Report from the chair (November 2024)
Dear all, and welcome to our November newsletter.
We continue to get applications for volunteers through the Stockport and Manchester Volunteer Hubs and it is wonderful to be getting extra help at the archive. The fascinating thing for me is the breadth and range of both ages and backgrounds of the people coming forward. It is wonderful that youngsters (relative to us old fogies) are interested enough in what we do to give up their time to help out. We now have three people trained in using the collection database which means more of the main collection backlog can be dealt with. In addition there are also five volunteers working on the product filing of our loose advert collection, something we are very keen to build as this is the first port of call for research enquiries.
Donation offers keep coming in and we try to take as many as possible. This month we received two large boxes of newspapers with a further box on its way. These will add nicely to our growing newspaper collection. Another source of material is my regular trawl of Facebook marketplace and Ebay. On Facebook I managed to acquire a small collection of 12 beer glasses produced as part of the Stoke-on-Trent annual beer festivals. Fortunately for me, Paul, one of our volunteers, lives in Stoke-on-Trent and offered to pick them up for me. Another find, again on Facebook, was a collection of 2,000 beer mats which I collected at the weekend from Mansfield. This collection had been put together by a member of the British Beermat Collectors Society and the mats were already sorted and numbered. This will make consolidating them into the archive collection so much easier.
With our December open evening fast approaching I would like to offer a warm welcome to anyone living close to us to come along and join in our festivities. We will again be putting on mulled wine and mince pies alongside our usual tea, coffee and biscuits. The decorations will be up and we will be in good Christmas cheer. Look out for the invitation in your inbox.
Following the success of our advent calendar last year we are putting another one together to celebrate 2024. We have hopefully put together another package of exciting Christmas advertising for your enjoyment so feel free to share it with your friends and spread the word about the archive and its wonderful content.
Please look at the latest acquisitions reports in the rest of the newsletter for more details on all of the items recently arriving.
Take care and all the best.
Richard Roberts and the team at the Richard Roberts Archive
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Collection Statistics
The Richard Roberts Archive collection statistics
Tuesday 1st November 2024
Collection database
Total items 163,594
- of which Magazines 139,199
Product folders
Total folders 173
- circa number of adverts 21,137
Breweriana
Total folders 472
Beermats 29,210
Transport photograph database
Total items 883
Volunteer hours
Total to date 75,437
