A team of Trafford library volunteers responsible for unveiling scores of unknown facts for a book about the First World War have won a top award.
The Trafford Local Studies Library team won the Volunteer Team of the Year award at the Greater Manchester Archives and Local Studies Partnership (GMALSP) event in Manchester Central Library on Tuesday night.
The award was in recognition of their skills and dedication spent researching the First World War archives over the last five years, which contributed to the writing and publishing of the book The Bravest Little Street in England about Chapel Street in Altrincham.
They discovered facts and statistics never made available before - and without their assistance it would not have been possible to uncover all the stories of the men and families from Chapel Street. The impact the work had on the lives of surviving family members has been immense, including a lady aged 87 who discovered the military history of her father.
Cllr Jane Baugh, Trafford Council’s Executive Member for Culture and Leisure, said:
I am very proud of our volunteers who helped produce the book ‘The Bravest Little Street in Britain’. This was a very well deserved award. Our dedicated and committed volunteers have ensured that those 161 men from just 60 houses in Chapel St Altrincham who volunteered in the Great War will never be forgotten.”
The volunteers also run a successful weekly family history helpdesk in Local Studies to assist people tracing genealogy, sharing their skills and knowledge.
GMALSP is a formal collaboration between the ten local authority archive and local studies services in Greater Manchester. This partnership provides an over-arching strategy and development plan for the area, bringing benefits in terms of collective sustainability and enabling collaboration on service improvements. It has volunteers working in all 10 archive and local studies libraries and each year holds an awards evening to recognise the work done by those volunteers.
Posted on Thursday 6th June 2019