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The Kent Heritage Resource Centre at Smarden
A new resource Centre for regional heritage groups has been established at Smarden as a result of a partnership agreement between Smarden Local History Society and Kent Archaeological Society.
Under the partnership, the two organisations are working together to provide practical help and guidance to local history societies, museums, schools and private individuals on archive management, preservation and digitisation at a new Kent Heritage Resource Centre at The Charter Hall in Smarden.
The facility features a state-of-the-art archival camera capable of producing high-output, high-definition images of, for example, documents, bound volumes, artefacts, photographs, slides, and maps up to A2 size, linked to specially developed indexing and cataloguing software.
The Centre has been formed in answer to a problem faced by many heritage organisations, that of uncatalogued, and often unseen, archival collections with no back-up, which makes them vulnerable to accidental loss and inaccessible to people who might otherwise wish to study them.
The Centre offers expert advice on archival techniques and provides options for users to carry out digitisation projects, with Resource Centre assistance where necessary. The Centre also offers a data storage service for organisations seeking to back-up archives off-site. All Centre facilities are available at nominal cost to users at The Smarden Charter Hall two days a week and at other times by prior arrangement.
The Centre operates as a not-for-profit voluntary organisation, established with the help of grant funding by Kent Archaeological Society, Smarden Local History Society, Kent County Council, Ashford Borough Council and with the support of The Trustees of Smarden Charter Hall.
The archival camera in use at The Kent Heritage Resource Centre
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