The University of Hull will be 100 years old in 2027!
In summer 2023, Hull University Archives began an ambitious project to catalogue records created by the university during its century long existence.
This project is inspired by the upcoming centenary and will enable the University Archives to better support research and activities in connection with the centenary celebrations.
Follow our progress below and on the History Centre's blog (filter using the category 'University Centenary').
Don't forget to keep an eye on our Stories from the Strongrooms talks. So far we've posted the following videos exploring the University's history:
The University of Hull - Early Years in Pictures
Update: December 2023
After an initial cataloguing flurry back in September and October, we’ve now reached some of the larger series of records. December has been a month of planning to get us ready to tackle material produced by Middleton Hall and our University Library in the new year.
Update: November 2023
November was a busy month for the project. Our first project intern completed their work to digitize a series of graduation programmes dating back to the early 1950s, enhancing descriptions along the way. With this work done, we spent the next few weeks updating catalogue records and listing an accompanying series of congregation recordings on VHS and DVD.
We also had a stocktaking week during which the History Centre was closed for us to do some behind the scenes work. We spent our time taking stock of University material in our audio-visual store. We discovered some fantastic photographs along with a reel of film recording the foundation stone laying ceremony, held in the late 1920s!
Update: October 2023
The project began back in July, when we started with a survey of what we have. Next, we got physical and moved the collections around in our strongrooms, giving us space to work and making sure successive accessions to individual collections were located together. After this we could get cracking and the cataloguing work began! By the end of September we had catalogued the following collections:
- Records of the Students Union
- Records of Hull University Social Services Organisation
- Papers of T.W. Bamford on the History of the University
- Records of the Centre for Languages in Education
- Records of the Hull University Staff Cricket Club
- Records of the Lecturing and Administrative Staff Association
- Records of the University Staff Women's Club
- Records of the Senior Common Room
- Annual Reports and Accounts
- Annual Calendars
- The University Gazette
- Records of the Centre for South East Asian Studies
- Press Cuttings Books
A quick note to say that, whilst cataloguing work has been completed on the above collections, the catalogues are not yet available online. We're holding off on releasing them until we've got further into the project in case we uncover any more treasures that we need to add in. If you are interested in accessing anything please do get in touch using the email archives@hull.ac.uk