Castle Madoc School, Breconshire, by William Williams (ca. 1850)
Over the last couple of weeks I have been going through the uncatalogued material in the Map Store, in order to create some extra space on the shelves. Shifting lots of heavy boxes full of maps around is hard work, but it does have its rewards.
On several occasions over the last fortnight I have come across uncatalogued material of great interest. Antiquarian maps, railway plans, architectural drawings, estate sale catalogues, printed maps and atlases, each discovery has been a cause of excitement in what might otherwise have been a rather tedious task.
When you clear out part of your own home you often come across things which you had forgotten about, but with this job I’m finding things I never knew we had, so the excitement is that much greater.
I am reminded of the famous scene of Howard Carter opening Tutankhamun’s tomb and finding ‘wonderful things’, I’ve had more than one Carteresque moment recently. Perhaps the most fascinating was discovering several boxes containing architect’s drawings of school buildings in Wales, such as the one pictured; something which will be high on our cataloguing agenda in the coming year.
Another feature of this belated spring-clean is that I am beginning to see exactly how much work we still need to do to make all of these items available on our catalogue. With resources tight we need to carefully prioritise which collections we should tackle first, in order to provide the best possible access to our collections. In addition to cataloguing the material my colleauges in the Collection Care Section will also need to carry out conservation work on some the material before it is really usable. Again, this is something which will need to be carefully considered in order to make the best use of resources.
Much of this material will be processed over the next few years and will become available for the public to use, which is, after all, why we are here.
Huw Thomas, Map Librarian