All posts by Liz Rees

About Liz Rees

Hi, I’m the senior manager for Archives, which is based at the Discovery Museum in Newcastle, but covers the whole of Tyne & Wear.

I first got interested in archives through studying history at university, but it took a year working on a job creation programme surveying business records in Wales to get me started in the profession. That took me from copper works to laundries to pop factories and showed me that archives are certainly not all glamour! Records that have been stored away in attics and cellars for decades or even hundreds of years are often filthy and have sometimes been used as bedding by pigeons, rats and other creatures.

Nevertheless I got caught up in the thrill of never knowing what you might find on opening that box, cupboard or room that no one has looked in for years, and I’ve now been working in archives for over thirty years.

Hidden History – LGBT Month

The Archives
Posted by Liz Rees on February 2, 2012     Permalink     Comments (2)

In recent years there has been increasing interest in more personal versions of history such as gender and sexuality, but it’s often difficult to uncover evidence of private lives, particularly of ordinary people. In reviewing a recent addition to the… Read more

Neptune Yard Launches

Collections & Objects   Maritime History   The Archives
Posted by Liz Rees on November 15, 2011     Permalink     Leave a comment

A recent acquisition for the Archives is the visitors book for Swan Hunter’s Neptune Shipyard covering the years 1910-1963 (TWA ref DS.SWH/5/1/6/3). This volume had apparently been put in a rubbish skip on the closure of the yard in 1988… Read more

Who do you think you are?

Local History   The Archives
Posted by Liz Rees on September 15, 2011     Permalink     Comments (1)

Like millions of other people we love the BBC programme Who Do You Think You Are? and we’re particularly interested when the celebrity involved has north east connections. We’ve only actually featured in one programme – the one on Jodie… Read more

Tyne map

The Archives
Posted by Liz Rees on October 8, 2010     Permalink     Leave a comment

The Archives has just acquired an intriguing new addition that has required some detective work to uncover the truth of. On the surface it is an L-shaped map of the River Tyne from Heddon on the Wall to the sea,… Read more

BFI Mediatheque

Discovery Museum   The Archives
Posted by Liz Rees on August 26, 2010     Permalink     Comments (1)

I’m the senior manager responsible for Archives, where we generally work with historical documents on parchment or paper, sometimes hundreds of years old. The most exciting recent development for the Archives, however, has been the opening of the BFI Mediatheque… Read more