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Welcome to this month’s heritage bulletin blog, it’s a little bit later than usual but it is holiday season and we have been working on some exciting projects; more on that in future blogs. This month we thought we would discuss the best ways that you our readers can use the Heritage Collection. We will explore what resources we have, what help we can offer and give examples of how our heritage has been used in the past.
ArchiveOnline is a fully searchable catalogue contains listings, many with preview images of a selection of historical material housed in our Archive & Heritage Collection. It is also the gateway to our digital, downloadable version of all 419 issues of the WVS/WRVS Bulletin from 1939-1974, over 60 Oral Histories and the 84,000 pages of the WVS Narrative Reports 1938-1945.
There is also a guide available to help you use our extensive catalogue; Guide to searching the Archive Online.
Why not have a go at running a search and see what you can find!
Read our fact sheets and tell us if you think there is topics we should include
From an in-depth analysis to a short overview of the history and origins of some of the charities most enquired about services.
More detailed fact sheets can be found on the
Royal Voluntary Service website and include among others:
• Hidden Histories of a Million Wartime Women - kickstarter updates
• Welfare work in hospitals 1938 - 2013
• Origins of WVS
• WVS Housewives' Service
• One in Five
On our school resources pages
Voices of Volunteering you’ll also find brief overviews of many services including among others: ·
• Books on Wheels
• Clothing Depots
• Good Neighbours
• Lunch Clubs
• Services Welfare
While we have an extensive rage of factsheets if you’re looking for information on a particular topic please let us know.
Read past blogs and follow us on social media
As you are already doing you can keep up to date with the Archive and find out about the history of the Charity in this blog. An archive of these
blogs is also available on the right of the page.
Also we are very active each week on
Twitter and Facebook, why not follow us to keep up to date.
Ask us a question
We are here to help and answer all your questions about our history and our Heritage Collection. If you have a burning question for us then get in touch and email us
archive@royalvoluntaryservice.org.uk.
Visit us
If you have many many questions needing an answer or researching a particular topic in depth then why not come and visit us, the collection is open by appointment only the first Tuesday and Wednesday of each month, 10:00-16:00 (closed for lunch between 13:00-14:00). To ensure we can provide a high standard of service, access is by appointment only and we ask that these are made at least a month in advance.
You can find more information here about this service.
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Of course we all assume the traditional archive audience is academics, historians (of different disciplines depending on your archive) and genealogists. Archival audiences are also those who have traditionally been represented by them. I could in site the usual pale, male and stale but I know from personal experience this simply isn’t true. In 2015/16 we used our oral histories, publications, photographs and documents to create the Voices of Volunteering School Resources. These resources are for teachers to use with students age 14+ studying Citizenship, PHSE, English language and History or who are involved in extracurricular activities such as the Duke of Edinburgh Award. Titled Citizenship and Service, the activities and oral histories illustrate to students the significance of volunteering through the volunteers’ own eyes and how volunteering has adapted to the changing needs in society. The resources are available free for all.
Visit Voices of Volunteering: 75 Years of Citizenship and Service.
There you have it six of the simplest ways to make the best of Royal Voluntary Service’s Heritage Collection. Hopefully you’ll try some of them if not all of them out in the near future. Of course there are other ways you can use the Heritage collection and perhaps you will let us know how you have been using it.
Tomorrow is
the start of a New Year and perhaps for some the start of some New Year’s
resolutions. If one of those is researching a new project or discovering
something new we can help. In this week’s blog we provide a guide to using our
online resources to research the history of Royal Voluntary Service.
Fact Sheets
From an in-depth
analysis to a short overview of the history and origins of some of the charities most enquired about services.
More detailed
fact sheets can be found on the Royal Voluntary Service website and include
among others:
- Hidden Histories of a Million Wartime Women - kickstarter updates
- Welfare work in
hospitals 1938 - 2013
- Origins of WVS
- WVS Housewives'
Service
- One in Five
On our
school resources pages Voices of Volunteering you’ll also find brief overviews
of many services including among others:
·
- Books on Wheels
- Clothing Depots
- Good Neighbours
- Lunch Clubs
- Services Welfare
School Resources
As
mentioned above we have the Voices of Volunteering resources; these resources
are for teachers to use with students age 14+ studying Citizenship, PHSE,
English language and History or who are involved in extracurricular activities
such as the Duke of Edinburgh Award. Titled Citizenship
and Service, the activities and oral histories illustrate to
students the significance of volunteering through the volunteers’ own eyes and
how volunteering has adapted to the changing needs in society. The resources
are available free for all. Visit Voices of Volunteering: 75 Years of Citizenship and Service.
