February 2008 Heritage Feature: Meet Morag MacLean at Highland Archives

From a career in adult education it was only a short jump for Morag McLean, Highland Archive Service education and outreach co-ordinator, to her new post. “My last project was working in career development for the RAF, working on redeveloping their skills and helping them address new opportunities. Fascinating work!”

The service just now is going through a period of structural change to match up with the building of the new Highland Archive centre, which is currently being built and will come on stream in 2009. It will be part of a hub and spokes model, working with the area centres in Caithness, Lochaber and Skye.

“My job,” explains Morag "will be to work out of the Hub and co-ordinate the spokes to explain how the archives work, what is in them, and to help people in their work with the archives. We also want to get more people into the archives, more interest groups and to show them what the archive service can do for them. We have some exciting stuff in there.”

“In addition to the official records of the civic bodies, and those that preceded the current structure we have some privately deposited papers – estates and families, societies and organisations, maps and plans. We have stuff going back to the 15^th Century! Cameron of Locheil has just donated some estate papers to the Lochaber archive. Getting folk aware of that is a priority, just now.””

“The new centre will have proper space to store and display material. There will be extended conservation space and we are hoping that we may be able to liberate material of local interest currently being held by the National Library, some of it in a fragile state. The Lochaber centre has just been validated, and is getting some documents returned North.”

“This is an exciting time, and with the new UHI course coming up, there will be some great primary sources for students to work with, to increase the body of knowledge on the Highlands. There will be an education suite, as well as an exhibition area and a family history centre at the new building. The registrars will be in the same area, for ease of access to census information. It will be moving from Farraline Park and will, of course, be purpose built for these functions – a lot more space.”

“I want to encourage groups to come in and visit – local history groups, study classes, genealogy and clan societies. We will be developing learning materials in partnerships, in consultations with others. We want to engage with smaller groups, we have the materials to make their research come alive, but also to work strategically with the nationals. It will be great to have them as back up.”

“We would also like to work with small independent museums - we can take contributions for secure and sustainable storage of perishable documents, but we also hope to be able to get some idea of what is actually held across the area, so we can direct researchers, wherever they need to go. But we can also offer curatorial advice.”

"We will be working in a partnership to celebrate the Year of Scottish Homecoming, and putting on a lot of events. The centre will open to coincide with those festivities, so we will be going global rather than just local there and encouraging tourism too.”

If you want to get in touch with Morag, phone her at 01463 703218 or email her at morag.maclean2@highland.gov.uk.