Sunday 2 September 2012

Goodbye to the Archives and Special Collections Service, Tremough

After a fantastic nine months, my traineeship has far too quickly come to an end. It's been the best possible experience I could have hoped for, for which I must give all my thanks to my manager, Sarah.  The last year has furnished me with experience of most aspects of the archive profession and has allowed me to go on some great trips visits and training opportunities. I couldn't mention these without mentioning the Erasmus placement I undertook in July to a university archive service in Berlin. Not only did I get to visit a city that I've always wanted to go to, but I also gained experience of an archive in another European country, which is probably quite unusual for someone in my situation.

A highlight of the year has been working on the Tom Cross Archive catalogue. Tom Cross was a painter and Principal at the Falmouth School of Art (predecessor of University College Falmouth) in the 1970s and 1980s. The collection includes some beautiful sketchbooks, copious amounts of research on artists and art history, and fascinating material relating to his published work. I felt I'd really got to know him through the Archive, and certainly learnt a thing or two about art! I was completely overwhelmed when I was presented with one of his paintings as a leaving gift, kindly donated by his wife who I came to know quite well through my work.

A real achievement has been the initiation of a Social Media policy for the Service. This was something I'd been keen on from the start, and the first step was setting up this blog. The major breakthrough was our Twitter Project, which launched in June. We've been watching our followers steadily increase ever since. There is no doubt that there is a lot of work involved in keeping up a successful Twitter profile, but it's been a great way of promoting our collections and networking with other archives and archivists. I will certainly be keeping an eye out on future #CornishWordoftheDay tweets; these have been my favourite to write, with words like 'silly-wig' and 'popey duck'! (Follow @FXArchives to find out what these mean!)

Despite the perfect Cornish summer I was looking forward to never quite appearing, I've really enjoyed living here. Making the move from south-east London was a bit of a culture shock, but actually a very pleasant one. On the rare sunny days, it certainly all felt worth it when I could spend my lunch break wandering around the beautiful grounds at Tremough. I've also met some fantastic people here, and would like to thank the whole of the Library and Information Services team for making me feel so welcome.

I'm very sad that this experience has come to an end, but can't wait to begin my studies at UCL in a month's time and begin the next stage of my career. I would like to say a final thank you to the Archives team, especially to Sarah, and I wish the next Intern the best of luck.

Tuesday 21 August 2012

New Professionals Summer Seminar

Last Friday I travelled up to Manchester to attend the Archives and Records Association's second Summer Seminar for New Professionals. It was set to be a great day of networking and interesting talks, all set in the very impressive John Rylands University Library.

The first talk was by Fran Baker, who works in the Special Collections in the Library and has been working on a project to preserve the digital correspondence of Carcanet Press. I was really intrigued about how such a seemingly large and complex task could be undertaken, but hearing about all the various stages in the process made it seem a lot more manageable than I had thought, from initial surveys to transfer, accessioning, and documentation, to eventually making the archive available online.

I was really interested to hear from various recruiters there tips on applying to project-based roles, since a lot of jobs aimed at newly qualified professionals at the moment are project based. It was reassuring to hear the advantages to this kind of work, for instance that you can get a wider breadth of experience, you get a new perspective on the profession on each project, and you can be more selective in your approach and choose a role that matches your skills.

The day ended with a discussion on the future of the Archive Sector. As predicted there was much debate on Archivists increasingly needing IT skills and the willingness to accept advances in the digital aspect of the profession. another interesting point was that Archivists increasingly need to have the ability to network with people outside of the profession, i.e. people who work in other areas of your institution. This is particularly important at the moment were the need for advicacy is so strong. It was generally thought that pre-course level would be a good time to get this experience.

The seminar was a really great place to meet people in a similar situation to me and also to hear the experiences of those who have qualified and gone on to find work. It is certainly reassuring to know that there is a support network in place for those entering the profession. I will definitely be getting involved in future New Professional events and would urge anyone who's a trainee, student or recently qualified to do the same!

The section for New Professionals can be found on the ARA website here.

Monday 20 August 2012

Time flies!

Not sure how this has happened but I only have two weeks left of my Traineeship! The last few weeks have flown by and I can't quite believe I'll be starting the Archives and Records course in a month's time. I've still got lots of odds and ends to finish off, like the finishing touches to the Tom Cross Archive catalogue and the Intern Handbook I've been putting together. I'll be working hard over the next two weeks but I'm feeling confident I can get it done. I'm going to be very sad to say good bye!

Tuesday 31 July 2012

Berlin: Day 5

As expected, the last day of my placement at the University of the Arts Berlin Archive came around far too quickly. In the morning I was given a tour of the other University buildings to gain more of a sense of the history of the Schools. They are located about a ten-minute walk away from the building I'd been working in where the Archives are held. There is a complex of three buildings: the original schools of Fine Art and Music built in 1902, and the modern Concert Hall. The original concert hall was built as part of this complex in 1902 but was destroyed during the Second World War. Both buildings are still used for their original functions - for the teaching of music and the fine arts. Walking around the Arts building was particularly interesting. Dotted around the building were examples of different styles of architecture for the pupils to study - medieval, baroque, classical etc. This pair of neo-classical pillars appeared at the top of a staircase:

Example of neo-classical architecture at the Fine Arts building
© Mary Allen
The style of the two existing original buildings from 1902 is Baroque, but I found this medieval-looking doorway at one the back entances of the Fine Arts building:

Another example of architecture at the Fine Arts building
© Mary Allen
It was an interesting day to visit the Fine Arts building as the whole University had just been opened up for the 'Rundgang' - end of year exhibitions and shows. The previous night the building had played host to a huge party for students and members of the public for the opening night. The morning we looked round the evidence of the night's events hadn't quite been cleared away and there was a certain amount of hopping over beer cans to be done!

