Catalogue description National Fairground Archive

The National Fairground Archive collections are continuing to grow, primarily by donations from within the fairground community, and presently include 80,000 images in the photographic collection, in addition to audio and video material, journals and nearly 3,000 monographs. The collection also includes a collection of fairground ephemera (programmes, handbills, posters, charters and proclamations, plans and drawings).

University of Sheffield Library

Original material presented by Vanessa Toulmin, 1994; further donations received from multiple sources

• Showmen's Guild of Great Britain
• Fairground Association of Great Britain
• Toulmin, Doctor Vanessa, fl 1997
• Cultural events
• Travelling exhibitions

The photographic database is available on CD-ROM

The National Fairground Archive (NFA) was inaugurated at the University of Sheffield Library in 1994, with the support of the Showmen's Guild of Great Britain and the Fairground Association of Great Britain. It has grown out of research material collected by Vanessa Toulmin for her Doctor of Philosophy thesis "Fun without vulgarity: community, women and language in Showland Society" (1997), and forms a large collection of photographic, printed, manuscript and audiovisual material covering all aspects of the culture of travelling show people, their organisation as a community, their social history and everyday life; and the artefacts and machinery of fairgrounds. In addition the National Fairground Archive holds associated material in the field of popular performance culture, such as theatre, circus and early film.

The photographic images have formed the basis for a digitisation project, initially funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund for the initial 30,000 images, and subsequently, as the collection has grown, continued with funding by the Pilgrim Trust, which is producing an image-related descriptive database for the complete photographic collection.