{"id":846,"date":"2020-05-05T13:23:30","date_gmt":"2020-05-05T12:23:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/childrensliteratureinnewcastle\/?p=846"},"modified":"2020-05-05T13:23:32","modified_gmt":"2020-05-05T12:23:32","slug":"to-weed-or-not-to-weed-opening-the-aidan-and-nancy-chambers-archive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/childrensliteratureinnewcastle\/to-weed-or-not-to-weed-opening-the-aidan-and-nancy-chambers-archive\/","title":{"rendered":"To weed or not to weed? Opening the Aidan and Nancy Chambers Archive"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Dr Hazel Sheeky Bird<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the weird and worrying times that we are currently living in, it is good to be able to write about the positive things that are still taking place in the world of children\u2019s literature. While locked down, I\u2019ve been helping to put the finishing touches to three major areas of the Aidan and Nancy Chambers archive. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To give a bit of background: In 2016, Seven Stories\nwas fortunate to acquire the entire archive of Aidan and Nancy Chambers. It is\ngenuinely difficult to write an adequate summary of the immense contribution the\nChambers have made to the whole field of children\u2019s literature. (Anyone\ninterested in finding out more about their work in general, and Turton and\nChambers specifically, might like to look at my earlier blog on their work (https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/vitalnorth\/tag\/turton-chambers\/<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Being archivally minded, the Chambers amassed a\ncolossal amount of material during professional careers that spanned over 50\nyears. This has proven to be exciting and daunting in equal measures, and meant\nthat serious investment was needed to process the initial deposit and create a\nworking catalogue. Fortunately, through a generous grant from the Archives\nRevealed scheme for an archivist-cataloguer, matched by funding from Newcastle\nUniversity for a Research Associate, i.e. me, there have been two dedicated\nstaff working on the archive for the last 18 months. Not only that, with management\nand input from Seven Stories\u2019 Collection\u2019s Manager, Kris McKie, and Senior\nLecturer in Children\u2019s Literature at Newcastle Uni, Dr Lucy Pearson, a\nsignificant amount of resources and expertise have been invested in the\nproject.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Image courtesy of Thimble Press: http:\/\/www.thimblepress.co.uk\/covers\/index.htm<\/a> <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The Archives Revealed grant specified three distinct aspects\nof the overall archive to process in this first stage: Thimble Press, Signal: Approaches to Children\u2019s Books <\/em>(1970-2003),\nand Turton and Chambers. Aidan and Nancy Chambers set up publishing house\nThimble Press in 1969, in the first instance to publish their own children\u2019s\nliterature journal, Signal<\/em>. As\neditor, Nancy Chambers was responsible for publishing a wealth of articles on\nchildren\u2019s books by contributors such as Elaine Moss, Peter Hollingdale, Peter\nHunt, Philip Pullman, Margery Fisher and Eleanor Graham, to name only a few.\nThrough Thimble Press, they also published seminal works of British children\u2019s\nliterature criticism such as Peter Hollingdale\u2019s Ideology and the Children\u2019s Book <\/em>(1988) and Aidan Chambers\u2019 own Tell Me: Children, Reading and Talk <\/em>(1993).\nMany of these books are now instantly recognizable through the Chambers\u2019 long\ncollaboration with typographer, Michael Harvey. Harvey designed most Thimble\nPress covers and was responsible for the re-design of Signal<\/em> in 1979, courtesy of Margaret Clark and John Ryder of the\nBodley Head. Aidan Chambers set up Turton and Chambers (1989-1993) with\nbookseller David Turton to publish innovative works of children\u2019s literature in\ntranslation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Image courtesy of Thimble Press: http:\/\/www.thimblepress.co.uk\/covers\/index.htm<\/a> <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The Chambers archive is huge. I could find grandiose ways to describe it, but the huge does the job. Aidan and Nancy Chambers had done a great job of organizing their vast papers over the years and initially deposited 126 large boxes with Seven Stories. A further accrual of boxes arrived in January 2020, and the Chambers continue to work on organizing the remainder of their papers at their home. When it first arrived, the papers were stored in a variety of boxes that the Chambers had amassed over the years. (You can see a very small fraction of the original boxes in the image below.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Author’s own image <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Before any work on the papers could begin, Seven\nStories\u2019 conservator, Rosalind Bos, had to condition check the entire deposit.\nThis is standard practice, but it was particularly important with the Chambers\narchive. Before coming to Seven Stories, the archive had moved around and was\nnot always stored in ideal conditions. Mould was a particular worry:\nfortunately, only one box in the whole deposit was badly affected. It was the\narchivist cataloguer\u2019s job to create the catalogue, but before he could do\nthat, I had to weed the material. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Weeding is anathema to researchers, but necessary for\narchives and archivists. As a researcher, steeped in the assumption that\neverything in an archive is sacrosanct, it has been surprising that a big part\nof my job has been working out what should be kept and what could be set aside.