Back at the Archives Dr Schenk showed me some early examples of student artwork. One was a project by students in 1898 to re-design the room that belonged to Martin Luther in the Luther family home in Wittenburg. This sketch shows how the room looked at the time:

Sketch of Martin Luther's room, Wittenburg, 1898
© Mary Allen
The next piece shows the design they came up with:

Design for the room of Martin Luther, Wittenburg
© Mary Allen
I decided to look up the Luther House to find out some more information. I came across this site which shows how the room looks today and was rather excited to see that it looks pretty much identical to this painting! So it must have been used for the reconstruction of the room.

I loved this etching from the 1920s, which is best viewd close-up to see the detail which is incredible considering it is a relatively small image, about as wide as an A4 sheet of paper:

Student work from the School of Fine Art, 1920s
 © Mary Allen

Detail from the image above
© Mary Allen
 This is a carictature by German artist George Grosz while he was at the School:

Caricature by George Grosz, c.1910s
© Mary Allen

Grosz became famous for his savage caricatural paintings of Berlin life in the 1920s and was a prominent member of the Berlin Dada and New Objectivity group before he emigrated to the United States in 1933. After his emigration, Grosz rejected his earlier work and caricature in general.

I was also shown this very important and incredibly poignant file which lists all students of Jewish descent at the Art School between 1933 and 1937. As soon as the Nazi Party came to power in 1933 they began to focus on limiting the participation of Jews in public life. One of the first laws passed, in April 1933, was to restrict the number of Jewish students at schools and universities.


File listing puils of Jewish descent at the College of Fine Arts
© Mary Allen
This page from the file shows how a family tree was drawn out for each student. Jewish parents or grandparents were coloured in red. If it was found that the student was Jewinsh, they would also be coloured in red. It seems from this page that those with one Jewish grandparent were not considered Jewish, and those with two Jewish grandparents were generally considered not Jewish although there is one exception here.


Jewish students at the College of Fine Arts
© Mary Allen

The last student on the page is Charlotte Salomon, a student of painting at the College of Art. Despite German universities restricting their 'Jewish quota' to 1.5 per cent of the student body, Salomon was able to get a place at the College in 1936 and continued to study there until the summer of 1938 when she was forced to leave. After this, she lived in the South of France as a refugee until 1943 where she painted a series of 769 autobiographical paintings entitled Life? or Theatre?. In 1943 she gave the work to a trusted friend asking him to keep it safe. That same year was transported to Auschwitz.

Charlotte Salomon, Jewish student at the College of Fine Arts
© Mary Allen
There have been many exhibitions of Salomon's work since the 1960s, including an exhibit at the Royal Academy, and plays and films written about her life.

Germany has a fascinating history and it was interesting to see how it has shaped the country's archives, particularly in the modern era with one extreme dictatorship being replaced by another as seen through documents like this and the archive of the Foundation for the Reappraisal of the SED Dictatorship.

By the end of my placement I felt I had learnt a lot about the Archive at the University and German archives in general. A lot of their theory and practice is very similar to ours but it was interesting to learn of some differences, like their Archive Law and the way of referencing their collections. I think having knowledge of these will be really useful while I'm doing my MA. I would totally recommend a placement abroad to broaden your knowledge of archival theories and practices if you ever get the chance. I would also really recommend a visit to Berlin: it's a fantastic city and I can't wait to go back one day!

Wednesday 25 July 2012

Berlin: Day 4

For my fourth day at the University of the Arts Berlin, Dr Schenk had a rranged for me to visit the Archive at The Federal Foundation for the Reappraisal of the SED Dictatorship.

The Federal Foundation for the Reappraisal of the SED Dictatorship, Berlin
© Mary Allen
The SED (the Socialist Unity Party of Germany) governed the German Democratic Republic (GDR) from 1946 to 1989. The Foundation, established by the German Parliament in 1989, deals with the repercussions of the SED's politics on Germany as a whole since reunification in 1990. They support research into the Soviet zone of occupation in East Germany, the GDR, and East Central Europe and aim to raise public awareness of such dictatorship. The Foundation promotes the special recognition the peaceful revolutions of 1989 deserve in the efforts to overcome Germany and Europe's postwar divisions. Key elements of the Foundation's work are encouragement and support.

The Archive of the Foundation was established in 2000 and documents the oposition and resistance and the political persecution and opression  in the GDR. Among the collections is the Archive of Supressed Literature of the GDR. The literature of the GDR is far more diverse than one might think from the published material, which was highly censored and subject to political restrictions. The purpose of the Archive is to give a more informed view of the literary culture of the GDR and poses as a counter to the official literature of East Germany. A particularly moving peice I saw in this collectin was the notebook of a political prisoner, Edeltraud Eckert. Eckert was imprisoned in 1950 aged just 20 and sentenced to 25 years of forced labour after she became involved in an anti-Communist group. She was allowed this notebook and used it to write poems. Sadly, she suffered a serious accident while she was working as a mechanic in 1955 and died just three months later at the age of 25. A book of Eckert's poems and letters, A Year Without Spring, has been published by the Archive using this material and is part of the Silent Library series in which 20 books are to be published.


Anti-Communist magazine Die Tarantel from the 1950s
© Mary Allen
Another large collection is the archive of artist Roger Loewig. He was arrested in 1963 by the Stasi after putting on a private exhibition of his work which, from the regime's point of view, was of the wrong subject matter, being critical of the state of affairs in the GDR, and was charged with anti-state activity. He was held for a year without trial before West Germany paid for his release and was then sentenced to two years probabtion for agitation and propaganda endangering the state. All his paintings, essays and poems were confiscated. Eventually he resettled in West Germany in the 1970s and continued to paint and held exhibitions almost every year until the reunification. He was the first German artist to be exhibited at the National Museum at Auschwitz. Many of his paintings line the walls of the Foundation, while many more are kept in the archive store.

