Top honour for NRM’S Search Engine
SEARCH Engine, the National Railway Museum’s acclaimed research and archive centre has been awarded Archive Service Accreditation by The National Archives for the first time.
The award is the national benchmark for excellence, which recognises customer service and the management and care of archives. The York venue is the first in the Science Museum Group to reach the benchmark.
The assessment took place over four months and involved a site visit and interviews, as well as the submission of written evidence.
Since opening in 2008, Search Engine has welcomed 400,000 visitors through its doors and over 10,000 readers to its archives, including researchers, authors, academics and students.
The archive’s extensive collection of railway items includes more than 1000 paintings, 2350 prints and drawings, 1,750,000 photographs and 11,000 original railway travel posters. It includes the Robert Stephenson and Company Archives, which document the creation of the world’s first railways and have been recognised by UNESCO.
Other treasures include the Backhouse Letter which depicts a child’s drawing of the historic first locomotive-hauled passenger train and the Rastrick notebook from one of the judges present at the famous Rainhill Trials of 1829, plus original engineering drawings of steam locomotives Mallard, Flying Scotsman and Rocket.
NRM archive manager Jane Hubbard said: “Achieving Archive Service Accreditation is a huge achievement for the museum and represents many hours of work from everyone in the archive team and from our many volunteers.
“This will also help safeguard and maintain the collection, ensuring that the UK continues to have one of the richest railway archives in the world.” ➜ Search Engine is open to the public Wednesday to Saturday and is free to access. Visitors can email their requests to view archive material in advance by contacting search.engine@ railwaymuseum.org.uk