Collaboration in the Archive

The MRC and the Railway Work, Life & Death Project

Authors

  • Mike Esbester School of Area Studies, Sociology, History, Politics & Literature, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, UK https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6674-5991
  • Alex Gordon National Union of Rail, Maritime & Transport Workers (RMT), London, UK
  • Cheryl Hunnisett Independent Researcher, Railway Work, Life & Death volunteer
  • James King Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK
  • Stephen Lamb Independent Researcher, Railway Work, Life & Death volunteer

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.31273/eirj.v11i4.1589

Keywords:

collaboration, history, railway, volunteering, trades union, family history, local history, railway history

Abstract

In this piece we look at a collaborative project, in which the Modern Records Centre is a co-lead: the Railway Work, Life & Death project. The project is transcribing details of accidents to British and Irish railway staff before 1939. Using a collaborative and co-productive methodology, and thanks to the efforts of volunteers, we are transcribing and making freely available tens of thousands of records of accidents to railway workers. Many of these records come from the collections of what is now the RMT (National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers) trade union, and their support for our work has been excellent. Here we offer up critical reflections from across the project team about how the project has worked in practice.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.
Posed staff safety photograph produced by the Caledonian Railway Company in 1921. (Credit: Railway Work, Life & Death project. Included with permission)

Downloads

Published

2024-09-25

Issue

Vol. 11 No. 4 (2024): Special Issue: MRC@50

Section

Critical Reflections

License

Copyright (c) 2024 Mike Esbester, Alex Gordon, Cheryl Hunnisett, James King, Stephen Lamb

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY), which permits use and redistribution of the work provided that the original author and source are credited, a link to the license is included, and an indication of changes which were made. Third-party users may not apply legal terms or technological measures to the published article which legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.

If accepted for publication authors’ work will be made open access and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license unless previously agreed with Exchanges’ Editor-in-Chief prior to submission.

Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.

Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work. (see: The Effect of Open Access)