Image above: Swindon market charter – Letters Patent issued by Charles I under the Great Seal, dated 1626, granting Thomas Goddard the right ‘to have and to hold within the town of Swindon one Markett every Monday in the week’ forever and ‘two Faires there yearly’.
Image credit: Bonhams
The Accessions to Repositories Survey is carried out every year to obtain an overview of the types of materials that archives are collecting. It also aims to provide a better insight into collecting practices across the UK. New accessions vary greatly in scope and content. But our analysis over the past 5 years suggests that there is remarkable stability in the category of records archives are choosing to collect.
A large number of accessions date from the twentieth century and are in a physical, rather than digital, format. However, archives across the UK are already collecting records related to major events over the past year. For example, there were close to 100 collections related to COVID-19. A number of repositories, including Jersey Archives and the Ahmed Iqbal Ullah RACE Centre, also accessioned records related to the Black Lives Matter movement. Accessioning this material as events unfold allows the initial reactions to these events to be preserved for future generations.
The consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, and numerous lockdowns, have made comparisons to previous years’ accessions less straightforward. There is less data from 2020 to work with. And since repositories are still feeling the impact, it is more difficult to draw firm conclusions from it. Overall, 219 archives participated in the survey, reporting approximately 7400 new collections. The challenges of the past year have significantly reduced the number of accessions that many repositories were able to make. In some cases, this prohibited collecting altogether. Despite these difficulties, many archives were able to accession material worthy of note.
Some highlights include the Library of Trinity College, University of Dublin’s accession of Cartoon Saloon Animation Studios’ drawings of the animated film ‘The Secret of Kells’. And the University of Bristol Theatre Collection now holds Charles Karl’s (active 1885-1934) costume designs for Sir Henry Irving’s production of ‘Peter the Great’ (c.1897).
Analysis of accessions data shows collecting and descriptive practices have undergone very little change over the past few years, with 2020 being no exception. The type of records collected, including Public Records, have likewise remained very stable. 2020 was an extraordinary and challenging year. But services as a whole have risen to the challenge, continuing to take in new material and collecting responses to COVID-19 and current events. There were also a number of new participants in the survey as archives looked to engage with researchers and local communities in new ways.
If you are interested in contributing to the next Accessions to Repositories Survey, please visit our main accessions webpage.
Thank you to all of the archives that contributed to the 2020 Accessions to Repositories Survey, including those who kindly provided images for use in this report.