Tag Archives: archivist

So you think you know about Special Collections?

A guest blog by Helen Clutton, a MA Medieval Studies student, recalling a placement with Special Collections earlier this year

If you ask most Bristol students to describe Special Collections they will probably say, ‘It’s a couple of rooms on the first floor of the Arts & Social Sciences Library, and if you ask them very nicely they’ll magically produce a book out of nowhere, which you can come in and look at as long as you put it on a cushion.’

Special Collections Seminar Room laid out in preparation for a seminar on the history of Hong Kong. Photograph by Jenny Fisken.

Special Collections Seminar Room laid out in preparation for a seminar on the history of Hong Kong. Photograph by Jenny Fisken.

That’s how I thought of Special Collections, before I did a placement there as part of my masters. Every Tuesday for a semester I spent some time with a member of Special Collections staff (there are more than you think!) and learnt a little bit about everything that goes on in this branch of the library service. What we see on that first floor is the tip of a remarkable iceberg.

Downstairs, along corridors, and through various locked doors, there is a treasure trove of archived material, acquired over a century, covering not just books but artworks, banners, political leaflets, photographs – you name it, it’s down there (and if it’s not in the library building, it’s in the off-site warehouse in Brislington). And the collection grows every year – last year alone there were sixty new acquisitions. There are also specific projects going on, such as one for the Hong Kong History Centre, where wonderful photos and memories of old Hong Kong are being sent in by people from all over the world. Additionally, Special Collections is linked with Theatre Collections just down the road – another amazing accumulation of riches. So much history, so many stories, all there to be discovered.

King George V and Queen Mary passing the Vandyck Printworks (now the Theatre Collection) on their way to open the King Edward VII Memorial Hospital (BRI) on Park Row, 28 June 1912.

King George V and Queen Mary passing the Vandyck Printworks (now the Theatre Collection) on their way to open the King Edward VII Memorial Hospital (BRI) on Park Row, 28 June 1912.

For instance, the stories which have been holding my attention for all these weeks centre around DM104, which is a collection of fifty manuscripts from Kingswood Abbey in Gloucestershire (now no longer in existence apart from its gatehouse, thanks to our old friend Henry VIII). These documents cover two centuries of monastic life, and include land deals, estate accounts, lists of workers’ jobs, and complaints about taxes! There are frustrating gaps and so many unanswerable questions (thanks again, Henry); however, the documents we do have reveal a dynamic and far-reaching monastic enterprise, with lands up to thirty miles away. Some of their lands were received as gifts, perhaps to secure the prayers of the monks (‘for the salvation of my soul’); other lands were part of complicated exchanges or leases where, in the days before birds-eye-view maps, plots were described in relation to people or landmarks around them. We can see in these descriptions a local and generational knowledge which, even when lessened by the Black Death, is still present at levels unimaginable now.

List of properties owned by Kingswood Abbey and the wages paid to workers at each property, 1255-1256. SC ref: DM104/24.

List of properties owned by Kingswood Abbey and the wages paid to workers at each property, 1255-1256. SC ref: DM104/24.

The documents relating to estate management give a tantalising snapshot of abbey life – the trips they took, the animals and their keepers, the food they ate (so much fish!). Being immersed in these documents over weeks transforms dry old documents into living stories.

And that’s the most interesting part of Special Collections – how do we discover all these stories? How do we know what we’ve got? That’s the job of the archivists. They take an acquisition, which could be an immaculate collection or simply a pile of ‘stuff’ from someone’s attic; they quarantine it in case of pests and mould; they do a simple box list of the contents; then when time, money, and manpower allow, they decide how best to arrange it, list it, and describe it, they digitise it if appropriate, and they make it accessible to us.

It’s quite an undertaking, and the people doing it are highly skilled and dedicated. They are also overstretched and underappreciated! Every time one of us students makes a request for an item from Special Collections, there’s a whole lot of form filling, shelf searching, and running up and down stairs that goes on in order to get that item onto its cushion – so remember to thank them.

My experience of attending the DPC Unconference 2024

Emma Hancox, Digital Archivist, working in Special Collections and Theatre Collection, shares what she learnt at the Digital Preservation Coalition’s Unconference event in May.

