Cambridgeshire Archives and Local Studies is committed to achieving the highest possible standards of service delivery and document storage. The Big Move project's overall aim is to provide state of the art storage for all our archive holdings.
In conjunction with this, we are systematically repackaging documents wherever necessary, and are applying barcoding technology to our boxes and folders.
Achievements at Huntingdon
In 2009 Huntingdonshire Archives moved all its historical documents to new, purpose-built premises in Princes Street, Huntingdon. Huntingdonshire Archives and Local Studies now provide a seamless service under one roof, for the first time in Huntingdon.
The move was the culmination of nearly three years' worth of planning and preparation work which included barcoding every single box we have, and entering data about all our holdings onto our CALM database.
Huntingdonshire Archives is now the first local authority archives repository in the UK to be wholly barcoded.
See below for an article about the methodology behind our project in the winter 2008 issue of the National Archives' magazine RecordKeeping.
Site search ongoing for Cambridgeshire Archives
In 2008 a scheme to site the new Cambridge History Centre near Cambridge railway station collapsed. Work is currently underway to identify new potential sites for the History Centre.
Our original hope was to include the Cambridgeshire Collection fully within the History Centre. This hope may or may not be achieved, depending on the capacity of the site eventually chosen. Nevetheless there will be some element of local studies provision, no matter what size of site proves attainable.
In the meantime, the Cambridgeshire Collection will continue to operate from the Central Library in Cambridge, and Cambridgeshire Archives will continue to be based in Shire Hall in Cambridge.