The Grotto

With an increasing amount of interest in the history of the campus coupled with next years commemoration of the First and Second World War, the archive service have been preparing a  number of history projects for students of public history. One such project is based on the Grotto, which is located down by the gate house and is so tucked away that if you did not know it was there you would easily walk past without seeing it.

It consists of a star shaped pool which can still be seen, however, unfortunately due to damage the statues have had to be removed, but there were two of these depicting Our lady of the immaculate conception and St. Bernadette. The Grotto was consecrated by the Bishop of Plymouth in May 1944.

The Grotto was built by a number of American servicemen stationed here at Tremough during 1944, and their names are listed on a stone within the grotto. Unfortunately, it only gives the first letter of the Christian name so we are undertaking some preliminary enquiries to see if we can either find the names or find more information on what regiment the men came from. Initial investigation suggest it was the 97th Seabees Battalion of the United States Navy, however, research is still in its early stages. So watch this space!

Volunteers Day

This week we had a small get together to say thank you to all of our wonderful volunteers who so kindly give up there time to help us with the collections. It was deliberately arranged to coincide with volunteers week and our figures suggest that over the last year we have had 8 volunteers in all and they have clocked up a magnificent 200 hours.

This year particularly has seen a large amount of outreach activities and an increase in teaching sessions, which have all contributed to the service becoming increasingly busy. While this is encouraged as we want people to use the service, it means that in reality less time is available to spend working with the collections and completing those jobs which may be on the wish list, but unfortunately don't seem to get done.

This may be why volunteers are increasingly playing an important role in enabling organisations to get collections catalogued and therefore accessible to the public. CIPFA figures for 2006-2007 recorded 2136 volunteers working in Local Authority archives contributing a total of 188,333 hours
compared to a year later in 2007-2008 which stated 2742 volunteers contributing a total of 211,294 hours. A marked an increase of 22%.(1) The Archive sector update in August 2010 included a short article about a volunteering project at the University of Reading. This involved a collection of 608 boxes containing various contracts, documents and over 60,000 letters from a publishing house called Macmillan and Longman. The project started in January 2010 and is estimated to run for two years which gives a good indication of the time and effort involved, especially when you think that there are 20 volunteers taking part doing a minimum of half a day a week.(2)

We are then very grateful to our volunteers for all their help!

Sources:

(1) Archive Services Statistics 2006-7 Actuals and Archive Services Statistics 2007-8

Actuals CIPFA, http://www.cipfastats.net/ Quoted in Louise Ray, ' Volunteering in Archives: A Report for the National Council on Archives', June 2009, http://www.archives.org.uk/images/documents/volunteeringinarchivesfinal.pdf >[Accessed 7/6/2013]

(2) The National Archive, 'Archive Sector Update Autumn 2010' http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documents/information-management/archive-sector-update-autumn-10.pdf [Accessed 6/6/2013]

Outreach

During the last few months the Archive Service has found themselves undertaking a large amount of outreach work. This has included a number of small exhibitions as well as participation in a public history event held on campus for the first time in March. Prior to the University's moving on to the Tremough site in 2004 it was a Convent school and before that Tremough house was a private residence. The estate has changed hands a number of times over the years and consequently records about Tremough are scarce or at least scattered in various locations. The Archive Service has numerous requests from students trying to find out about the history of the estate to inform projects that they are undertaking. Performance students are required to do a site specific piece on campus which often requires research into various aspects of Tremough. This curiosity is of course not just restricted to students, we also receive enquiries from external researchers. It was with this demand in mind that earlier this year we undertook the task to produce a Resource List to help guide researchers to the various organisations that currently hold records relevant to Tremough [see post 11th Jan 2013].

The opportunity to further this research was presented when interest was shown by the University of Exeter's Public History Course in organising an event in the form of a Public History Day. This was aimed at encouraging people who had connections to the school or other aspects of the site to come back and have a look around and re-connect with the place. Of course with anything like this you cannot predict how successful or how unsuccessful the day may be, but as it turned out there was an amazing amount of interest which just illustrates the strong human connection to places from the past.

