Without wishing to introduce a morbid note to the
exchanges on this mailbase, I'm pondering a question my wife put to me the other
day when I returned from various underground forays in and around Nenthead with
a couple of rolls of undeveloped film and a few bits of mineral: "What are you
going to do with all these mining things?" (i.e. when I go to that great stope
in the sky).
Many of us will have perhaps a lifetime's
collection of photographs, books, mineral specimens and mining paraphernalia,
and not all of us will have children who wish to inherit them - I've two
teenagers myself but they have no interest in mining. And like many fellow
enthusiasts, I've got thousands of photos (mainly transparencies) of mines all
over the UK, above and below ground, loads of books (I dare say none of them
particularly rare but the collection is pretty comprehensive), mineral specimens
and a dozen miners lamps. My photos are probably of average quality - I'm no
expert, but they do form a record of sites that have changed a lot in thirty
years, or which have disappeared altogether.
It would be nice to think that these could go to
someone who appreciated them (while they are important to me, I guess the
average museum or archive might find them pretty unremarkable) but how do you
identify such a person or organisation? The last thing I would want would be for
them to be wasted ... any ideas?
Yours in hope of a good few more years
yet,
John
