Using Seven Stories: A researcher's perspective
Nolan Dalrymple is a doctoral student in the Children's Literature Unit in the School of English at Newcastle University. He holds a Collaborative Doctoral Award from the UK's Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) which means that he divides his time between his own research and working under the supervision of the Collection Manager and Archivist in the Seven Stories archives. Nolan's thesis will include a study of the work of the noted children's writer, Robert Westall, whose archives are held by Seven Stories. Working on the Westall materials has formed the core of Nolan's contributions to Seven Stories in the first year of the collaboration. His description of what this has involved provides insights for those working in Seven Stories - and for other collections where material is still in the process of being sorted and catalogued.
Nolan writes: Working within an archive differs from research I have done up to this point (which has been mainly library-based, and not within archival deposits or special collections) in a number of regards. The nature of the material encountered becomes much more significant, and this impacts upon one's work in a number of ways.