Collections
There is a
very handy list of some of the collections held in our Archives which you can
find on the Archive & Heritage Collections page.
Heritage Bulletin
As you are
already doing you can keep up to date with the Archive and find out about the
history of the Charity in this blog. An archive of these blogs is also available
on the right of the page. There is also access to the six volumes of the Heritage Bulletin printed between 2010 and 2012 which provide a variety of stories about
WVS and WRVS.
Social Media
Believe it
or not Social Media can be a fantastic resource for research and finding out
about what we hold in the collection that may not be found on the main website
pages. As well as a number of Facebook and Twitter posts we have also created a
small number of vlogs and videos on YouTube and podcasts and oral history clips
on SoundCloud.
These include
YouTube
- The Hidden History of a Million Wartime Women
- A history of Uniform
- Three Heritage Bulletin Blogs
- Two 80th Anniversary Films
SoundCloud
- Coloured Thread
- Archives and Motives
- Women in Green on the Silver Screen
- Clothing Store (Oral History)
- The Gift of Time
- Bromham Hospital Fire (Oral History)
ArchiveOnline
Once you’ve
been through our extensive collection of secondry sources and finding aids you
may want to look at some primary material. ArchiveOnline is a fully searchable catalogue
contains listings, many with preview images of a selection
of historical material housed in our Archive & Heritage
Collection. It is also the gateway to our digital, downloadable version of all
419 issues of the WVS/WRVS Bulletin from 1939-1974, over 60 Oral Histories and the 84,000 pages of the
WVS Narrative Reports 1938-1945.
There is
also a guide available to help you use our extensive catalogue; Guide to searching the Archive Online.
Why not have
a go at running a search and see what you can find! We searched for New Year
there were 497 results including this 1963 New Year message from Lady Reading.
Enquiry Service and visiting
Of course if you are in need of help or can’t find what you are
looking for you can contact us through our enquiry service. Also if you are a
researcher and are interested in visiting the Archive & Heritage Collection
the collection is open by appointment only the first Tuesday and Wednesday of each month, 10:00-16:00 (closed for
lunch between 13:00-14:00). To ensure we can provide a high standard of
service, access is by appointment only and we ask that these are made at least
a month in advance. You can find more information here about this service.
We hope this brief
outline of what we can offer has given you food for thought and some New Year’s
research solutions.
Happy New
Year from all of us at the Royal Voluntary Service Archive & Heritage
Collection.
This month we have been taking part in #Archive30 along with many other Archives on Twitter. Each day has had a different theme and I thought those of you not on Twitter or who haven’t seen what we’ve been sharing might be interested in learning something new and finding out about the different things we hold. This is just a selection and some may surprise you.
Day 2 – Favourite Item
My favourite item from the archive has to be knitted doll Stella who kept me company while collecting #oralhistory and is now part of the collection #archive30
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Day 5 – Something Small
#Archive30 day 5 something small which is difficult to choose because we have quite a lot of small items including all the items in this #ARP First Aid Box which forms a Model Rest Centre #WW2 #postwar #emergency includes a green model toilet.
Day 9 – Animal
#Archive30 day 9 #animal - during #WW2 WVS members collected dog hair to make wool for jumpers. This week's Heritage Bulletin #blog looks at some of the other clothing related work done by WVS and WRVS members in the 20th century http://www.royalvoluntaryservice.org.uk/hbblog
Day 13 – Journey to work
Day 13 - #archive30 day 13 Journey to work, some WVS members would travel to work in vans here is a model version from our collection. Green painted wooden WVS Model Van BUG 44T, metal wheels painted front and side windows, W.V.S. painted in red on side, back doors function. 1940-1960.
Day 18 – Friendship
Day 18 #Archive30 #friendship during our Voices of Volunteering #oralhistory project many #volunteers spoke of the camaraderie between themselves and other volunteers: https://www.royalvoluntaryservice.org.uk/about-us/our-history/archive-online/voices-of-volunteering …. #photo: Emergency Feeding Exercise, Velmore Camp (food Flying Squad) 1955
Day 20 – Something Fun
#Archive30 There are so many #fun things to choose from! Members of the WRVS Books on Wheels service enjoyed delivering books to those who had requested them. #volunteering #reading
A large green mocked up book with pages, titled 'WRVS BOOKS ON WHEELS' on the front cover and spine, mounted spine up on four wheels, the hubs of which contain the WRVS monogram in black on gold. Used for advertising the Books on Wheels service.
#Archive30 continues until the end of April why not see what else we are posting about by visiting @RVSarchives. Today’s theme is self-portrait.