next in this series of blogs highlighting accessible heritage in Wiltshire during lockdown. Also follow us on Twitter and Facebook for instant updates.

Max Parkin, Archivist

Mike Marshman - 50 years of service

on Tuesday, 20 December 2016. Posted in History Centre

At the end of August 2016 Michael Marshman retired from his post as County Local Studies Librarian, marking an amazing 50 years working for Wiltshire Council.

Mike (top right) whilst at Trowbridge Boys High

Mike originally wanted to be an archaeologist but changed direction after visiting the county library whilst still at school in Trowbridge, his home town. He joined Wiltshire County Council on 1st August 1966 as an eighteen year old library assistant, at Trowbridge Library HQ, which at that time was in Prospect Place. In 1967 Mike was appointed a trainee librarian and undertook training at the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth. He returned to Wiltshire to work and became Marlborough Mobile Librarian from 1970-1 followed by Melksham Town Librarian from 1971-1975. Mike has always prioritised working with the local community and while in Melksham he ran two Puffin Clubs for children, hosted or mounted monthly exhibitions and began giving talks on local history – something he has continued to this day! From 1975-1979 Mike became Town Librarian of Trowbridge, where he was one of the founders of Trowbridge Civic Society. Mike, a keen amateur photographer, carried out much important photography of Trowbridge. In 1979 the first of his eight books, Wiltshire Landscape, was published by Countryside Books. From 1979-1981 Mike became Trowbridge Area Librarian which expanded to include Warminster Area in 1981. From 1981-1988 Mike was Town Librarian of Warminster, setting up its new library, working with the local community and setting up, with Nicola Harris, Senior Assistant, a very successful programme of children’s activities. In Warminster Mike also began working with a certain Helen Taylor who will be well known to History Centre visitors! In 1988 Mike became Wiltshire County Local Studies Librarian, and immediately set to work promoting local history county-wide. He organised local history weeks including over 70 events in one year! He inaugurated ‘Wiltshire History Road Shows’ taking archivists and the Wiltshire Buildings Record staff out to communities. He established fiendish cryptic Wiltshire local history quizzes with sponsored prizes. Building on the work of his predecessor, John Chandler, he extended the Wiltshire Collection into the largest collection of published Wiltshire material in the world. Mike also established the Ephemera and Creative Wiltshire collections as sub-sets of the Wiltshire Collection. In 1998 Mike was one of only a hundred librarians nationwide to be awarded the Library Association Centenary Medal for ‘outstanding contribution to and achievement in library work’, presented by Princess Anne, no less, and in 2001 he won the national Dorothy McCulla Memorial Prize awarded by CILIP for his outstanding contribution to local studies work.

Work experience students discover more at the History Centre

on Thursday, 17 July 2014. Posted in Archives, Wiltshire Places

For my Year 10 work experience I chose to come to the History Centre. It has been an insightful experience into what the Centre actually does. I was lucky enough to get to do some sub-numbering - it helps prevent documents becoming lost. I was sub numbering the Earls of Radnor archives – which are also done by volunteers. These documents vary in age from the 17th century to the 20th century.


I have been able to do some cataloguing – both online and offline. The documents that had to be catalogued were the agendas and minutes of the meetings of the local Wiltshire councils. I began by sorting the documents by place, and noting their dates in Microsoft Excel. Then we had to go into a strong room, and place the meeting records with all of the others. These files are now accessible to the public. However the files have only been catalogued in draft form.

logos1

Accredited Archive Service