St Ives Archive

Yesterday I vistited the volunteer-run community archive at St Ives. Having worked with a number of volunteers at our Archive and Special Collections Service at Tremough, I have become very interested in how archive services can use volunteers - in ways that are both beneficial to the service as well as the individual.

The St Ives Archive was set up in 1996 and has been collecting material on the town ever since, particularly newspaper articles, legal documents, pamphlets, tourist quides, sound recordings, photographs and genealogical records. The main subjects covered are maritime, art, family history, buildings, photographs, archaeology and public services. Each volunteer has an area of expertise, and many have a vast knowledge of St Ives. Some have even written books using the Archive, and these are on sale as a form of generating funds.You could tell that each person working there had a real love for St Ives and its community, and I was amazed at the wealth of information available.

It's not an archive in a strict sense of the word - they don't work around the rules and regulations that we might do, over handling care for example, and a lot of the information isn't primary sources. Their material isn't catalogued as we would catalogue ours, but information is kept in subjects. Around the walls are hundreds of files, each on a different topic. These files are each colour coded, to tell you which of the main catagory they fall into. This makes it all very user-friendly - a reader can browse through a folder as they like and can look at material on the spot, without necessarily having to make an appointment. So although it isn't an archive in the sense that we might see it, it certainly is a mine of information, and very accessible information at that. And afterall, I think that is what a Community Archive should offer. It was amazing to see how well organised they are, and how well they have managed on nothing but donations, membership and occasional funding for projects. It really was an inspirational visit, and I would be very interested to learn how other Community Archives work - possible dissertation topic for next year?!

A Cornish giant and some positive feedback

Being based partly in an arts university, we often get readers in the archive looking at our collections for a vast array of reasons. As well as the more traditional researchers, we also get students looking for inspiration. Last week we had an MA Professional Writing student, along with her illustrator, who are creating an illustrated children's book on Cornish Folklore. We have fantastic resources for this - not only the Special Collections of Cornish Poetry and the Gorseth Kernow collection in the library which contain many illustrated books of Cornish tales, but there is also a wealth of material in the Kneehigh Archive.

Kneehigh have taken many folktales and re-worked them, and the one we focussed on was the tale of Tregeagle, which they have performed three times in 1985-6, 1989, and 1996. Tregeagle is the tale of a greedy steward, whose ghost is summoned to answer to a charge of unpaid rent and is then forced to carry out a series of pointless tasks to avoid being sent down to hell. There is a mine of material relating to the performances in the archive, from promotional material like flyers and programmes, to photograph albums and scrap books, and all are incredibly stimulating visually, which is perfect for someone researching for an illustrated children's book.

It was fantastic to receive from our readers some really positive feedback the next day, saying that the visit had left them "feeling inspired and motivated to get writing and drawing". This is what's great about our Performance Archives - they can be used in a less traditional ways to inspire creativity, and this has definitely been a theme amongst students coming in to use our service, and not only with the Performance archives but also the photographic Ian Stern Archive. We can't wait to see the result of the visit and look forward to sparking the creative juices of many more students to come!