Preparatory sketch of animals by a riverbank, Irene Hawkins, 1947
Front cover of Unionews, 14 Jan 1976
Typed cipher from the archive of WW2 British SOE agent George Hiller, 1944
The Library’s Heritage Collections team have been busy digitising some of the University’s unique archive collections, making them accessible to colleagues, students and the wider public through the Sussex Digital Collections website.
The collection features a diverse range of material, from Second World War ciphers used by the French Resistance to mid-twentieth century children’s book illustrations.
Recently, the team also made available a selection of newspapers, magazines and bulletins produced by both the University and the Students’ Union from the 1960s through to the 1980s, providing a window into the University’s history and a wider snapshot of politics, culture and local life at the time.
The digitisation programme is set to expand further thanks to new support from JSTOR, which has awarded Sussex $18,000 over the next three years to make more of our collections available through its platform.
Sussex was the first UK partner to use JSTOR’s Seeklight tool, which uses AI-generated metadata to speed up the digitisation process, helping to make our cultural heritage collections accessible. The next phase of work will begin later this year and will initially focus on the papers of Leonard Woolf, the writer and member of the Bloomsbury Group, whose archive was donated to the University of Sussex following his death in 1969.
As more collections appear online, these digital resources will help to preserve Sussex’s rich archival heritage while opening up new opportunities for research, learning and public engagement.