Get technical at the National Motorcycle Museum

Technical literature is always handy – whether to help with a restoration or just to place your classic in its historical context. And that’s something the National Motorcycle Museum can help with. Five years ago, the museum took over BMS, a service initiated by publisher and bike journalist the late Bruce Main-smith, to supply photocopies of original literature – handbooks, parts lists and manuals for familiar and obscure classics. The museum continues to supply these affordable photocopies while steadily digitising the archive, so pdf copies are often available. Museum Director James Hewing says: “It’s a popular service; sometimes the only source of technical information you’ll find on an obscure bike. But we also sell them to people who already have the factory literature but want a ‘workshop copy’ to spare a precious original from oily fingers!” Investing in other collections has expanded the range further and there is now a selection of outof-print books and magazines with articles available for copying. Public donations have further boosted the collection, with benefactors and their donations all carefully logged in the archive. In cases where the collection has several copies of a book or manual, originals are offered for sale and a ‘wish list’ is kept for customers prepared to wait in case the desired original becomes available. Two cabinets have been erected in the reception area to display donated ephemera and this seems a side of the museum which is likely to expand. Indeed, there are hopes that eventually it may be possible to increase the archive into a library in which visitors can carry out their own research by arrangement. The archive is open Monday to Friday, with the full range of BMS reprints available for sale in the reception area for weekend visitors, as well as being for sale online to mail order at: thenmm.co.uk