The Aviation and Aerospace Archives Initiative

Obtaining copies from small organisations can be understandably difficult. Large or small in general cannot trust loads. Large (public or corporate) should either have facilities or be able to more easily arrange for copies but there are the other obstacles. I also volunteer at/work with small volunteer organisations and it certainly is very difficult.

I value the initiative but fear that it is too focused on agreeing and applying the best cataloguing methods, sort of an archive project for professional archivists.  But apart from a small number of larger archives most historical aviation material is scattered among  many small collections and museums which rely on volunteers to do the work.  Most of these (me included) are retired and from a wide variety of backgrounds so cataloguing is carried out with whatever they are most familiar. Word and Excel (often then saved as pdf) seem to be most popular with all kinds of catalogue structure and nomenclature.  Even some of the major museums use Excel.  I don’t think it matters one bit what software is used or how the catalogue is structured provided a) It is searchable, and b) it is made freely available, and that is not the case for almost all.  The next step, as noted above, is then key. You find what you are looking for but actually obtaining copies of material from some large and small collections can prove to be extremely difficult, and certainly not just the company that cannot be named

Yeah. That would be the one. 

Ah, the British company that now owns most of the old British aviation companies? 

I agree. I guess one important question is ‘what is the level of access to the archives.’ This is no reflection on the importance of what the Aviation Archive people are doing, but may dampen the interest from potential supporters who know how hard (or impossible) it can be to actually get copies of certain material in some archives… not naming any in particular!!!

Hi Nicki,

Very much as I found – thank you. 
 

Surprised that there isn’t more interest on this site; I would have thought it was just what the people want.

The website is active, although April of this year might not be active enough for some. There was an article about their recent activities in the RAeS magazine. Not sure which issue, but I only received it a couple of months ago – maybe being down under, that doesn’t mean much, with the deluge of Covid home shopping parcels that dominate all freight services these days – and I passed it on to a friend.

Anyway it mentioned a survey of archives and provided this web address:  https://www.aviationarchives.uk/Guide_to_the_Archives_of_Aircraft_Manuf…

I had a look through it – all happening enough for me – quite an effort! 

: – )