Please note that the following advert will not be advertised in ARC.

Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council
Directorate of Adult, Community and Housing Services

Libraries, Archives and Adult Learning Division

Dudley Archives and Local History Service


Earl of Dudley Estate Collection - Service Development Grant

Background

The Museums, Libraries and Archives Council West Midlands made funds
available to repositories providing a service in the West Midlands to
develop collections.  Activities that were highlighted for funding
included the re-development of collection, and were particularly
encouraged if preparatory to a Heritage Lottery Fund bid.

The Earl of Dudley Estate collection (DE)
	*	The collection is the single largest body of documents
held at DALHS relating to the history of the Dudley MBC.  It reflects
the social, economic and geographic nature of the area.
	*	The collection dates to 1186/7 and contains the oldest
documents relating to the borough, being a papal bull granting the lands
of the priory at Dudley and up to 1948 when property was sold by the
estate, bringing to a close a series of rationalisations of the estate,
set in motion by the estates auditor, Loch in 1833 and which led to Lord
Ward's Estate Bill being passed as an Act of Parliament on 22 July 1847.
	*	The extent of the collection is at least 42 linear
metres of shelf space, in addition to at least 40 linear metres of maps
and plans.
	*	Due to the extent and complexity of the collection,
full-scale cataloguing has been partial and piece-meal. In some
instances, mainly in the map collection, the context of the collection
has been compromised.  References to the Dudley Estates interests in
Jamaica are limited at present to a single 19th century published
volume, the 'Jamaica Almanack'.  Exploration of these links would be
especially pertinent in the bi-centenary of the Abolition of the Slave
Trade Act, 1807.

	The Service Development Grant funding will enable an examination
of the collection to facilitate a Heritage Lottery Fund bid for
full-scale detailed cataloguing into DALHS's electronic catalogue, DS
CALM and delivery of the resource via the blackcountryhistory.org
gateway via the World Wide Web, thus facilitating wider public access.

	The project must be completed by Feb 2008.

Objective
	*	To improve accessibility of the collection by informing
a Heritage Lottery Fund bid for a cataloguing project.
Approach
	*	Using the Logjam methodology of assessing collections
developed by MLA-NW.
Deliverables
	1.	A detailed picture of the Dudley Estate collection
	2.	Identify resources and a timeframe to catalogue the
collection
	3.	Identify conservation need, using NPO guidance


Closing date for submission of tender documents by 25 October,
preferably in electronic format.

Gillian Roberts
Borough Archivist
Dudley Archives and Local History Service
Mount Pleasant Street
Coseley
WV14 9JR

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01384 812770

For further details or an informal discussion about the project, please
contact Gillian Roberts.





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