The College Record 2022

Reports and College Activities
Credit: David Olds
A YEAR IN THE ARCHIVE
Michael Riordan
College Archivist
This has been a momentous year in the Archive, as plans
long delayed by the pandemic finally came to fruition.
As described in previous Records, we will re-catalogue the
Archive over the course of a decade. The current catalogue
is actually four catalogues (medieval deeds, volumes, files,
and everything else), none of which meets international
professional standards and all remain paper-based.
We have – at last! – begun the project, working first on the
records of the College’s Oxford properties, and on the
estates given in 1529 by William Fettiplace. They will all be
arranged and catalogued according to the International
Standard on Archival Description (General) on specialist archival cataloguing
software, Epexio, which, as it happens, was created by a former member of the
College’s Library staff. In due course it will be possible to search the catalogue via
the College’s website.
To facilitate the project, the College has created the role of Assistant Archivist.
We have been lucky to appoint Amy Ebrey who has just finished a doctorate at
St. John’s on the work of mediaeval Oxford theologians. She is working part-time
at Queen’s and is studying part-time at University College London to become a
professional archivist. Amy is answering most of the enquiries that come to the
Archive about the history of the College, its members and estates, and would be
very glad to hear from any Old Members.
We continued to receive such enquiries from the public throughout the pandemic,
though we had to close the Reading Room to physical visits for a while. It is now
fully open again, but we’ve found that though professional scholars are visiting
to look at items from the Archive, we have not yet had the return of recreational
researchers to investigate their family history, local history, or a myriad of other
subjects. Consequently, over the course of the year we had just 17 visits by
researchers to the Reading Room, but a further 162 enquiries by email, telephone
or (very occasionally!) post.
Additionally, work continued by the Oxford Conservation Consortium on cleaning,
repairing and rehousing – in a variety of acid-free envelopes and boxes – the College’s
collection of 2,500 mediaeval deeds. We also held a pop-up exhibition of items from
the Archive illustrating the College’s historic connections with the North of England.
Some of these can be seen in my article on the subject later in this Record.
46 The Queen’s College | College Record 2022