Worth preserving
My wife and I went to the museum to see three exhibits full of things that would have been lost had someone not thought to keep them, even though it probably didn't seem all that important. Old toy catalogues, schematics for abandoned designs, misprinted packaging. Photographs of roadworks. Ticket stubs.
When I went on a tour of the museum's stores it was amazing all the stuff. Obvious things, sure. Big things. Clearly 'historical' things. But in the Fifties when the city's public toilets were being torn down a curator decided this ought to be kept. Giving the museum one of the largest toilet archives in the country. There was a pavement stencil from the Covid social distancing campaigns. I'm so glad someone thought to keep it.
At many stately houses they have centuries of records. I suppose they have the space. These families have shopping lists from the seventeenth century. They weren't kept for the historical value of a shopping list, they were kept for accounting. But they have huge historical value now.
According to Dr Who missing episodes on Wikipedia:
Several portions of the long-running British science-fiction television programme Doctor Who are no longer held by the BBC. Between 1967 and 1978, the BBC routinely deleted archive programmes for various practical reasons—lack of space, scarcity of materials, and a lack of rebroadcast rights. As a result, 95 of 253 episodes from the programme's first six years are currently missing
They turn up in boxes in attics.
I love living history museums. Stuffed with real objects. Objects so mundane most of them are lost. To preserve a thing people first have to think it worth preserving. Or imagine a time when they are not ubiquitous. When they are treasures.
At the wedding my mother-in-law and the aunties were reminiscing about the nicknames their mother gave to her neighbours. Random and rude. All the cousins were laughing. Oral history, I joked. But then, after, not so much a joke. I wished I had been writing them down.
What does my family have? It might seem pompous and self-important to assume there's anything of value. But we don't know what other people might find useful. Recordings of my grandfather about landing in Normandy on D-Day. Leaflets my other grandfather collected during the war in India, or his photos from the Festival of Britain in 1951. My father's collection of Eighties protest badges.
I think I might have to do something about that.
I've got some links to online museums, libraries, and archives on the links page. Part of my history and heritage notes.
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