Photographic Library - Trust Annual Report 1994
The Trust has decided to set up a Photographic Library, containing photographic records of the Winchester street-scene dating back to the turn of the twentieth century or even before, leading up to the present day and adding to it as the street-scene changes.
Work is continuing on the careful cataloguing and storing of the small collection of past photographs of Winchester that has been collected by the Trust over the years in a rather haphazard manner.
The County Records Office and the Winchester City Museums Service have offered advice, especially in relation to the most appropriate depositories for some of the original material (from which copies will be made), whilst attention is also being paid to the Laws of Copyright which recently came into effect as to the rights of ownership and reproduction.
With regard to current and future photographs there is no comprehensive ongoing record of Winchester that we know of, and there have been many occasions when such a library would have been very useful.
We envisage that the first batch of current photographs will be complete by the end of 1994. To start with we have concentrated on recording the streets approximately within the line of the City walls. There are also some areas outside the walls, such as the new line of the M3, and at Bar End, where one might reasonably expect changes once the motorway is completed. When the initial photographs are in place, we hope to build up the library by adding "before-and-after" shots of new development, road pedestrianisation, and important changes to buildings.
There will eventually be about 5,000 photographs as slides, this being the size of the new storage cabinet that the Trust has purchased to house the collection. It is intended that the collection should be in triplicate; one slide for use, the second in case of loss, and the third being deposited at the County Records Office for use only in very special circumstances.
It is hoped that the library will not only be available to members of the Trust, but also to lecturers, teachers, architects, planners, landscape architects and other local organisations. Obviously, as the collection grows both in size and age, it will become more valuable.
We are proposing to make a small charge for borrowing slides in order to offset costs, but the success of the scheme will largely depend on finding a voluntary custodian to administer the Photographic Library.