In the belief that archives are the bedrock of historical studies, HAT promotes, encourages, helps to finance and generally supports the preservation, conservation and organisation of materials of all kinds – documents, photographs, recordings, film and video and digital files.
HAT is committed to supporting the preservation and celebration of valuable local archives through our grants system, events and other related activities. In 2024 HAT undertook a survey of all community archives holdings that could be located in Hampshire. Those responding were invited to a webinar which outlined to key results of the survey and has much useful advice to those undertaking archival projects.
The survey highlighted the need to provide a single source of advice to groups to help them in the search for the best approach to their cataloguing, digitisation and access challenges. We hope that the following information will provide guidance. A further benefit of the survey was that it provided details of no less than 250 archive sources in Hampshire. To enable researchers to identify appropriate sources access details are provided in Discover local archives. We thank all those who contributed to the survey.
In addition to the three Regional archives offices Hampshire Record Office , Southampton Archives and Portsmouth History Centre, you can explore the over two hundred Hampshire based community archives listed on this site. If you can’t see a particular archive listed, please add it to the directory. We have also produced a number of tools to help you with curating your own archive, as as well as a number of case studies so you can see how others have approached it.
