Summary

To collect and preserve all historical primary and secondary source material, documentary, digital and artefactual, for the benefit of present and future communities, local historians and scholars.

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Description

The Rosneath Peninsula Local History Archive is currently situated in the Cove and Kilcreggan Library at Cove Burgh Hall which is run by the Cove and Kilcreggan Amenity Society. The collection includes an extensive  variety of material, both gifted and collected, relating to the history of the Peninsula. The primary aim of this project is to both safeguard and ensure the sustainablility of the collection for posterity. 

In March 2025, several members of the group attended a conference called Collecting Communities: A Shared Responsibility for Digital Sustainability hosted by the Scottish Council on Archives and Community Archives and Heritage Group which explored best practices and gave advice on the sustainability of community archvies and how to tackle digital preservation.  Digital preservation is now widely viewed as best practice for archive preservation.

With this in mind, the project is divided into three stages:

Stage 1 will address an urgent requirement to undertake the following steps to reduce immediate degradation of the material:

• Remove metal staples etc from paper
• Transfer material from plastic sleeves to archival polyester sleeves
• Place documents in archival grade boxes
• Create digital versions of all the printed documents in the collection

Stage 2 will involve digitising the collection:

• Seperating the collection into sub-collections under entities such as, Church, Scouts etc.
• Creating a finding aid/catalogue for all of the physcial objects
• Digitising the physical object
• Hosting the digitised objects in an accessible way online that respects privacy, copyright and data protection rights.

Stage 3 will involve outreach:

As part of this project, going forward we would also like to conduct a survey, asking the community what else they would like to see included in the archive, using the digitising project as a tool for positive engagement within the community.  By doing so, we hope to stimulate more interest in both the library and the archive and more care and recognition for the Peninsula's unique tangible and intangible cultural and environmental heritage, thereby sustaining it for future generations.

Stage 1 is likely to take approximately 30 hours and so could be undertaken within 1-2 weeks.  Stage 2 and 3 are likely to run for approximately six months.