Category: News

  • Visit to the Tower of London

    Visit to the Tower of London

    The British Records Association are delighted to be resuming our programme of visits with a very special day at the Tower of London on 28th July 2022.

    We will be treated to talks from Archivist, Tom Drysdale on the Architectural Drawings Collection, from Head of Records Vanessa Hodge on the creation of the Gardens & Estates Archive and from Assistant Curator of Historic Buildings Alfred Hawkins on the historic registers of the Chapel Royal at the Tower.

    After the meetings, attendees will have the opportunity to explore the public areas of the Tower of London at leisure, including the Jewel House and the White Tower.

    Programme

    11.00  Arrive at the Middle Drawbridge, the Wharf at the Tower of London. Please leave plenty of time as this area is quite busy. The nearest Tube station is Tower Hill. Tea and Coffee will be  provided.

    11.30  Display of items from the Architectural Drawings Collection

    12.00  Tom Drysdale, Archivist, on managing the Architectural Drawings Collection

    12.30 Vanessa Hodge, Head of Records, on the creation of the Gardens & Estates archive

    13.00 Alfred Hawkins, Assistant Curator of Historic Buildings, on the historic registers of the Chapel Royal at the Tower.

    13.30 Event ends.

    After the meetings, attendees will have the opportunity to explore the public areas of the Tower of London at leisure, including the Jewel House and the White Tower.

    With thanks to Historic Royal Palaces.

    Tickets

    Tickets cost £20 for members of the British Records Association and £25 for non-members and can be booked via Eventbrite

    Getting there and access

    The nearest tube station is Tower Hill. Please leave plenty of time to arrive as the area is quite busy.

    The Tower of London does have difficult stairs and cobbled paths; access to wheelchair users is limited. For more information, including Blue Badge parking see their website.

    Download Programme and Map

    Tower of London visit programme and map

  • Archives of crisis and conspiracy: The digital future

    The latest Shock of Record partnership seminar with the Institute of Historic Research is now available to view on YouTube.  The video has captions.

    The webinar considers how memory institutions and other organisations conduct rapid response archiving to capture the digital records of crisis, how they decide what to include and exclude, and how and when those born-digital archives should be made available to researchers and the wider public. It will also consider how huge digital archives, which may contain multiple forms of misinformation, can be effectively described and contextualised when close reading and cataloguing are not possible.

    Thanks to speakers Valérie Schafer (University of Luxembourg) Friedel Geeraert (Belgian Royal Library) Kees Teszelszky (National Library of the Netherlands) for a fascinating discussion.

  • Janette Harley Prize 2022 Open for Entries

    Entry to the 2022 Janette Harley Prize is now open. The prize is intended to generate interest in archives, and raise awareness of research and achievements in the world of archives.

    The prizewinner in 2021 was Dr Amy L Erickson, Robinson College, Cambridge, for City Women in the 18th Century, a free open-air exhibition in autumn 2019 about women who ran luxury businesses in the City of London in the 18th century; and a supporting article, ‘Esther Sleepe, fanmaker, and her family’, Eighteenth-Century Life, 42 (2) (2018), pp.15-37.

    The closing date for entries to the 2022 Janette Harley Prize is 31 July. The winning entry will be announced in November. We hope to hold the Prizegiving at the same time as the BRA’s annual Maurice Bond Memorial Lecture, early in 2023.

    Terms and conditions and further details about how to apply can be found here:

    https://www.britishrecordsassociation.org.uk/british-records-association-janette-harley-prize/