How to preserve your family or community archive: the Covid-19 lockdown blogs. Blog CM #5

• Need to list your archive collections?
• Want to learn more about cataloguing archives?

The documentation you create when you take in (“accession”) new material should include a brief description of each batch of material you’ve received (see blog CM #2).  But you will probably also want to list in more detail (or “catalogue”) the material in your personal or community archive.  As well as being very useful for you, catalogues can be shared, for example via a website, so that other people can see what material you have.

One of our volunteers sent this lovely feedback….

I’m everyone’s volunteer. In normal times I would be dashing between Gloucester Cathedral, Berkeley Castle, Cheltenham College, Cobalt and of course Gloucestershire Archives. I like to use my brain to do something potentially useful, I like learning new things, meeting people with the same interests and chatting to fellow volunteers, friends I have made over the years. All that stopped with lockdown.

John Humphris’ probate inventory, 1690, mentioning the hogs (see below)