About

The Story Behind This Website...

The owner of ‘The Smallest Bookshop in the World’ (now sadly closed) had purchased, at auction, a lot which included Barbara Parker’s (Max Mallowan’s second wife) reference collection, a large collection of photographic slides, a set of notebooks and a box containing a collection of glass lantern slides. He had offered the collection to my friend, Richard Tyndall, who was intrigued enough to purchase it!

At this time, I knew very little about Barbara Parker, but I fell in love with the collection when Richard showed it to me one evening back in 2011. I wanted to know more, so I went home and did a little research and realised that much of the collection must have belonged to Max Mallowan, as well as Barbara.

The collection has stayed very much in my mind and I have been lucky to be able to use it for parts of my Heritage Studies degree at Bishop Grosseteste University in Lincoln. The glass lantern slides (although protected within their original wooden box) were a little worse for wear; I therefore did some work to discover the best ways of conserving the slides within the context of a private collection.

In order to apply best practice, I consulted the National Trust’s Manual of Housekeeping;  the second part of their conservation definition stated that conservation ‘is about revealing and sharing the significance of places [or artefacts] and ensuring that their special qualities are protected, enhanced, understood, and enjoyed by present and future generations’. Therefore, as part of my final dissertation, I decided to digitise parts of the collection with the aim of making the digitised images available to as many people as possible. Digitising the notebooks will also mean that further research can be carried out without the need to handle them; helping to ensure 'that their special qualities are protected' for future generations.