Cataloguing of Letters

On Friday the 13th March I continued to work in the Special Collections department. This time my work involved cataloguing some letters from Frederic Whyte. This process involved me going through a number of letters and checking who writer was (in this case making sure it was Whyte), identifying the date the letter was written, and also going through the letter, reading it and providing a small commentary on the content and scope of the letter.

This work was exciting as it was my first experience of having real archival work, in the sense that we had come to Special Collections at the point why they were finishing work with the Bloodaxe Archive. The process of cataloguing the letters was slow to begin with as I had to get used to Whyte's writing style and decipher just what he was actually saying in the letter. Once I overcame this the task become simple and another example of quite a methodical way of working, which I enjoyed.

In cataloguing the letters I also learnt the importance of speaking up when you are unsure of things, as there were certain items in the letters and some things attached to the letters that it was necessary for me to double check with Becky, otherwise they would have been catalogued incorrectly.