On Tuesday 19 Feb Kath Shawcross the LBHF Archivist gave us an overview of the background to and current services provided to the public. One of the major benefits of the move to Hammersmith Library has been improved access to the local history collection much of which is now available to browse whenever the library is open and Kath is there on Mondays and Tuesdays to assist and deal with requests for items from the archive. For family historians, electoral registers, Ancestry UK, Census, photograph collection and newpapers on microfiche are a terrific resouce. A major achievement has been the addition of a public website search of the Archive Catalogue Kath also talked about the work of volunteers, recent acquisitions, museum objects, special collections – such
as William Morris and the Art collection. An example of the latter is the loan of a nude sketch by Archibald Standish Hartrick to the Tate for the current Van Gogh exhibition. More of the collection can be accessed through searches of London Screen Archives and ArtUK. We were treated to slides of some of the most popular and more interesting items in the archive from the Japan British Exhibition through deeds and photographers’ glass plates to the records of a Hammersmith framing company heavily used to provide provenance for art works. All told an interesting insight in to the borough’s collection and how to access it.