Before the Boom: A Digital Exhibition in the Making

For nearly a year we closed our collections to researchers while we undertook the mammoth task of moving out of our Old Aberdeen House site (read more here). During this time, we were unable to share our wonderful collections as well as we wanted to. When we reopened our search room for research visits, we also wanted to think about other ways to promote the vast and fascinating collections in our care. Exhibitions are an obvious way to do this, but our service doesn't have a dedicated exhibition space (on our wish list for the future!). We do utilise the spaces of Aberdeen Art Gallery through our colleagues there (you may have seen our most recent Aberdeen Harbour Board exhibition in Gallery 2), but we felt a digital exhibition would also allow more flexibility to reach those people unable to visit us in Aberdeen. 

Below is some information about how our service created our new digital exhibition: "Before the Boom".

From May through August 2025, two of our team began the process of creating our digital exhibition through training with The National Archives (TNA) partnered with The Audience Agency. The course was for a small group of pairs from archive teams across the UK, taking a deep dive into how to create a digital exhibition for archives. Kimberley Newell, former Archivist, and myself, Lisette Turner, Collections and Archives Assistant, complete several months of training and information sharing sessions.

Slides from the National Archives Digital Exhibition training

Throughout these workshops we explored some themes and ideas for what we wanted to exhibit. It was a brilliant opportunity to explore the collections of Aberdeen City and Aberdeenshire Archives further, especially as both Kim and I were fairly new to the service and had mostly been working on the Old Aberdeen House decant up until this point!. With such an array of records, we discussed everything from World War II intergenerational social history to Jacobite history and witchcraft. However, with Tall Ships washing ashore over the summer and the exhibition in the Art Gallery, it seemed fitting that we expand on the interest in the Aberdeen Harbour Board collection.

Image from Aberdeen Harbour Board exhibition at Aberdeen Art Gallery July 2025-Jan 2026

Entrusted to us by the Port of Aberdeen, there are 80 linear metres of material within the collection with centuries worth of narratives. It was deciding which one to focus on that proved difficult! With the help of our training sessions we were able to really think about who the exhibition was for and who we had to consider when telling the stories.

Slides from the National Archives Digital Exhibition training

Within no time at all we decided that “Before the Boom” would tell the story of the harbour in the decades the lead up to the oil boom in Aberdeen in the mid-20^th century. The exhibition would highlight the bustling port, the people that worked there, and the industries that helped it grow and expand. We would do so by looking through and selecting from thousands of images to create a digital exhibition that could give an exciting visual representation of the collection.

You can view our new digital exhibition here: Before the Boom – Bustling Aberdeen on the Verge of Transformation.

Curated by Lisette Turner with the assistance of the Archives team and volunteers.

By Lisette Turner, Collections & Archives Assistant