Initially the Service's expectations of the day were minimal and it was largely seen as an opportunity to possibly begin discussions with people and allow them to put faces to the team, so that in the future we might be able to encourage donations of records relating to Tremough and in doing so enhance our understanding and ability to meet our users needs. Advocacy is something the Archive world is very familiar with. As Larry Hackman points out it is part of our core work, '...not an add-on or a 'nice to do' (1),  and so this was seen as part of what was going to be a long process of forming relationships with people who had connections to Tremough and learning about what records may exist, an excercise which proved to be very informative.

There were a number of items donated on the day which was certainly unexpected but very welcome. One lady bought a collection of items which had belonged to her father who had worked as head gardener on the estate. Others came to simply meet up and remember their experiences of the place and relive old memories. One such gentlemen had grown up on the Tremough Barton farm and remembered the soldiers who were billeted here during the war. Events like this provide a wonderful
platform for oral history so it was extremely useful to have CAVA (Cornish Audio Visual Archive) carrying out interviews with those who were willing to tell their stories and memories and allow them to be captured and recorded as a valuable source of information.

For me, though, the most valuable experience of the day was for the first time seeing Tremough in terms of a stage for all those personal stories and memories, rather than simply an historic house and grounds. Many former pupils of the convent school brought their children to show them where they had been taught. This importance of passing on information about your past and in so doing helping construct the identity and self worth of your children is interesting. It has been said that  'A sense of belonging and a sense of place are two important components of a person's sound metal health' (2). Archives can  and do play a very important role within that construction, a fact which has become well recognised with the huge growth in family history researchers, but also within social care professions (2).

Due to the success of the day it is planned that the event will be repeated next year and hopefully encourage more people to come and share their stories and records so that Tremough Campus does not lose its links to the past but is enriched by the experiences of those who came before.






(1) Larry Hackman, 'Love is Not Enough: Advocacy, Influence and the Development of Archives', Journal of the Society of Archivists', Vol 33, No.1, April 2012, pp9-21, p12.
(2) Judith Etherton, 'The Role of Archives in the Perception of Self', Journal of the Society of Archivists', Vol 27,No.2 October 2006, pp227-246, p227..

World Book Night

It is World Book Night tomorrow and to mark the occasion the library staff have got a number of novels to give away free to try and encourage people who would not normally read to pick up a book. The Archive service have put together a small display in one of the glass cabinets in the library to try and advertise and bring people's attention to some of the wonderful novels, both old and new, held in the special collections.  These are available for students to freely browse and include novels from Hollywood films taken from the Bill Douglas Collection to novels of Victorian Culture from the Chris Brooks Collection.

As you can see, titles are as diverse as Roy Rogers to The Brontes went to Woolworths! Here's hoping it inspires someone to explore the rolling stacks to find another gem of a story hidden away.

The joys of research

One of the most enjoyable activities of this job is the research I get to do for people with enquiries which can range from family history to witty and amusing anecdotes for speeches, as has been the case this last week. The Camborne School of Mines Annual Dinner was held last week which also marked the 125th Anniversary and so I have been involved in helping various people find information for their speeches. During that research I have found some interesting little snippets and lively accounts, not just about student escapades, but staff aswell!

For instance did you know that CSM once unofficially adopted a rather scruffy, but charming little dog who took pride of place in the 1925 School photograph. He had somewhat mysteriously disappeared by the beginning of the new academic year, but it was reported that 'Old Ben' had been seen '...looking very forlorn, wearing a collar, with a Praa Sands address inscribed upon it.'

For all those students out there who complain about the habits of their house mates spare a thought for one 'Haughty Student' who wrote to the CSM magazine in March 1898 to complain about the antics of his landlady. Apparently, she had a partiality to corned beef and would eat the students stock and then 'conceal the delinquency by keeping up the level of the beef in the tin with the aid of bread put in from underneath, and who eats [his] sardines, and says they had to be "throwed away" because they had 'agone bad'.

