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Waterways Archive To Be United

The nationally important Waterways Archive which is currently housed in two locations – at the National Waterways Museum in Ellesmere Port and Gloucester Waterways Museum, is to be united at one single location, the National Waterways Museum.

The Waterways Trust has secured the funding to enable the move to happen, which will bring the two resources together for the first time.

Peter Collins, Collections Manager, explains: “Moving the Waterways Archives from Gloucester to Ellesmere Port is part of our ambition to create a single central resource for waterways heritage at the National Waterways Museum. We are delighted that we now have the funding in place to make this happen.

“We have long been aware that conditions in Gloucester are in appropriate for storing these precious records and access is very restricted. At the National Waterways Museum we will be expanding the existing archives to accommodate the re-located records and redeveloping the research and reading area to give greater physical access.

“The vast majority of our archive collection is also available on our Virtual Waterways website. The move to Ellesmere Port presents us with a super opportunity to add further records to this database. Anyone, anywhere in the world is able to search this database twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

“80 per cent of users access our records and information either on-line or over the phone, only one-fifth of people actually visit the archives in Gloucester. The move to Ellesmere Port will have minimal impact on how the majority of people use our service.”

The re-location of the Waterways Archive to its new home at the National Waterways Museum will take place later this year. There will be some disruption to the archives service whilst preparing for the move and the general enquiry service will be closed from mid-September 2011 until Spring 2012. The Archives team will work hard to keep any interruption to a minimum.

Visit the Virtual Waterways website at www.virtualwaterways.co.uk