Welsh Journals

THE POWYS COUNTY ARCHIVES OFFICE The County Archives Office is currently involved in three types of operation. First of all, there is the traditional work of a county record office, taking in archival material, cataloguing it, and dealing with enquiries from personal visitors and from those who cannot visit in person. Secondly, our modern records operation looks after the records of county council departments which are closed to the public. And finally, our celebrated Powys Digital History Project has become an acknowledged leader in the United Kingdom in presenting archival material digitally on the Internet. The core of our work continues to be the public service of the record office. Every year the number of personal visitors increases; the numbers are consistently over 1,000. The number of enquiries to be dealt with is also increasing, with e-mail being added to letters and the telephone as a means of reaching us. We continue to receive material donated or transferred to us, from larger estate collections to individual items (such as the speech day reports by the headmaster of the Brecon Boys Grammar Technical School). A selected list of accessions received follows this report. Work is continuing on the cataloguing of the Glanusk Estate papers, which is still taking the bulk of our cataloguing resources. The modern records operation has been a major success within the County Council, to the extent that the existing premises are already full, and we are looking to expand into an out-store. The Powys Digital History Project ran initially from June 1998 to May 1999. This was a European-funded project to present digital images of archives on the World Wide Web, with detailed commentary and interpretation, something that had hardly been attempted in Wales, or in the rest of the UK. This has proved to be a great success, with over 500 pages available on-line (Hay-on-Wye and Ystradgynlais were the two communities from Breconshire that we concentrated on), and the project has been cited by the Government as an example of good practice. Now I am pleased to report that with support from the Education Department of the County Council we have secured Heritage Lottery Funding to develop the project over the next two years as a resource for primary school children at Key Stage 2. (The work so far can be viewed at the URL: http:history.powys.org.uk-if you do not have Internet access at home, remember you can always use your local library). SELECT LIST OF ACCESSIONS RELATING TO BRECONSHIRE (1998-1999) OFFICIAL RECORDS Minutes of Cantref Parish Council 1894-1976, with gaps [Acc. 1186] Speech day reports by Aneurin Rees, Headmaster of Brecon Boys Grammar Technical School, 1954-1970 [Acc. 1187] Miscellaneous records from the Dr Coke's Memorial Church Brecon (Methodist)