Documents by the tonne Jonathan David describes the recent formation and activities of the CIRCA Society documenting historic building product literature. If you want to know what a Georgian sash pulley looks like, you can ask the Brooking Collection. But if a specification for a London Brick hollow clay block is needed, perhaps because some need replacement, there has been no easy source of information. Once construction projects are complete, much of the design information is disposed of unless it is needed for day-to-day running of the building. Similarly, where can a professional turn if he/she needs to know precisely what a 1950s code of practice said? How can one find out what claims a manufacturer was making for a particular product on a particular date - often important in disputes? It was the realisation that there is this big gap in our information sources which led to the formation of the CIRCASociety. Several separate events influenced its formation. These included a pa per by David Yeomans of Manchester University published in the Journal of Documentation, realisation that the British Standards Institution does not have a complete set of past standards, and a wish by the Science Museum to find a long-term strategy for its large collection of industrial and construction documentation. The CIRCA Society was therefore set up in the summer of 1996 to aid the conservation of construction industry documents including standards, guidance documents from official and commercial sources, trade literature, contract documents etc. It was assumed that it would take a long time to get things off the ground, find sources of funding, gain a membership of people interested in construction industry documents and begin to amass a collection. However, things moved much faster than expected. Within clays of the inaugural meeting a call was received from Tarmac subsidiary TBV. That company had been involved in an asset swop with Wimpey whereby Wimpey took both companies' house building businesses and Tarmac took the rest. As a result there was a great Context 54June1997 deal of rationalisation and much of Wimpey's library was surplus to requirements. The fledgling CIRCASociety quickly arranged to collect the material, along with surplus material from Tarmac subsidiary TBV, and found premises in Bristol to store it. The TBV material was very important, since much of it originated in the former PSA library, while the Wimpey material contained a standards collection and much information on the company's worldwide activities. Wimpey also generously provided a good deal of shelving and other useful furniture. It quickly became evident that this was only the tip of a very large iceberg. Allover the industry organisations were downsizing, merging and clisappearing, usually with the loss of their libraries. As a result, ever since that first weekend spent collecting material from Hammersmith and Croydon, members of the Society have regularly moved documents from premises in the home counties to the store in Bristol. The largest single move was some 16 tonnes of documents from the reserve DoE library, items remaining after the material had been offered to other public sector libraries. Material has come from companies, professional practices, former public sector organisations and individuals. The result is that the CIRCASociety now has tens of thousands of documents, which are gradually being sorted and indexed. It is not yet known how much duplication exists, but it is not thought to be a great deal, other than of some of the better known books and journals. As soon as the material can be put in some kind of order it will be possible to offer a service to professionals and the public. Already some enquiries have been handled successfully: one enquirer needed to know the wording in a code of practice on acoustics dating from the 1960s; a researcher contacted the Society for information about Wimpey's activities in the Middle East; a third enquirer wanted to know about suppliers of a type of ground coloured glass used in the 1950s to produce murals. However, although help will be given where possible, the Society is not yet able to offer a full service. So far much of the work has been done by fewer than a dozen people, including the five who originally formed the Society. As soon as the pace of acquisitions slows clown, a priority is to increase the membership both to allow more work to be clone and to provide a sound financial basis for the Society. Fortunately, thanks to the great generosity of Patrick Barbour, founder of the Barbour Index, the Society has sufficient funds to pay its basic running costs for three years or more. And more than one company has provided assistance in kind: Calorex provided some refurbished dehumidifiers at a nominal price, and Ryclers, the hire company, has been most helpful in providing vehicles at attractive rates. But every expedition to collect documents and transfer them to Bristol costs over £100, and rent, rates and insurance premiums have to be paid. And the sheer amount of sorting and cataloguing work will require more than just volunteer labour if it is to be completed in a reasonable time. So while offering Conservation Officers what help we can give with historic construction industry information, we would also like your help in two ways. First, if you know of material which is being disposed of, please t1y to ensure that it is offered to the CIRCASociety. Secondly, join the Society (annual subscription £20 for individuals, £200 for corporate members) and help us both financially and with volunteer effort. The latter may take the form of help with weekend document moves - a guaranteed way of keeping fit and losing weight, help with sorting and cataloguing, or recruiting members in various ways. In addition to providing the archive, the Society in the long run would like to make use of the information to produce documents to help those responsible for maintaining, repairing 21
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