Carmarthenshire Archives: J’accuse, Part 2
In the immediately preceding post, I produced incontrovertible evidence that Carmarthenshire County Council never installed dehumidifying equipment that would have enabled environmental conditions in the archival strongrooms to meet BS5454, the national standard for such facilities, despite provision to do so being set out explicitly, and costed, in the business plan submitted to, and accepted […]
Carmarthenshire Archives: J’accuse, Part 1
…or, if you prefer, rwy’n gyhuddo. Readers of the previous posts in this series will know that when I first started to express my concern about the future of the archives, and began the online campaign to raise awareness of the situation, there was virtually no clarity at all about what was likely to happen in […]
Carmarthenshire Archives: The Fait Accompli
Back to the seemingly endless and tangled saga of Carmarthenshire Archives today, and some clear evidence that we are approaching the end game – at least as far as the future location of a new record office is concerned. (The issue of why mould appeared in the strongrooms of the old facility is a very […]
Carmarthenshire Archives: the Right Hand and the Left Hand
Democracy is a wonderful thing; or, as President Harry S Truman said, ‘if you can’t convince them, confuse them’. (Or don’t reply to their Freedom of Information requests; but that’s another story, for another day.) Such has been the case with the ongoing saga of a possible future location for a new Carmarthenshire Record Office. […]
Carmarthenshire Archives: the Perils of the ‘P’ Word
This week, I’m delighted to welcome Susan Beckley with a guest blog about the Carmarthenshire Archives situation, essentially a response and sequel to last week’s post on this site. Susan worked as an archivist in Carmarthenshire from 1974 to 1986, and wrote the book Carmarthenshire Record Office: A Survey of Archival Holdings (1980). She was […]
Carmarthenshire Archives: The Future
For those who might be new to the fraught saga of Carmarthenshire Archives, you can catch up on the ‘story so far’ here, here and here. I expected this to be the first of two new posts about the situation in relatively short order. However, I’m still waiting for a response to the Freedom of Information requests […]
Of Babies and Bathwater
Two blogs for the price of one this week – my latest, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, observations on the Carmarthenshire Archives affair/scandal/fiasco (please select favourite apocalyptic noun), and this one, some thoughts on last week’s conference at the National Maritime Museum about ‘the emergence of a maritime nation’ in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In all essential […]
Location, Location, Location
I hadn’t intended to write another blog about the Carmarthenshire Archives situation for a while, but I’ve been overtaken by ‘events, dear boy, events’… First, the good news: apparently Carmarthenshire county council intends to provide a page about the archives problem on its website, finally acknowledging the facts that [a] it actually holds such things […]
The Power of the Internet
A very quick update, particularly for anybody who follows this blog but isn’t on Facebook. We’re just coming up to the one week anniversary of the ‘Save Carmarthenshire Archives’ campaign going live online, and we’ve just chalked up a remarkable milestone – 1,000 ‘likes’ on the Facebook page! This, and the hugely supportive comments both […]
The Photocopier of Doom
In the near future, I promise to start blogging again about matters other than the situation at Carmarthenshire Archives, the subject of my last two posts and of a remarkable and gratifying response from individuals and online communities around the world. But while I’m waiting for responses to the letters I’ve sent to the Keeper […]
