In addition to our core work collecting, preserving and sharing Guardian and Observer records, we engage in projects and partnerships from time to time. These may be aimed at developing the collections in new ways, opening the archive up to new audiences, or bringing new perspectives into the archive team.
In recent years we have worked with the National Lottery Heritage Fund, The National Archives, u3a and our colleagues at GNM to deliver projects with a range of benefits for young people, volunteers and researchers.
With a National Lottery Heritage Fund grant we engaged more than 300 students aged 11-14 with our collections. Participants used our records to explore the challenges journalists faced in reporting news before the internet. A legacy resource is available to download.
A National Archives Testbed grant allowed us to work with remote volunteers, including members of u3a, to open up archival records written in phonetic shorthand. We used of the online transcription platform Transkribus to enable volunteers with shorthand experience to work with digital copies of a reporter's notebooks from 1960s Africa.
The Bridging the Digital Gap programme (BtDG), run by The National Archives and funded by NLHF, aims to increase digital skills in archives by bringing new people from different backgrounds into the workforce. We were selected to host a trainee, joining a cohort of digitally-active archives that also included Amnesty International, the London School of Economics and the University of Bristol.
Working with GNM colleagues in 2021, we ran an oral history project to capture the experiences of Guardian staff in the newspaper's bicentenary year.