We certainly aren’t quite like any other archive office. The story of our founding is unique. Our position within the University gives us a particular character which emphasises teaching and research and collaboration with University departments, but the breadth of our holdings means we don’t really resemble the archive departments of other universities.
In many ways we share many of the same characteristics (in our size, user numbers, type of holdings and role as diocesan record office) as county record offices, but we are also distinctively different from any local authority run record office.
We began as - and we still remain - a specialist Church of England archive repository, but we have now become much more than this.
So in many ways the Borthwick is 'special'.
Teaching a documents class for a University department, using the Borthwick's Lifelong Learning room