Have the floodgates on the subject of recent archive television
programmes at last been broken? An excellent topic for a Friday! While
I realise that we should be grateful for any scraps of publicity we're
able to get (especially, as Richard Childs pointed out, the DCMS are
doing their best to ignore us), and from a layman's point of view both
Bloodties and Breaking the Seal have probably made for reasonably
interesting viewing, I do not feel that either programme has yet managed
to provide an accurate representation of the realities of research. I
appreciate that they're trying to make archives look sexy, but it would
be nice if they could mention the practicalities of ID, security,
surrogate copies - no you will not be allowed to simply turn up at the
PRO and have a look at Domesday, and if you were you wouldn't be able to
read it anyway. And no you do not need to travel to the PRO to look at
the Hearth Tax returns or the Family Records Centre to look at the St
Catherines House Index. Am I going on a bit? Perhaps we should think
about writing to the Radio Times as a group? By the way, I thought
Louise Hampson came across very well, and if the 'specialises' was a bit
misleading, at least it was nice to be portrayed as having some sort of
expertise.
Regards,
Maria Sienkiewicz
Oldham Local Studies and Archives
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