Thanks goodness for collectors! You might call them daft but they are a godsend for archivists and archive collections. Recently, Midlothian Local Studies has completed a catalogue for a collection once owned by Eric Basden.  Eric B Basden lived at 7 Leyden Park, Bonnyrigg with his wife Joan and four children. He was a keen entomologist, and a member of the Bonnyrigg and

We’re mad busy at East Lothian Archives getting ready for our move to John Gray Centre in a few weeks. Packing, cataloguing, cleaning, blogging – you name it we’re doing it. The website for the new centre began its user testing this week (and will launch to the public shortly) so many hours have been spent writing content, checking the details and uploading catalogues to make our collections as accessible as possible. With one search visitors will gets results from

As we move into the New Year, here at West Lothian archives, we are looking forward to busy and changing times for our archive service. Last month we learned that we had been awarded a National Cataloguing Grant of £42,588 to catalogue our Livingston collections. The 18 month project entitled “Livingston New Town, From Plan to Community, 1962-2012” will be led by a project archivist and will involve the cataloguing of the records of Livingston Development Corporation as well as

One of the fulfilling aspects of working in an Archive is helping with and promoting programmes within the community that it serves. A recent enquiry highlighted this; from Julia Priestley, the Arts Development Officer at West Lothian Council, and Thomas Connelly, Library Manager asking for photographs of Craigshill as source material for a mural. Craigshill is one of the oldest districts in Livingston, being one of the first areas built when the New Town was created. The mural project involving

The end of November saw the final stages of Edinburgh City Archives’ move of the major part of its archival holdings into a new purpose-built storage facility at its Murrayburn repository. The move comes in the wake of a Friendly Audit of Edinburgh City Archives which was undertaken by the National Archives of Scotland in 2005 and which found the existing storage facilities deficient in most of the assessed areas. On the back of the report and survey, a Business

It’s been a busy year here in East Lothian with preparations for our move to the John Gray Centre ongoing. We’ve been busy packing and cataloguing and working on our new website and portal where you’ll be able to search across Archives, Museums, Local History and Archaeology collections. We’ve also been setting up our social networks so if you want the latest news on what we’re up too and a sneak peek at the new building like us on Facebook

 Part of the joy of working in archives lies in the uncovering of gems in unexpected places. Here at West Lothian Archives, we recently came across a bundle of scrapbooks amongst a collection of records from Glen and Henderson solicitors, Linlithgow.  In the late nineteenth century, local solicitors played a pivotal role in local society. During his career W.H. Henderson took on many roles, including as Procurator Fiscal, county road clerk, county clerk and as Honorary Treasurer of the Linlithgow

  School Children c.1895 The admission records of the Wellington Reform Farm School in Leadburn provide a rare glimpse into the lives of young offenders and nineteenth century approaches to understanding and ‘reforming’ juvenile delinquency. The admission applications and certificates are a rare survival of detailed individual records and help to tell the story of children from a variety of backgrounds and circumstances.   Although life as a ‘delinquent’ child during the Victoria era was certainly not easy, social reforms concerning

  We are often asked what an archivist is. There are lots of right answers but I like to think of myself as a keeper of people’s stories. A collection at East Lothian that demonstrates this to a ‘T’ is the Wallace Menzies collection. Wallace Menzies is a firm of solicitors based in North Berwick and the collection is one of personal legal papers relating to work they undertook. The story of the firm itself is an interesting one and

                            Recently, there has been a lot of publicity about the theft and destruction of war memorials. Uncaring and unscrupulous people have been stealing memorials and selling them for scrap metal. This is a particularly insensitive crime which insults the brave men and women who gave their lives for our freedom and destroys irreplaceable aspects of our history. Happily, it’s not all bad news and in Midlothian