'Finding Barrington Part 1: Who is Barrington Young?': Reading Race, Collecting Cultures - The Roving Reader Files: 'Finding Barrington'

The Ahmed Iqbal Ullah Race Relations Resource Centre is an open access University of Manchester facility. The blog 'Reading Race, Collecting Cultures' (www.aiucentre.wordpress.com) features on its website (www.racearchive.manchester.ac.uk). The Roving Reader Files category of blog posts is produced by Alison Newby (under the pseudonym The Roving Reader) in collaboration with Hannah Niblett (Collections Access Officer). The former provides the text and the latter provides the images. The Roving Reader Files are designed as public engagement materials. The intention is to introduce research skills and terminology to the general user/reader in an entertaining yet informative manner by revealing hidden stories, making unusual connections and sharing insights into using the Centre's collection for research. The three-part "Finding Barrington" series introduces the significance of unpublished oral history projects as resources preserving the experiences of 'ordinary people'. Using the starting point of a book inscribed as a donation from 'Barrington Young', readers are taken on an investigative journey through key oral history collections held by the Centre to find out who Barrington Young is, as well as the context of his eventful life. The collections that are introduced record the experiences of Manchester's varied communities over the decades from the 1950s to the 2000s, being (a) the Roots Family History Project; (b) Mapping Our Lives: The Windrush Project; (c) the Community History Project: Exploring Our Roots.