The University of Stirling Archives and Special Collections (ASC) moved from our lovely loch side reading room to computers hastily set up in our homes among the houseplants back in March, much like everyone else. In the usual run of things we keep the institutional memory of the University itself and collect around the University’s key research interests. Over the years this has made us the permanent place of deposit for the NHS Forth Valley records and had us collect around Film & Media, African History, Aquaculture and Politics to name but a few. In recent years we’ve also had a particular focus on Sporting Heritage collections, creating the Commonwealth Games Scotland Archive and receiving support from the National Lottery Heritage Fund to kickstart a Scottish Boxing Archive too.

We work with staff, students and external researchers, teach classes, lead tours and even host the occasional cake sale!

We love working closely with colleagues across the campus, facilitating research visits to the Scottish Political Archive and collaborating with the University Art Collection on exhibitions and events. Our own exhibition Hosts and Champions has displayed treasures from our Commonwealth Games Scotland Archive all over Scotland since it opened in 2015 – even making it all the way to the Gold Coast Games in 2018!

We usually run a well utilised volunteer programme with some long standing volunteers we’ve worked with for years and some shorter term volunteers who stay with us for a year or a semester to learn some new skills and we’re so proud of the volunteers we have who go on to do archives qualifications themselves! We’re missing our volunteers very much throughout lockdown, like I’m sure many services are so we’re happy to be redesigning some of our regular projects for remote users so that we can welcome back some volunteers and help a new round of folk develop their skills in the near future!

During lockdown, we have continued to process enquiries as much as we can with the digital resources available to us – some of them the product of our wonderful volunteers! We have also tried to find new and remote ways of encouraging users to explore our archives! Every Thursday lunchtime 1-2pm we host a #CollectionsInColour hour where we explore our collections through a specific theme. Previously these hours were dedicated to #BrigInColour as we launched the digital archive of the University of Stirling’s student newspaper Brig. You can search these hashtags to find all of the amazing content already out there – supplemented by the Art Collection and the Scottish Political Archive and join us for future themes every Thursday on our Twitter and Facebook pages. We have playlists, we have colouring in sheets, we have jigsaws and we have a heck of a lot of cool archives to show you! Recent themes have included fashion, 70 years since Scotland first hosted the Commonwealth Games and travel.

Like many other archive services, we launched a Covid-19 collecting project during lockdown which is ongoing. As we hold the archives of NHS Forth Valley and will one day receive their records relating to this period, we hoped to build an archive of personal and local stories that complemented this. So we put a call out for videos of the weekly Clap for NHS/Clap for Carers/Clap for Key Workers; for images of local communities in Forth Valley and how lockdown and/or coronavirus had altered the landscape, impacted on services and shaped people’s daily lives; and we asked participants who were willing to keep a reasonably regular lockdown diary. It is never too late to take part in this project, you can send us any videos you may have previously taken of the Thursday night clapping, images you may have taken out and about during lockdown or start a diary now. We hoped when we launched the project that these activities would be a creative and cathartic outlet during a frustrating time and that they might improve mindfulness and foster good mental health and we encourage participants to only engage in the project if this is the case for them! There is no pressure to produce content or to continue once you have started if doing so becomes burdensome or stressful. A gallery of some selected lockdown images can be seen here – we’ve loved seeing Forth Valley through the eyes of our project participants.

Excitingly, the time has come for our Archive Service to reopen. As the University Library launches a click and collect service, we’ve opened the doors to our reading room once more – with some changes, of course! All the information on using the service now we have been reopened can be found here – we’re still hoping to deal with many enquiries remotely with custom digitisation and by completing research on your behalf but the option to visit us is now possible, just remember you have to book an appointment!