The End is Nigh

As we near the end of our traineeship we are busy completing projects, thinking about all we have learnt on our placements, and applying for new jobs. My last few projects at Worcestershire Archive and Archaeology Service are a hand over pack for my absent voter project, photographs for the Explore the Past leaflet I have designed and a project to catalogue and care for the Kinver archaeology Collection.

Absent Voters Hand-over Pack

The Absent voters from 1918 are being transcribed by a loyal band of volunteers I recruited and trained. I have supported them as they completed the work and congratulated them as they finished one book and moved to the next. But they in turn have supported me as I wrote up the project for my PG cert assignment. Now the volunteers know what they are doing I just need to leave a pack for my colleagues who will take over supervising the project.

A photograph of Sarah with volunteer David Bonnick taken by David Tyrell – for the Explore the Past leaflet

Meanwhile I have been running around trying to rope in photographers and models for some photographs to advertise the service. The staff and volunteers at WAAS, their children, and some students from the university as well as Tom from the Cathedral library, all kindly helped by posing for photographs, and I was lucky to find two very talented photographers to take the pictures. I have been researching and writing the leaflet for months, so it’s been lovely to get the last bit completed, and now it’s on the way to the printers.

The finished boxes made by Sarah for the Kinver Archive held by Worcestershire Archaeology

And the archaeology project has given me a chance to learn more about the Heritage Environment Record, and to input items into it, while learning some more about archaeology. At the same time I have reinforced some of the skills I have previously learned in archival care and conservation, finally getting my head around how to make boxes to fit the archives.

It’s a little sad as each individual trainee departs on their new journey, but great for the project to revel in our success and I am really looking forward to my own new roles as I continue to apply all that I have learned here. I feel really lucky to have had this opportunity to work with so many experts at WAAS, and to be leaving the role to continue working within heritage.

Sarah Ganderton

Popping up in Worcester

This week is the culmination of our project as the My Worcester Pop-up Museum goes live in Reindeer Court. We are opening to the public from Thursday 20th, Friday 21st and Saturday 22nd August 11am to 3pm, with an exhibition and FREE activities for all ages.

My Worcester Pop-up Museum, Reindeer Court

For several months now all the trainees have been working hard on the pop-up museum as part of the Worcester Festival. It’s been exciting, terrifying, enjoyable, nerve-racking and fascinating all at once. Such a project had not been tried by the previous tranches of trainees so we are breaking new ground while we learn new skills.

The Worcestershire Archive and Archaeology Service panel at the My Worcester Pop-up Museum

The exhibition highlights favourite treasures from each placement chosen by our volunteers and visitors. At Worcestershire Archive and Archaeology Service and the University of Worcester Special Research Collections we don’t normally have artefacts on display so we took the opportunity to create an exhibition on level 2 of the Hive.

Planning exhibitions at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery

I visited a couple of other institutions to work out how to create this exhibition. I was welcomed by Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery where Katie Hall had kindly organised for staff to talk to me about planning, setting up, and marketing a large exhibition. I chatted to the conservator about looking after the artefacts on display and sat in on a planning meeting. Then I visited Droitwich Spa Heritage Centre where Becky Pye and her band of volunteers let me sit in on a day’s worth of museum management while I marvelled at the temporary exhibition there.

Admiring the exhibition at Droitwich Spa Heritage Centre

Fired up with inspiration from both placements I created the exhibition now on level 2 of the Hive to showcase the Hanbury Hall Map Book (1732) chosen at Worcestershire Archive and Archaeology Service and a copy of Where the Wild Things Are from the University of Worcester Special Research Collections. This mini exhibition can be viewed until the end of August.

Exhibition at Worcestershire Archive and Archaeology Service

It has been brilliant to work together as a team with all the other trainees on this project.  Now all the hard work is done, and we can enjoy welcoming customers to our pop-up museum in Reindeer Court: Thursday 20th to Saturday 22nd August, 11am to 3pm. Why not pop in and check it out for yourself?

Sarah Ganderton

The last assignment

All of us trainees have been working on the final assignment for our Leadership & Management (Heritage) Postgraduate Certificate This time we had to write a 4000 word report about a project in our work place – and we just handed it in so fingers crossed.

Sarah teaching a volunteer

My project involved working with volunteers to transcribe the Worcester Absent Voter list for 1918. The absent voter list, can show which voters were away because of the war, where they came from, and where they were, with a description of their service details. The volunteers have been adding addresses to what is already a useful resource for researchers of family, local and WW1 history

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This project has been a great opportunity to work with volunteers, to get to know them individually, and to learn about how to supervise them on the task. During the project I learned about the council’s policies on recruiting volunteers, I took staff training at the University of Worcester on training people and read lots of books and articles about how to motivate volunteers. I was really pleased they kept coming back, and they did a great job of the transcribing. We even learnt some things about the people in the lists as we went along.

Absent Voters book for 1918

The task is going to take a while to complete for the whole of Worcestershire, but eventually will be available for everyone to use, both on the shelf and on the website as a searchable electronic copy. In the meantime, lots of electoral registers are available on the local studies collection shelves on level 2, and the Worcestershire electoral registers for 1918 and 1919 are available from the original archives during opening hours.

