The Best of the Borthwick

Followers of our Twitter feed, and keen visitors, may have noticed a new exhibition which has gone into the space outside our offices on the second floor of the Borthwick.

This new exhibition, Best of the Borthwick, was designed by our archival trainees for 2012/13, Zoe and Amy, who have now finished their placement at the archives.

You can read a little bit about their time at the Borthwick, and their approach to this project on this National Archives blog post, written by Amy.

The exhibition comes at a really important time for us. Whilst celebrations and projects quite rightly focus on the University of York's 50th anniversary, 2013 also represents the 60th anniversary of the Borthwick Institute. How fitting, then, to have a display showing off the best selections from our many holdings.

The exhibition displays items from the Retreat Hospital, the Mount School, our probate collection, Theatre, Film and Television collections, the confectioners Rowntree's and Terry's, and the Ecclesiastical and Church Court records. Included in this are items from the archive of Sir Alan Ayckbourn, the Cause Paper records (of which many are now available for free online), case notes for a patient of The Retreat, extracts from a Mount School pupils' diary, and a will written in verse, amongst other treasures.

A front cover of the Mount
School Magazine, 1927, ref:
MOU 6/5/1/40

One of the major aims of the project was to create an exhibition that could be reused in the future. As such, all of the 'original' documents displayed in the cases are, in fact, surrogates. This made the job no easier for our trainees or Conservation team, however. Each item has been printed, trimmed, and boarded to represent the original document as accurately as possible.

The Best of the Borthwick Exhibition will run until May 31st and can be found on the top floor of the Raymond Burton Library and is viewable free of charge.

If you've got any feedback, or would like to talk about any of the documents on display, please visit us in the searchroom, leave a comment on this blog post, or send us a tweet.