The Archive contains an Amnesty International Archive which includes letters from anti-Communist individuals and parties, the bulk of which come from North America and Western Europe, dating between 1975 and 1985. These letters were sent to the Minister of the Interior of the GDR, the State Council, the directors of prisons, and many political prisoners. Amnesty International frequently accused the GDR authorities of violating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and campaigned for the release of political prisoners.


Amnesty Internation Archive at The Federal Foundation for the Reappraisal of the SED Dictatorship Archive
© Mary Allen
 On a more light-hearted note, an item I particularly enjoyed in the Archive was this poster, which was part of a campaign to save the East German Traffic-light Men:

'Save the Traffic-light Men' poster
© Mary Allen
Prior to the reunification of Germany in 1990, the two German states had different forms of Ampelmännchen (traffic-light men) - those in West Germany being rather similar to ours in Britain, and those in the East in the form of a man in a hat. The Ampelmännchen became popular in East Germany when they were introduced in the 1970s and are one of the very few features of communist East Germany to have survived with their popularity unscathed. After the reunification there were attempts to standardise all traffic signs to the West German forms, leading to calls to save the East German Ampelmännchen. The protests were successful and they were returned to pedestrian crossings, including those in the western districts of Berlin.

The Ampelmännchen became a mascot of the East German nostalgia movement, Ostalgie, which became popular about a decade ago. The movement was not without its controversies and there were some pro-GDR artefacts, like T shirts, in the Archive. I asked the Archivist if these were serious or supposed to be taken as a joke, to which he replied that they were "a very bad joke". It does seem inappropriate to be sentimental about life in a regime were people were killed for trying to escape and persecuted for disagreeing with the ideology. But for the most part Ostalgie is a nostalgia for the things people grew up with, like the traffic-light men, rather than wanting to re-establish the GDR.

Tuesday 24 July 2012

Berlin: Day 3

On day three at the University of the Arts Berlin Archive I helped with a project to repackage teaching aids that would have been used in lessons at the School of Fine Arts in the 19th and early 20th centuries. These teaching aids were enlarged images from published books that the School would have bought and held up in classes to teach from - a predecessor to slides and PowerPoint presentations. We were working with aids that would have been used in Architecture lessons.

Architecture teaching aid from the 19th C
© Mary Allen
These had previously been kept by the library so each folder of teaching aids had to be checked off against a list made by the Librarian, cleaned, repackaged and recorded in a new list for the Archive. The date of each aid could be estimated using the School's stamp which was stamped on each folder and item.

19th C School stamp
© Mary Allen
This example is from the 19th century as (although it's hard to see here) the writing at the bottom of the stamp says 'Berlin'. The School moved to Charlottenburg in 1902, so those from after this date will also have 'Charlottenburg' on the stamp.

The teaching aids are evidence what students were being taught and how. There are many photographs of buildings in these files, including important examples of buildings and architecture in Germany which have since been destroyed either during the Second World War or at other times, so these are important evidence of the country's historical topography. Student work has been found among the teaching aids, some of whom went on to be famous artists like Karl Freidrich Schinkel, an architect and designer who designed the famous Altes Museum in Berlin.

Example of student artwork used as a teaching aid, signed W Lange 1895
© Mary Allen
In the afternoon, Dr Schenk showed me some more interesting articles that could be found in the archive, including the sculptures and original photographs of Karl Blossfeldt (see earlier post Berlin: Day 1):


Sculptures of Karl Blossfeldt
© Mary Allen

And he demonstrated the efficiency of the filing systems of German offices in the 19th and early 20th Century. Anyone who worked in an office at this time kept a Journal of every single letter sent and received. Each letter would be filed in an Akta (file) as and when they were received or written (for those written this would be the third carbon copy - the first being sent and the second being filed in its appropriate subject folder). There would also be an index which lists each person they had corresponded with and gives the page numbers of their entries in the Journal. The Journal, in turn, tells you where to find the letter in the Akten. Phew! This system worked very well in the 19th century, but began to lack efficiency in the 20th and would obviously not be very practical nowadays, what with all the emails that whizz about, but it certainly must make the Archivist's job very easy when cataloguing 19th century correspondence!

Left to right: a Journal, index and Akta
© Mary Allen

Friday 20 July 2012

Berlin: Day 2

The Archive team at the University of the Arts Berlin is made up of Senior Archivist, Dr Schenk, and two part-time archivists. On my second day at the Archive, I helped Antje with an enquiry. Antje is one of the part-time archivists who is also working on a funded project, and will be coming to Falmouth in October to work at our Archive Service for a week. An enquiry had been passed on from the Exmatriculation office about a possible past student at Der Berliner Kunstgewerbeschule (the Berlin School of Arts and Crafts) who would have attended in the early 1900s. In essence, this was very similar to the family history enquiries we receive through our Camborne School of Mines archive. For these enquiries we usually look through our student registers for any evidence of the individual, and that is exactly what we did for this enquiry. Being a preceding institution of the University, the records of the Arts and Crafts School and therefore the student registers are held in the Archive. The students were registered each term and their entries include details like name, age, birthplace, trade, previous studies, area of study etc, very much like our CSM registers.


Berlin Arts & Crafts School student register 1901/02
© Mary Allen
 Unfortunately, I was unable to find any evidence of this particular student in the register, but as we always say, this is not evidence of absence! The Archive Service frequently receives internal enquiries such as this, often regarding former students who would like to know what marks they achieved, the dates they attended and so on. This is because they take on almost a records management role by looking after all semi-current student records. The relevant records, once found, are sealed and sent through the internal post. All files sent out are logged in a book and can be kept for up to three months.

