The Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick is a partner in a project funded by the Research Support Libraries Programme entitled “A Mine of Information: Cataloguing the South Wales Coalfield”. The project is led by the University of Wales, Swansea. Its aim is to improve access to research resources relating to the South Wales Coalfield. It will do this by creating online catalogue records for the relevant material located in partner institutions. The records will be held in EAD and MARC databases at UWS. Researchers will be able to cross-search these via the Web.
For its part in the project, the Centre is contributing catalogue records for the archive of the Trades Union Congress. The archive comprises some 20,000 files from 1920 to 1987 and includes much material of relevance to mining, industrial health, industrial disputes, nationalisation, and records of local Trades Councils. We are currently updating the existing typed list of the TUC records from 1920 to 1960 (1500 pages) by converting it to EAD and editing it to ISAD(G) standards. We will contribute the resulting EAD records to the project, along with the 7000 existing EAD records describing the files for 1960 to 1970. So far, the list has been successfully converted to EAD and, to give researchers immediate access, it can be found in the Centre’s on-line guide to holdings (www.warwick.ac.uk/services/library/mrc). Researchers should be aware that editing of the list is still in progress. As a further part of the project, we will also be compiling an index of Welsh place names to enhance access to information relating to the South Wales Coalfield and surveying the Centre’s other holdings for relevant material.
Mrs Christine Woodland
Archivist, Modern Records Centre
University Library
University of Warwick
Coventry, CV4 7AL
tel. 44 (0)24 7652 4495
fax. 44 (0)24 7657 2988
email c.woodland@warwick.ac.uk
URL modernrecords.warwick.ac.uk
Posted: 6 March 2001