Railway historian’s research legacy begins new life

We have teamed up with the Railway & Canal Historical Society (R&CHS) to create a new research tool based on the work of esteemed railway historian Alan Jackson. Jackson wrote many books in his lifetime and, as part of his work, created an extensive collection of reference cards of railway-related themes from books, magazines and accompanying boxes of clippings. The R&CHS has provided the funding to have these hand-written cards digitised. They have also helped us find the volunteers needed to transcribe the many thousand entries of the digital index cards into a useable spreadsheet. Once complete, the plan is to make this tool available to researchers online.


Alan Jackson’s index cards in situ




It marks an exciting change to our volunteer programme as this is the first time we have supported volunteers who work away from the museum. All our transcribers work at home from all over the country.

If you would like more information about this project or would like to become involved in making this resource a reality, please contact librarian karen.baker@nrm.org.uk

Filed under: Library and archive collections, Research Tagged: index, research, Volunteers

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