Boxes, boxes and more boxes! Old Aberdeen House move: July update

In June 2024 our Aberdeen City and Aberdeenshire Archives service closed to the public so that our team could start preparing our collections for the move out of Old Aberdeen House. Since our closure we have made brilliant progress with our work; read on for some of the highlights!!

We completed one of our volunteer projects - appraisal and listing of a collection of City Building Warrants (dated 1940s-1970s). This project began before Christmas 2023 when our volunteers Sandy, Ace, and Matthew began working on the collection. Back up in the form of volunteers Elaine, Ken, Ilona, Rachel, Cameron, Ian ,Sara and Maryann arrived from February 2024.

Old Aberdeen House set up for volunteers

Old Aberdeen House volunteers and MA Lisette appraising and listing

Our volunteers did a massive amount of work:

• reduced the collection by over half, from 13605 to 6316 plans!
• saved 32 archive boxes for us to reuse elsewhere
• created 5 shelves of space in our storerooms
• listed 6316 plans
• scaled countless stairs moving boxes from storeroom to search room and back

Shelf space saved by building warrant project

As part of our appraisal and housekeeping tasks, organised by each storeroom, we have been transferring material to more appropriate homes. Records have been offered to the Highland Archives, Moray Local Studies, Dumfries & Galloway Archives, the Moving Image Archive in Glasgow, and closer to home, such as these seal presses, which were transferred to the Aberdeenshire Museums team in Mintlaw last week.

Historic Environment Scotland were also on site with us for two days to uplift two deposited collections (George Bennett Mitchell and Duncan & Munro). The records will be returned to us in the future, but shelving has now been freed up for us to move to the Town House in the meantime.

Empty shelving

Boxes boxes boxes!

We have entered the repackaging phase of our project, which means lots of boxes. Our first delivery of 350 boxes arrived this week (thankfully the weather held as we decanted the boxes into the building).

Box delivery

Our collections and their enclosures have all been condition checked prior to the move, giving us a clear scope for the repackaging work. Repackaging means we will reduce the risk of damage to our records as we move them, not to mention the long term benefits for documents housed in appropriate acid free folders and boxes.

Last week, our Archivist Kim, Museum Assistant Lisette and volunteer Alina began repackaging some of the records we plan to move first. A total of 217 archive boxes were used over 3 days - a phenomenal amount of work!! Full credit to Lisette for working tirelessly to decant records out of over 150 transfer boxes...

Volunteer Alina repackaging folders

We hope that gives you a flavour of the move project! We'll be continuing with volunteer appraisal and listing tasks and repackaging for the next couple of months.

You can read more about the move in our other blog post: Saying Farewell to Old Aberdeen House.

[Kimberley Smith, Archivist]