Service feature: Archives Hub highlights book design

The Archives Hub includes the institutional archives of our contributors, but there is far more to it than that. There are now over 19,000 descriptions on the Hub, and a very wide range of people and organisations originally created the documents in these archives.  They include the records of shopkeepers and multinational corporations, the personal papers of writers and artists, memoirs of soldiers and nurses, and the records of churches and government agencies. 

Our regular 'Collections of the Month' feature highlights collections of topical interest or ones that tie in with exhibitions being held by our contributors. These features remain in place as the months roll on to the next feature, and the website includes a list of previous features.

Manchester Metropolitan University Special Collections, one of our most recent contributors, is highlighted this month. 

Jeremy C. Parrett, Special Collections Archivist at MMU, has written about their book design and illustration collections, and provided us with half a dozen wonderful examples of hand-crafted artworks as illustrations.  Jeremy has also selected related archival descriptions from other contributors to the Hub. 

The feature takes its title, 'Books To Grace Your Shelves', from a sales catalogue of books by Huddersfield-based printers and publishers The Fleece Press, whose archival collection is described on the Archives Hub. 

December's theme was in fact suggested by one of our Manchester contributors, the John Rylands University Library of Manchester.  The Museums, Libraries and Archives Council has recently Designated the Manchester Medical Society Archive at the Rylands as being "of outstanding national and international importance". The Medical Society Archive will be one of the Archives Hub's collections descriptions highlighted in January.

The first Collections of the Month for 2006 will be 'Coughs and Sneezes', on the theme of influenza.  The Archives Hub includes many descriptions of collections relating to the history of medicine and also to military history. January's feature will concentrate on the Spanish Flu and the First World War, but will include other flu outbreaks and also medical institutions. 

Some of the archival collections highlighted in January are held in the University of Leeds's Liddle Collection, which preserves individual experiences of the First World War.  The Liddle Collection has provided the illustrations, which show embroidered pocket handkerchiefs created during the War. 

We will also show you how to find recycled tissues. You'll need them for those coughs and sneezes, and for some of January's stories. 

'Coughs and Sneezes' will be published on New Year's Day 2006. Just follow the link from the Archives Hub homepage. 

The Archives Hub only provides textual descriptions of archival collections. The Collections of the Month features help to remind researchers of the kind of material that they can find within archives. Each description on the Hub includes a link to up-to-date contact details for our contributors, so that researchers can make arrangements to view the original material. 

You can receive regular updates on Collections of the Month by joining the Archives Hub Jiscmail list. The Archives Hub also has an RSS 'news channel' which is updated monthly.  This carries information about our Collections of the Month themes, and a link to the current feature. Details of how to subscribe to the mailing list and the news channel are on the Archives Hub website. You are welcome to send us suggestions for future Collections of the Month themes to archiveshub@mimas.ac.uk.