The Archives department would like to thank everyone who collected general election campaign literature for the Library earlier this year, to help them build their election ephemera collection. As well as appealing within LSE, the Archives department contacted over 4000 candidates directly, and had a great response. Over the last couple of months they have been busy sorting and listing all the materials received. Material is still arriving, although in very much smaller quantities now, and Archives are expecting to continue receiving material for some time to come (they still occasionally receive material from the 2005 election!), but so far:
-
579 constituencies are represented in the collection (just under 90% of all constituencies)
-
1619 candidates are represented in the collection (just under 40% of all candidates), including 304 Conservative, 298 Labour, 242 Lib Dem, 184 UKIP, 162 Green, as well as a range of smaller parties and independents, from across the whole of the political spectrum
LSE Library is not the only library that has been collecting campaign literature. Bristol University Library also collects on a UK-wide basis, while the National Libraries of Wales and Scotland maintain regional collections, therefore Archives have been passing on to them any duplicates received, and they have done the same for LSE, to ensure that each institution has the widest coverage possible.
Online campaigning has also been catered for: the UK Web Archive| includes official party websites, personal sites and blogs maintained by PPCs, and The Straight Choice, a site where members of the public could upload photographs of the election leaflets they received.
For more details on the collection, visit the online Archives Catalogue| and search for GE2010, or email them at document@lse.ac.uk|