On Holiday in the Archives

November 17, 2008 / Jane Stevenson

Liverpool University Centre for Archive Studies (LUCAS) organised an event on Saturday, with Sefton MBC, at Southport Arts Centre. This was an afternoon of talks and films about what archives can show us about holidays and seaside resorts.

There were four films from the North West Film Archive, made by railway companies to encourage visitors to travel to northern resorts, and films showing local people made by cinema owners to encourage visitors to their cinemas.

Then Dr Chris Lewis of Victoria County History told us about his investigation into the names of private houses in the seaside town of Goring in West Sussex – an ingenious way to shine light on social history.

Allan Brodie of English Heritage showed us some of the evidence he had uncovered that Liverpool (rather than Margate) can make a claim to be the first seaside resort, in the early 18th century.

Professor John Walton of Leeds Metropolitan University described some of the lateral thiking and detective work required to track down sparse or scattered records of resort life in Britain (and Spain) in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Documented history concerned with these aspects of ordinary lives tends to be thin on the ground, as the whole subject was generally seen as ‘trivial’. But there’s so much more to history than the ‘great and the good’. These archivists and historians were at the seaside, but they were working on illuminating our history…

Above: Photo from the collection Papers relating to English concert parties and pierrot shows, held at the University of Exeter. Image courtesy of University of Exeter Library (Special Collections).

Use of archives by social scientists

November 13, 2008 / Jane Stevenson

I have just attended two seminars as part of a project on Archiving and Reusing Qualitative Data: Theory, Methods and Ethics Across Disciplines. They provided a great deal of food for thought, as seminars like this so often do. These seminars were particularly valuable because they drew together academics, particularly social scientists and archivists. Many of the participants were oral historians, and the challenges of oral history ran through many of the talks.

When archivists think about archival theory and description, they are generally thinking about archives as materials ‘created by an individual or organisation in the course of their life or work and considered worthy of permanent preservation’ (my quotes, to indicate that this is a classic definition of archives). But if we think about archives as any records considered worthy of preservation and with value for future researchers, then we can expand the definition to include records that social scientists refer to as archives. For them, archives are often data sets, created by researchers in the course of their research and then, possibly, reused.

Social scientists do not necessarily think in terms of business records or personal letters, or archives as a reflection of personal or organisational activity. They think in terms of longitudinal studies and oral histories; quantitative and qualitative data. These are archives that generally are created for the purposes of research, and so the perspective is rather different to those created in the course of individual or organisational activity. We have the UK Data Archive which has ‘the largest collection of digital data in the social sciences and humanities in the UK’, and this houses the History Data Service which ‘promotes the use of digital resources, which result from or support historical research, learning and teaching’, but I don’t think that there is a general sense amongst archivists that these are part of the archive community, in the sense that trainee archivists don’t really think about working for a data archive, and arhcival theory doesn’t appear to really encompass this type of archive. Certainly social scientists clearly see archives as both data archives (data sets) and traditional archives (archives as reflections of past activity), and the fact that the two were not explicitly distinguished during the seminars was striking in itself.

It may be that data archives require different ways of thinking to ‘historical archives’, in terms of how they are organised and managed, but now that archives are increasingly digital, and as all archives are a valuable source for research, surely there is sense in the two communities moving closer together?

What Are Archives? (Or, Shameless Plug for Archives Hub Authors)

November 11, 2008 / Joy Palmer

(And as I am not one of the authors in question, I can do the shameless plugging:)

I’m proud to announce that two of our colleagues here at the Hub, Jane Stevenson and Paddy Collis, have been included in this important anthology of essays What Are Archives? Cultural and Theoretical Perspectives: A Reader. The collection has been edited by Louise Craven of The National Archives (UK) and brings together a range of voices around this complex question. Underpinning the question, ‘What Are Archives?’ is a fundamental change in perspective where new answers to that question are beginning to emerge, as Craven notes. We are now, she says, beginning to adopt a wider perspective, “looking at archives from the outside, rather than from the inside” (Preface).

Jane Stevenson’s contribution, ‘The Online Archivist: A Positive Approach to the Digital Information Age,’ is an excellent overview of the practical issues that emerge in the realm of ‘online archives.’ She considers the evolving skillsets needed by information professionals in general and archivists in particular, especially around emerging technologies. “We need to know how to share and exchange data, how to structure finding aids to enable sophisticated searching, what the advantages and disadvantages are of using controlled vocabularies…”(90). Above all, she says, “If the archive profession does not address this need to change and adapt to meet the needs of the new information society, we run the risk of being sidelined in this most crucial area of work”(105).

Paddy (Gerard) Collis’s essay, ‘Permitted Use and Users: The Fallout Shelter’s Sealed Environment’ takes an altogether more exploratory and philosophical approach to the central question of the collection. Through a series of meditations on the ‘archives’ such as the caves at Lascaux, nuclear waste repositories, and avant-garde art exhibits, Paddy asks us to question our perhaps restricted notion of ‘the archive,’ and significantly the polarising concept of the ‘casual’ visitor versus the ‘serious’ researcher.

Well done to both Paddy and Jane for these valuable contributions. We’re very lucky to have you sitting in desks across from us!

Tom Eckersley

November 7, 2008 / Jane Stevenson

This month we celebrate the work of Tom Eckersley (1914-1995), one of the foremost graphic designers of the twentieth century working in Britain.

With an introduction by Karyn Stuckey, Archivist at University of the Arts London, and illustrated with 14 designs and drawings from their Tom Eckersley collection, including poster designs for Guinness, the World Wildlife Fund, and RoSPA.

There are also links to selected websites and a some suggested reading.