Antje also introduced me to her project Music Archives in Post-War Germany, which has been funded by the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) and is being done in collaboration with the Faculty of Music. The result will be an inventory of all music archives and collections in Post-War Germany, Austria and Switzerland that will act as a finding aid for researchers. This will come in the form of a database and a book and will describe the structure of archives and theories like Provenance to help researchers use and understand the archives. The scale of the project is huge: for every institution in the database there is a description - adress, website, who the archive is responible to, history of the archive - and then a list of all the collections that fit into the theme of Music in Post-war Germany within that institution. Selecting a collection from this list will open a new window which tells you its reference, content, dates, extent, finding aids, creater of the collection, history of the collection and an index of institutions with related collections. It really will be an incredible tool for researchers on this subject; all this readily available information will save a huge amount of time and effort.

While looking at this database, I noticed that they use a very simple way of referencing. They use the same tree-structure as us in their arrangement of the archives, but the path through the tree (Fonds, Sub-fonds, Series, File, Item etc)  is not reflected in their reference as ours is. Instead they use only two numbers which seem to basically reflect the collection/series (Bestand) and item/file. Each Bestand that comes in is given the next running number, so that two sibling series might have very different Bestand numbers depending on when it came into the archive or when it was catalogued. For example, this sign shows that on the left hand side of these shelves is Bestand 28, items 5384 to 9585 (click to enlarge):

© Mary Allen
This system does have an obvious benefit over ours in that our reference numbers can get incredibly long and probably seem a bit unecessary to users not accustomed with how and why we give material the references we do. However there is no reflection in the reference of how each collection or series relates to another or the rest of the archive - i.e. its Provenance. As I thought about the advantages and disadvantages of this system I remembered this interesting Blog post I read about whether users really need to know or care about the Provenance of the material they're looking at. Seeing from a reference that there is obviously some kind of heirarchy going on might tempt a user to ask about the material in the next folder, series or even collection and use the archive more laterally, which I think can only be a good thing.

A word which was mentioned a lot on my visit was Zuständigkeit - which literally translates as 'competence; jurisdiction; responsibility'. This is basically a sense of duty which is written into the Archives Act of each State, and comes under Section 2 of the Berlin public records Act. The duty of the State Archive of Berlin is to collect archival material relating to the history of the State, its institutions and its people, and to preserve it and make it accessible. In this way, the Archive Service has a duty to collect, preserve and make accessible the records of the University of the Arts and its predecessor institutions.


Files (or Akten) in the Archive
© Mary Allen




Thursday 19 July 2012

Berlin: Day 1

On my first day at the University of Arts Berlin Archive I was given an introduction to the collections, the history of the institution, and Archives in Berlin in general. An important function of the Archive is to preserve the history of the University and its preceding institutions. It was established in 1975 in what was then West Berlin after the College of Fine Arts and the Academy of Music and Performing Arts, both founded in the latter part of the 19th century, were merged. The four colleges specialise in fine arts, architecture, music, performing arts and media and design. The Archive represents these disciplines, as well as holding modern and historical administrative records. The roots of the Arts University can be traced back more than 300 years to the foundation of the Brandenburg-Prussian Academy of Arts in 1696, but the collections from the College of Fine Arts and the Academy of Music and Performing Arts make up a much larger part of the Archive.

University of the Arts Berlin Archive Store
© Mary Allen

The Archive collects the archives of individuals, particularly those who have had a close relationship with the University, such as lecturers. One of the most important collections is that of Karl Blossfeldt, an important photographer and sculptor best known for his close-up photographs of plants in the early 20th century. He taught sculpture at the Royal Museum of Decorative Arts and later the United State School for Fine and Applied Arts between 1899 and 1930, both predecessors of the present-day University. A database has been created so that all the images held by the University Archive can be viewed on-line, which can be found here - well worth a look!

Like our Archive Service, the University Archive in Berlin takes in collections that are connected to the subjects studied at the University that are of research value to the students. Unlike us, however, they are responsible for administrative records of a semi-current nature, such as student records. These are requested frequently by offices within the University and since they are not yet archival there is no issue around their controlled access. While our collections are used often by our students for inspiration, particularly the Ian Stern photographic collection and our Cornish Performance Archives, the archives at the University in Berlin are almost only used for research purposes.


Some semi-current files in the Archive store
© Mary Allen
One fundamental difference between the British and German systems is the existence of Archive Law in Germany. Each state has its own law which applies to the State Archives and the archives of any other public body in the State, such as University Archives. The Berlin Public Records Act (Archivgesetzes des Landes Berlin) was passed in November 1993 and sets out legislation on the preservation and use of Archives in the State of Berlin. Some clauses are particularly interesting:
  • Section 3 provides a definitition of archives as documents of value, for example deeds, acts, personal papers, audio and visual material, maps, files. Archival material is that which is worth being preserved and is necessary for research, education, and understanding of the past and present.
  • Section 4 states that all authorities, courts and agencies of the State are required to get rid of all documents that are no longer needed, usually 30 years after its creation, unless there are other laws to determine deadlines. Construction records, for example, are usually kept for 90 years.
  • Section 7 says that the State Archive must ensure the orderly and proper permanent storage of archival material.
  • Section 8 says that records relating to an individual can only be disclosed to 3rd parties with the consent of the individual concerned. After the death of an individual, a further 10 years must elapse before the records can be used, with the consent of relatives. If the date of death is unknown, the protection period is 90 years after birth and if the date of birth is not known the protection period is 70 years after the document was created.
So after having my mind boggled with all this very interesting legislation on my first morning, I was able to have a slightly less strenuous afternoon at the University Library.

University Library
© Mary Allen
The Library is shared by the University of the Arts Berlin and the Technical University and is absolutely vast! The Library covers all the subjects offered by both institutions. The University of the Arts Library, due to its long and varied history, has a comprehensive collection of old stock, which makes up the Rare Book section. I was taken to see the Rare Books, which are kept in a secure room. The majority are German but there are also many English books - I spotted a shelf full of Thomas Hardy! There are also many original music manuscripts.