One staff member in his early days as a student during the 1940s played a rugby match in Penzance for the school after which he and the wing forward went on a pub crawl. Some time later they clambered on board the student's motor cycle to return to Camborne. There they partook of 'one more' at the club before again mounting the bike and proceeding down the footpath which also happened to have a concrete post looming ahead. 'The pillion quaked in trepidation as to the width of the gap between post and wall. [The student] replied to his passenger in the usual way, by revving the engine, slipped the bike into gear and gave [a laugh] followed by 'we'll have to see'. The two remained friends so it would seem the bravado paid off, however during a more sober moment the gap was found to be just 2 inches wider than the handlebars!!

The Art of Cataloguing

One of the central duties of an archivist is of course to facilitate access and this is largely acheived through a catalogue. This allows users to search and see exactly what material is held by a repository as well as providing some background detail or context about the person or organisation to whom the papers belong. The catalogue is structured rather like a family tree which should reflect the relationships between the documents. As a central element of the Archivist's role, I have been keen to get some experience of cataloguing and the different methods of achieving it. Therefore, during the last few months I have started cataloguing a small collection of material which is known as the Edwin Chirgwin Archive.

Edwin Chirgwin was a Cornishman born in 1892 in Newlyn and passed away in 1960. Throughout his life he was an ardent supporter of Cornish history, culture and language, writing poetry, stories, historical essays and giving lectures on these topics which so fascinated him. In 1932 he became a Bard of the Gorsedd of Cornwall and adopted the bardic name of Map Melyn (Son of the Mill).

The collection we have includes lecture notes and essays on the ethnographical make up of the Cornish people, the stone monuments of Cornwall, including Trethevy Cromlech and Boscawen-Un, as well as observations on churches and other historical subjects and folklore from within the County. There is also a significant amount of his poetry, but also stories written in the cornish dialect about local people and events that took place, although it is not always clear whether these are fictional accounts or true stories. There is a suggestion that at least some really happened as Chirgwin includes notes alluding to the fact that some characters at the time of writing were still alive.

Progress has been good with each item now entered onto the CALM database with a temporary running number. The next part of the process was to decide how the catalogue would be structured which is not without its issues when considering personal papers. If, for instance, you were dealing with an organisation, a provenance based structure reflecting the management hierarchy may be employed. This would begin with the organisation as a whole at the top e.g. Sweet Chocolate Company (known as the fonds or collection) and beneath that may be the Company Board and beneath that the various departments within the firm such as HR, finance department, marketing department etc. In some companies however, structures may have changed or may remain unknown. In that case a more functional structure may be adopted. This means rather than using the creating department as you would for a provenance based structure, you may use headings such as governance, sales and operations to arrange the collection. When applying this conundrum to personal papers the provenence is the creator which forms the fonds itself, therefore the supporting structure may well consist of functional groupings according to the persons different responsibilities or roles. The important thing is that the structure should best represent the person rather than an imposed order which has no meaning in context to the person.
With the Chirgwin papers it was unclear as to the source of the stories, many in Cornish dialect. Some referred to actual people, but it was not clear whether all the stories were true, old tales handed down from previous generations or entirely fictional. This meant our arrangement had to be carefully considered so as not to invent a new function for Chirgwin as a short story writer. Instead, we termed the material 'Accounts in Cornish Dialect' in an effort to avoid this, but also to encompass the possible variations as to the source of the stories. Another interesting issue for cataloguing was the fact that there was material in the Cornish language, and so to avoid making assumptions only minimal descriptions could be recorded. There was one record, a scrapbook, which did not appear to have any correlation with the rest of the material. After some deliberation as to where in the structure it should go we finally opted for it to remain separate under its format heading of scrapbook. Hence the final tree now has the following sub fonds: poetry, lectures, accounts in Cornish dialect, essays, translations and scrapbook. Although using format is not a recommended approach the item in question did not fit comfortably amongst the other groupings.

