What better way to complete the hashtag challenge with a post about how we #lovearchives!!!
Prior to #Explorearchives we sent an invitation to colleagues inviting them to select the collection they love the most (if they could narrow it down to one) and then share their reasons for their choice.
And here are the results!!
Archivist Katharine Short talking about our prospectuses:
Sally Gaukrodger-Cowan, senior lecturer from our Fashion Buying Department, talks about French fashion magazine the Gazette du Bon Ton:
Alan Brine, Deputy Director of Library and Learning Services and Head of Archives talks about the Wyvern’s connection to DMU and local heritage as illustrated through our collections:
Natalie Hayton, Archives Assistant, talks about her three favourite collections, the Papers of Andrew Davies, the earliest DMU register and Chic Parisien:
More clips to follow over the next few days!!
Being filmed is not everyone’s cup of tea and not all who wanted to take part could make it on the day of filming so instead they emailed us with their choices:
Chosen by Dr Douglas Cawthorne
D/068: Papers of Peter Blakesley
“Measured and drawn by Peter Blakesley in the 1960’s, a lecturer at the Leicester School of Architecture, they are a rare survival of historic building research at the school and must be the only archive items acquired by DMU from a hand-over in a graveyard – quite legally I may add. They have also most recently been used to help inform a digital reconstruction of Bradgate House for the Bradgate Park Trust. I think at a number of levels they represent that preservation of institutional memory which can so enrich a University and the community and region in which it exists.”
Chosen by Dr Kelley Wilder, Director, Photographic History Research Centre
Teneriffe, An Astronomer’s Experiment, by Piazzi Smyth, 1858
Chosen by Jayne Stevens, Principal Lecturer in Dance
D/036: Papers of the Foundation for Community Dance
“I love the first ever issue of Animated which is now in the DMU Archive and Special Collection. It’s important because this began in a very homespun way (as you can tell from the attached) in 1986 but has been in continuous production ever since and now has an international readership and distribution championing and promoting community and participatory dance. It also has connections with DMU and its predecessor Leicester Polytechnic as the polytechnic offered the Foundation for Community Dance a home in 1989 and the foundation is still based in Leicester with strong links to DMU.”