Once upon a time, in order to communicate with a business associate in another location, a person would write a letter using pen and paper. Or they might dictate their message to their secretary who would type it. The letter would be placed in an envelope and sent by messenger or postal worker. The letter […]
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At present, working from home means I can’t access the collections, so this rather puts paid to new cataloguing. However, what I can do is use the information in our electronic files to enhance our collection descriptions and write ones for archives which we haven’t yet catalogued. In other words, I am getting to know […]
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National Gardening Week runs from Monday 27th April – Sunday 3rd May this year, and naturally we decided to delve into the archives for inspiration for those who have a garden. First up we found a rather peculiar (and unhelpful) article in the Battersea Polytechnic Magazine from March 1922 (Vol 14 No. 62). We then […]
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How strange when we’re all supposed to be staying at home to be considering the archive of a body devoted to travel and tourism. The British Guild of Travel Writers, generally referred to as the BGTW, is celebrating its sixtieth anniversary in 2020. To coincide with this, we have started a project to catalogue and […]
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Carefully compiled by their creators, scrapbooks can be very revealing. They can be informative, commemorative, and aesthetic, and give an impression of the owner as well as providing insights into a subject through the items they have preserved. We have a number of scrapbooks in our collections which show how varied they can be. Henry […]
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It is exam period at the University of Surrey which has prompted us to take a look at some of the related material we hold in the archives. Whilst current students may look at exam papers from the last few years to see what kind of questions might come up for them, exam papers from […]
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