Collection Pop-Up: the Bright Family Papers

Join us at this week's Collection Pop-Up for a discussion of one of the University of Melbourne's oldest archive collections.

The Bright Family papers are a rare record of a family business over four hundred years (1511-1974). The collection provides tangible evidence of the relationship between people, commerce and the unfolding of history. Papers follow the Bright and Meyer families, originally from Bristol, through their involvement in the sugar trade between Britain and the Caribbean, offering insight into the disturbing history of slavery in the region and the dark side of colonial expansion. It is also an unexpectedly rich personal archive with letters documenting the perspectives and lives of their writers across the generations.

Hear from Archives Collection Management Officer Clare McLellan regarding the challenges of caring for a fragile collection assembled over several centuries, which survived inheritance disputes, fire, flood, and multiple ocean crossings before arriving at the archives, and examine the relationship between physical and digital preservation of original material in an increasingly online world.