Report of the Archives Team – 2017/8

Cataloguing: Having completed all the major catalogues for photos, slides, books, maps, artefacts and legal documents, the team has moved on to cataloguing the contents of the individual boxes and providing each item with a serial number for easy recovery.

Acquisitions: The archive continues to receive a sporadic trickle of photos, books and documents for the archives. One member of our team has spent all year sorting out papers donated by Bill Tyler. The lack of a filing system for correspondence has impeded the process. It is hoped that this task will be completed mid 2018.

Enquiries: The Archives continue to receive a slow stream of enquiries via the internet. Most are by members of the public requesting photos of places their ancestors lived or documentary evidence for them being there. I estimate we can help in just under half of the cases. The archives have also assisted Tricolor/Terapia with photos for their information panels on the Bothy; Frank Kelsall’s research into Hawthorn Dene and provided Avenue/Stephens House with some material for the forthcoming information boards celebrating Spike Milligan’s 100th birthday. We were also able to assist Linda Kane in identifying some early photos of East Finchley and in doing so gained some early photos for the archive. We helped Denise Ferguson with information about Sedgemere House and in return gained information about local resident Sam Woodiwiss, a noted breeder of Abyssinian Cats and Bulldogs as well as being the owner of Sedgemere Faith believed to be the foundation female of the British Alpine Goat.

Digitisation: The archive team will be able to participate in whatever digitisation programme the Society eventually decides on.

Copyright: Much discussion has been held on the Society’s position regarding the provision of our images to others in view of the complexity of copyright. We await the definitive advice of the Trustees in this matter.

The team was saddened by the loss of team member Margaret Cullen, who died at the end of 2017.

Tony Roberts