Connecting People and History

We were delighted to host the Ancestry filming crew again in September, this time redigitising our parish registers in high definition and colour. The Welsh parish register collection will be relaunched on Ancestry once they have finished the project across all Welsh archive offices.

West Glamorgan Archive Service is run jointly by Swansea and Neath Port Talbot Councils in order to preserve access to their archives and to other archive collections which it has received and collected on theirbehalf. Residents of the two local authority areas and researchers from across the UK and overseas access ourarchive collections, both online and inperson, in order to carry out a wide variety of research.

The archives for some years have been faced with the implications of the proposed closureof Swansea Civic Centre. The decision (formalised in December 2021) to move the archives to a city centre Hub located in the former British Home Stores on Oxford Street isone which presents opportunitiesfor the Service alongside some challenges. On the one hand, the archives will benefit from a more central location inSwansea and ease of access immediately alongside the Local Studies Library: on the other hand, the new facility will need to fit into a multi-purpose building and this has required considerable care and attention to ensure that the archival storage area reaches the required BS 4971 for the conservation and care of archive library collections.

At the time of writing this report, the City Centre Hub project has passed RIBA Stage 3, which relates to spatial co-ordination within the building. A detailed floorplan has been developed which places the archive searchroom on thefirst floor and the archive strongroom on the second (top) floor, the two connected by a document lift. The newsearchroom has seatingfor ten people at document tables, three seated at PC desks and one using a microfilm reader. There is a reception area with lockers, space for reader registration and a small shop.

RIBA Stage 4 relates to technical design, and a number of challenges have been thrown up and addressed as to howthe archive strongroom will maintain environmental stability in accordance with BS 4971. The design will incorporate adehumidifier unit in order to prevent excessive humidity developing in the highly airtight newstrongroom. Doors will be tightly sealed and each entrance (including the document lift) willhave a lobby which acts as an airlock. Temperature control will be maintained through a cavity wall or plenum which is cooled when necessary during hot spells of summer weather, or if the internal heating of the building in winter percolates upstairs to the strongroom.

The archive storage area has been designed with 25 years of expansion space for the collections, which is the standard lifetime expectation of such a building. The move will present a welcome opportunityfor the Service to once again take in large accessions of archive material, which it has been unable to do nowfor some years because of lack of remaining space in its strongrooms.

The Oxford Street Hub represents a considerable investment by Swansea Council in regenerating its city centre. The investment has also beenmade possible through a grant from theWelsh Government ‘Transforming Towns’ fund. A condition of the latter’sfunding for the Hub project is that the Council will at the same time undertake a study into thefeasibility of creating a single ‘fit for purpose’ archive repository in Swansea, able to house multiple partners who together can secure access to our heritage with long-term benefits for current and future generations. The participating partners are our two parent local authorities and the two universities in Swansea.

In the archive sector, West Glamorgan Archive Service is not alone in struggling to recover its pre2020 user base, and the consensus amongst colleagues in England andWales appears to be that family historians are the group least likely to return to use archives, given that the majority of family history resources are now available online on a subscription or pay-per-viewbasis. Many more people took out subscriptions during the Covid lockdowns and have not returned to us. It is impossible however to resist the move to a digital world, and the development in online resources is welcome for the many people who live toofar away from the area to make a personal visit. We shall have to learn to value remote use of the archives as much as we do physical access to them.

Improving on an existing online resource, the website company Ancestry were at the archives during the autumn to re-digitise our parish registers in higher definition and full colour. Digitisation of paper and parchment records is not the only way in which the Archive Service is responding to the move to digital and it is becoming increasingly pressing for the Service to create a digital repository for born-digital records (records which have always existed only in electronic form). During the year work has progressed towards a consortium approach to this acrossWales, and the Archive Service plays a constructive part in this process, which is led by Glamorgan Archives.

Mention should also be made of volunteersfrom the Glamorgan Family History Society who have returned after a gap of two years to continue their indexing of someof our other name-rich archives of interest to genealogists. After such a long period, it is a joy to welcome back old friends alongside a new generation of users. More recently the Swansea Branch of the GFHS have been holding their monthly meetings in our Family History Centre, another reason to celebrate and renewour close links with the community of familyhistorians.