Durham University Library and Collections is a member of Research Libraries UK (RLUK), a consortium of the most significant research libraries in the UK and Ireland. As many members entered lockdown in March, Dr David Prosser (Executive Director of RLUK) took a virtual tour of RLUK member’s special collections via Twitter (#RLUKCollections), including those at Durham University, to highlight just a small selection of the extensive, diverse, and unique collections held within the member libraries and archives.
We have (with permission) highlighted here Durham’s brief entry, and provided links to each of the others, as an opportunity to quickly sample some of the many treasures held within the British Isles.
In several instances, each “visit” approached the collection with a particular theme or lens; in Durham’s case, how particular items or collections might end up being held by one particular archive.
Heading north from Cardiff to Durham University, I wanted to continue the theme of how items enter collections for #RLUKCollections and their wide variety
— David Prosser (@RLUK_David) April 23, 2020
For some of @dulib collections the connection is obvious. As a well-established university in a powerful and often rich ecclesiastical centre there are the illuminated manuscripts and items reflecting the history of the region that you might expect
— David Prosser (@RLUK_David) April 23, 2020
But then some items have a less immediately connection with Durham – a significant Sudan Archive from the days of empire and, intriguingly, the archive of the Cremation Society of Great Britain!
— David Prosser (@RLUK_David) April 23, 2020
Our Sudan Archive was founded in 1957, the year after Sudanese independence, and is one of four collections at Durham University which hold Designated Collection status under Arts Council England’s Designation Scheme. The others are Bishop Cosin’s Library, and the Egyptian and Chinese Collections at Durham University’s Oriental Museum.
The Sudan Archive includes a wealth of material, much of it from British officials and their families who lived in the Sudan between 1898 and 1955. As well as a significant amount of official, semi-official and personal papers, the collection also includes over 50,000 photographs, 1,000 maps, portraits, cinefilms, archeological reports, museum objects and a large amount of related printed material. It was established through the work of Durham University staff (including the first director of Durham University’s Oriental Museum, Professor Thomas Willaim Thacker) and former Government officials, with contributions from hundreds of individuals over the decades which followed and support from a number of research grants (Ward, 2015).
Meanwhile, The Cremation Society of Great Britain was founded in 1874 and played a pivotal role in the promotion of cremation as an alternative to burial, and advocating for clarity in the legal basis for allowing cremation and the establishment of crematoria in Britain. The Cremation Society first gave journals and part of its archive to Durham University in 1998, with a further substantial addition in 2015. Funding provided by the Wellcome Trust has helped catalogue the archive, providing access to a valuable resource for research at Durham and beyond.
Focussed collection policies, donations, personal connections, serendipity, good timing – all contribute to the depth and breadth of any library collection. (And that is without mentioning Durham’s superb museum collections.)
— David Prosser (@RLUK_David) April 23, 2020
Serendipity in research is one of our favourite themes; whether that is the importance of creating environments for serendipitous discovery when browsing our collections and how that juxtaposes against the different needs for space from our communities of users, or the journey a book might take through the hands of various owners before arriving in our collections.
A recent example of a great collection coming into the library was the acquisition last year of the papers of John Lambton, 1st Earl of Durham. Lambton, known as ‘Radical Jack’, was one of four politicians who drafted the Reform Bill, which become the Great Reform Act of 1832
— David Prosser (@RLUK_David) April 23, 2020
Here the connections are clear – geography, subject fit with existing collections, timing all coming together to produce an obvious candidate for addition to the wider Durham collection. (More details, with an excellent video, at https://t.co/AsdkRRPja4)
— David Prosser (@RLUK_David) April 23, 2020
But, as with the Cardiff collection yesterday, it was not inevitable that Radical Jack’s papers would either remain a discrete collection or find such a good home. Again, it takes hard work, determination, and political skill to bring these collections into our universities.
— David Prosser (@RLUK_David) April 23, 2020
The archives of ‘Radical Jack‘ was a significant acquisition for the University in summer 2019, and being able to make the collection available to study for the first time in 40 years will offer great potential for research, teaching and public engagement.
The purchase itself was made possible through the hard work of a collaboration between professional staff within Durham University Library and Collections, and academic colleagues across the University to secure the funding from internal and external sources. The acquisition was a great endorsement of the value of archives and other collections to teaching and research in arts & humanities and social sciences, and the University’s willingness to invest in this.
The press release video can be seen here:
A large part of historic collections of papers such as this is often letters. But, of course, unless the writer had kept copies, they will more often contain letters sent to the writer rather than letters from the writer
— David Prosser (@RLUK_David) April 23, 2020
As more of these collections are acquired, catalogued, and made available, we start to see more of the conversations that were taking place, rather than just one-sided views
— David Prosser (@RLUK_David) April 23, 2020
With Radical Jack’s papers becoming a research resource, we get to see more of the interconnections of early C19th policy and politics and so deepen our understanding of the period.
— David Prosser (@RLUK_David) April 23, 2020
The Lambton Archive also provides a wonderful complement to the Earl Grey papers that we already hold within our special collections. Lambton married Lady Louise Grey, the daughter of Charles, 2nd Earl Grey, who became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in 1830, both being integral to the passing of the Reform Act of 1832. The Earl Grey papers are another vitally important collection of primary source material covering the political, colonial and diplomatic history of the 19th and early 20th centuries.
As we head into two new decades which will see bicentenaries of events to which these collections bear witness, and at a time when Britain’s history and its relationship with its people and colonial Empire are being cast under new lenses for examination, these collections offer a rich resource for researchers to explore.
If this has caught your interest, you can explore this #archivesunlocked tour of RLUK member collections by clicking on each members log below.
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