Explore Your Archives Week

The National Archives in England has uploaded a page at http://exploreyourarchive.org to promote activities concerning this week's Explore Your Archive week. From the site:

Explore Your Archive is a joint campaign delivered by The National Archives and the Archives and Records Association across the UK and Ireland. It aims to showcase the unique potential of archives to excite people, bring communities together, and tell amazing stories.

Usually held for a week in November, the campaign showcases the phenomenal archival collections held by organisations across the UK and Ireland, whatever their size and scale, and wherever they are. Watch this space for news relating to the 2015 campaign and see below for some of the activities which took place in 2014.

The page has details on promotional events in archives across the British Isles, and more. Remember that the archive sector underpins our genealogy world. Whatever records you see online in a database was in many cases sourced in the first place from a repository that has spent many years and TLC taking care of them. If you spend all your genealogical effort using online resources, this week is just as good as any to try and partially wean yourself off them, and to suss out what is happening at your local archive. Believe me, from someone who uses them regularly, all the Ancestrys, FindmyPasts, Genealogists and more, wonderful as they are, hold but a mere drop in the ocean compared to what is actually out there!

Make pals with your local archive. It will be the start of a beautiful friendship...!

Chris

For details on my genealogy guide books, including my recently released Discover Irish Land Records and Down and Out in Scotland: Researching Ancestral Crisis, please visit http://britishgenes.blogspot.co.uk/p/my-books.html. My Pinterest account is at https://www.pinterest.com/chrismpaton/.