It was great to hear that the Boots Archive has been successful in obtaining funding from the Wellcome Trust to make the archive more accessible to academic researchers, including digitisation of much of its content. A Wellcome-Boots Advisory Board, comprising representatives from Boots, including the archivist, Sophie Clapp, and from the Wellcome, as well as academics from Warwick Business School, will recommend how best the archive can be opened up and suggest potential research themes across disciplines. Following on from the ICA conference in Milan, this is a great way of demonstrating how the archive can provide a good return on investment. 

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The South Downs National Park Authority has given planning permission to the Weald & Downland Museum’s ambitious Gateway Project. It will be the biggest development in the museum’s 40-year history which aims to maintain the site’s future viability and will transform the way in which visitors experience the museum.  There will be two new clusters of buildings: one providing a ticket hall and shop, leading through to new interpretation galleries, and the other will house new catering facilities and a community learning space to use as a classroom and for meetings. Two of the historic buildings will be dismantled and moved to new sites, providing opportunities for trainees and volunteers to be involved with conservation work and learn heritage related skills. The project is scheduled for completion in 2017.

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