Accessibility statement

Friday Update Number Twenty Three

Posted on 10 September 2020

This week we’ve been taking bookings for the big reopening and adding a few more hospital records to Borthcat.

On Monday 14th September we will be welcoming our first visitors to the Borthwick since March.  We began taking bookings on Monday and you may have seen information about the changes we’ve had to make to our usual procedures on Twitter or Facebook.  The most important of these is that all visits, and crucially all documents and microfilms, must be pre-booked.  All documents and microfilms must be quarantined before and after use, meaning it will unfortunately not be possible to fetch additional items on the day.  As a further safety measure we will also be running two searchroom sessions per day, a morning slot from 10am until 12.30 and an afternoon slot from 1.30pm until 4pm.  Visitors can book either one or both of these.  However if you plan to book both slots please note that the Borthwick will close for an hour in between sessions for sanitisation and to allow for staff breaks (although we’re pleased to report that the Library Cafe is now open for takeaway food).

As you will have seen in last week’s update the searchroom reception desk has been fitted with perspex screens and we ask that all visitors wear face coverings for the duration of their visit.  Hand sanitiser will also be available.  These changes have been a long time in the planning but inevitably in practice they will take some getting used to - for staff and visitors - and we appreciate your patience as we get accustomed to this new normal.  You can read about our new procedures in more detail on our website here, or see the highlights in our handy short video below.

Finally we’ve also found time to add a few more indexes for patient admissions to Clifton Hospital in the 19th century.  You can now find details for female patients admitted in 1857 and 1861, 1862, 1863, 1864, 1865 and 1866.  As always, if you find something useful to your research in these new indexes we’d love to hear about it!