OHD_COL_0324 Thank you notes
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Tag Archives: Placement
OHD_RPT_0288 NCBS report
There were two main aims for the placement at Archives at NCBS. The first was to investigate and formulate how archives handle access to material while taking into account a multitude of factors from copyright to data protection to sensitive content. The second aim was to experience and understand the culture of a young archive. Archives at NCBS has only existed for four years which is considerably less than my partner institution the National Trust.
The first aim, surrounding access in the Archives, manifested into two mini projects. The first was creating a takedown policy and the other was developing a sensitivity check. The former had three iterations with the first version containing a basic spiel on how a visitor of the archive can contact the Archives to request material is to be taken down. The following versions expanded into a fully formed how-to guide on a takedown process and included a variety of reasons for and against takedown, ranging from copyright, defamation, and changes in the law. In addition, the final version was expanded again to become a takedown and alterations policy, meaning this process could be used by visitors and archive staff to make and document any changes to the archival material. The other mini project, the sensitivity check, only required two versions as a lot of the research done for the development of the takedown policy could also be applied to the sensitivity check. The sensitivity check ended up being a two page document which is to be used during the cataloguing process in order to clear non-sensitive material to be put online as soon as digitised. This is to ensure the Archives is able to make material accessible to the public as soon as possible after accession. What I learnt from this work is how the various ethical questions which surround archival material are woven into the entire process of acquisition and cataloguing. This principle was then used during one further activity developing a framework for an acquisition and cataloguing workflow.
The second aim of the placement was to experience and understand the work culture at Archives at NCBS. Initially there were no distinct activities attached to this aim, although during the Archives annual away day I did end up creating some activities. These activities were designed to get the archiving team to bring together their individual thoughts on the Archives and get everyone on the same page. One of the activities also helped the team to discuss their gripes and praise with and for the work environment of the Archives. Overall my experience at Archives at NCBS led me to conclude the Archives has two distinct identities the first is a public archive and the other is a knowledge hub for the development and innovation of archiving methods. However these two identities require very different work environments, which can cause stressed and disfunction under the staff if they are not managed correctly. The Archives therefore needs to review and reflect on how they manage these two different types of workloads across the team.
OHD_RPT_0287 BL report
The aims of the placement at British Library were:
- To produce a status report on the collection, including how much has been digitised and the status of cataloguing
- Producing a report on a pathway to clearing the collection for online access
- Writing for the British Library Sound and Moving Image blog
For the first aim I did an audit and presented my findings in a spreadsheet. The creation of this audit included searching through both analogue and digital files. The audit has given the staff at The British Library a better idea of what material still needs to be catalogue, digitised, and ingested, and which recordings need be to prioritise within each of these. For example, I found a handful of mini-discs which are harder to digitise then cassette tapes. The second aim of the placement lead me to create another audit, this one specifically about the copyright status of all the recordings in the catalogue. This was a long and tedious process which took up most of my time during this placement. It required me to be very thorough and rigorous as I had to repeatedly go through the recordings accompanying documents in order to check and double check whether the recording had copyright or not. In the end the auditing process produced one very large spreadsheet, containing information on all the recordings, and a spreadsheet for each individual National Trust property which had a recording without copyright. In addition to noting whether a recording had copyright or not I also had to work out whether an item could be an orphan work. Doing these two audits help me better understand the workflow within an archive and what is needed to make archival material accessible. In addition, to these two audits I also created a guide to what I had done so the person who next works on the National Trust’s sound collection can easily understand what I did and why. This was a very helpful exercise as it made me think about how you might communicate across project periods or other long periods of time and ensure work and information is not lost or repeated.
Overall this placement gave me a better idea of The British Library and the National Trust’s relationship surrounding oral history story. The National Trust sound collection is the second biggest in the archive and the recordings span nearly 40 years, so there is a great variety in needs when it comes to preservation and steps to make material accessible. The work I did while on this placement has become a foundation for further projects based around the National Trust sound archive, including the further cataloguing of analogue and digital material, and the development of a three-month PhD placement which will involve developing a workflow for National Trust sites to obtain the correct copyright forms and help The British Library in getting closer making the recordings publicly available.
Finally, I also wrote a report on the status report on the collection to share with both National Trust and British Library staff and have also written a blog post on the contents of the collection after I spent the last week listening to a handful of recordings.