Final Remarks as a Trainee

Trainees just starting out at DCDC15. Image courtesy of Emma Stagg.

I have been working at Cheshire Archives and Local Studies for the past year as a Transforming Archives Trainee and have learnt a huge amount about archives and digitisation. Unfortunately, my time here is coming to a close.

A number of Transforming Archives Trainees have begun their traineeships this year (Cohort 2 of 3); with a smaller amount in Scotland as part of Opening up Scotland’s Archives. With two official trainee meetups throughout the year and a lot more impromptu ones, we have all supported one another while early on in our careers.

Transport used inside The National Archives' building to transport documents.

Everyone undertaking the traineeship is enrolled onto a module at the University of Dundee. This module was undertaken via distance learning and I studied an Introduction to Digitisation and Digital Preservation. In fact, Transforming Archives/Opening Up Scotland’s Archives have been so successful in ensuring the new workforce is up to speed with digital preservation, that they have been shortlisted for the Award for Teaching and Communications in the Digital Preservation Awards 2016!

With a training fund available to me throughout the year, I have been able to go to a large number of conferences and courses of my choice. Naturally, the Digital Preservation Coalition’s Student Conference, was one of my first choices as it supported my distance learning course. Other courses completed include the Care of Paper and Photographic Collections and Photographing Museum Objects: both of which otherwise I would be unable to afford.

Possible hazards to consider at the Archives as part of the Care of Paper and Photographic Collections course.

The funding has also allowed me to purchase books relating to digital preservation and preventive conservation of photographs, to improve my knowledge in these areas and support my archival career.

I have become a member of the Archives and Records Association and Institute of Conservation over the course of my traineeship post; attending both of their conferences. Additionally, I am now a member of the Association for Historical and Fine Art Photography with plans to go to their conference in November after my traineeship has concluded. A number of the trainees from all three years will also be attending DCDC16 in Salford from 10^th-12^th October 2016. 

Back at Cheshire Archives, I have catalogued and re-packaged over 15,000 Local Studies items. These range from 35mm slides, to prints, glass plate negatives and original illustrations. A selection of those catalogued were digitised and uploaded onto the Cheshire image bank and I have spoken about a series of these in a previous blog post.

Selection of Local Studies slides from the 80s, showing views of Cheshire and North Wales.

After working with Local Studies, Medieval Deeds was my next project. Over 350 Medieval Deeds were digitised and are all accessible remotely for our volunteers to transcribe them from their original Latin. The goal is ultimately to add both image and transcription to our cataloguing system. This will make the whole series searchable and increase the value and knowledge which can be gained from these manuscripts. This project has just been released to volunteers and will continue under the management of the new trainee.

To tie in with the Medieval Deed transcription, I organised two days of Horrible Handwriting courses to assist the public in deciphering and making sense of the English writing on old documents. This was a successful event and also helped me to improve my palaeographical skills alongside assisting those attending.

In between these main projects, smaller ad-hoc duties have cropped up. Early in the year, I produced a blog post promoting The National Archives' Explore your Archives week which runs again this year, 19-27th November. At Christmas I photographed Chester’s Christmas Markets, which was the perfect time to capture that area of Chester. Town Hall Square will soon look a lot different with the progression of the new Northgate shopping development.

More recently, I have scanned glass negatives for Twitter and even produced a variety of visuals to be displayed at Cheshire’s Tour of Britain. The sheer range of work I have undertaken here has made it a very informative year for me!

Eastgate Clock, Chester. Glowing pink just after its refurbishment. 

You can follow the work of next year’s trainees (and take a look back at this year) via the following Twitter accounts:

@TransformingArc @CheshireRO 

And you can read a bit more about my work, and how I got here on the National Archive’s blog.

For now, I hand over to my successor Miranda Lennon and wish her and the rest of the new cohort the best of luck with the year ahead.