Schoolchildren meet special collections

Today was a first for me - I gave a tour of Special Collections and Archives to a group of schoolchildren aged between 12-15. The tour was organised by SHARE with Schools, SHARE being Cardiff University's School of History, Archaeology and Religion. The idea was to introduce them to the idea of studying history at University, through some taster lectures, and visits to sites such as Special Collections and Archives.

Recalling how chronically unimpressed I had been with everything the world had to offer at that age, this was something I considered with more than a little trepidation. My usual approach of pointing at Kelmscott Press books and illuminated incunabula and saying 'look, pretty!' wasn't going to wash here.

I turned to Twitter for guidance, asking 'anyone have any advice on engaging schoolchildren with special collections?' It was unanimously suggested that I introduce them to objects which have a good story behind them, and ideally that story should be macabre, gory, salacious, involve illegal activity... you get the picture. So this gave me a jumping off point to start from. We try to feature items with good background stories on our blog, so this was a good place to start looking for key pieces.

I needed a context in which to ground these items, however. Displaying a bunch of weird stuff and pointing at it is much the same approach as displaying pretty stuff and pointing at it - I needed to show why it mattered. This is something I have never really had to convince anyone of before, my usual audience for tours and presentations being PhD students and academics - preaching to the converted.

How could I explain the difference between our special collections section, and the rest of the University library? It struck me that the key division was between primary and secondary sources. This concept was always hammered home by the national curriculum - I can still recall the photocopied, typed extracts from Samuel Pepys' diary. Imagine if I'd been able to see Samuel Pepys' actual diary? I think I would have been a lot more excited about history.

As I didn't have Pepys' diary handy, I decided to start out with one of our strongest pieces - a bloodstained letter found on the body of the war poet Edward Thomas, when he was killed in the trenches. It was the last letter from his wife Helen, writing how much she missed him and promising him that soon the war would be over... powerful stuff. It had the desired effect of getting their attention straight off. I then held up a copy of a recent award-winning biography of Edward Thomas, and told them how the author had spent hours, sitting where they were now, reading Edward's letters, and this got us into the value of primary sources.

At their age I was only aware of libraries as a repository for secondary sources: rows and rows of intimidating books full of other people's ideas, telling me - this is how it was, don't argue. I wanted to get across one thing - primary sources allow you to argue, to rewrite history, and that's why we have them in a University. I asked them why they think people still keep writing history books - and pointed out that because of libraries and archives, new information is always coming to light, and changing what we think we know. I showed them what will probably be my life's work - a room full of uncatalogued, unlabelled cardboard boxes, waiting to be opened, and their previously unknown contents interpreted and described. Part of the reason I love working with young people - they are all convinced they can change the world. They talked about the possibility that they might find something ground-breaking in those boxes, write a best-selling book and become famous! I pointed out that if they did, we would probably want their papers for our archive, which caused much excitement!

From here, we talked about unreliable sources, where I pulled in some examples such as the book purportedly written by 'Belzebub', and the zoology textbook featuring bizarre illustrations of entirely fictional sea creatures. Finally, I showed them a Victorian copy of the Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine, and compared it with this month's Cosmopolitan. I wanted to emphasise that although we had looked at a lot of old books in the session, not all primary sources are old. I told them there was no difference between the two magazines except their age - they both told us what the women of that time wore, what interested them, their place in society, which products were marketed to them. People in the future would read the issue of Cosmopolitan to find out more about what it was like to be a woman in 2012. We also talked about how this was problematic - did Cosmopolitan represent all women? We know that they use airbrushing, for instance - in the same way, can we trust the Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine to be representative of all Victorian women? Which sections of society might have been ignored and why?

We could have talked a lot longer, but before I knew it the time was up. I was surprised to found I had enjoyed myself, and they had too. All thanked me when they left, without prompting (!), and one boy came right up and said 'that was amazing, thanks miss!' High praise indeed!

Volunteering

Thing 22 looks at volunteering. In the days when I hoped to be a teacher, I spent many hours volunteering in primary schools, but I have never volunteered in the library sector. Unless you count being my school's 'lunchtime librarian' when I was 13 : )

I have been fortunate enough that volunteering was never a route I needed to consider, though it's one I would certainly have taken should it have been necessary. At Special Collections and Archives, I'm on the other side of the equation, dealing with requests for volunteering, and training and supervising volunteers we take on.

We take on very few volunteers, and this is not due to a lack of offers - quite the contrary. I always find it very hard to turn away offers of help, since it is always needed, but we lack spare workstations and sufficient staff available to train and supervise volunteers on a regular basis. The problem with offering work which requires less training is that the volunteer gains little from the experience. We believe that placements should be mutually beneficial, and with this comes the need for time and effort from both sides. My experience of working with volunteers has been very positive - all have been tremendously motivated, talented and quick to pick up new skills - so we hope one day to be in a position to offer more voluntary opportunities.

Library Routes

Thing 20 covers the Library Routes project, and wants us to write about how we got into the profession. I wrote about this at length for Thing 10, so I think I'll approach this activity by adding my link to the project, and exploring others' stories.

Tales of an accidental archivist

Thing 10 covers routes into the profession - traineeships, master’s degrees and accreditation. I’m a (accidentally) trained Archivist rather than Librarian, but the route was identical, so I figure it’s worth sharing. I may catalogue archives rather than books, but when I'm not doing this I work with extensive book collections. I care and repair books, make them accessible, I teach using them, and create exhibitions and web resources from the collections. When work for small respository, you need to be able to turn your hand to anything!

