Home of Swansea University’s Archive Collections
Assistant Archivist Felicity Grey looks at the Christmas cards held at the Richard Burton Archives as a means of exploring our collections relating to the South Wales Coalfield. …Continue Reading Christmas cards from the Coalfield
An archival collection documenting the history of Gower has been excitedly uncovered by Archives Assistant (and Gower native!) Sarah Thompson. The Chapman collection offers a unique insight into Gower through time. Spanning over half a century (1900-1955), the Chapman collection was created by the Antiquarian Donald Le Cronier Chapman. Chapman was a Lloyd’s agent for…Continue Reading Gower Through Time
In September, delegates from across the globe travelled to Glasgow for the 2022 iPres conference on digital preservation. Thanks to the generous support of the Digital Preservation Coalition, our Assistant Archivist Simon Mackley was able to attend the conference and find out more about the latest developments in the field. In this blog post, Simon…Continue Reading What next for Digital Preservation? 3 Takeaways from iPres 2022
Archives are often portrayed as being held in ‘dusty’ conditions, such as dark, dingy basements – but this is actually something that are deliberately avoided! Archive services are very conscious of the conditions required to ensure the long-term preservation of collections, and aspire to have state of the art facilities with latest technology. The staff…Continue Reading Collections Care in the Archives – preserving the then for the now and for the future
This month for LGBT+ History Month, we are pleased to launch the newly catalogued Amy Dillwyn Collection (ref. DC6). Amy Dillwyn (1845-1935) was a pioneering female industrialist, novelist, social justice campaigner, and, according to Professor Kirsti Bohata, ‘a queer writer of international significance’’. The Amy Dillwyn papers include – Amy’s handwritten journals (1863-1917) a copy of…Continue Reading ‘Take me as you find me … I am not ashamed of being myself’
In case you missed it 20-28 November 2021 was Explore Your Archive week! The Explore Your Archive campaign takes place every November and enables services to showcase treasures from their collections, promote their holdings and to help people discover more about archives generally. The main message of the campaign is that archives are for everyone,…Continue Reading Explore Your Archive 2021
This year’s theme is environmental history so, along with other archives, museums and libraries participating in this year’s History Day on 4 November, we’re discovering how our collections can be used to research the impact of industry on nature, landscape, climate change and much more. The Lower Swansea Valley Project In the 1960s an innovative…Continue Reading Landscape, environment and archives – History Day 2021
Archives Assistant Stephanie Basford-Morris reflects on her experience of going ‘back to school’ as an adult with a distance learning MA Archives Administration course, and highlights material giving an insight into adult learning over the decades in the Richard Burton Archive collections. Do you remember the particular joy of buying new stationary for back to school? This childhood…Continue Reading Back to School: Archives & Adult Learning
The #ExploreYourArchive theme for this month is firsts, so we’re going to look at our namesake, Richard Burton, and some of his premieres a.k.a. first or opening nights! Some thoughts about first nights, stage and screen, are found in his diaries which form part of the Richard Burton Collection- ‘We went to London for the opening…Continue Reading Premieres and the red carpet in the Richard Burton Collection
On the anniversary of Raissa Page’s death, archivist, writer and researcher, David Johnston-Smith gives an update on activities to celebrate the photographer’s life and work. Today is the 10th anniversary (28 July 2011) of the death of photographer, Raissa Page, whose archive we were lucky enough to receive in 2014, and which was later catalogued…Continue Reading Remembering Raissa