Since then, Caleb's role has expanded to include various other aspects of managing the archive, including responding to enquiries from OIs and researchers and managing the archive volunteers.

Thanks to a generous donation from the OI Club, Caleb has been able to develop the School's archives website to make the collections at Ipswich School more accessible. The archive has been collecting items since the 1970s, helped by dedicated volunteers.

Caleb commented; "There is a huge amount of material to make sense of and as is the case with many small (and sometimes even large) museums, the historic documentation of these objects was not quite as thorough as we need for the requirements of accessing the material, especially remotely."

"The job of museum documentation is to work out ‘what have we got?’ and ‘where is it?’ Once this has been established, it opens up many more productive uses for the collection."

"There is still a lot of work to do, but the archive is moving in a positive direction. It collects items that help to tell the story of Ipswich School and the people who have studied and worked here." Caleb added.

To give a taste of the artwork available to view online there are works by Charles and Henry Eddowes Keene, George Thomas Rope, George Ingelow, Edward Poynter, Edward Ardizzone, Cecil Lay, Martin Squirrell and Carl Giles.

Other items to view include a letter signed by Admiral Nelson, a piece of graffiti by the author H. Rider Haggard and some astonishingly early leaves of paper from, amongst other things, the first collected works of Geoffory Chaucer.

Development Director, Nikki Brown said; "We have a diverse selection of material and with the 50th Anniversary of girls joining the school coming up, we are particularly keen to develop our collection that represents women who have studied at the School since it became co-educational in 1974."

If you have any items that you think would be a good addition to the collection please get in touch by emailing archive@ipswich.school.

You can read the in-depth article regarding the Ipswich School Archive in the soon-to-be published 2022-23 OI Journal.

The Ipswich School archive can be visited at https://www.ipswichschoolmuseumandarchives.co.uk/ and for details of how to search the Ipswich School archive website please read on.

1. Select ‘Search All’ from the top menu.

2. Type in your search term and click the magnifying glass to bring up your results. A good tip is to try not to be too specific e.g. use a surname rather than full name. This is because ‘John Smith’ might appear as ‘J. Smith’ in records and these would not
show up in a search for ‘John Smith’. It’s better to keep things broad initially before experimenting with more detailed search terms.

3. Once you have a list of results from your search on screen, you can begin to review which are relevant. For example, after a search for ‘Smith’ you’re bound to find records that refer to lots of different people, however, a section of text including your search term will be visible for each record so you can see the context of the record and know whether it is referring to H.R. Smith or J. S. C. Smith. You’ll also be able to see a title for the piece of text the quote is from and the date of the publication it features in, which will help you discern whether the item is relevant.

4. Once you find an item you would like to see in more detail you can pick from two options by clicking on the icons at the right far side of the page . Clicking on the open book icon will take you to the entire document the quote is from e.g. an Ipswichian Magazine. Clicking on the unrolled parchment icon will take directly to the highlighted text within the document.

5. After clicking on one of these icons, you will be taken to an online PDF of the document you have selected, where you can use the arrows at the top of the page to cycle through the reference to your search term in the document (if there is more than one).