Hello everyone! We hope this finds you all well. Please feel free to read this as a pdf document.

Dear Friends,

Welcome to the last newsletter of the year.

Apologies for the lack of new scans in 2025, but we have been kept very busy with the reorganisation of our collections.

Back in January we had catalogued (almost!) all of our backlog, but materials needed merging, sorting and destapling (we only have done so by default in last few years). Most importantly we needed to update our database to know in which box a specific item is kept. Back in the early days it was easy enough to find a specific pamphlet in the half a dozen ‘C’ boxes, but thanks to so many generous donations we now have 47 boxes ‘C’, so a new system was needed.

A small part of the main collection – sooo satisfying to see them like this!

We worked hard and managed to finish this mammoth task just before the holidays.

The central planning committee was pleased.

Over the course of 11ish months we verified and updated 20,524 records (keep in mind one record can be a single issue of a newsletter or a chunky bundle of leaflets).

They are now enclosed in 443 archive grade storage boxes, which now also sport much prettier labels, featuring Craig Humpston’s ace Sparrow artwork.

Jar of Evil 2025 – 476 grams of wickedness…

We removed thousands of corrosive staples and other nasties (one donut or equivalent bribe to any valiant researcher who spots one we overlooked).

The materials feature 32 languages and were produced in 63 countries.

There are 2,071 local items (and many more localish ones if we look beyond the city limits).

So, now that we are reorganised, what would happen if, for example, you looked up the item catalogued as 20524, our currently highest catalogue number? You would find the record for volume 3, number 4 of The Mobilizer:

You would be able to see from the information in green that we could now find it quickly amongst the 20 ‘M’ boxes in Box M08, stored at the Sparrows’ Nest itself. As you are planning your visit, please note that items marked other than ‘SN’ (e.g. ‘OSJ’) are stored off-site and need to be requested in advance.

As always feel free to browse our catalogue and access the 8,448 digitised items – without paywall or need to register.

Going forth we will once more be focussing on digitisation (please suggest any favourites you might have), though we will likely also be looking at moving more digitised materials onto the Internet Archive which allows for more convenient full text searches etc.

We are hoping to be at more bookfairs and suchlike in 2026, finding new homes for some of our ‘overspill’ and meet more of you in person.

Dec 25 Document of the Month

What better way to move into 2026 than by thinking about one of our next projects? Item number 19215 is a collection of historical campaigning posters. Poignantly, they come from the collection of our departed friend Chris Richardson and his partner Richard McCance, two of our most treasured mentors, with Richie providing on-going support for activism in the city. You can click on the record to see all the posters as we have scanned them in.

Improving storage, catalogue records and digitising more of our posters will be on the horizon for the new year. This will pose all sorts of fun conservation issues and historical puzzles, and we anticipate asking for your help in identifying some of what we have been gifted over the years.

Watch this space...

Money, money, money!

We will lose our very cheap off-site storage in a couple of months and need to move lots of boxes to a commercial unit. So once again we need to raise money, for the rent and for shelves of the sort of quality you can see in the photograph above. If you like what we do and can support us financially, every little helps (ideally as a standing monthly order).

Thank you once again for your support!

Bank name: Unity Trust Bank
Recipient: The Sparrows Nest Library and Archive
Sort code: 60-83-01
Account: 20379287

Thank you!

Thank you for all your help and support this year, as always it is an honour and a pleasure to do what we do, and we could not do it without all of you.

We hope you all have a good start to 2026.