We’ve finished the first phase of our move
- 26th March 2012
We have now finished moving all of the archive collections out of our County Hall branch that were due to come straight to The Hive. There are still a few things left to be collected by the specialist document treatment company we are using, but for now our hard-working removal company have completed the first phase of our move.
The archaeology team, which now makes up part of the joint Archive and Archaeology Service, also moved into The Hive last week. We are still getting to know our new neighbours and we all hope to learn lots about the service they provide so that we can provide our customers with any advice they may need in the future. The final stage in our move is for our History Centre branch to join us. They will be coming along after the History Centre closes on 21st April.
The last photograph taken at County Hall branch, showing Angie amongst our empty shelves.
Now that the hard work of the physical move is over, we are busy working to make sure the strongrooms are all in order ready to restart our enquiry service. During the move there were a number of occasions where the boxes didn’t quite fit on the shelves they were supposed to, so they had to be put somewhere else last minute. This means that we now have an awful lot of checking to do to make sure we know exactly where each box is. Everyday, we have members of staff in the strongrooms with a printout of our shelf location database, checking off each item on each shelf. Once this is complete we are updating our electronic database with the new location. This may sound like a laborious process, but once we reopen to the public this will be a vital tool that we can use when people order documents – it means we can go straight to the correct shelf to find it, rather than wandering round helpless!
We have a lot more work to do before we open too, including finishing off the updates to our newly merged finding aids; producing guides to our new searchroom; updating our website to reflect our new, joint service; training staff to use the new building and establishing new rotas to ensure we can provide the best service to you all when we reopen.
Soon, we will bring you some more behind-the-scenes photographs of our areas within The Hive. We are also planning to film a video tour of the archive stores and new searchroom. We are keen to know what you would like to see on the blog too. If you have any ideas for future posts, or any questions you would like us to address, please leave us a message in the comments section here and we will do our best to answer it.
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