Starting My Work Placement

On the week beginning Monday 16th I started my NCLA placement. I met with Linda and talked with her about what NCLA were currently working on . This involved their big project of archiving all the Bloodaxe Books material after acquiring the rights. Linda showed me the website relating to the Bloodaxe work and told us that she would speak with her colleague Tom Schofield as he had some tasks relating to the website which he would need our help on.

On the Friday of this week I also met with Rebecca Bradley, an archivist working in the Robinson Library. Through Linda we arranged that I would help Rebecca with the Bloodaxe Archive in terms of gaining experience from the traditional side of the archiving process.

Working in the special collections section of the Robinson Library was beneficial for me as I have not had a lot of experience of working in a real working environment.  I feel that having been in the office it helped me to learn that I would potentially enjoy working in a traditional office environment over a job where I might move around a lot or work outdoors.

My work with the archive involved helping to file the photographs of each of the authors that were used in the archive. I ensured that each photograph was filed into a grey box, ensuring that each photograph was placed into a polythene protective sheet to preserve it, as well as ensuring that each photograph was packaged away with a duplicate photograph.

I enjoyed this task as it was quite methodical and gave me a sense of purpose, suggesting to me that I would quite like working in a methodical way in the future.

It was also really interesting and intriguing for me to speak with Rebecca a little about what was involved in archiving and the different kind of archiving jobs that she has had in the past. When someone has said to me the word archive/archiving in the past, I have immediately just thought of a collection in a library, used by a school or university. However, in speaking to Rebecca, I realised that a lot of archiving goes on in business sectors, as Rebecca has previously worked for various companies such as Unilever. This definitely opened up my mind to what archiving both entails and who has a need for it, and it made me think about how more traditional businesses do need help in terms of more creative outlets and ensuring that there work can be catalogued for future reference.