\nThe idea of weeding is disturbing. The Society of American Archivists offers us\nan alarming set of synonyms for the process: culling, purging, stripping. In\npractice, though, the process has been thoughtful, consistent and, most\nimportant for future researchers, useful. Today, the Signal <\/em>archive is housed in organized and accessible archival boxes\n(you can see some of the archive below), ready for future researchers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Author’s own image<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Think about the material relating to Signal: Approaches to Children\u2019s Books. <\/em>Nancy\nChambers edited 100 issues of the journal over 33 years. For the majority of\nthat time she corresponded with contributors through the post (the cost and\nreliability of the postal system is a frequent subject in her letters); keying\n(in preparation for typesetting) and proofs were sent to contributors (who may\nor may not have made changes to any or all of these stages). Nancy Chambers duly\nfiled them on their return. On top of these versions, the archive also\ncontained many photocopies of finished articles, most of which bore no\nannotation whatsoever, numerous pasted-up versions (i.e. copies of finished\narticles that had been cut up and pasted onto A4 paper), plus large amounts of\ncamera ready copy for all issues. Nestled, and sometimes hidden, amongst this\nmaterial was over 30 years\u2019 worth of correspondence with major figures from the\nchildren\u2019s literary world: think Robert Westall, Grace Hogarth, Robert Leeson,\nJohn Rowe Townsend, Sheila Ray, Jan Mark, Margaret Meek and Raymond Briggs for\nstarters. Added to this, was the material that actually demonstrates Nancy\nChambers\u2019 practices as editor, and which reveals her collaboration with\nMargaret Clark on Signal<\/em> following\nClark\u2019s retirement from the Bodley Head. Without weeding, anyone wanting to\nlook at this rich body of material would have needed to set aside a significant\nabout of their research time and budget to wade through many hundreds of pages\nof duplication, none of which revealed anything about Nancy Chambers\u2019 editorial\npractices or the children\u2019s literary world during this time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the outset, it was\nclear that we needed to agree on a set of guiding principles for weeding. Like\nall archives, Seven Stories already has a clear weeding policy, and this was\nour starting point. We also had to consider the nature of Signal<\/em> as a publication: i.e. a journal as opposed to a literary\nwork. We decided that we would keep limited draft material for articles\npublished in Signal<\/em> as, unlike\nliterary works, there was likely to be limited interest in the writing process.\nKey exceptions were drafts, keying or proofs that had substantial annotation by\nthe author or Nancy Chambers. Substantially annotated drafts of articles now\nconsidered seminal works of children\u2019s literary criticism were also kept. I\ncompared all drafts against the published versions and all correspondence was\nretained. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There were some exceptions:\nfor example, the entire production file for Signal<\/em>\n1 <\/em>was kept intact, even though\nannotated drafts were only marked up with typographic errors. I also could not\nidentify any single issue file that reflected all production processes, so a\nrepresentative amount of production material was retained and catalogued across\nthe issues. This included, for example, handmade dummy issues, a sample index, Michael\nHarvey\u2019s preparatory artwork, John Ryder\u2019s production material for his \u2018Leaves\nfrom a Designer\u2019s Notebook\u2019 inserts, etc. In terms of space, it simply was not\npossible to retain all production material for all 100 issues of Signal. <\/em>The production material that we\nretained, however, documents not only the various processes that Nancy Chambers\nused over the years, but also the hands-on nature of her work as editor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It literally took me weeks to weed the Signal<\/em> material as I considered every\nitem for its research value. In making these decisions, I was extremely\nfortunate to be able to turn to Nancy Chambers for aid. Weeding the Signal <\/em>archive involved the removal of a\nsignificant amount of material, and it was vitally important that the final\narchive preserve and document Nancy\u2019s editorial and publishing practices. Working\ncollaboratively with Nancy Chambers meant that I fully understood, and could preserve, her working\npractices in the archive. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Having spent the last few weeks before the lockdown\nactually doing some personal research on Signal<\/em>,\nI know that we have created an archive that is comprehensive and accessible. It\nhas been a pleasure to read Nancy Chambers words, to \u2018hear\u2019 her voice, and to\nsee her hand everywhere in the archive. At the time of writing, the launch of the\nfinal catalogue has been slightly delayed due to the lockdown. However, I look\nforward to seeing the many ways that future researchers use this unique archive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dr Hazel Sheeky Bird In the weird and worrying times that we are currently living in, it is good to be able to write about the positive things that are still taking place in the world of children\u2019s literature. While locked down, I\u2019ve been helping to put the finishing touches to three major areas of … Continue reading To weed or not to weed? Opening the Aidan and Nancy Chambers Archive<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7893,"featured_media":852,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[193,48,278,280,4,279,194,277],"class_list":["post-846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorised","tag-aidan-and-nancy-chambers","tag-archival-research","tag-cataloguing","tag-publishing","tag-seven-stories","tag-signal","tag-thimble-press-collection","tag-turton-and-chambers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/childrensliteratureinnewcastle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/childrensliteratureinnewcastle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/childrensliteratureinnewcastle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/childrensliteratureinnewcastle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7893"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/childrensliteratureinnewcastle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=846"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/childrensliteratureinnewcastle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":854,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/childrensliteratureinnewcastle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846\/revisions\/854"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/childrensliteratureinnewcastle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/childrensliteratureinnewcastle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/childrensliteratureinnewcastle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/childrensliteratureinnewcastle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}