ARCHIVE NEWS
Upon registration as a museum we advised that we would have all our archives recorded by the end of 2005. Unfortunately the archives seem to be expanding faster than the speed we can handle them although, in some cases, we are talking about items in stock for many years that have been hiding 'in deep cover'.
Bob Williamson has been describing in 'Omnibus' over recent months his excellent work on destination blinds. This exercise is complete and now simply has to be kept up to date, an essential part of archiving.
An earlier burst of effort on the book library has remained static but another day's effort will complete it. Meanwhile, Andrew Turner has really got to grips with the large number of technical manuals.
The acquisition of the ex-Alan B Cross negatives has obviously rendered the archiving of photographs incomplete. The process of obtaining a print off each negative has begun and, I would guess, we are around one-fifth of the way through the ex-Birmingham City Transport negatives. The best of the negatives are then selected for a bigger print run for the shop and Dave Potts has been happily selling these since last year. We were delighted to be awarded a grant by Worcestershire County Council Museums and Heritage Group to purchase a fire resistant cabinet in which to keep our most valuable photographs and negatives which include some glass ones. The cabinet, which has some resemblance to a safe, was delivered on a splendid c1983 Leyland six-legger truck.
John Rollings has joined the battle, already involving Dave Taylor, Phil Ireland and Dave Parry, of sorting the technical drawings held by the museum. This is one of the more worrying aspects of the archiving exercise as there are literally thousands of large drawings dating right back to early motorbus times that first need to be sorted and listed and then copied and/or the originals transferred to appropriate storage conditions. The latter has significant cost and space implications.
The amalgamation by myself of collections of donated timetable books, leaflets and other printed matter is also going well but documenting what we have is barely beyond the starting gate. The same applies to tickets.
Uniforms were stored all over the site and have now been gathered together into a cluster of wardrobes in one place. This exercise revealed two things. Firstly we had far too many National Bus uniforms. These were separated into different styles and then sizes, the duplicates then being extracted for sale. Secondly, some uniforms are in desperate need of cleaning, a process which has begun with the assistance of Lynn Hawketts.
There's still plenty to do amongst all these assorted items from the past but they're fascinating exercises and revealing all sorts of items that can be put out or copied for display if we get more undercover accommodation. We would be pleased to hear from members wishing to help in any particular area, not least tickets where we haven't begun to think about how to archive them.
Malcolm Keeley
Chapel Lane, Wythall, Worcs B47 6JX
Tel : 01564 826471 e-mail us
A registered educational charity no 507191
