While we were rather quiet on the blog front last year, we had plenty to keep us busy during year as we take a look back at 2022 in pictures.
January
The beginning of the year saw some book post and a rather happy librarian, it was also the start of some serious behind the scenes work on a new exhibition. It also saw the release of the 1921 census online…who else stayed up till midnight to be amongst the first to find their family?
February
It got a little windy out there thanks to storm Eunice, which meant we had to close our doors for the day.
March
Our assistant librarian wrote a post about North Devon and the 1921 Census while the Librarian worked on installing our first exhibition in the Community Gallery of the Museum. The culmination of months of work on our joint Creative North Devon Project.
April
The Creative North Devon exhibition opened in early April and the librarian gave a talk on The Master and His Apprentice (Alexander Lauder and William Richard Lethaby) as part of the South West Heritage Trust’s online programme.
The Librarian was also asked to contribute to the Explore Your Archives blog (which has since been re-edited) as part of the #Archive30 social media campaign which runs for the whole of April.
May
As our Creative North Devon Exhibition came to a close, items from our collections went on loan for another museum exhibition on Ethel Mariet and Fred Partridge which opened just before ours closed. The Creative North Devon Exhibition was the culmination of a joint project between the Museum of Barnstaple, the South West Heritage Trust and us. The librarian also contributed to the Partridge exhibition catalogue and gave a talk on the Barnstaple School of Art.
June & July
Saw us celebrating the Jubilee with a blog post on a Royal visit in 1956 and providing support for an exhibition held by the Libraries Unlimited. We also hit the shelves as the librarian, assistant librarian and one of our Trustees were all busy finishing their chapters for the new book on Barnstaple.
August
We held our very first joint pop-up exhibition at the Shambles in the Guildhall in Barnstaple. Spread over three days we had displays and items from all three departments celebrating North Devon in Living Memory. There were over 300 visitors to the event including a very well-behaved Jack Russell called Florrie who was very interested in the displays!
We also completed a mini project in our stack, replacing some of our shelving which meant some of our larger books were being better supported.
September
After nearly three years of behind-the-scenes work (thank you Covid!) our library catalogue was finally transferred to the South West Heritage Trust system which means you can now search for all of our library items alongside those held by Devon and Somerset Archives.
October
We took part in the what’s in #ArchiveBox social media campaign and re-discovered some of the gems in our collections.
November
The start of the month saw a blog post on Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s connections with North Devon.
We attended the book launch for Barnstaple 1640-1670 : Richard Newcourt’s Map which contained the chapters we wrote earlier in the year. The book launch was held along with a private viewing of the Mapping Our Town exhibition which accompanies the book. The exhibition includes the Richard Newcourt map of Barnstaple on loan from the Bodleian Library.
We also held our first Founders Day celebrations for the first time since 2019…the same week as the book launch!
The end of the month saw us take part in Explore Your Archives week, where we once again delved into our collections and found a few more gems.
December
Having taken part in Explore Your Archives weeks we then took part in the #12DaysOfArchives in the run up to our Christmas break.
While we say goodbye to the old year, we have more exciting things planned for 2023!
…Barum Athena
Tales From the Archives 