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 […]
More Spinned Against Than Spinning
For those who are getting confused, I thought I’d provide a helpful guide to what Carmarthenshire County Council’s public statements regarding the archives situation actually mean. Please refer to this as and when attempts are made to spin against future posts on this blog, or when the Council puts out a story in the press. […]
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 […]
Carmarthenshire Archives: An Update
In my previous post, I presented the situation at the archives as I understood it, and noted that I had not received any reply to the email that I sent to Carmarthenshire County Council a fortnight earlier. Perhaps coincidentally, I received a detailed email from Jane Davies, Senior Cultural Services Manager, some six hours after […]
Carmarthenshire Archives: Farce or Greek Tragedy?
A warning: if you’re in search of a short and cheerful read, I suggest you leave this post now and click on something like Buzzfeed instead. On the other hand, if you have a few minutes to spare to read a woeful tale of institutional failure, threatening access to – and the very existence of […]
Repository Bingo, Part 2
Last week’s first part of this thread got a big response and clearly struck some chords with people. I wrote then that I intended to use this week’s post to provide my ‘top five’ of UK non-national repositories, i.e. county record offices and the like; at the last count, I think I’ve now visited […]