The Library opened in 2004 and is amazingly high-tech - it even has conveyor belts to move books around between floors and the machines for returning books sort them all by themselves! It became obvious looking round that these things were necessary for the running of the Library, which is so big and has such a large capacity - without such technology the library staff would be completely overwhelmed. It's a fantastic building and a great place to study, with works of art on each floor for inspiration. There is a media centre where videos, DVDs and CDs can be viewd or listened to and also a digital piano where students can try out music scores.

So at the end of my first day I felt I'd already learnt quite a lot! And I was really looking forward to what the rest of the week would bring...


University of the Arts Berlin

My internship has so far offered me some fantastic training opportunities and visits, but perhaps none more exciting than my placement last week, which saw me fly off to Berlin to spend five days at the Archive Service at the University of the Arts Berlin. This was all arranged through Erasmus - being able to take part in schemes like this is one of the great things about working for an HE Archive. The aim of the placement was to gain practical experience and knowledge of archive administration in a comparable HE Service in another European country. I was really excited about seeing what kind of collections they held and how they compared to ours and learn what the archivists there did day-to-day. Berlin has been at the top of my list of places to visit for a while, so obviously this added an extra bit of excitement! So off I went armed with camera, notebook and guidebook. Find out what I saw and learnt as I post my daily diary...


The University of the Arts Berlin
©Mary Allen

Thursday 28 June 2012

St Ives Archive

Yesterday I vistited the volunteer-run community archive at St Ives. Having worked with a number of volunteers at our Archive and Special Collections Service at Tremough, I have become very interested in how archive services can use volunteers - in ways that are both beneficial to the service as well as the individual.

The St Ives Archive was set up in 1996 and has been collecting material on the town ever since, particularly newspaper articles, legal documents, pamphlets, tourist quides, sound recordings, photographs and genealogical records. The main subjects covered are maritime, art, family history, buildings, photographs, archaeology and public services. Each volunteer has an area of expertise, and many have a vast knowledge of St Ives. Some have even written books using the Archive, and these are on sale as a form of generating funds.You could tell that each person working there had a real love for St Ives and its community, and I was amazed at the wealth of information available.

It's not an archive in a strict sense of the word - they don't work around the rules and regulations that we might do, over handling care for example, and a lot of the information isn't primary sources. Their material isn't catalogued as we would catalogue ours, but information is kept in subjects. Around the walls are hundreds of files, each on a different topic. These files are each colour coded, to tell you which of the main catagory they fall into. This makes it all very user-friendly - a reader can browse through a folder as they like and can look at material on the spot, without necessarily having to make an appointment. So although it isn't an archive in the sense that we might see it, it certainly is a mine of information, and very accessible information at that. And afterall, I think that is what a Community Archive should offer. It was amazing to see how well organised they are, and how well they have managed on nothing but donations, membership and occasional funding for projects. It really was an inspirational visit, and I would be very interested to learn how other Community Archives work - possible dissertation topic for next year?!

Tuesday 26 June 2012

A Cornish giant and some positive feedback

Being based partly in an arts university, we often get readers in the archive looking at our collections for a vast array of reasons. As well as the more traditional researchers, we also get students looking for inspiration. Last week we had an MA Professional Writing student, along with her illustrator, who are creating an illustrated children's book on Cornish Folklore. We have fantastic resources for this - not only the Special Collections of Cornish Poetry and the Gorseth Kernow collection in the library which contain many illustrated books of Cornish tales, but there is also a wealth of material in the Kneehigh Archive.

Kneehigh have taken many folktales and re-worked them, and the one we focussed on was the tale of Tregeagle, which they have performed three times in 1985-6, 1989, and 1996. Tregeagle is the tale of a greedy steward, whose ghost is summoned to answer to a charge of unpaid rent and is then forced to carry out a series of pointless tasks to avoid being sent down to hell. There is a mine of material relating to the performances in the archive, from promotional material like flyers and programmes, to photograph albums and scrap books, and all are incredibly stimulating visually, which is perfect for someone researching for an illustrated children's book.

It was fantastic to receive from our readers some really positive feedback the next day, saying that the visit had left them "feeling inspired and motivated to get writing and drawing". This is what's great about our Performance Archives - they can be used in a less traditional ways to inspire creativity, and this has definitely been a theme amongst students coming in to use our service, and not only with the Performance archives but also the photographic Ian Stern Archive. We can't wait to see the result of the visit and look forward to sparking the creative juices of many more students to come!

Wednesday 30 May 2012

Volunteer Tea Party

This Monday was a very exciting day for us in the Archives, with the launch of our Twitter (which we are all now totally addicted to) and a tea party in honour of all our fantastic volunteers in the afternoon. With the promise of tea and cake and some very special guest speakers it was set to be a fantastic afternoon, and it didn't disappoint. We were joined by some of our brilliant student volunteers and members of staff who've all done their bit over the last few years. Our speakers were Sarah Riddle, Collections Curator at the National Maritime Museum Cornwall, and Lynne, a volunteer who has been working on an amazing collection of photos at the Museum.

 
© Archives & Special Collections Service at
University College Falmouth & Univsersity of Exeter's Cornwall Campus

We really value the help from our volunteers, and it was great to hear from Sarah how valued they are in much larger institutions - in fact the National Maritime Museum is largley run by volunteers, from researchers to boat-builders, marketing assistants to conservators. For me, the highlight was listening to Lynne talk so enthusiastically about her project to catalogue a collection of photographs donated to the Museum by David Weller. The 600-odd photos were taken by Weller and his father and provide a unique photographic history of the Falmouth docks. Although the photos came with a meticulous index, Lynne was able to use her local knowledge to add even more detail. One of the photographs, a beautiful image of a ship called Waterwitch, was chosen to be February's 'Curator's Choice', and can be seen here.

