Heritage Focus Day

Working out what you want to do in your career can feel like an impossible challenge. When I was at school, I had no idea what a good choice might be or what I was particularly interested in doing. Everything seemed appealing but nothing was jumping out to me. I wasn’t alone in this. The only people I knew who were certain of what they wanted to do with their lives all wanted to go into medicine. But they were the minority, everyone else was also drawing a blank.

A mysterious little girl – An unusual photographic process at Gloucestershire Archives?

Back in March, Gloucestershire Archives was given some documents and photos pertaining to the Pringle family of Longhope (D11928, accession 16319).

The photographs came into Collections Care to receive custom protective enclosures, as carefully wrapping and boxing in archival-quality materials is one of the best ways of ensuring their preservation. Good protective enclosures help to protect them from physical damage and other agents of deterioration.

All the portraits were attractive and appealing, but there was something particularly intriguing about this portrait of a little girl.

How to preserve your family or community archive: the Collection Care Covid-19 lockdown blogs. Blog CC #18

 

• Do you have a personal, organisational, local or subject related archive?
• Have you been following our training blogs?

 Since April 2020, we’ve posted over 20 blogs to help you care for, manage and develop your collection. We hope you’ve found them helpful.  Here’s a quick re-cap of what we’ve covered:

How to preserve your family or community archive: the Collection Care Covid-19 lockdown blogs. Blog CC #17

• Keen to have good storage for your archive collection?
• Want to know what furniture is best?

How to preserve your family or community archive: the Collection Care Covid-19 lockdown blogs. Blog CC #16

• Thinking about making copies of items/collections?
• Keen to save time and avoid damaging originals?
• Want to know how best to prepare?

Making copies of fragile or popular items reduces handling and the risk of physical damage, the number one cause of deterioration in archives (see blog CC#4 on causes of damage to archives.)

It’s good to keep an eye on how often items are used so you can see which ones are most at risk of damage.  Keeping a note with your catalogue or list is a great way to do it – even a simple ‘five bar gate’ tally will do.

How to preserve your family or community archive: the Collection Care Covid-19 lockdown blogs. Blog CC #15

• Got a damaged item?
• Think you might want to have some conservation work done?
• Want to “know what to know” first?

How to preserve your family or community archive: the Collection Care Covid-19 lockdown blogs. Blog CC #14

• Want to avoid damaging items?
• Want to find out how to take a book off the shelf correctly?
• Keen to handle and display things carefully?

Then read on for our top ten handling tips.

How to preserve your family or community archive: the Collection Care Covid-19 lockdown blogs. Blog CC #13

• Want to be prepared in case things go wrong?
• Like to be able to sort out problems fast?

“I have never been in an accident of any sort and have never been wrecked, nor was I ever in any predicament that threatened to end in disaster of any sort”  E J Smith (SS Titanic)

It can happen to anyone! The best thing we can do is be prepared just in case!

How to preserve your family or community archive: the Collection Care Covid-19 lockdown blogs. Blog CC #12

• Want to avoid uninvited guests eating your collection!?
• Keen to make sure the surrounding environment is safe for archives?

Let me introduce you to our silverfish, a Grey Silverfish (ctenolepisma longicaudata).  They are fairly new to the UK, and this is the first one we have found.  We will be keeping the traps out and our eyes peeled just in case he has brought friends and relatives!  They are more tolerant of dry conditions than regular silverfish.

How to preserve your family or community archive: the Covid-19 lockdown blogs. Blog CM #5

• Need to list your archive collections?
• Want to learn more about cataloguing archives?

The documentation you create when you take in (“accession”) new material should include a brief description of each batch of material you’ve received (see blog CM #2).  But you will probably also want to list in more detail (or “catalogue”) the material in your personal or community archive.  As well as being very useful for you, catalogues can be shared, for example via a website, so that other people can see what material you have.