‘Now for the second entry in my trusty virtual diary…
This week we’ve been giving a bit more thought to the ‘fit out’ of the new Heritage Hub. We’ve been approaching this from a couple of angles: fine tuning the specifications for all the rooms and sussing out some of the freestanding furniture we’re going to need.
Unbelievably, our refurbishment and construction plans involve fifty rooms! Admittedly, ten are WCs but it’s still a lot of data to consider – 166 documents worth, to be precise. Heather, our head of service has been studying this to ‘double check’ everything’s going to be exactly right for our needs. The dossier includes plans, elevations, sections, engineering drawings and room lists, and it covers everything from the locations of hundreds of plug sockets to types of doors (24 different styles, who’d have thought it?). It seemed like we were fitting out a hotel!
Heather Forbes poring over plans for the Heritage Hub
As for the stuff that’ll be going into the rooms, we’ve been thinking about the sort of furniture we’re going to need for people to access audio visual records or hold effective one to one conversations in busy parts of the Hub. We wanted to get this right so we enlisted the help of two of the Archives’ volunteer buddies and asked them to sound out (excuse the pun!) the acoustic furniture at the University of Gloucestershire’s Business Hub and Bishops Cleeve Library. This was a really useful things to do (good fun too) and we now know exactly what to buy. Thank you, ladies!
Heather Forbes, Maureen Anderson and Liz Jack in the acoustic meeting pod at the University of Gloucestershire
Heather with volunteer buddies, Maureen Anderson and Liz Jack at the University of Gloucestershire.
Liz and Maureen testing the acoustic chairs in Bishops Cleeve Library
Liz (left) and Maureen (right) at Bishops Cleeve Library. These chairs were a firm favourite!
We were also able to pick up some useful ideas on our travels, like the e-signing in arrangements at the UoG Business Hub.
Heather, Maureen and Liz signing in at the UoG Business Hub
We’re hoping to introduce something similar in the Hub and have submitted a funding application to see if we can make this a reality.
‘More next week….
Jill Shonk
Access & Learning Leader
Gloucestershire Archives 