WATCH: Perfect gift for 90-year-old former Express & Star librarian would be a digital archive
A former Express & Star librarian who was responsible for cataloguing thousands of historic photographs celebrated her 90th birthday recently.
And she believes there would be no better present than to see our photo archive bid be successful, so generations to come can learn about the city and enjoy the nostalgia of looking back on iconic moments in time.
Hazel Jones, who stays in Penn, worked at the newspaper's HQ in Queen Street, Wolverhampton for seven years from when she finished school in 1942.
Her duties included storing and maintaining an archive of photographs that today encompasses one million images dating back more than a century.
Now, she is backing our bid to digitise the collection, preserving them for generations to come.
The plan, which has been set up with the university of Wolverhampton and the city archives service, has been awarded development funding of £59,800 from the Heritage Lottery Fund.
The funding is used in order to develop plans to seek a full grant for the project.
She told the Express & Star of her hopes for the bid, and how she realised: "I think it is a really important project. I'd like to see it happen. "It's a historical collection which has been gathered for such a long time. Hopefully the bid is successful and people can enjoy the images for years to come.
The collection has an estimated one million prints stored, covering events and people featured in the pages of the newspaper during the 20th Century. They document around100 years of Wolverhampton life and the history the city and the people collectively share.
"I met lots of people doing that job, all sorts of people throughout the building, right from the owners down.
"I was very much a junior member of staff.
"In the early days, a lot of the photographs weren't dated or captioned. It was only as I carried on with the job over the years that I realised how important these photographs could be for people to look back on."
After the Express & Star, Hazel moved down to London to work for Mirror Group newspapers, before returning north to Wolverhampton after retiring.
Both jobs were a dream for Hazel, who has a keen interest in photography herself. Though due to her service in Wolverhampton being during the war, she can't recall an pictures which were particularly iconic.
She said: "I can't think of any. It was during the war so the photographs were a bit limited.
"I did a bit of photography myself as an amateur, and then quarter professionally when I was living in London. I used to take photographs at equestrian events.
"I've been interested in photography for as long as I can remember."
To mark her birthday, she did a video interview on her time at Express & Star with local historian Ann Eales in association with the University of Wolverhampton, and celebrated by having tea with friends. To view the videos, visit our website at www.expressandstar.co.uk
Express and Star readers were invited to part in a survey in July last year to find out what photos they would like to see digitised. The categories ranged from local personalities, sport, war, buildings and landmarks or crime and punishment.
Once online, it is hoped that the pictures, will form part of local history lessons in schools and colleges around the region. At the time of the survey, community project consultants Tricolor described the Express & Star collection as 'a 100 year time capsule for the region'.
Speaking at the time, Express & Star editor Keith Harrison said: "Photographers from the Express & Star have been on hand to photograph events and communities across the Black Country for more than a century.
"This collection documents the people who make this region so great and the history they share.
"These pictures tell hundreds of thousands of stories."
