Save our written heritage: Making UK writers archives available to future generations

The Right Honourable Lord Chris Smith of Finsbury and Poet Laureate Andrew Motion are addressing an international conference at the British Library, Manuscripts Matter on 19-20 October 2006 to discuss the importance of UK institutions acquiring the archives of living writers.

Increasingly, manuscripts of modern and contemporary UK authors are being sold abroad, despite the best endeavours of UK public institutions and funding bodies. Public institutions find themselves unable to compete with organisations abroad, primarily in the United States , in terms of readily available and accessible funds. The Working Group on UK Literary Heritage, chaired by Lord Smith, aims to ensure that authors know that UK funds may be made available if enough time is given and that they should approach UK libraries and archives to discuss the sale of their works.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 20th, 2006 and is filed under Archives and Special Collections. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.