Birmingham City Library Photographic Collection

[Peter Klein]

Hello.  Having the late lamented Pete James of the Birmingham City Library called to mind, can anyone tell me what the current status of the photographic collection there might now be?  Is there anybody there with a curatorial knowledge of the collection, or has the entire enterprise been mothballed?  I would be very grateful to know - I haven't yet forgiven Birmingham for demolishing the previous building.

[Peter Klein]

Many thanks indeed, Paul.  A fitting tribute - but let's now hope for greater resources to be made available.  Pete is a hard act to follow, and his accumulated knowledge will still be hugely missed. 

[Paul Hill]

[Peter Klein]

Many thanks, Paul.  It can't have been an easy decision to take to cut all that talent and knowledge in the Library, but it could take a very long time indeed to recover from it, and it will be very much more difficult to recoup.  We can only cling to the hope that some solution can be found, even if only a single archivist post could be created to deal with photographic enquiries.  

[Paul Hill]

There is now a Photography Wall in the Library of Birmingham that contains a section featuring a modest tribute to the pioneering work that Pete James accomplished at LoB. The above is a low res snap of the wall done as a favour to me by one of the staff who I worked with to get this section added. I will visit soon and get a close up of it. There is currently only one archivist responsible for several LoB collections. There have been no photographic archivists at LoB since the department was disbanded. So you could say, Peter that it is in moth balls. However, exhibits from the Photographic Collection that Pete was responsible for have appeared in at least two LoB exhibitions since his death five years ago.

[Paul Hill]

[Peter Klein]

Nicholas - so much money has been spent on that building, and now all those resources are just sitting there as if in a storage facility.  Once again it seems to come down to politics, where central government appears to be cutting funding to cities controlled by opposition politicians. Woops - perhaps I ought not to be raising such issues here!

[Peter Klein]

Hi Paula.  Yes, it has been such a waste.  I can't believe that Pete has been dead now for five years, and closure must have hit him very hard.  I know he had a liver condition, but he was only 60. Will be in touch shortly.

[Nicholas John Burnett]

A while back I asked to see Brian Coe's collection at Birmingham City Library.  I was told that it could not be consulted as it hadn't been catalogued.  Asking when cataloguing would be completed, the answer was that they had no staff who could catalogue it and so it was not going to be catalogued.  

[Paula Fleming]

Peter - I second your inquiry and thoughts.  Pete is sadly missed.  Hoping to hear positive news of the collections.

--Paula Fleming