One of the biggest challenges facing any Archive is the question of how to give local people the opportunity to see and interact with the historical records of their community – how, in short, to give them access to their own history?
It was as a response to this challenge that Caithness Archive staff loaded up two cars with boxes of records one crisp Saturday morning last November and drove down to Lybster Community Centre.
Lybster is a small, active fishing village and harbour some 14 miles south of Wick. Once a major herring port, its rich heritage now lives on in photographs, records and maps in the strongrooms in Wick, and these were what we had brought. We laid out trestle tables all around the hall, and invited local people to come in and browse the records.
Among the items on display was a register of fishing boats from Lybster, containing details of the boats, their ownership, size and crew numbers; a Victorian police station lock-up book (the cause of much amusement as people inevitably looked up their ancestors and their misdemeanours); school records, a poor house admission register, and maps of the harbour and area dating back to the early 19th century. Staff were on hand to offer advice as needed, and to help with family history enquiries.
The event was a great success – the hall was packed, with people wandering in off the street out of curiosity and staying to study the archives on show – and as a result Caithness Archives now run a regular programme of three or four roadshows each year, taking the archives out of the strongrooms and back to the communities whose history they tell.
Gordon Reid, Caithness Archivist
