Every time a researcher requests to view an item, or staff use materials for teaching and outreach purposes, we record these 'retrievals' to keep track of how our collections are being used.
We record our retrievals every academic year from 1st August – 31st July. Collecting the retrievals statistics this year has involved entering a total of 5,716 request slips. Last year, 2018-2019, our total number of retrievals was 8,713.
These totals are affected by the closure of the Archives and Special Collections Centre (ASCC) to researchers on 17th March 2020 due to COVID-19. However, from our requested scans over the past year(s) we thankfully have access to some digital copies of items of interest, and have been able to help researchers with their research remotely by providing digital reproductions where possible.
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From our record of retrievals, we can see that the most viewed collection at the ASCC is the Stanley Kubrick Archive, with a total number of 4,025 retrievals this academic year, and 1,691 retrievals for our other collections.
As you can see by the above statistics, our retrievals show a broad range of collection research.
A group of archival collections I am particularly interested in and excited about are the five collections donated by PARC (The Photography Archive and Research Centre), which have been partly catalogued by Robin Christian and Oisin Davies. This academic year they have been increasingly viewed, as PARC (based at London College of Communication) presented two exhibitions in 2019 - ‘No More Flowers’, and ‘Portrait of a London Road: 1904, 1975, 2019. PARC have been working closely with us and have moved the majority of their collections to our Archives and Special Collections Centre. We are looking forward to seeing theirs, as well as other newly acquired collections, being used in future research.
You can browse descriptions of all of our collections on our online catalogue.
We are very eager to return to helping researchers with their work physically, and excited to see how the statistics may change upon reopening.
Keep in touch via our Twitter and Instagram, or email us directly: archive-enquiries@arts.ac.uk