It was fantastic to see a volunteer so dedicated to her work. Here at the Tremough Archives we have had some amazingly dedicated volunteers of our own, with three having committed over a hundred hours to the Service each! So for them there was a short award ceremony with certificates, not laminated, but housed safely in archival sleeves...


© Archives & Special Collections Service at
University College Falmouth & Univsersity of Exeter's Cornwall Campus

 Next week is National Volunteers Week. We should all celebrate the contribution that volunteers make in terms of time, expertise, and enthusiasm (and all that for free!), not only in Archive Services, but across all sectors.

Tuesday 29 May 2012

We are Tweeting!

Yesterday the Archives and Special Collections Service very proudly launched its very own Twitter. We've been busily working away on our Twitter Project and are now ready, with especial thanks to our student volunteers.

Follow us @FXArchives for tweets about our exciting collections, behind the scenes snippets, and anything and everything about archives.

UPDATE: we've had a retweet from Chris Evans!

Wednesday 23 May 2012

Cornwall, 1952


With the Queen's Diamond Jubilee coming up in a couple of weeks, I decided to have a look through our archive and find out what was going on in 1952 in Cornwall using our collections. Since many of our collections are more modern, like the Cornish Performance Archives, most of the focus fell onto the Camborne School of Mines, the Institute of Cornish Studies, Falmouth School of Art, and painter and former principle of the Falmouth School of Art, Tom Cross.
In 1952, the Cornish political party Mebyon Kernow (Sons of Cornwall) had been going for just over a year, having been set up in January 1951. It was at this time a pressure group and contained activists and politicians from a number of political parties. Its aims were
  • To promote and foster the Cornish language and literature,
  • To study local conditions and attempt to remedy any that may be prejudicial to the best   interests of Cornwall by the creation of public opinion or other means,
  • To encourage the study of Cornish history from a Cornish point of view,
  • By self-knowledge to further the acceptance of the idea of the Celtic character of Cornwall, one of the six Celtic nations.
The Cornish language had died out in about 1800, but in 1952 the recent years had seen a revival of interest. The Cornish Gorsedh (Cornish Assembly) had been set up 23 years before, an organisation dedicated to the preservation of Cornwall's Celtic spirit, through literature, language, music and the arts, and the recognition of all forms of important service to Cornwall and its people. The most accomplished writer in the Cornish language of the day was Robert Morton Nance, who was also the Grand Bard of the Cornish Gorsedh in 1952. He wrote several plays in Cornish, textbooks on the language, and developed a unified spelling for Cornish. 


The Cornish Review, 1952 Vol 10

Richard Gendall, a leading expert in the Cornish language, wrote an article about Cornish Nationalism in Denys Val Baker's Cornish Review, 1952: “In recent years, and especially within the last year, there have appeared in Cornish newspapers and magazines a number of articles, letters, and reports with a savour of nationalism about them.” A major source of complaint was that Cornish mines were being neglected while those abroad received millions of pounds in subsidies, and that Cornish mines were prevented from achieving prosperity by crippling systems of taxation. There seemed to be two sides to Cornish nationalism in 1952: one sentimental, the other practical. "Sentimentally Cornwall is seen as a member of the Celtic family, with a past of battles against the Saxons, and rebellions against a changing world under the Tudors; a land whose Cornish language was not long ago to be heard and which even now is being cherished by a few devotees… Practically, Cornwall is seen as a small area with a great variety of resources, with a decreasing population already deprived of much of its best manhood by emigration due to economic necessity…”

During the Second World War nearly all crafts except purely rural ones came to a standstill and there was a real danger of British craftsmanship suffering a mortal blow. Thankfully, this was averted, and in the aftermath of war there was actually a revival of interest in crafts, and nowhere was this more apparent than in Cornwall. According to a survey by the Rural Industries Bureau, there were in 1952 more than 400 separate crafts in existence in the county, from the painting of sea-shells and the making of jewellery and decorations from pebbles to the more traditional – the blacksmith, wheelwright, saddler, and potter (H. Trevor, 1952. 'Crafts From Cornwall’, D V Baker (ed.) The Cornish Review). 


Pottery was an art specifically associated with Cornwall - not surprising since the county was the home of the china clay industry. Bernard Leach, Britain’s leading potter, had set up his large co-operative pottery in St Ives in 1920, to which students and visitors from all over the world visited and in 1952 was still producing not only exquisite craft work for the luxury market, but a large amount of utility goods and slipware. Cornish pottery was in wide use in Cornwall itself and all over the world. Between the end of the war and 1952 over 400 applications had been received by the Leach Pottery by people who wanted to study the craft. At this time mechanisation and mass-production was overtaking and displacing local handicrafts. In protest, people were turning back to work which “springs from the heart and gives form to the human imagination” (Bernard Leach, My Work as a Potter).

Post-war Cornwall saw a remarkable flowering of the arts and literature. Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson were spearheading the Modernist movement in Britain in sculpture and painting respectively. Abstract artist Terry Frost was appointed as Hepworth's assistant in 1951 and would go on to become an important artist in his own right. Other influential Cornish artists in 1952 include: Patrick Heron, Peter Lanyon, Bryan Pearce and Bryan Wynter. (FCP3/D)


CSM Magazine, 1952 Vol 52
Although mining in Cornwall at this time was in decline, Camborne engineers were held in high regards in various parts of the world. The report from the Camborne School of Mines annual school dinner in 1952 reveals some anxiety amongst students about the situation in South Africa. Since mining was in decline in Cornwall, many went on to work abroad after finishing at the School. The National Party with its policy of Apartheid had come into power only 4 years before in 1948. “The second and third years have heard much of South Africa from representatives of mining companies there, but it is doubtful if they have had their prejudices against the country so severely shaken as by Mr. Haggart’s speech.” (Mr. Haggart being Deputy Chairman of the Anglo-American Corporation of South Africa, Ltd.) He calmed the dinner attendees about the political activities going on in SA by pointing out that “South Africa is a relatively happy country, and that the alarm in England over the racial future of the country can be settled in a sensible manner”! This particular dinner ended in a brawl, after which some went home, and others went for a swim at Gwithian: “I suppose you don’t feel the cold if you’ve had the right spirit.” (CSM Magazine, 1952)

