With our recent closure in preparation for our upcoming building redevelopment, and coming to the end of the academic year, it’s time to look back on and celebrate the hard work of our Special Collections & Archives team, volunteers, supporters, and community members between 1 Aug 2025 and 31 July 2026.

This year, we’ve also measured our enquiries and retrievals process in a new way, producing more accessible data to help us understand how archive material from different collections are being used.

Contents

Star Project: A Radical Re-imagining

Our crowning achievement of 2025-2026 has to be our HLF-funded Unity Theatre heritage project in partnership with the theatre. We were joined by new Project Archivist Megan to catalogue the collection (upcoming under UT – watch this space), curate exhibition A Radical Re-imagining, train new volunteers, and contribute towards the theatre’s own heritage production Stage Left and suite of radical events inspired by their radical history.

Read more about the Unity Theatre papers here.

Other Key Achievements

Other non-measureable achievements include:

Totals for 2025-2026

This academic year, we:

  • Received 576 total enquiries, a 178 enquiry increase from 398 in 2024-2025.
  • Received 833 requests to view material, 47 less than 880 received in 2024-2025.
  • Fulfilled 736 or 88.4% of these requests (unfulfilled requests are most often related to our legal requirement to close records containing personal data, or not violate the copyright of other persons when handling digital item requests).
  • Received requests to view 24,093 items (6,205 more than 17,888 in 2024-2025!), of which we retrieved 22,214 items (see above).
  • Welcomed 836 visitors to our physical Reading Room service.
  • Ran 50 engagement events for a total of 892 participants.
  • Hosted 16 volunteers and student work placements, who contributed 594.5 hours of work and training to our service.
  • Acquired 53 new deposits, covering 8.03 linear metres.

Enquiries

Of the 576 enquiries we received this year, 274 enquiries requested material, 207 were not requesting material, and 89 were not yet requesting to view archival material (i.e. speculative enquiries or initial enquiries which led to follow-up requests).

We achieved a median average response time of answering enquiries within one working day of receiving the enquiry, with 360 enquiries responded to within the day, and 542 enquiries responded to within five working days.

Types of enquirer included: LJMU students (94); LJMU staff (79); Academics (external) (66); Depositor (60); Family history (41); Students (external) (38); Potential volunteers (28); LJMU alumni (22); Media (19); and Other archive services (7). ‘Other’ enquiries made up the largest proportion, with 122 in total. These included: local and amateur historians or researchers without an institutional background; community organisations and creatives; and members of the public interested in archive material for general interest or recreational use.

The most popular collections for enquiries were:

  • LJMUH, the institutional papers of LJMU, including all subcollections for each College or organisation, received 19% of the enquiry share with a total of 139 enquiries. Within this, 66 of these related to LJMUH/SA, the Liverpool School of Art papers.
  • SC, our Special Collections holdings (this means published material – i.e. non-archival material), received 12% of the enquiry share with 91 enquiries.
  • FEM, our Femorabilia collection of magazines aimed at women and girls, received 6% of the enquiry share with 47 enquiries.

A total of 98 enquiries unrelated to any specific collection were also received.

Items Requested and Consulted

Not including material retrieved for engagement events, we received 833 total requests to consult material, for 24,093 items, of which 736 (88.4%) were fulfilled to provide access to a total of 22,214 items. Unfulfilled enquiries are almost always due to access restrictions on an item, such as that they include personal data which we’re legally bound to protect, or that it would infringe on someone else’s copyright to provide digital copies.

605 of these requests were to access physical material at our in-person Reading Room service, and 131 requests were for digitised material.

Interestingly, the most highly requested collections (by number of items) is quite different to the most enquired about collections.

The most popular collections by number of items requested were:

  • SB, Stafford Beer’s papers, received requests to view 5,084 items or 21% of all item requests.
  • LJMUH, the institutional papers of LJMU, including all subcollections for each College or organisation, received requests to view a total of 4,011 items or 17% of all item requests. Within this, 53% (2,123 items) of items requested were from LJMUH/IMM, the papers of I M Marsh College of Physical Education.
  • ED, the England’s Dreaming punk collection, received requests to view 2,634 items for 11% of item requests.
  • TP, the papers of streetstyle photographer and fashion anthropologist Ted Polhemus received requests to view 1,813 items for 8% of item requests.
  • FEM, our Femorabilia collection of magazines aimed at women and girls, received requests to view 1,520 items for 6% of item requests.
  • UT, the papers of the Merseyside Unity Theatre, received requests to view 1,400 items for 6% of item requests.

Engagement Events

This academic year, we ran 50 different engagement events for a total of 892 participants. These included 22 workshops for LJMU students for a total of 398 participants, 7 workshops for external students for a total of 85 participants, 15 public events for a total of 229 participants, and 6 research events (both internal and external) for a total of 180 participants.

25 (50%) of these engagement events included our SC Special Collections holdings (meaning published works, i.e. non-archival material). Other collections used within our engagement events include: LH (17); PF (16); ED (15); LJMUH (inclusive of all subcollections) (13); JMS (13); TP (11); UT (10); SR (9); FEM (9); GE (8); AA (5); OZ (5); EVT (3); 1966JS (2); SB (2); BM (1); JN (1); NME (1); and TJS (1).

Volunteers and Student Placements

This year we recruited, trained, and supported 16 volunteers and student placements, including a two week placement of a student on the University of Liverpool Masters of Archives & Records Management course, and our very first one week A level placement student from Southport College. These wonderful volunteers and placement students contibuted 594.5 total hours to our service, including training hours.

Within this: 235.5 hours were spent on cleaning, repackaging, and describing KM, the Keith Medley photographic collection; 218.5 hours spent cataloguing and digitising UT, the Unity Theatre’s papers; 51.5 hours cataloguing VF, the papers of VisionFest; 11 hours cataloguing AR, the papers of Andy Roberts; 10 hours digitising and enhancing catalogue description for LJMUH/IMM, the papers of I M Marsh Collge; 8 hours cataloguing OZ, the papers of the Oz Obscenity Trial; 7 hours cataloguing SC Special Collections holdings; and 27 hours spent on other tasks and collections.

Acquisitions

This academic year, we recorded a total of 53 new accessions records, which only measures the number of times a deposit was made to our collections, irrespective of size. The extent of these acquisitions totalled 8.03 linear metres (LM), which measures the length of space taken up by archival items.

Collections we received new acquisitions for include: FEM (3); LH (1); LJMUH/IMM (17); LJMUH/JMSU (1); LJMUH/LJMU (3); LJMUH/LP (3); LJMUH/SA (4); LW (1); MS (2); RCT (4); SB (1); SC/MAG (1); SC/Z (5); SC Other (6); and UT (4).

Download our Stats

For more details on the above, download a copy of the information we recorded about our collections access this year below:

Stats SCA 25-26 PublicDownload

Thank you to everyone who made 2025-2026 such a bright and impactful year, and we look forward to sharing more with you in 2026-2027 and beyond. As always, you can email us at archives@ljmu.ac.uk for all enquiries and requests.

– Christopher Olive, Assistant Archivist 2026