Behind the scenes at the Manx Museum archives

Look behind the scenes at the collections held by Manx National Heritage's library and archive service

Transcript

00:00 So my name is Wendy Thirkettle, I'm an archivist at the Banks National Heritage Library and Archives

00:06 at the seaward end of the Banks Museum.

00:09 What we hold is really vast and is glued together by the connection to the Isle of Man, that's our collecting remit.

00:17 Of course it's all aspects of the island life, so it's library and archives,

00:23 and so we hold things such as personal papers, some public records that we hold, maps, plans, photographs which are very popular,

00:33 news prints and printed sources, business archives and records of societies and associations,

00:41 some which are no longer around but the records mean that the story can still be told.

00:48 And what have you got on offer here? What can people expect when they come to the library?

00:52 Well it's a library with very few books on display for starters, and that's because we look after them behind the scenes.

00:59 They're available by request, on request, in fact the material we'll try and produce when people come in,

01:05 you haven't got to book to necessarily to come and see material.

01:10 It helps to maybe make an appointment if you've got quite a specialist inquiry,

01:15 but effectively it's a counter service, open Wednesday to Saturday, and we encourage people to come in and see what we've got.

01:23 There is information available through our webpage, but we're very happy to have a chat.

01:28 What would you say to someone who perhaps wants to come along but isn't sure where to start, where to have a look and what to do,

01:34 do you guys help recommend what to look for and what they're after?

01:37 It's a case of maybe come along and think what you might be interested to look at,

01:40 we can point out whether there's content available to do remotely online.

01:45 I didn't mention but we have a lot of family history resources, and we complement the Isle of Man Family History Society that way.

01:52 We can't do people's research for them, but what we try to do is to facilitate that research,

01:59 and that's a real joy for us, we really enjoy helping people find out what they need.

02:05 Occasionally we hit the proverbial brick wall, some people hit pay dirt and get some fantastic finds in family history,

02:12 others aren't quite so successful, so we say come with modest expectations, and hopefully they'll be exceeded.