Above: Image provided by University of the Arts London with all rights reserved by the owners: the Tom Eckersley Estate and London College of Communication. Image of poster taken by Graham Goldwater. With rights reserved by University of the Arts London, contact: archive-enquiries@arts.ac.uk, 02075 149 335.

Archives 2.0

October 31, 2008 / Jane Stevenson

I’ve just been reading the excellent entry (with many interesting comments) on the ArchivesNext blog on the subject of ‘Archives 2.0’. I agree with Kate’s position, that ‘Archives 2.0’ should be about our mindset – the principles of participation, openness, experimenting with new technologies, collaboration and exploration. Whilst we can argue over various tools that may or may not be ‘Web 2.0’ and how we might or might not integrate these into our work patterns, surely taking a more open and participatory approach should be something we can all agree on?

At the Archives Hub our raison d’etre is dissemination – we want to improve access to archives through providing an effective cross-searching service. I see ‘Archives 2.0’ as very much in line with what we are doing – implementing standards, looking at interoperability and taking a collaborative approach. As a community, we are entirely at liberty to shape ‘Archives 2.0’ ourselves, to make it something relevant to us – the label is, after all, just a label until it has an agreed meaning behind it. It should not be seen as something forced upon us, but as something that we create and progress for our own benefit and the benefit of our users.

I’ve kept an eye open for good examples of more interactive and participatory websites relating to archives, but they seem to be a bit thin on the ground in the UK. I think that the archives community might be a bit behind the Library community in this respect, although maybe that is hardly surprising given the resources that most of us are working with and the fact that many archivists are lone practitioners. It’s not easy to embrace new technologies and new ways of working when you’re struggling to accomplish the basic tasks – acquisition, cataloguing (backlogs!), preservation, etc.

I think that some of the work that we at the Hub are doing with The Women’s Library (Genesis portal) and AIM25 in terms of interoperability and data sharing is very much ‘Archives 2.0’ but the benefits of this won’t be obvious to the outside world because its not about whizzy new user interfaces, but about sharing descriptions, rather than asking archivists to create several descriptions for different services. So this brings benefits of efficiency and more content and reduces problems of version control. We’ll post more about this work as we progress it!

I think that if we can work together as a community, then the benefits of a more open and collaborative approach can be widely shared. Certainly at the Hub we are keen to share our experience and any expertise that we might have for the benefit of the wider community, and we are also keen to find out about any other projects that we might learn from – no point in trying to work out everything for yourself if you can benefit from the experience of others.

The Big Draw 2008: The Big Wheel

October 31, 2008 / Jane Stevenson

This October the Archives Hub took part in The Big Draw. Thank you for sending your drawings on the themes of Fairgrounds and Playgrounds or Cycling and Recycling.

Above: Research drawing of ferris wheel for the film Artificial Intelligence: AI, originally developed by Stanley Kubrick and realised by Steven Spielberg after Kubrick’s death in 1999. From the Stanley Kubrick Archive. Image provided by University of the Arts London with rights reserved by the Stanley Kubrick Estate and reproduced with their permission. Submitted by Karyn Stuckey, Archivist.

The Big Wheel: Fourth Spin

October 24, 2008 / Jane Stevenson

This October the Archives Hub is taking part in The Big Draw. We want you to make drawings on the themes of Fairgrounds and Playgrounds, or Cycling, or Recycling. Scan or photograph your drawing, and then email the digital version to us. We’ll post your pics here each Friday. And we’ll give an Archives Hub notepad and propelling pencil to everyone who sends us a drawing, and the first name out of the cycle helmet will receive colouring pens, a pencil case and a notepad – all made from recycled car tyres! If you send us your postal address, we won’t use it for anything else.

1. Windmill and bicycle
This is a detail of a calendar for 1950 from the Cyclists’ Touring Club archive. Photograph copyright © CTC, reproduced with kind permission, and courtesy of the Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick. Submitted by Paddy: "I’ve recycled this from our feature about cycling and some other things."

Esther Rantzen eat your heart out

October 20, 2008 / Lisa

On 3rd October 2008, I attended the

The Big Wheel: Third Spin

October 17, 2008 / Jane Stevenson

This October the Archives Hub is taking part in The Big Draw. We want you to make drawings on the themes of Fairgrounds and Playgrounds, or Cycling, or Recycling. Scan or photograph your drawing, and then email the digital version to us. We’ll post your pics here each Friday. And we’ll give an Archives Hub notepad and propelling pencil to everyone who sends us a drawing, and the first name out of the cycle helmet will receive colouring pens, a pencil case and a notepad – all made from recycled car tyres! If you send us your postal address, we won’t use it for anything else.

1. An Oxford bicycle
Here’s a drawing of an Oxford bicycle. Submitted by Elizabeth Martin of Nuffield College Library.

The Big Wheel: Second Spin

October 10, 2008 / Jane Stevenson

This October the Archives Hub is taking part in The Big Draw. We want you to make drawings on the themes of Fairgrounds and Playgrounds, or Cycling, or Recycling. Scan or photograph your drawing, and then email the digital version to us. We’ll post your pics here each Friday. And we’ll give an Archives Hub notepad and propelling pencil to everyone who sends us a drawing, and the first name out of the cycle helmet will receive colouring pens, a pencil case and a notepad – all made from recycled car tyres! If you send us your postal address, we won’t use it for anything else.

1. Cyclist
This is a detail of a RoSPA leaflet from 1954. Photo courtesy the University of Liverpool Library, and the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents. Copyright © RoSPA. Submitted by Paddy: "I’ve recycled this from the Collections of the Month about cycling."

2. Mr Pickwick
Label for the Pickwick fairground music LP ‘Radcliffe’s Steam Carnival on Tour’. Submitted by Paddy: "I found this in a charity shop years ago. The label includes a drawing of Mr Pickwick, so it still counts!"