Many of the collections held at the Archive and Special Collections Department are fairly large and so it would be unlikely I would finish them before leaving in August. To be able to do a relatively small collection like this one has been really useful as it has enabled me to experience the full process from start to finish and to see the different considerations and issues that can arise.

Appraisal and the digital avalanche

Preservation of digital records has become one of the chief concerns for Archives everywhere and so it has been with interest that I began to look at this topic during my recent archive course module. One of the issues that has arisen is of course how to deal with the mass of digital material available which made me re-examine appraisal and the archival mission.

One of the contentious issues to arise and for which the profession has faced accusations of elitism during the last forty years, is its apparent failure to fully represent society . It was in 1970 that Howard Zinn addressed the Society of American Archivists and heavily critised current trends which saw the rich and powerful of society represented whilst the 'poor and impotent...[were condemned to]...archival obscurity'.(1) This was supported by other professionals including the President of the SAA, F. Gerald Ham. Ham stated the most important duty of the Archivist is to '...make an informed selection of information that will provide the future with a representative record of human experience in our time.'(2) He went on to question the very existence of the profession if '...we are not helping people understand the world they live in, and if this is not what archives is all about, then I do not know what it is we are doing that is all that important.'(3)

Writing in 2001 Johnston reported an improved situation in America but remained somewhat scathing of the situation in the UK. He suggested representation remained an issue which he attributed to the lack of debate in this country surrounding those actions which should encompas the archival mission, and went on to voice Ham's belief that for some in the profession the archival role remained a purely custodial one, as proposed by Jenkinson, and discussed in 'Appraisal To be or not to be', [Jan 24th]. (4) Whilst issues around representation have improved, appraisal has remained a necessary practice to prevent repositories becoming overun with material, a fact which is now further exacerbated by the digital issue.

So, with records threatening to swamp our repositories and with the lack of resources to inspect each file individually  in order that we may reflect fully the society we live in, how do we select archives and ensure adequate coverage is achieved.

Recently, I came across an article which put forward a fairly radical theory to address this very problem. It was by Robert Neumayer and Andreas Rauber of Vienna University of Technology, and was presented as a provocative position paper which certainly achieved its end, raising a number of interesting points and concerns. In essence it proposed that every nth record should be kept, a number dependant on the size of repository, and the rest discarded. The authors claim this would address representation by removing the Archivist's judgement of what should be selected for preservation, and in so doing, eradicate appraisal's natural inclination to favour dominant societal values.(5)

 In essence this returns to the Jenkinsonian premise of archival survival being guided by chance.  Whilst it seems to deal with the problem of mass, essentially it removes any responsibility of the Archivist in his/her role to represent society and make informed decisions about appraisal. It is this which the author's suggest will facilitate representation, however such a system can only be applied to the records which make it to the repository for selection which in no way ensures fair and equal representation.The profession has long struggled with how appraisal should be carried out and continues to search for the holy grail of standards or rules to guide the process. This is an attractive theory from this perspective, but also a troubling one. The Authors suggest random selection would deliver a high level of privacy protection, yet this is largely thanks to the imcomplete nature of the information. There is also that nagging doubt that whilst you may be preserving a rather nondescript invoice in the right hand, there is that ever present danger that in the left you throw away the Magna Carta of the future.


(1) Ian Johnston, 'Whose history is it anyway?',  Journal of the Society of Archivists, Vol. 22, No. 2 2001, p213.
(2) F. Gerald Ham, 'The Archival Edge', The American Archivist, January 1975, p1.
(3) Ham, p13.
(4) Ham,  'The Archival Edge', quoted in Johnston, 'Whose history is it anyway?',p216.
(5) Robert Neumayer and Andreas Rauber, 'Why Appraisal is not Utterly Useless and why it's not the Way to Go either.'http://www.digitalpreservationeurope.eu/publications/appraisal_final.pdf [Accessed 18/2/2013]