About the Catalogue
The Special Collections Catalogue provides access to the records in the following collections.
North East England Mining Archive and Resource Centre (NEEMARC)
The collection contains records from The National Union of Mineworkers Durham Area (NUM), The North of England Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers (NEIMME) and the Durham branch of the National Association of Colliery Overmen, Deputies and Shotfirers (NACODS). In 2007 a Heritage Lottery Fund award of £270,000 was granted to set up an archive centre at the University of Sunderland's Murray Library.
The main aim of the project is to preserve and catalogue the primary archival material within the NEEMARC collections and to make the items accessible to a wide range of users. Within the collections are digitised Durham Miner’s Association Minute Books which can be accessed via the online catalogue.
The Kate Adie Collection
Kate Adie is a journalist who was born and raised in the City of Sunderland. Her most high-profile role was that of chief news correspondent for the BBC, during which time she became well-known for reporting from war zones around the world. During her time with the BBC, which lasted until 2003, Kate covered a raft of major world events and reported from a number of combat zones including the Gulf and Yugoslavia.
Kate became Chief News correspondent for the BBC in 1989. Kate holds honorary degrees from a number of Universities and is Honorary Professor of Journalism at the University of Sunderland. Her published works include Kindness of Strangers, Corsets to Camouflage, Into Danger, and Nobody's Child. She was awarded an OBE in 1993 and won the Richard Dimbleby Award from BAFTA in 1990.
Kate donated this collection to her home town university in 2005. It comprises a wide range of material relating to her work as a journalist and for the BBC, including reports, correspondence, memoranda, personal notebooks, tapes, videos and DVDs. At present over 900 video clips of Kate Adie’s broadcasts can be accessed via the catalogue.
The Lord Puttnam Collection.
Lord Puttnam began his career in advertising and then turned to film production in the late 1960’s and produced films such as the rock musicals That’ll Be The Day (1973) and Stardust (1974), Ken Russell’s Mahler (1974) and Lisztomania (1975), and Alan Parker’s Bugsy Malone (1976). In 1978 he also produced Alan Parker's Midnight Express.
In 1976, he set up his own production company, Enigma Productions, through which he produced a string of films, such as The Duellists (Ridley Scott’s feature film debut), Chariots of Fire (which won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1982), Local Hero, Memphis Belle, Meeting Venus and The Killing Fields and The Mission with Roland Joffe (which won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1986).
Lord Puttnam was chairman and CEO of Columbia Pictures from June 1986 until September 1987. Lord Puttnam retired from film production in 1998 to focus on his work in public policy as it relates to education, the environment and the creative and communications industries. Lord Puttnam was the first chancellor of the University of Sunderland from 1997 until July 2007.
Donated by Lord Puttnam in 2016, this unique archive comprises a range of material relating mainly to his work in the field of education. The material includes diaries, letters, speeches and articles written by Lord Puttnam from the 1980s to 2013.