Join in with SPA
Would you like to contribute to the Scottish Political Archive? Read below for ways you can add to our collections and help us to make our archive material accessible to the public.
Contemporary Collecting – Election ephemera
SPA has been collecting election ephemera since 2011. We use it to evidence political messaging across a wide geographic spread – does this political party highlight the same issues in Inverness as in Melrose?
It’s a vibrant and well used part of our collection and we need you in order to help it grow! Particularly to help us collect material from right across Scotland.
What should I be collecting?
‘Ephemera’ is generally considered to be material that could easily end up in the bin because it’s use is so ‘ephemeral’ or short term. Around election time, leaflets, pamphlets and party promotional material will be posted through your letterboxes. We just ask that you save what you receive instead of eventually binning it.
What should I do with the material once I’ve collected it?
Please post your ephemera to us here at the Scottish Political Archive. Our address is:
Scottish Political Archive
Pathfoot Building
University of Stirling
Stirling, FK9 4LA
You can see examples of some of this collecting on our Flickr page. For example:
Volunteering with SPA
If you’re interested in working with our collections more closely and helping us to make them more accessible to the public then you might be interested in working with SPA. You can look at specific projects here or email scottishpoliticalarchive@stir.ac.uk to find out more.
Donating to SPA
The Scottish Political Archive is happy to accept offers of material, whether it is a smaller accession to a wider collecting strand (for example, if you have election ephemera you would like to donate to our contemporary collecting) or a whole archive collection. There are a few things we need to take into consideration before we accept material into the archive and, unfortunately we cannot guarantee that we will take in all material offered to us. Wherever possible, if we cannot accept your donation, we will suggest an alternative place of deposit that would be appropriate for the material you have.
What material does SPA collect?
The Scottish Political Archive collects around the following topics:
- The referendum of 1979
- The referendum of 1997
- The re-establishing of a Scottish Parliament
- Scottish independence, the Independence Referendum of 2014 and future plans for independence
- Scottish party politics
SPA will consider accepting the papers of individuals, organisations and campaign groups where there is significant contribution to Scottish politics.
Things to note
SPA, like all other archives, has a collecting policy which guides the Archivist and Advisory Board when making decisions around accepting collections. The kinds of things we take into consideration are:
- The topics and themes represented in the archive (see above for the kinds of topics we collect around).
- How unique the material is – if there are other archive collections which significantly reproduce the material, we may decline.
- Is there a more appropriate place of deposit? – Particularly when it comes to the papers of people or organisations, there may well already be a partial archive collection relating to that figure or group elsewhere. In this case, we would advise keeping all material together, rather than splitting up the archive.
- The condition of the material – is it in a useable condition? If not, how possible is it for us to make it so?
- The format of the material – can we adequately preserve the collection?
We are always happy to talk to you about possible donations. Email scottishpoliticalarchive@stir.ac.uk with any questions you may have.
