The University of Portsmouth History team’s Mike Esbester has recently had a co-authored open access article published, in Exchanges: The Interdisciplinary Research Journal. It’s part of a special issue, marking the 50th anniversary of the Modern Records Centre (MRC) at the University of Warwick.
The MRC is the major repository for archives of trades unions and employers organisations, with a particular strength in transport collections. Mike has been using the MRC for his research for over 20 years.
Over the last five years the MRC has been an integral part of the ‘Railway Work, Life & Death’ project, as a collaborator and institutional co-lead, alongside the University of Portsmouth and the National Railway Museum. The project also works with The National Archives of the UK and the RMT Union. The project is looking at accidents to British and Irish railway workers before the Second World War.
Working with small teams of dedicated volunteers, the project is transcribing accident records and making them freely available for researchers to use, via the project website. So far the project has made available over 48,000 records, and the volunteers are working on a further 70,000 cases.
Page from a booklet, with text describing an accident, accompanied by a posed photograph, showing a fireman on top of a steam engine’s tender as it was moving, about to be struck by a bridge.
Given collaboration is integral to the Railway Work, Life & Death project, when the MRC wanted to mark its 50th anniversary in 2023, Mike and the project team were keen to be involved. Mike spoke about the project, alongside volunteer Cheryl Hunnisett and RMT President Alex Gordon. Having voices outside the traditional higher education setting was fundamental to the talk, another way of putting into practice the co-creative ethos of the project.
This has followed into the publication, ‘Collaboration in the Archive’. It looks at the Railway Work, Life & Death project and the MRC, reflecting on the project’s work, including the successes and challenges of working collaboratively. As a point of principle, it was co-authored. It features two of the project volunteers, Cheryl Hunnisett and Stephen Lamb, the MRC’s Senior Archivist James King, RMT President Alex Gordon, and Mike.
Just as importantly, in terms of reaching outside higher education, the article is open access, meaning it’s free to download!
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