The Collections Story - Next Slide, Please!
We pick up the story of our visual collections with the work we’ve been doing to appraise, catalogue and re-package our 35mm slide collection.
First invented in 1935, these slides contain a photographic film mounted in a small square frame of cardboard or plastic. They can be magnified up to 100 times and still maintain a crisp and detailed projected image, either in black and white or colour.
Being cheaper and more portable than their glass predecessors and with home projectors becoming more affordable, they became the most popular photography viewing format in the twentieth century until the advent of digital photography in the 1990s.
It is perhaps not surprising then that we hold a large collection of 35mm slides relating to people and places in Cheshire - an estimated thirty-nine thousand, in fact!
Our slides are stored in archive quality boxes, grouped by area or subject based on information supplied when they were first deposited with us.
Organisation is key to cataloguing the slides. Once they have been checked against our online catalogue and Cheshire Image Bank, each one is given a reference number under the classification VS. This is then recorded onto a spreadsheet along with information about the slide including dates, location and subject matter, ready to be put onto the catalogue.
As we work, we have also been making a note of never-before-seen images which could be added to the Image Bank, mystery images, and potential Gems for townships across Cheshire.
Once completed, the slides are re-packaged into protective sleeves in order of reference number, and returned to their archive boxes ready for safe transport.
With around fifty boxes still to go, the work is projected (!) to continue when we move to our new centres in Chester and Crewe.
By Michael Keegan, Archives Assistant