Meanwhile, the Camborne School of Mines (CSM) Club had been given a makeover with new curtains, pelmet boards, and central heating installed. It was now being patronized by many more members of the School, and sometimes they even condescended to let women up to the Club bar! The first time this happened was apparently before the Autumn Term dance (1951), and a great success it was: “You can’t get old so and so to put his hand in his pocket to buy you a half, but you just wait until his latest girlfriend says she’ll have a double gin and lime; up he trots, meak as a lamb, and slaps down his 3/8; oh yes; very good for business.”


Falmouth School of Art prospectus, 1952

Over in Falmouth, the School of Art was still relatively small. Having been founded in 1902 on Arwenack Avenue, the School had relocated in 1950 to Kerris Vean, Woodlane. Numbers of students were incredibly small compared with what it is today (University College Falmouth), with only 23 full-time! And, compared to the £9000 a year students will be expected to pay from next year, fees were much cheaper in 1952 at £25 a year, or £8.6.8 a term. The six members of teaching staff taught, among other subjects, Lettering & Illumination, Leatherwork, Dressmaking, Embroidery, and Pottery. Classes were aimed at preparing students for the Ministry of Education’s Intermediate Examination in Arts and Crafts, the National diploma in Design, and the Royal College of Art Entrance examination, with the School also providing part-time day and evening classes for those who worked or those who had a general interested in art.

60 years ago the Camborne School of Mines and Falmouth School of Art were very separate institutions. Could they have predicted then that at the time of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee they would be sharing the same campus? Probably not. Of course, Tremough did not exist at this time, and the idea of Combined Universities in Cornwall had not even been conceived. But despite sharing a campus, both have maintained their strong identities: CSM as one of the World’s most famous mining schools, and University College Falmouth as a vibrant and forward-thinking specialist arts college.

The Cornish Gorsedh is growing ever stronger, with 496 Bards at present. It continues to maintain the national Celtic spirit of Cornwall and annually awards Bardships to individuals who have provided outstanding service to Cornish culture. The highlight of the year is the Open Gorsedh, involving a procession of Bards, dressed in their blue robes, to a location of cultural significance where new Bards are initiated. Mebyon Kernow is now a recognised political party, fighting for Cornwall, a nation with its own distinct identity, language and heritage, to have the same right of self-determination as Wales and Scotland, and is leading a campaign for the self-government of Cornwall.

More information on the history of Cornwall, the Camborne School of Mines and Falmouth Art School can be found in our archive.

Friday 11 May 2012

Volunteers

Over the last few weeks we have been very busy in the office with several work experience and volunteer placements. It's been great to see so many students interested in what we do and wanting to come and have a go themselves! Often coming from creative disciplines, it has been quite eye-opening for us to see how they react to our collections and sometimes end up using them for inspiration. We try to match their tasks to their interests, so for example we have one regular volunteer, a Fine Art MA student, with a particular interest in photography who we have given a repackagaing project on the Ian Stern Archive. Ian Stern was an important photographer in the '60s and '70s, and the Archive contains negatives, prints, manuscripts and a fascinating range of darkroom experiments. The project has been a great success and she has begun to really get to grips with the collection, which is excellent for us as we have very little information about this particular archive. We regularly use the Ian Stern material so having it repackaged will make it much more accessible for users, and much safer to use from a preservation point of view.

Another success has been our Twitter Project. The Archive and Special Collections Service is aiming to launch its very own Twitter in the next few weeks and we have had some excellent work experience students in to research our collections for tweets. We gave a film student free reign over the vast array of books relating to film and film history in the Bill Douglas and Peter Jewell Collection and found some amusing quotes from filmstars. We've also had a history student, looking particularly at public history, who uncovered some rather interesting events in the history of University College Falmouth from local newspaper articles... So keep a look out for the launch of our new Twitter to find out more!

In the meantime, we've got a couple more volunteers and placements lined up and I'm vey much looking forward to seeing how they get on and what they come up with.

Wednesday 9 May 2012

The Aura of Archives...

Last week Sarah and I attended a lecture given by Kym Martindale, senior lecturer in Creative Writing here at University College Falmouth. The talk began with an explanation of the library Dewey system, which differs vastly from the tree structure we use when arranging archives. An interesting point was that, technically, you could give any scene a Dewey number. For example, a tractor in a field you could say was agricultural, european, of the 21st century, and possibly more to come up with a Dewey number.

The crux of the lecture, however, was how an archive makes you feel: why are people so drawn to the archive? In some ways, rifling through an archive is a way of getting into the life and mind of someone you might admire or are researching. Currently on display at the Emory University are the Salman Rushdie archives. This contains traditional archival material such as journals, notebooks, photographs and other manuscripts, but there was also the dilemma of what to do with the vast quantity of Rushdie's born-digital records. Common options for dealing with such data can be to either preserve the physical objects: computers, floppy disks, DVDs etc, or to transfer the data to more modern systems and making sure these are kept up to date. At the Rushdie archive they have come up with an innovative way of displaying the born-digital material by giving users access to Rushdie's computer using an emulator and, in effect, simulating the author's electronic universe, thus providing an archive that is both interactive and digitally preserved. A video demonstration can be seen here.

