Come and See: A Post-Grad Student Placement in Archives and Special Collections
We are delighted to present a guest blog-post from Neil, currently on student placement here at Archives and Special Collections:
Hi, I’m Neil Hemfrey and, as a post-graduate student of Information and Library Studies at Strathclyde, I was lucky enough to be welcomed into the Archives and Special Collections of the Andersonian Library for my placement. I’d never set even the slightest, wary foot in this “mysterious” department before, having always imagined the space as suited towards the “Professor Van Helsing” and “Dr. Indiana Jones” types and not the likes of a mere student who had a shaky grasp of referencing. How lucky I felt when I learned that my mortal presence was invited see the inner workings of a sanctum filled with special knowledge and history.
I’m seven weeks into my placement now and there’s, thankfully, not a kindly occultist nor a cocky treasure hunter, seeking to pursue world-ending artefacts, in sight. Instead, my misapprehensions have been pleasantly wiped away and I feel silly for it to have taken me five years to finally see Archives and Special Collections. In fact, it is the coolest department most people may not be visiting, and it IS a department for EVERYONE.
It’s quiet and peaceful atmosphere is a welcome change from the typical tension and stress I can feel permeating the study areas that I’m used to. Inky pens and angst-induced eating and drinking are left outside the department’s doors in favour of pencils, clean hands and calm. These measures ensure that the integrity of the items in the collection are preserved as well as, I feel, the integrity of your sanity in a learning environment. The friendly and enthusiastic team of archivists inside are keen to help whoever enters with their enquiry, whether it is for academic purposes or personal interest. Archives and Special Collections holds collections begging to be explored.
I have certainly been enthused by the invaluable work that takes place here. Enquiry-solving, cataloguing and preservation are simply three of the skilled jobs this team commits to every day, each integral to maintaining the legacy of the university and providing us with fascinating and surprising resources. The two BAFTAs of Verity Ann Lambert, the first producer of Dr Who, were definitely unexpected items to find in the collection. They were definitely unexpectedly heavy too. Archives and Special Collections could be the place to find the best Cluedo weapons.
For my personal project, I am helping the team record old and rare books into an online database called the English Short Title Catalogue (ESTC). This database contains a catalogue of items published between the 15th and 19th centuries in Britain, Britain’s former colonial territories, Ireland and the United States. My task is to check a selection of books from Special Collections against copies of those books on the database so that it can be publicly known to the institutions, organisations and individuals using the database whether the University of Strathclyde holds an item they need for their research. Checking two versions of the supposedly “same” book, as I have discovered, is no quick or simple matter. Any book, along with its title, from the outside can portray a look of ‘neatness’, ‘polish’, and sensible structure, then swiftly transition into a hair-tearing exercise. So, accuracy, a detail-oriented approach and the resolve not to be beaten into submission by a bundling of paper older than your great, great, great, great grandmother are key!
Every aspect of the books I handle, originating in the 17th and 18th centuries so far, were all once handmade. Unlike the books born of today’s technology, that can mass produce identical items speedily, books for the ESTC were all individually paginated, trimmed, bound, sewn and hammered together, resulting in incredibly unique items. The covers bound to protect the manuscripts inside are usually the most immediate and noticeable difference between books. As I have learned from my own personal reading, bindings used to be made from wooden boards, compressed paper, leather, vellum, and cloth.
Most challenges I encounter concern the pagination of the book, historical damage or missing plates. Firstly, in terms of pagination issues, I have found that in some volumes the page numbers do not match a chronological running order or have been bound in the wrong order completely. This can result in a book having more or less pages than another copy is catalogued as possessing. Secondly, historical damage I’ve seen has taken the form of holes/tears in pages that destroy text, or discolouration which has obscured text (like the interesting, brownish fingerprints I found in an old medical textbook), or pages being stuck together and hiding text. Thirdly, some books contain plates that take the form of separate pieces of paper added to the text, that are often on larger, folded, sheets that display illustrations or tables. In some cases these are missing, and the disappointment comes from not being able to see a ‘sweet’ piece of art that another copy of the same book possesses.
As the weeks go on, bringing me sadly closer and closer to the end of my placement, I’ll no doubt encounter further head-scratching problems and gawk-worthy information gathered in a different time from different mindsets. I feel very fortunate to have had my placement in Archives and Special Collections as it has educated me on handling and preserving historical texts as well as the importance of keeping accurate records for them so they can be shared. I feel this is very valuable as the issue of digital preservation for digital items seems to steal most, if not all, of the focus on my course. Going forward into my library career, I hope to continually improve my knowledge about Archives and Special Collections and advocate its immense value to protecting physical pieces of history; something we would be crazy to overlook.