Like many in the library sector, I’m an English Literature graduate. My secondary school was... best forgotten, and I did not reach anything near my potential. Leaving, thank heavens, finally, in 1999, I managed to get a place at Anglia Polytechnic University. Founded by, and since 2005, named after John Ruskin, it was a highly liberal, nurturing and creative environment, in which I finally flourished. I left after three years with a first class honours degree and an AHRC scholarship to study a Masters in Modernism, at Queen Mary, University of London. I accepted this without much thought to a long-term career plan, and had a wonderful year of complete financial and intellectual freedom in the capital. On graduation, a friend at Cardiff University urged me to move there to take up a PhD in Critical Theory, which was a discipline I had dabbled with under Jacqueline Rose while at Queen Mary. I applied unsuccessfully for an AHRC scholarship, and again, without thought to long-term goals, moved to Cardiff anyway and began a PhD. I had a succession of dreadful bar and supermarket jobs to support myself while I studied, before successfully obtaining an evening and weekend library assistant job in the University’s Arts and Social Studies Library. This was August 2003 – and I’m still here!

I loved everything about the library. I loved the work and I loved the people, who were almost without exception, at every level, kind, thoughtful and intelligent. I loved working with the students, and I loved the changing seasons of the academic year – the lull of summer, the giddy new students in autumn, the tears and tempers around essay submission dates and the hum of tension during exam revision. After 18 months I made the decision to withdraw from my PhD, for a whole host of reasons, but a major factor was the feeling that I knew what I wanted to do with my life. I put all my efforts into a library career. 

In 2005 I moved into a post which had become vacant, working afternoons rather than evenings and weekends. This gave me more hours and experience of working in peak time, very different to evenings and weekends. I’m glad I had the experience of working these ‘insightful’ shifts however – many daytime staff don’t appreciate how much harder the work is in terms of customer service. All the problem customers would come out of the woodwork after hours, hoping to take advantage of a largely untrained, unsupervised skeleton staff. 

I took advantage of my free mornings to work on a distance learning Library and Information Studies MSc offered by Aberystwyth University. I was one module in, but then suddenly everything changed at work. I had taken part in a 6 week ‘job-swap’ scheme, and had been paired with the University’s Archives Assistant, Gemma. She had only been in post for a few months, and was finding the work unsuitable. She came to work on the issue desk, and loved its chaotic bustle. I went to work in the archives, and loved the scholarly quiet and the variety of work there was to do. Special Collections and Archives had only been founded six months previously, and there was plenty of work on offer. After the six weeks were up I felt like I’d had ten different jobs (in a good way), and was sad about leaving them unfinished. Fortunately, Gemma felt the same way, and we were permitted to continue our ‘swap’ for the foreseeable future. I will never forget my gratitude to senior management for their flexible attitude toward what was quite an unorthodox set up. Gemma was on a higher grade than me, and full-time rather than part-time, so we didn’t make it easy for anyone. 

I contacted Aberystwyth and asked to move from the LIS degree to a degree in Archives Administration. I couldn’t transfer any credit, but having abandoned half a PhD, losing 20 credits didn’t feel like the end of the world. The transfer was done with a minimum of fuss, and I found myself training to be an archivist. 

In 2006, Gemma obtained a library post at the Welsh Assembly. Her Archives Assistant post became vacant, and I applied for it successfully. Now I was full-time and working at a higher grade, I was almost there! The next bit is pretty boring, it basically involves me spending two years doing coursework every weekend and working very hard at my new job. 

In 2008, I completed my archives qualification to Postgraduate Diploma level, since I had already completed a dissertation at Master’s level. I had also ran out of academic steam (and money) by this point. I started being allowed to take part in more professional activities – cataloguing, researching and organising exhibitions, project management. 

In 2009 I took a route within my organisation known as re-grading, where you fill out a questionnaire describing your typical work. This in entered onto an HR computer programme and ‘scored’ to tell you what you should be being paid. (This is also checked by a panel of real people, I should point out.) A ‘questionnaire’ makes it sound easy – this was a 50 page document in which I ultimately wrote 10,000 words. On what I do at work. It took me around six months to complete it satisfactorily, but it was worth it. In 2010 my role was re-graded up two grades. This was in line with what the ARA recommends should be a newly-qualified archivist’s salary, and my job title was changed from Archives Assistant to Assistant Archivist – which means nothing to anyone but me!

Lately I’ve been putting things together for Registration (Chartership for Archivists), and I’m maybe halfway there. It’s been a long and rather random journey between 2003 and now, but I hope this gives new professionals hope that you never know what opportunities may be around the corner!

Introductions!

A quick post to introduce myself and to check that this all roughly works...

My name is Alison Harvey, and I'm an Assistant Archivist. I work for Special Collections and Archives at Cardiff University, and this is my first work-related blog. 

So why blog? I've decided to take part in CPD23: http://cpd23.blogspot.com/, which requires me to use a blog over the summer months to critically reflect on a number (23 to be exact) of topics/tools/skills related to professional development in the wonderful world of information, books and archives. 


But no more spoilers! Week one starts on 20th June, where I'll be writing about my motivations for taking part in CPD23 and for starting a blog for work purposes.