Users are faced with a facsimile of Rushdie's computer screen from one of his early Mac computers and can navigate through his files and folders and even launch apps. No doubt this is a fascinating experience and you can totally emerse yourself in Rushdie's way of working. This simulator not only provides the information, but also gives the information an aura - an archive experience on a higher, almost spiritual, level. However, an important point was raised by an audience member during the lecture: surely the information on the computer was in some way vetted by Rushdie himself before being made public. Therefore the idea that this simulator shows his computer just as he would have used it is a false one. This made me think about archives in general: we tend to think of them as absolute truth; they are as primary as a primary source can get. But in actual fact, an archive is really only a selection. If someone uses an archive to gain a sense of someone or something, i.e. its 'aura', rather than the straightforward, non-subjective facts and evidence that it might provide, is this aura or sense in some way false?

On the other hand, you might be able to find out more about a person by using their archive. Kym spoke about the archive of poet Frnaces Bellerby, which is held at the University of Exeter. After going through the archive, Kym was suprised to see several notebooks about Bellerby's pet tortoises. These notes were so extensive, yet no mention of these tortoises had ever made it into her poetry! They were obviously a significant part of her life, yet anyone reading only her published work would never know this aspect of her life. This is an example of how using an archive can give a further dimension to the person you are researching, making them seem that little bit more real and less remote.

In any case, the idea of an archive having an 'aura' is an interesting one, and I don't think anyone who has used an archive or works in one can deny that there is a sense of satisfaction and significance in working with this original material.

Tuesday 17 April 2012

World Book Night

World Bok Night is coming up on the 23rd of April. To celebrate, Library staff at Tremough will be giving away FREE copies of books! On this literary theme, I have been busy putting together a display to promote our Patrick Gale archive, which will be up tomorrow in the group study area of the library and will contain handwritten drafts of novels, a fillm treatment, and other exciting treats.

For those of you unfamiliar with Patrick Gale, he is best known as an author, and flew to fame when his novel Notes From an Exhibition was selected for the Richard and Judy Book Club in 2008.Yet he has also written a film, scripts for television sitcoms, and many articles and reviews for newspapers and magazines. All of these are represented in the Archive, and you can browse the catalogue here.

If you are on campus, come and have a look at my display!

Cornish Archive Network

Yesterday, Sarah and I attended a Cornish Archive Network (CAN) meeting, which meets four times a year, at the Cornwall Records Office in Truro. This was a great introduction to the various teams across the County. Those who attended were from a range of organisations: community, voluntary and professional, and most of the meeting was taken up discussing the progress of each organisation, updates and opportunities. Being new to the meetings, this was a good way to hear about what everyone does. I was particularly interested in the St Ives Archive, which is largely volunteer-run and had had an exhibition on about living in St Ives in the 1930s, focusing particularly on children and whether they were happier then or now. This had been put together by an A-Level work experience student and all in the space of a week!

We reported on the progress of all the building work and movings-around at Tremough and how that might affect the Archive Service in the future, as well as the progress on our Preservation Assessment Survey, with the sampling almost finished. Sarah also mentioned how much we'd grown since she had last attended, having gained a trainee (me!) and a part-time term-time Assistant, Carole.

Many there were part of the 'Cornwall's Sporting Histories' series of events and exhibitions giong on throughout the year, which has been organised by CAN and the Cornwall Museums Group to raise awareness of the many fantastic collections of sports-related documents all over the county. There will be displays at sports centres and Cornish Mining World Heritage sites across Cornwall, and in the Heritage Pavillion at the Royal Cornwall Show.

We have some lovely colourful leaflets with more details in the Archive office, so please come and take one!

Tuesday 3 April 2012

A week in London

Last week I travelled up to London just in time for the beautifully hot and sunny weather to attend three days of training in Russell Square with the Archive-Skills Consultancy Ltd, which is aimed at providing basic and relevant training in archives and records management, and spent a fourth day at the archives of the Institute of Education.

The first session of training was an introduction to basic archive skills and covered several topics:
  • what are Archives?
  • collecting policies and accessioning
  • appraisal
  • providing access to Archives
We also had talks from two guest-speakers. Mark Pomeroy, Archivist at the Royal Academy, spoke about archival processing, arrangement and description; and Jonathan Rhys-Lewis, a Consultant in Preservation & Collection Management, spoke about preservation.

The second day was all about archival description and arrangement, which provided us all with a really in-depth introduction to description techniques. Both days involved facilitated discussions and exercises, which was great as it gave us the opportunity to network with the other people on the course, who were in similar situations but worked in a variety of different services. It was also reassuring that most of what was covered on the first two days I found familiar - which is a good sign that my traineeship and previous volunteer experience has been worthwhile and is setting me in the right direction!

I was most intrigued about the last day, which was an introduction to Records Management, since this is an area I have had practically no experience of and have always been a bit scared of! All the reading I did on RM before my MA interview was largely theoretical and seemed rather abstract, but this day provided a really practical overview of it and went through the realities of a Records Manager's job day-to-day, and I'm feeling much more confident about the RM module on the course.

The next day I went on a visit to the Institute of Education archives, who are in the process of taking over Records Management within the organisation. Since there's not been a proactive policy in place before, I was talked through how they were going to apply records managament from the back end, so to speak, and put plans into place for the future. I was given some appraisal work to have a go at as well. This I found a bit nerve wracking - having worked in archives for the past year I'm used to dealing with records selected for permanent preservation, so putting whole files in bags for shredding felt totally wrong! But very satisfying. I always enjoy visiting archives and seeing how they compare to others I've experienced, and this visit was particuarly apropriate as the RM aspect complemented the training I'd had the day before.

So it was a pretty full-on week, and I felt like I'd essentially had the whole Archives and Records Management MA taught to me in the space of four days, but I would totally recommend the Archive Skills Consultancy courses to anyone in a traineeship position like me or to anyone wanting a refresher. It's a really laid back environment, with lots of opportunity for networking and meeting like-minded people.