Helping you to explore York’s incredible history

In April 2024, Explore York began its ‘Setting the Record Straight’ project, a collections based project aimed at improving access to our wonderful collections. During this project, the Archives Reading Room is closed for three days a month so that staff can focus on working on our collections.

The community and civic archives we hold on behalf of the City of York Council are one of the most important local authority archives outside London. Yet many of the records in our care remain invisible to York’s communities, and to our national and international researchers. Incomplete and fragmentary cataloguing in the past, records in need of preventative conservation, and a lack of online information is compromising the ability of our users to explore our collections and find the information they need.

The Setting the Record Straight project will:

  • implement a comprehensive review of our collections information, improving, expanding and enriching our online catalogue;
  • carry out further preventative conservation measures on select items;
  • create generous online information about our collections, providing contextual details and signposting researchers to related material.

This work will have a significant and lasting impact on our users.  Researchers will reap the benefits of  increased discoverability and understanding of our collections. We will be able to share more of our collections with our communities, connecting them with archives that help to tell their story. The project will also put our collections in a better place for a programme of digitisation, which has the potential to transform access to the archives for current and future generations.

Please give 

Explore Archives is part of Explore York Libraries and Archives Mutual Limited.  A mutual organisation owned by our staff and community members.  Although we are contracted by the City of York Council to look after the Archives Service on their behalf, we need to raise additional funds to ensure the continued conservation and maintenance of the collection. 

Please donate to enable us to continue our work through our website at Giving – Explore York.

Reading room closures

Below is a calendar of our planned closures for January 2025 – March 2026:

Monday 13 January – Wednesday 15 January 2025

Monday 17 February – Wednesday 19 February 2025

Monday 17 March – Wednesday 19 March 2025

Monday 14 April – Wednesday 16 April 2025

Monday 19 May – Wednesday 21 May 2025

Monday 16 June – Wednesday 18 June 2025

Monday 14 July – Wednesday 16 July 2025

Monday 18 August – Wednesday 20 August 2025

Monday 15 September – Wednesday 17 September 2025

Monday 20 October – Wednesday 22 October 2025

Monday 17 November – Wednesday 19 November 2025

Monday 15 December – Wednesday 17 December 2025

Monday 19 January – Wednesday 21 January 2026

Monday 16 February – Wednesday 18 February 2026

Monday 16 March – Wednesday 18 March 2026