‘Do Archives dream of Electr(on)ic Records?’
Display of digital documents on our online catalogue
Here at Archives and Special Collections, we’ve a pretty exciting development to share: we have now completed the processing and cataloguing of our first born-digital archive collection (other than oral history interviews and lecture recordings) that is also fully available to view online!
The past year’s lockdown has been a good opportunity to focus on our digital records - both digital versions of records that are still safe in the store-rooms on campus, and those that were created digitally. At the start of 2021 we received an accession of a fully born-digital collection of papers from Archives friend, and retired speech and language therapist, Linda Armstrong relating to the history of the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists (RCSLT), and the speech and language therapy profession in general (Collection reference: GB 249 ARM).
Full catalogue, and documents, is available here: https://atom.lib.strath.ac.uk/papers-of-linda-armstrong-relating-to-the-history-of-the-royal-college-of-speech-and-language-therapists
The papers comprise lists and analytical articles relating to the history of the College and the profession, such as early members, conferences, the changing name of the profession, and analyses of the College publications. The records themselves were researched by Linda Armstrong, and some collaboration with Jois Stansfield, between 1999-2021 using the papers of the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists: both those held at our archive, and those still held by RCSLT.
What is particularly exciting about this collection is that Linda, who created the records, is happy for them to be accessed online and so once we processed the files through our digital preservation software, we were able to attach copies of the documents themselves to our online catalogue, so when you search for these items in the catalogue, you may also access them directly.
Digital preservation work-flow for Linda’s files
We have seen an increasing demand for digital access to our collections in the last few years, and especially during lockdown in the past year. For many reasons, it is very difficult to provide online access to our physical collections as well as to some of our digital collections. The cost and time involved in digitising large amounts of paper records is huge, and so we can only do this on a small scale. Also, some digital files cannot be shared online due to sensitivity and data protection or copyright issues. It has been very exciting, therefore, to process a collection that can be made fully available online.
The papers themselves make a great companion to the papers of the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists, for which we recently completed the catalogue and will be a great source for those studying the history of speech and language therapy.
We would like to thank Linda Armstrong very much for depositing the collection, making it fully accessible, her help during its cataloguing, and for her research into the history of the College and profession. Last year we featured many of her fascinating blog-posts in honour of the anniversaries of the College and of teaching speech and language therapy at the University.
These papers are a great resource to bring to a fully digital platform. Have a look for yourself and delve into the history of speech and language therapy!