In May I attended the Digital Preservation Coalition’s annual Unconference and Networking Event. The Digital Preservation Coalition or DPC is a membership organisation for institutions involved in digital preservation activities. Its vision is to build ‘a welcoming and inclusive global community, working together to bring about a sustainable future for our digital assets.’ My role at the University of Bristol is Digital Archivist and I was excited to attend this event as it was the perfect opportunity for me to meet others in similar positions from a variety of institutions in Europe, the UK and the US. The venue this year was the beautiful Royal Irish Academy, an historic building in the centre of Dublin. Its meeting room was lined with books and it was a grand setting for the events of the unconference which were spread over two days.

Digital Preservation Coalition Unconference and Networking Event 2024, Royal Irish Academy, Dublin.

Digital Preservation Coalition Unconference and Networking Event 2024, Royal Irish Academy, Dublin.

The unconference had a strong focus on opportunities to network, share information and have conversations with others. This is particularly important to practitioners in the digital field as they are often the only member of staff working on digital preservation in their institution and there may not be any other Digital Archivists working in their local area. I am fortunate that we have two Digital Archive Assistants at the University of Bristol but it is still invaluable for me to be able to meet other Digital Archivists. The programme for the event was driven by members hence the ‘unconference’ name. As well as proposing talks in the run up to the event, we were able to suggest and vote on topics for discussion on the day. The winning areas were cloud storage, procurement of digital preservation systems, advocacy for digital preservation and lastly artificial intelligence which was no surprise due to its popularity as a topical issue!

One of the highlights of the event for me was going to the DPC’s reading club for the first time. Whilst I have attended reading groups outside of work, a reading group based on professional literature was new to me. This was the first in-person reading club as it is normally held online. The topic of the session was an article called ‘Toward a Conceptual Framework for Technical Debt in Archives’. ‘Technical debt’ is a term borrowed from commercial software development. It is a metaphor for future costs and work which are necessary because of compromises that were made (either intentionally or unintentionally) when setting up a system or project. Technical debt applies to digital archives work where there is often a legacy of early collections-based projects and infrastructure which are time intensive and resource heavy to maintain in the future and compete with the many other tasks archivists are faced with in their day-to-day jobs. The article proposed a model to assess past digital projects through an understanding of technical debt to make better decisions in the future. I found the article a useful starting point for evaluating the status of legacy projects and it gave me a framework I will use when analysing past projects that are presented to me. I enjoyed the discussion around how the article could be expanded to include case studies relating to born-digital rather than just digitised material. I plan to attend more of the DPC’s reading groups in the future online as they are a useful driver for engaging with professional literature.

Other talks I attended included one on fixity file checking in the cloud by Gen Schmitt from the University of Illinois. File fixity checking allows archivists to verify that files in their care have not become damaged or corrupted over time. The talk discussed performing fixities at scale across a whole repository of content and it was interesting to hear how the cost and efficiency of the process had been balanced. There was also a useful discussion around appraisal of born-digital collections led by Nicola Caldwell from the National Library of New Zealand. Appraisal in the digital realm is a very challenging area due to the sheer volume of digital files produced. It was encouraging to hear about tools that could help to make this piece of work easier such as Brunnhilde and the full version of FTK Imager. We are also grappling with challenges around how to appraise born-digital files at Bristol and because of the information gained from this session we will certainly look at these two tools as part of our future research and testing.

Professional visits were another part of the unconference and I was lucky to get a place on a tour of the Irish Traditional Music Archive. Housed in the Georgian Merrion Square the archive collects everything to do with Irish traditional music and has a fascinating and wide-ranging collection. After a tour of their digitisation and recording studios we learnt about their collections and how they provide a service to the public. As expected, the ITMA staff spend a lot of time clearing rights in their collections to be able to make them accessible. If you are ever in Dublin a visit is highly recommended.

I’m very grateful to have had the opportunity to attend this year’s unconference. It was a fantastic opportunity to make new connections and I plan to integrate what I learnt about dealing with legacy projects, fixity checking in the cloud and digital appraisal in my own role at the University of Bristol.