Anglesey Archives

Anglesey Archives joined People’s Collection Wales (PCW) in early 2020 but only started using it in earnest in April 2022 when they were invited to take part in a PCW campaign with four other local archives across Wales.

Kelly Parry, Senior Archivist at Anglesey Archives, was previously unaware of much of the work of PCW, but the campaign drastically changed this. “I thought it was a fairly passive tool i.e. you upload images and that was it. But that’s not the case at all – in the marketing project our services have had a lot of help and promotion, gained real insight into what’s proved popular and I’ve also had lots of help and advice from the PCW learning officer.”

I think more of PCW as a partner than just a place to put things!

Raising their profile and reaching bigger audiences With the campaign focusing on the theme of ‘Seaside Holidays’, Anglesey Archives published 26 items ranging from photographs, postcards and posters into a collection onto the PCW website. Some of these were then promoted during the month-long social media campaign.

Beaumaris seafront and pier, c. 1890s

While as a small team it can be challenging to make the time to find and upload images from the archive, Kelly found that being part of the campaign helped raise their profile and reach bigger audiences.

Other benefits included advertising insights and receiving users’ comments on a post to help identify a photograph’s location.

Providing a digital platform

With IT barriers, small budgets, limited staff time and a lack of staff with specialist ‘digital’ skills preventing Anglesey Archives from fully embracing digital technologies, Kelly says PCW has given them a platform to showcase some of their material and point to in their social media posts.

We also had the BBC contact us to use an image they found on PCW.

The reach is not limited to their own collections either. Anglesey Archives have had some of their seaside holidays images (within living memory) repurposed into the PCW’s “Memory Archive”, a free resource facilitating reminiscence with people living with dementia.

Prompting positive changes

Working with PCW has brought about some positive changes at Anglesey Archives too. “It has prompted me to bring forward the way we make changes to recording copyright and […] with regard to our approach to collecting/cataloguing material”, Kelly explains. She is also planning on using PCW with their work experience students, giving them first-hand experience of curating digital archive materials: “we are going to get them to create their own collection”.

PCW is fun, useful, purposeful, enlightening, joined-up.

Next up: developing learning resources

Kelly is keen to continue collaborating with PCW, which offers training, consultancy, equipment loans as well as photography and marketing support to local archives, libraries and museums. She would like Anglesey Archives to start developing their own learning resources. With guidance from the dedicated PCW learning officer, they’ll be taking full advantage of PCW’s status as a trusted and approved content provider for Hwb, the Welsh Government’s digital learning platform, reaching all classrooms in Wales.