Sarah Ganderton

Red Sticker Day

Cataloguing items in the archives means they can be accessed by customers. This involves lots of different tasks and I had the opportunity to help: checking through a collection of log books from the Worcestershire fire brigade to see whether they could be used by the public. As a member of staff I was cleared to work with such confidential and sensitive information, so I was able to read samples of the books. Then under the guidance of the archivists I had to put stickers on the archives to avoid other people doing the same. The stickering bit was fun – yes I am just a big kid at heart.

Sarah updating the inventory

I was able to read through the log books, learning about the bathing routine of the firemen. I could also see patterns of chip pan fires in the winter and grass fires in the summer. I read only a sample of the collection, but after a few years’ worth of log books I noticed a change in the format. Additional data started to be included. Now the names, addresses and phone number of callers, home owners and details of casualties were recorded. The data protection act states that data has to be protected where it can identify a person, so where all these facts were included the books had to be closed to the public. Sadly I will be the last person to read these records for some time – now that they have been closed for 84 years, (or 100 years where children were mentioned).

Boxes in the archives – complete with new red stickers

But, where I had to close the records I was able to play with the stickers. I have left a rash of red stickers in my wake – across the boxes on the shelves in the strong rooms, on the books inside the boxes, and even on the inventory. In this way, everyone can clearly see where I the boxes contain sensitive information, and are to be avoided.

Firemen’s log books

So now when customers and staff are searching within BA11011, boxes 1 to 14 and 91 and part of boxes 15 and 92 can still be viewed. But the rest can’t be viewed, in some instances, until 2085, which means my work will be recognised long after my placement has finished.

Sarah Ganderton

What is eating your collection?

We have turned into fledgling botanists-cum-poachers tracking down and hunting wild beasts – and museum pests are our prey.

We had no idea there were so many different kinds, all with their personal favourite hiding places, and diets. Some like the dark corners, under cases, where they munch on the carpet. Some venture into boxes and cases for a tasty morsel of skin, fur or textile. Others with a sharper tooth spend their lifetime wriggling through wood. They come in all shapes, sizes and colours, and can nibble at most things you might find in a museum or archive, if you don’t keep tabs on them.

Luckily at the Archives there are very few live pests to worry about. A shiny new building with climate controlled strong rooms and carefully followed procedures mean only the most agile spider or fly can make it inside. But the conservator does deal with the evidence of insect attacks, after freezing everything to remove lodgers. Those books and documents scratched and gnawed by silverfish or left with delicate holes by the tiny Common Booklouse can be carefully put back together in such skilful hands, but it was interesting to learn more about the culprits.

At the Worcestershire Museums though the insect detecting now begins. The collection contains many stuffed animals, insect collections, textiles, carpets and wooden artefacts. These provide a veritable feast for biscuit beetles, furniture beetles, vodka beetles, and clothes moths, and require constant surveillance and control.

The National Brewery Centre in Burton-on-Trent provided the perfect setting for this training course with Jayne Thompson-Webb with great (if repulsive) actual examples and a chance to look around the museum itself to assess any possible pest control issues. This was also an opportunity to network with professionals and volunteers from other midland museums and historic houses, including Coventry Transport Museum, Middleport Pottery and Wightwick Manor. If you are tempted to learn more about museum tests, you can follow this link to the English Heritage pest poster.

Sarah

How do I print from the microfilm?

This is one of the big questions we get asked at the Explore the Past desk. But it is difficult to answer without leaving the desk. So one of my first projects here was to create a guide to help people print or save from microfilm.

One thing we discussed in our PG Cert sessions and which has come in handy for our first assignment is to learn from experiences by reflecting on them and finding better ways to do them for the next time. So, while it is lovely to complete this project completed and means I can get on with the next thing, it’s important to take a moment to reflect on what I have learnt during this task.

Sarah Ganderton with Reader Printer Guide

This task brought together lots of the skills we are learning throughout our placements. I used project management skills we have discussed in our PG Cert sessions, although the project involved more stages than I expected, so it would have been easier if I had planned it better from the beginning. I used the exciting writing we learned about with Kate Measures in a training session. I even used volunteer management skills I am yet to officially learn but which Sue Pope advised us about. I learnt some new skills in the use of Microsoft word too, from Lisa my supervisor.

But learning isn’t all done through training, some is just learned by having a go a things. So I learned a little about managing other people, negotiating with them for their skills and assistance. I asked the opinion of current users of the microfilm reader printer about what was needed in this guide. I had assistance from trainees Danielle and Emalee, and Roger (one of the WAAS volunteers) to test out the guide and Alex (my boyfriend) kindly proof read it. And Lisa, my supervisor, helped me to reformat the guide to help make it more user friendly.

Part of our role in the Worcestershire Archive and Archaeology Service is to make the archives accessible to the public and hopefully this guide will help to do just that, as well as providing a great vehicle for me to learn new skills.

Sarah Ganderton