Playing the Archive

We are pleased to announce the appointment of two new cataloguers, Alison Somerset-Ward and Catherine Bannister, who will work with Julia Bishop and Steve Roud to catalogue and index the first part of the collection, comprising the children’s responses to the Opie’s oral lore of schoolchildren surveys of the 1950s and 1960s. Their work will result in a freely available website, enabling public access to the digitised materials.

Catherine and Alison looking at the Opie Collection

It will also allow the thousands of individual items contributed, such as a game or rhyme, to be searched according to associated features, such as place and date played, type of game, setting in which played, and first line of text, facilitating historical research into play for all.