Highland Archive Service reflects on busy 2024 and upcoming 2025 activities
The past 12 months proved to be another very busy year for our team, writes the Highland Archive Service.
We were delighted to be named UK & Ireland 'Recordkeeping Service of the Year 2024' in the Archive and Records Association (ARA) Excellence Awards, receiving 63 per cent of the public vote.
The whole Highland Archive Service team take great pride in our work, and in the collections we care for and give access to, and we are very appreciative of the public support and professional recognition this award brings.
In addition we were thrilled to win the first Highland Council/High Life Highland Partnership Award at the recent Highland Council Staff Recognition Awards.
The archive and records management team works very closely with the council’s Health and Social Care records support team responding to requests from individuals who were formerly in care and who are seeking to find out information on their past. These requests have greatly increased in recent years with the advent of the Scottish Government’s redress scheme which offers redress payments to people abused in care in the past, and to some of their next of kin.
Using our documents in educational settings is always a pleasure. We've welcomed students from further afield, with a group visiting us from Argentina!
Through the holidays we have thoroughly enjoyed partnering with High Life Highland countryside rangers, libraries, and active schools teams to share our collections in new and fun ways.
We have continued to work closely with the Centre for History at the University of the Highlands & Islands (UHI), taking part in dissertation workshops and public history modules for students, and in September Community Engagement Officer, Lorna, was invited to be part of a panel discussion about using archives.
This session was held at the University of Strathclyde and attended by students from across Scotland. Our partnership with Fife College and HMP Inverness continues to be incredibly rewarding and following our latest collaboration, looking at superstition, myth and folklore in the Highlands, prison learners have produced some fantastic artwork.
Our online series of talks, Learn With Lorna, designed to share stories from our collections with a wide audience, marked its 200th anniversary with a special Q&A episode in November.
If you'd like to learn more about archives and family history then why not consider booking onto our upcoming classes?
Archives for Beginners Set (£44, or £36 with HLH membership) is online Wednesdays from 2pm to 4pm and features Crime Records (February 5), Poor Relief (February 12), Estate Papers (February 19) and Family and Personal Papers (February 26).
The same class is also available in person on Fridays from 10am to 12pm) - Poor Relief Records (January 31), Crime Records (February 7), Estate Papers (February 14) and Family and Personal Papers (February 21).
Another in-person class is Family History for Beginners Set (£44, or £36 with HLH membership) and takes place on Wednesdays from 10am to midday. The sessions are Introduction & Statutory Records (January 29), Census Records (February 5), Old Parish Records & Wills (February 12), Scotland’s People Network (February 19).
For more information about these classes or to book a place, email archives@highlifehighland.com or phone 01349 781130.
We hope to see you during 2025! Online, at one of our classes or open days, or as a customer coming in to use the archives and family history resources.
