| Description | Contains collections of principally donated material relating to YHA members, hostelling activities, and the work of YHA officers, wardens, and staff, including voluntary staff.
The material in this series provides a personal insight into the world of hostelling and the work of the YHA, and their impact on the daily lives of individuals. This includes personal reflections and diaries, memoirs and histories, photographs and drawings, correspondence and news cuttings, and ephemera such as badges and patches, merchandise, and membership cards, many of which include hostel stamps showing journeys made by hostellers.
The hostelling logs, scrapbooks, diairies, and photograph albums which can be found in YHA/MO/ME/2-4, YHA/MO/OW/2, and YHA/MO/OW/4, are a particularly rich source of information about early hosteling trip, hostelling routes and holiday tours, oversees hostelling, wardens journeys, and school hostelling trips.
YHA/MO/OW also includes some files and papers relating to the work of YHA officers and wardens in an official capacity, including some regional secretaries' books and records in YHA/MO/OW/2/12, artwork drawn for YHA publicity material in YHA/MO/OW/2/20, and papers relating to the work of local groups in YHA/MO/OW/2/6.
YHA/MO/OW/6 includes a selection of news cuttings and obituaries relating to prominent members of staff which provide some information about their employment, while YHA/MO/OW/2 includes series of records relating to early figures in the youth hostel movement and in the YHA, including Richard Schirrmann, YHA/MO/OW/2/3, Tom and Ena Fairclough, YHA/MO/OW/2/4, and Len Clark, YHA/MO/OW/2/7.
This series also includes some papers relating to the international hostelling movement, and in particular to the establishment and re-establishment of youth hostel organisations in Europe after the Second World War, which can be found in YHA/MO/OW/2/23. |