Friday 9 December 2011

First Post! An introduction to me and my job...

I was appointed Graduate Trainee Archives Assistant at University College Falmouth in October this year and am now at the end of my fourth week here. I work under Sarah Jane, Archivist and Special Collections Officer. We both decided it might be useful for me to start a blog, which will be accessible from the archives web page, to give people an insight into what we do. One of our biggest issues is that of visibility - not enough people know we're here! And I am hoping this blog might be one way at least to get more people through the door.

I will be at UCF until August 2012, and from there I hope to go on to do an MA in Archives and Records Management. This is the first time a graduate trainee has been appointed in the archives, and the aim of the role is both to assist Sarah, and to give valuable experience to someone who, like me, wants to begin a career in archive work. So being the first trainee, a lot of my time here will involve figuring out how the role will fit in with Sarah's, for example establishing who does certain duties, and implementing processes for future trainees to follow. Throughout the year, I will be putting together a handbook so that the next trainees will be able to see how I have done things and hopfully pick up where I left off.

To give some background on myself, I came into archives intially through my interest in history. I have always loved history and studied ancient history at university. I thought archives would be a great way to use this interest practically, and I was lucky enough to know the archivist at one of the London Livery Comapnies, The Drapers', and I was given a three-month work placement there. This was a fantastic place to work! The Company dates back to the 15th century, so not surprisingly there are some fascinating records there, which all relate to the organisation. By far my favourite were the title deeds for their current location in Throgmorton Street, signed by Henry VIII. The house and land was intended for Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex and Chief Minister to Henry, although he was never able to live in it. He was executed in 1540, and the lands were forfeited to the King, who sold it to the Company. There are also very early records of feasts, giving exact detail of what was eaten and how much each item cost. There are even records of the clothes the members of the guild wore. Its an amazing resource for social historians, and especially for family historians.

I also volunteered once a week at the Natural History Museum archives. This gave me a very different experience, and taught me that there is a lot more to archive work than historical research. My work here largely involved cataloguing and re-cataloguing, as well as carrying out basic preservation, such as the packaging of art works. Again, this was a great place to work. Working on cataloguing projects, I gained a thorough knowledge of archival description, and how to use CALM to enter records. It was a vast contrast to the historical business archive at The Drapers', since it largely consisted of the personal papers of previous Keepers for the different departments of the Museum, or scientific papers and artworks. These usually contained very long scientific words that required a lot of 'Googling' to work out which section they should be put under!

Finally I did a two week placement at the Parliamentary Archives. There they had an enormous archive! With some records obviously dating back centuries. It was interesting here to see how a much larger organisation worked, and I found that in such organisations, jobs had to be divided into different teams. For example, one team worked solely on enquiries, while another focused on outreach, etc. They also had their own conservation team on site.

What's great, and so different about working in a Higher Education archive, is the range of collections. All my previous experience was of archives relating to their specific organisation, whereas here at UCF we have collections ranging from theatre groups, to the Institute of Cornish Studies, to the Cambourne School of Mines. The types of enquiries we get, therefore, can vary hugely. So we might get a family history enquiry that would involve looking at the School of Mines records, or we might get a UCF student looking at the scripts or photos from one of the theatre company archives. What I have also learnt from my experiences, is that i find it much more fulfilling working in a smaller archive service. In a smaller service, you aren't pigeon-holed into certain tasks, you get to experience the whole range of duties of an archivist. I feel very fortunate that I have been given the chance to work in this particular archive service, with such fascinating collections, and i really think it will give me the best possible experience before starting my MA.