Three months down, three months to go in my post as Archives Assistant and a request to share my experience of the Archives and reveal what I have been up to, getting to know the remarkable collection that I have been lucky enough to encounter up the stone spiral staircase above the North porch.

Archives are sometimes described as the memory of an institution. The Friends of Manchester Cathedral celebrated their 70th Anniversary last December and I was able to produce for them service booklets and other memorabilia to help them plan their commemoration. In particular I was asked for details about Canon Peter Green, a driving force in the early twentieth century history of the Cathedral. The Friends had held a memorial service for him in the 1950s and I hoped the service booklet would fill in some of his biographical details. This was not to be the case; the booklet explains that there was no need to write about him at length for ‘he lived on in the hearts of them all.' In itself this is a striking and beautiful tribute, but without permanent records, the collective memory of an institution cannot survive as people come and go.

The archives also provide evidence that the Cathedral is upholding its responsibilities to the varied communities that rely on it. I received two independent enquiries from members of the now disbanded Third Battalion Grenadier Guards about the location of a set of military colours in addition to their colours that are laid up by the North Porch. I could find evidence of the laying up ceremony in the presence of the then Princess Elizabeth in 1951, but nothing documented the arrival of a later set of colours. My enquirers did not share my faith in the Archives - but were prompted to renew their search in other directions and sure enough the colours were found at Regimental HQ.

Other enquiries come from academics from all over the world - I was unable to help an American professor writing a biography of Mark Gibbs, an international leader in the laity, with any additional biographical details of his Cathedral connection, apart from confirming that he preached at a United Nations Association service in 1963 and his life was commemorated at the Cathedral in 1986. Can anyone help? I was equally unsuccessful in locating an organist, Arthur Collingwood, at the Cathedral for Sir George Dyson's biographer. However, it was worth a quick look for him in the Chapter Minutes, when I came across the evidence of the state of choir-organists relations in 1899. The choirmaster writes: ‘I do not think they have the scantiest idea of the way in which these casual organists treat the choir. It is quite common to see three and four of these gentlemen at our rehearsals, laughing and sneering at members of the choir and otherwise behaving in a most undignified manner. Whatever my duties may or not be, it is no part of my duty to be subject to insults or to gratify idle curiosity.' Which raised a smile with the musicians in 2008.

It can go one of three ways ...

There is no doubt that enquirers have very high expectations - the ‘Who do you think you are?' effect - when the viewer of the hour-long TV programme cannot imagine the hours of research that go into producing a document for the celebrity. The secret is in sharing any disappointment, and understanding that even a snippet of information may mean an awful lot in the search for elusive records of a person or event. For example, how to break it to an overseas enquirer gently, that his cousin in London will not be able to photograph the Cathedral cemetery gravesite of his nineteenth century ancestor, unless Platform 4 of Victoria Station will satisfy his curiosity?

Of course, it sometimes happens that the Many researchers require simple transcriptions of entries in the Cathedral Registers of Christenings, Marriages and Burials. They are the longest complete series of parish registers in the country dating from 1573 and can be viewed on microfilm at Central Library. In the course of searching and locating entries, other records sometimes stand out. Regular users of the parish register records at Central Library were asked to look out for records relating to black people in the earliest registers. Ironically, these people often with slave origins receive a more complete entry in the registers than the usual single line entries. It's human nature, whoever completes the register notes the unusual more fully than the routine, and we are told much more of a story. Retrieving the volume for 1832 to look for a burial record might make you wonder why it is twice the size of the one for 1831 - and you realise that in itself it tells the story of the cholera pandemic that struck Manchester that summer. These two registers that communicate evidence of people and events across centuries are on display in the Cathedral Visitor Centre until the end of February.

An email arrived that told the fascinating tale of four very unusual communion beakers. They were made in the early seventeenth century for a Scottish kirk at Camp Veere in the Netherlands. The wool trading post was forced to close during Napoleon's blockades and the kirk disbanded. The communion beakers next appear in a jewellers in the Strand in the 1870s and were bought by Lord Egerton who gave them to Manchester Cathedral. At this point I was becoming slightly alarmed at what might be required of the Archives - did Scotland want them back? It was in fact a much simpler request for images, the full story has been investigated by a local journalist and with the Lord Egerton and Tatton connection ‘Cheshire Life' will publish an article about them later this year.

Enquiries and exhibitions are the public face of the Archives, work goes on behind the scenes in day-to-day administration, receiving deposits, cataloguing and monitoring storage conditions. The most compelling reason for this effort, in the face of all of the other very pressing demands on a Cathedral's time and resources? It is a service that embodies the care Manchester Cathedral shows for people passing through today since it shows clear commitment to the memory and records of the people who passed this way before.