Award

As we move into the New Year, here at West Lothian archives, we are looking forward to busy and changing times for our archive service.

Last month we learned that we had been awarded a National Cataloguing Grant of £42,588 to catalogue our Livingston collections. The 18 month project entitled "Livingston New Town, From Plan to Community, 1962-2012" will be led by a project archivist and will involve the cataloguing of the records of Livingston Development Corporation as well as some of our smaller Livingston collections, the creation of an online catalogue, and the publication of a summary guide to the collections.The project coincides with the 50th anniversary of the new town of Livingston and will allow us to celebrate and permanently document the history of the local community.

Many people think of archives as being hundreds of years old, but this award recognises the importance of 20th century history to both our local communities and our wider cultural heritage.

The grant is a massive boost for our archive service and we are excited about enabling community access to these important collections.