As part of the Religious Archives Support Plan, a small-scale mapping project of religion-related audio-visual collections in the UK has been carried out by a partnership comprising RAG,The National Archives, and The British Library.
The UK currently has no national catalogue of audio-visual archive holdings, and those holdings are widely dispersed among several hundred repositories. This is especially true of community-based oral history work, for which there has generally been no national searchable database of projects and catalogue records (where these exist).
An initial task was therefore identified to undertake, through desk-based research, a high-level mapping of the UK’s existing religion- and belief-related audio-visual collections at a collection (as opposed to item) description level.
The main deliverable of the mapping project is an excel database, containing a breakdown of relevant collections identified. In addition, a report summarises the findings of the mapping project, which has been conducted over a total period of 25 days by Clare Canning, a volunteer based at the Oral History section of the British Library, under direct supervision by Elspeth Millar, Archivist and Rob Perks, Lead Curator,
The database and report may be downloaded below:
Mapping Religion Final Report July2014
RAG Mapping Project Database July2014
The Religious Archives Group will endeavour periodically to update the database. Details of additional collections, or amendments to existing entries, should be notified in the first instance to c.d.field@bham.ac.uk
