Knowing where you come from is an important factor in many people’s lives – and family history is often the reason that so many people visit archives. In the same way, it is also important for researchers and archivists to know where the documents have come from. We need to know about the creator and custodial history (where the records were stored, and by whom) to be able to assess the authenticity of documents – as my last post showed not all documents in archives are genuine!
Nowadays, archival best practice dictates what information should be collected on new acquisitions and this is recorded on an accession entry form. However, SBT started collecting documents, books, and artefacts long before most of our existing professional theory had been developed. As a consequence, much of the early acquisition information was either not recorded or has subsequently been lost.
Read the full article on Finding Shakespeare.