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The Student Life Collection

What are we doing?

We want to expand the University’s own archive to help document the York student experience over time. We are keen to build a richer, more diverse and representative record of student life, societies, activism and community which will act as a lasting historical resource to engage and inspire others.

The Borthwick Institute for Archives holds documents detailing more than 800 years of the history of the city and region. The University Archive traces the campaign for a university, its establishment and administration. We want to create an exciting and even richer archive to recognise the wider experience and communities of students, the challenges they faced, and document the past work of YUSU, the GSA and student societies.

The Student Life Collection will help the University Archive to reflect more fully the different identities, experiences and voices of students and student groups across its 60 years.

Documenting university life from the student perspective

We hold good runs of the two campus newspapers, Nouse and York Vision and are working to help preserve York Student Television’s archive. We hold relatively few records, however, that relate to the students’ unions and the groups and societies that operated on campus. We hold even fewer records that come from, or reflect the perspectives of, individuals or the many different categories of student (e.g. mature, international, research, visiting or distance-learning students). 

There is not, and never was, a typical ‘York student’ or a single York experience. We are keen to ensure the breadth and variety of this experience and these groups can be seen and preserved in the University Archive. This will help us to better reflect York’s diverse communities and past. 

What types of records would we like?

The records could be 

• Student publications (especially issues of student newspapers and magazines missing from our catalogue, fliers and pamphlets)
• Publicity material relating to University and/or student events (posters, programmes, fliers)
• Photographs (of activities and events, campus, study rooms and decor, arriving at University, college photos, on-campus events and gigs)
• Letters home or relevant journal or diary entries (from the time and about life at University); 
• Papers from student societies (e.g. meeting minutes, photographs, publicity material etc.)
• SU/YUSU/JCR minutes and publications (meeting minutes, reports, presentations, yearbooks, handbooks, alternative prospectuses, records relating to campaigns) 
• Posters (campus events, student productions etc)
• Video/film and sound recordings (e.g. early URY/YSTV programmes, footage of campus, events such as RAG week, college life, elections and hustings, campaigns) 
• Campus fliers/documents/photos and manifestos relating to campaigns, sit-ins, protest, student activism/campaigns, charitable and fundraising or awareness-raising events/initiatives
• Poetry/prose from the time relating to student/University life
• Records that help capture student entrepreneurship, and student business or social enterprise.

We can accept digital and physical records. All offers of items (including those outside the above categories) will be considered on a case-by-case basis.

Material that we cannot usually accept includes:

• Student work (e.g. essays, dissertations)
• Objects, textiles etc. (e.g. University scarves)
• Tickets for events/dinners

If you have items you think we might like and are happy to donate to the archive, please complete the form or contact us at university-archive@york.ac.uk. 

We particularly encourage submissions from groups and those whose history, voices or backgrounds are historically underrepresented in archives: including but not limited to those from ethnic minorities, the LGBTQ+ community, those with disabilities, international students, care leavers, and students who came to university from lower socio-economic backgrounds or came to higher education much later in life.

Any questions?

Please email us at university-archive@york.ac.uk and we’ll do our best to help.