The College hosted an event to announce our new partnership with Linen Hall Library which will focus on developing our archives. We were delighted to welcome OCs, parents, grandparents and friends of the College to our event to share information about our archive strategy. 

The College has an extensive archive with items dating back to the beginning of the school. The archive was carefully managed by former teacher Mr. Keith Haines, who was present at the event and we were glad to be able to thank him in person for all his work. Now, it is our duty to protect these precious items for future generations.

The College has developed an Archive Strategy which began with the Men Behind The Glass project - thanks to funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund. This strategy is based on 3 key areas; Education - how do we use our archives to enhance learning on a day to day basis; Sharing- how can increase access for all to our archives; Partnership - how do we create meaningful partnerships that deliver for the College?

Dr. Tom Thorpe, lead historian who helped the College with developing the Men Behind The Glass exhibition and website, discussed the honour and responsibility he felt in curating the stories that told of our OCs who served in WWI. He also discussed the need to tell these stories beyond Campbell and how materials were developed to share with primary school aged children, with links to their curriculum. The archives are broad reaching and there are many new stories waiting to be told, he said.

Julie Andrews, Director of Linen Hall Library and Samantha McCombe, Head Librarian presented to us on the approaches the library had taken to curate stories from their many records, books, documents and posters and they can support Campbell's archive. The Library contains records of many OCs who were prominent in Northern Ireland's civic life and the Library will help us develop and shine a light on these stories. We are delighted to announce our new partnership which will provide access to the LIbrary's expertise and our common shared archives. We are excited to get started on this venture.

The next step in our strategy is to digitise our entire collection and funding has been secured for the next 3 years. the digitizing process is now underway and we have developed a website specifically for our archives. We will be launching our website on Thursday displaying the items we have managed to record to date.