A HISTORY group has been delving into Hampshire's archives - and is working hard to create a comprehensive catalogue of all the fascinating stores of information that are held across the county.

The Hampshire Archives Trust has been painstakingly carrying out a survey of all scores of groups and organisations. 

Its chairman David Livermore set up the initiatives he wanted the trust to take a more proactive approach to fulfilling its mission of making Hampshire archives more accessible to the public.

The trust then commissioned a survey to establish the extent and nature of groups and organisation’s archives and their needs.

This encompassed the extent and nature of their archives, the degree to which they were catalogued, digitised and their accessibility to the public, as well as how they were managing them. 

Graham RoodGraham Rood (Image: The Hampshire Archives Trust)The questionnaire went through no less than 11 iterations in Excel format prior to transfer to an on line format for piloting with a representative sample of six organisations and groups.

David said: "We are most grateful to our guinea pigs who helped us through its development." 

Its extensive research exercise established that there were at least 200 organisations in Hampshire which were likely to have archives which would be of help to researchers, ranging from those interested in the Basingstoke canal through to the extensive archives of Winchester College or Farnborough Air Services.

As HAT already had extensive contacts with, and knowledge of, the Hampshire record offices, these were excluded from the survey.

The survey, launched on July 19, approached over 180 organisations, and at the time of writing they had received 44 sets of responses to over 30 questions in the survey.

As part of the survey, visits were made to Farnborough Air Sciences Trust (FAST) and the National Aerospace Library.

Responses are still being received and they hope to achieve a 25 per cent response rate (approximately 50 organisations).

For those groups and organisations that have not contributed to the survey yet, Hampshire Archives Trust would welcome further responses via the following link form.jotform.com/240853136127049