Good evening,

It’s now nearly two months since I took up my role at NHC, having spent several years at NRO, and my former colleagues have kindly allowed me a guest post to talk a little bit about what we do at the Heritage Centre and our ‘Pub for every day of the week’ series coming up in late November and early December.

For those that don’t know, Norfolk Heritage Centre is on the second floor of Norfolk and Norwich Millennium Library. During the planning of the current library and the building of the state of the art Archive Centre, people told us that they still wanted to be able to access historical and archive material in the City Centre.

Norfolk Heritage Centre, as part of the library, therefore holds a great deal of printed information, not least the local studies collection. We also have printed maps, newspapers, electoral registers, cuttings collections, Picture Norfolk‘s photograph archive, and special collections including the medieval City Library, the Colman Collection and Shipdham Collection. Together with these, we are able to make many of NRO’s most popular collections available including microfilmed and sometimes digitised parish register collections, wills and other probate, land tax, freemen and apprentice records, tithe maps, poor law records and even some monumental inscriptions and manorial material. We’re also very pleased to say that two Archive Specialists usually work from NHC to help people access NRO resources and engage with its archives.

If that weren’t enough, we also provide access, for free, to Ancestry Library Edition (containing all the databases you’d find on a private subscription), the British Newspaper Archive, 19th Century Newspapers, the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and much more – including all of our own websites with digitised Norfolk collections, and our catalogue.

Just like NRO, at NHC we have a busy events programme, many of which happen in partnership between the library and the record office. Our most frequent event is Heritage Hour, with two hour-long slots during the week where we offer talks on historical topics or types of record, and drop-in research clinics. You’ll find a whole list of events at http://norwichmillenniumlibrary.eventbrite.co.uk (all involving NRO will also be advertised at www.archives.norfolk.gov.uk/events)

NHC has a secure searchroom with PCs, study space and microform readers, and we’re open from 9-8pm Monday to Friday and 9-5pm on Saturday.

To interact with us, you can follow us @NorfolkHC or ‘Like’ us on Facebook /NorfolkHeritageCentre. Alternatively, call 01603 774740 or email norfolk.studies.lib@norfolk.gov.uk

To finish, you may remember a recent post that noted a series of pubs events coming up here. We’ve now confirmed six events including an EAFA film show, a ‘chance to see’ some pub-themed gems from the stack as well as four talks from speakers including Michael and Frances Holmes and Terry Gourvish.

For more details about all of these, and to book, click on the library’s eventbrite page.