Friday Update Number Twenty Four

Posted on 18 September 2020

We’re pleased to announce that the Borthwick has now officially re-opened so this will be the last closure update - but not the last regular update!

Between Monday and Thursday this week we welcomed our first visitors back to the Borthwick since our closure in March. Over the four days we ran 8 morning and afternoon sessions and fetched an impressive total of 44 original documents, as well as opening the microform room at a reduced capacity. The records requested represent a good overview of our core collections, from York parishes to York hospitals and from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation to the extensive archives of the Rowntree family itself. If you would like to make an appointment, you can find out more information about booking and the changes we’ve made to our usual procedures for health and safety reasons on our website here.

Searchroom ready for reopening

Since March we have published 24 weekly ‘Friday Updates’, bringing you news on our cataloguing work, our additions to Borthcat, our blogs, tweets and Facebook posts and information about our reopening plans. Over the 24 weeks spent working at home we have added more than 20,000 new archival descriptions to our online catalogue, published 3 new blogs, and launched a new project to record York’s experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic - as well as continuing to respond to customer enquiries and meeting remotely to discuss potential new accessions and develop extensive new COVID-19 policies and procedures for our eventual reopening.

As we have now reopened this will be our last ‘Friday update’ but in its place we will be launching a new monthly online update to keep you informed of the latest Borthwick news and developments. We look forward to sharing our latest accessions and cataloguing progress with you, as well as exciting news and projects in the pipeline - and in return, as always we’d love to hear about your Borthwick discoveries, you can get in touch via email, Twitter or Facebook.