Report from the chair (Jan 2023)
On behalf of myself, our trustees and volunteers may I wish you all a very happy and prosperous 2023.
Our Christmas open evening was a great success and it was wonderful to close the year meeting up with friends old and new. I was particularly delighted to see Caitlyn our intern who is now in full-time employment and catch up with her. As a thank you for all the work she put in on the Frank Patterson project we had a copy of her dissertation printed, bound up and signed by all the trustees. We were able to present this to her on the evening. We have also printed and bound a second copy so that we have a record of her work in the archive.
Caitlyn Harrison receiving a bound copy of her dissertation, signed by the trustees, from Richard.
Following a conversation with John Brooks (one of our stalwart “finders of donations”) I spent a very pleasant weekend late on in December ferrying magazines from Esher to Maidstone. Fortunately my daughter Ellissa and her partner Dan live in Maidstone and were happy to put me up for a few days as well as store the magazine collection prior to bringing it up to the archive. The collection itself consists mostly of automotive, golf and shooting magazines accumulated from the 1990s onwards. A big “Thank You” to our trustee George who once again loaned his small van to make the pick-up easier.
Of course not every donation has to be a big one to be welcomed into the archive. Sue, a person from whom I recently bought a Billy bookcase, came along with a box of Private Eye magazines she thought we could make use of.
As part of the expansion of our collection we have decided to push the area of breweriana and our volunteer Dickie Grenfell has taken on the task of cataloguing our growing collection of beer mats into a series of product file folders. These will sit alongside our existing product file folders. One problem with collecting beer mats is that in the vast majority of cases they are not dated and this poses quite a challenge for us. Fortunately we have discovered that the British Beer Mat Society has done a lot of work in this regard and so we are about to join the Society in order to be able to gain access to this information (as well as promote the archive within their organisation).
Craig has almost completed our expanded wood store and we hope to have the roof on later this week. Once completed this will more than double the amount of wood we can store. Apart from being essential to keeping the heating costs down at the archive it also brings in valuable income through sales of surplus wood.
Until next time, take care and keep safe
Richard Roberts
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Collection Statistics
The Richard Roberts Archive collection statistics
Wednesday 13th December 2022
08/11/2022 13/12/2022 Increase
TOTAL items 138,622 139,193 571
Of which Magazines 116,346 116,888 542
Product file database
TOTAL items (scanned and DB) 15,092 15,092 0
Of which physical copies 8,444 8,444 0
Product folders
Companies, people and authors A4 88 97 9
Companies, people and authors A3 0 1 1
Companies, people and authors A2+ 0 0 1
Artists and engravers 3 4 1
Drinking glasses 1 1 0
Breweriana 2 4 2
Transport photograph database
TOTAL items 883 883 0
Volunteer hours
TOTAL 63,540 64,017 477