Well, it’s certainly been an unusual time these last eight months but since the Archive reopened on 28th September, and with our new Covid-19 safety measures in place, we’ve received 29 visits and have been delighted to welcome many of our regular researchers as well as some new faces from within the University.
Socially distanced research in the Archive!
We look forward to seeing more of you in the near future but though the Archive is open during this latest lockdown, health and safety remains our priority and we ask all researchers to consider waiting until after 2nd December to book an appointment.
All smiles for Lucy and Dayna, yes, really! It’s in the eyes! Copyright Lucy Oulton.
So, while a physical visit to the Reading Room may not be on the cards for a while longer there are still ways to keep up with archival goings-on. During the first lockdown this blog had a resurgence as a place for archive news and stories, both from the Collections Team and our researchers. We’d love to continue hearing from readers so do send your contributions to archives@kingston.ac.uk.
#instarchive
Who is that masked woman!? Yep, that would be Jo.
As many of you have already discovered, you can now find us on Instagram too! After some sterling work behind the scenes from our very own Jo Skilbeck, whom you may remember from a previous blog post, @kingston_uni_archives was launched on 28th October.
We now have more than 200 followers which, as newbies, we’re very happy to see. Thank you to everyone who has been following us and liking and commenting on our posts.
As a visual platform we hope to showcase our collections, have a bit of fun, and encourage people to join in. We’ve introduced a regular feature, #whatinthearchiveisthat, where we ask you to identify an object from a close-up photograph before revealing it in full. So far items from the Sheridan Morley Theatre Collection, Stephen Sondheim Society Archive, Iris Murdoch Collections and KU History Collections have had people guessing!
The full image of this close-up has been one of our most ‘liked’ so far…
Today is also the beginning of the national Explore Your Archive campaign. Between now and 29th November we will be posting images from the archive each day to represent the campaign’s chosen themes which include Home, Education, Science, Celebration and Light. The first theme is Communication – take a look at what we’ve chosen to highlight and don’t forget to add your comments…
Ourchive
As if that wasn’t enough, we’re also appealing for contributions to a new archive collection. The KU Covid Experience Collection will document the way in which those associated with Kingston University have responded to the pandemic. If you are a student, staff member, alumnus or volunteer we would love to hear from you. Our aim with this collection is to record for future generations how we, as a community, have dealt with the effect of Covid-19, the lockdowns and the changes to our way of life. Contributions received so far include photographs, tales of a virtual book group, a favourite tree, lockdown birthdays, home working set-ups, a reflective account of lockdown, and homemade masks. If you’d like to offer material for this collection, physical or electronic, or have any questions please email us.
So, we continue in the Archive with a combination of on-campus and home working, staffing bubbles and sanitiser, masks and social distancing, but with these adaptations we also continue to offer support for research and the opportunity to engage with some fascinating collections. On that note we end today with a poem that appeared in our first Instagram post…
