It doesn’t seem nearly two years since this project started but when I look back I have learned so much.
I started this project as an interested amateur who had a thirst for knowledge and some ability to archive but knew that I needed to look closely at how other people archived!
I was so lucky to be sharing a job with David Llewellyn a professional archivist that I was able to question and share my enthusiasm with.
The five communities that we worked with have encouraged us to look at their collections and to work to archive them. Yes, we have give over views, written reports and been endlessly emailing back and forth but this project has shown that it is not a complicated process to archive and upload to Peoples Collection Wales and then display your history to anyone in the world who wants to look!
But as with most things if you do not care for something over the years it will either get lost or deteriorate. Archives very definitely fall into this sector although the community history groups can help overcome this.
I feel that all groups can learn from my experience: it is a communal quest to record those archives and to add to our sense of published community. There is a large unarchived range of material in Pembrokeshire. I started it with some knowledge and am so pleased to have been able to share my questions with the Peoples Collection Wales who helped so much with sharing their skills and essentially their backroom IT skills that make it so easy to upload work to their site. I can only say thank you so much for all the help and support that I have had over nearly two years from so many people; the local history societies, PLANED in Narberth, Peoples Collection Wales and the people that I have worked with.