Worcestershire Archive Service Explore The Past- Need your Records
Worcestershire Archive Service, together with the Archaeology Service are Explore The Past.
They support communities understanding Worcestershire’s past, present, and future. The archive collections tell the story of the communities, individuals, buildings, and landscapes of historic Worcestershire.
They include over 12 miles of archives ranging from the ordinary to the extraordinary dating from the 12th century to the present day. They tell us about the everyday lives of people and communities as well as about dreadful and wonderful events, special buildings and famous people.
Worcestershire Archives need to work with individuals and communities and organisations that work on their behalf to help ensure all of Worcestershire and its history is represented in our collections. More specifically, published on our Explore The Past webpage is our Collection Development Plan which outlines ‘areas of weakness’ in our collections:
- Records of LGBTQ+ groups
- Organisations and individuals Personal, family or organisational papers of BAME and immigrant communities groups and individuals
- Business archives of many significant local trades and industries
- Voluntary Sector organisations
- Many less main stream
- Non-conformist churches
- Minority ethnic and religious bodies (especially non-Christian)
- Agricultural and farming records
- Records of sporting clubs and societies
- Records of artistic and cultural organisations and individuals
- Architectural records
Worcestershire Archive are very keen for charities to donate their records. These would be records that show the function of the charity and its administration, really any records created by the charity during the course of its ‘business’.
For instance financial, projects including photos, HR records, formation etc.
That said it is not best practice to archive records still in use - either ‘current’ or ‘semi-current’ from external bodies such as charities, since they are not a records management storage facility. Records donated will be preserved into the future for use by researchers.
The facility is accredited by The National Archives for the level of service we provide, access provision and the level of care they provide to archives in our purpose-built storage facility at The Hive, Worcester.
In addition to collection development Worcestershire Archive are currently looking for opportunities to work in partnership on projects that will raise awareness and generate income.
Please contact the team to discuss ideas.
There is also an Outreach team who can discuss community projects and encourage engagement with the Archives Service.
Details can be found here.