From the BAA Archives

2023 December 12

John Chuter

Towards the end of 2022, the BAA Trustees agreed to fund the development of an Archives website. Its main purpose is for members to discover what is housed in the Archives and, where possible, to view it online.

Max Communications were contracted to set up the website, which made sense as they now store much of our more significant archived items, as I have mentioned already here. Richard McKim has produced a detailed catalogue which will be available to view on the website. As might be expected, this is, and will continue to be, an ongoing process.

The Trustees had already agreed to fund the scanning of a number of items stored at Max, and during 2022 this was done. Hopefully this process will now continue.

To date, the scanning done by Max has included:

–  All the Minute Books etc., right back to 1890

–  The complete set of 20 notebooks of Roland L. T. Clarkson

–  Thirteen notebooks of Major Percy B. Molesworth held by the BAA (others are with the RAS)

–  Notebooks and scrapbooks of Walter Goodacre and William Denning

–  One of thirty large notebooks given to the Archives by Alan Heath

If all of Alan’s notebooks were scanned, together with Clarkson’s notebooks, we would have a continuous record of the observations of two notable amateur astronomers, viz. Clarkson, 1906–1953, and Heath, 1953–2023 and beyond. Quite a thought as it spans most of the time the BAA has been in existence.

I show an example page, of many hundreds, from each of the five listed above. The minutes shown are the first page of those for the meeting held on 1898 Nov 30.

John Chuter, BAA Archivist